Microstory 945: Google

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In the early days, you had several choices for a search engine, and since few people fully grasped how the internet worked, or what it could become, they were all about the same. You chose Dogpile if you wanted to donate to charity, or you chose any of the others based on what features they had, or even just how pretty their homepage was. Then Google came along. As my father was a mathematician, I already knew what a googol was, and ignored the irony that I was otherwise terrible at math myself. As time went on, the world started to see the same thing I did. Google was quickly edging out all competition, until the only real contender was Yahoo!, plus whatever Microsoft was calling their service at the time. And then there was one. I early on saw the potential Google had to completely transform how we access information, despite being a wee boy with no programming aspirations. Though I didn’t know how big they would be, I did predict they would start adding unrelated services all the way back when all they did was search. I expected the internet to be one day entirely controlled by them, and while it’s more complicated than that, they are today the gatekeepers. We all know that person who still has a Hotmail account, and while most people aren’t dedicated power users like me, it still makes you giggle. Why is that? Just because you use Gmail, why in this world defined by apathy, does it matter to you? Well, because it’s absurd. Google is best at nearly everything they’ve tried, even if they ultimately shuttered a given service. They couldn’t crack social, and I don’t exactly understand why they keep trying. While I believe they could have out-Netflixed Netflix before Netflix got so big, they never seemed to see it coming, and missed that boat. Though Google Fiber is considered a failed experiment, they were the best internet service provider I ever had, and only don’t have it still, because I had to move. I use all the usual suspects: search, Gmail, YouTube, Google Calendar, Chrome, Android. But I use all the others too. There’s a reason you’re reading this on a website made by  Blogger, instead of WordPress. There’s a reason I’m typing this out on a Motorola (formerly owned by Google) phone, and one which uses Google’s Project Fi cellular service. And there’s a reason I’ll revise and post it once I get home to my Chromebook. The reason is the same for everything, which is that they are superior to all competition within their field. It’s as simple as that. I have been a fan and supporter of this company since before I cared about much else beyond my own life. Despite their just absolutely god-awful customer service, I still love them, and will never use anything but. So, search on, my friends.

Microstory 944: My Family

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I’ve had a lot of struggles in my life, and despite countless opportunities to be better, I’ve wasted nearly all of them. I had some behavioral issues when I was younger, which we now know was partly due to my autism, but that’s not a very good excuse in my case.  I’ve mentioned the classes I’ve failed, but never really gave you any numbers. I still won’t, and I can tell you it’s never been enough to keep me from graduating, but it has cost money. My job search was even worse. I finished college in 2010, but only really found a good fit about a year ago when I found this position I have now. Yet through it all, my family has been there for me. They have repeatedly given me extra chances, funded my doomed endeavors, and received little return on their investment. My father is an economist, and works as a human resources consultant. He’s taught me so much about how business and how the market operates. I’m a pretty simple guy, who sees a lot of excess in the world. Without his lessons, and constant guidance, I would be so confused and lost about all the things most people take for granted, like how insurance works. My mother is a crafty financial advisor with an unmatched capacity for compassion and understanding. I can talk to her about almost anything (and do). She gives the best advice, because she not only gets how the world works in reality, but also how I see it, and how I think it ought to work, which is decidedly different. My sister is my best friend, and like a third parent for me. I needed a lot of help when I was a kid, and still do. She helps me organize my thoughts, and tackle challenges. And she has had to support me financially as well. I have a bit of resentment for shows like The Originals and Supernatural, which teach you that blood relations are everything, because that is not how I was raised. I think ours is the preferable option, since those people are consistently dying, and even killing each other, yet that hasn’t happened to us even once. You absolutely can choose your own family; maybe not as much when you’re too young to fend for yourself, but certainly when you get older. Even though my real family happens to be related to me, it doesn’t necessarily have to be like that. I’m related to a ton of people neither I care about, nor who care about me. I’m sure you’ve heard the idiomatic expression, blood is thicker than water. You’re probably using it wrong, though, because the original phrase referred to blood of the battle versus water of the womb, which makes a level of sense, because what other water might it be talking about? The water of friendship? I wasn’t born with a lot of privilege, but instead acquired it later. My parents didn’t have it easy when I was born, but the three of them worked their butts off, and by extension, I benefit as well. Without them, there is very little chance that I would still be alive today.

Microstory 943: Constructive Criticism

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As I told my therapist a couple years ago, I’ve always been a lot better at taking criticism than praise. Accolades always make me uncomfortable, because I don’t know how to respond. Do I say thank you? Okay, I do that, but then they just keep going, I guess because I’ve just validated their insight, and they don’t think they can stop. So, do I say thank you again? I make good use of a thesaurus for writing, because I don’t like repeating myself too much, as you can see with praise and accolades. I tire of affirming their compliments so quickly, and assume they’re secretly resentful of me for not somehow magically absolving them of their continued admiration, and allowing them to move on without throwing me a friggin parade. While I understand that most people need a lot of validation for the things they do, I need very little. I really just need you to tell me that it was right, so I can lock that behavior into my procedural memory, and go on to the next challenge. What I truly thirst for is criticism, but as you may have guessed from the title, only the constructive kind. I don’t like being berated or insulted any more than anyone else, but I do need to hear what I did wrong, so I can correct the behavior, and lock it out of my procedural memory. Because if you say nothing, then I’m liable to do it the same way again. I personally enjoying finding efficiencies, and perfecting a craft, if given the chance, so I won’t necessarily be stuck there, but if I have too little motivation, then I will. One of my favorite lyrics from the band, Muse comes at the end of their song Hoodoo. It goes, I’ve had recurring nightmares // that I was loved for who I am // and missed the opportunity // to be a better man. I think it speaks for itself quite nicely.

The lack of constructive criticism is one of my biggest pet peeves, because I’ve struggled so much with it my whole life. I will be a part of something for an extended period of time, and then at some point after it’s over, I hear all this garbage about how poorly I did. If true, these people had every opportunity to help me before, but they chose not to, for whatever reason. Perhaps they just like complaining about other people, and attacking them. Or maybe they’re so out of touch with reality, that they don’t even recognize the disconnect. Or—and this is the most likely explanation since I’m so introspective, and don’t generally have the confidence to trust my own past actions—they’re just lying about the whole thing. If this is the real truth, maybe they’re upset I didn’t need their help as much as they thought I would, or they don’t like me for some other reason, and feel the need to justify their hostility. Whatever the case, nothing they’ve done has helped whatever it was we were trying to do, now there’s a chance I didn’t help it either, and I certainly can’t grow and learn much from my experiences. Most of my teachers chose deliberately to not use red pens when grading assignments, because of the negative connotation, but I’ve always loved seeing all that red. It illustrates a clear distinction between what I thought was right, and what’s actually right. If I cannot pick on on that difference—be it for a piece of writing, or more abstractly for any other scenario—then nothing gets better. The world is as crappy as it is today, because too many people have been indoctrinated to believe that we have no room for improvement. I don’t believe that, and if you don’t either, then come the next two elections...#votethemout.

Microstory 942: Language

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When I was in seventh grade, I found myself failing English class. I was blowing off every assignment, and bombing every test. It got to be so bad that my teacher had to call my parents, which led to an awful fight. It was the weekend, and another test was coming up, but I had no way of studying, because I didn’t bother bringing the booklet home with me. My dad made me start calling my classmates one by one from the student directory to ask them if I could borrow their booklet, make a copy, and take it back. I don’t remember how many I had to call—which, as an undiagnosed autistic boy, was about the worst thing you could make me do—but I remember there being several of them. I cracked open the booklet, and was surprised at the material. They called it Greek and Latin Roots and Stems. You mean to tell me the string of letters -ing means “continuous action”? Well, of course it does. And -ed denotes the past tense? It couldn’t be anything else. In a matter of weeks, I ended up with one of the highest grades in the class, because this was my field of study. I just didn’t know it yet. Over the course of the next few years, I would regularly start failing English class, only to make up for it once I actually agreed to pay attention, and try. Still, I was into my second year of college before I discovered Linguistics. People in movies often struggle to decide what kind of classes they want to take, but it wasn’t so up in the air for me. There were tons of general requirements, and you had to take a great deal of classes at a certain level or higher. And in order to reach that level, you had to take prerequisites. I’m not saying we all took the exact same classes, but there was quite a bit of overlap, regardless of your major. I ended up falling in love with the linguistics course that fulfilled these requirements, and decided to minor in it, while continuing to major in film. Though, by the time the next semester rolled around, I had realized that no one in the film department liked me, and I was better off switching completely.

True to form, I kept failing my classes, but this time I had to retake them, because college professors are far less forgiving than high school teachers. Still, because I basically started as a junior, with nearly the maximum number of transfer credits, I was able to graduate in four years, just like most people. And here I am today as what’s easiest to describe as a permanent office temp. I have a multitude of duties, at dozens of different locations, and not a single one of them is at all related to the study of linguistics. The name of my degree is, every single time, misleading to people who ask for it. Some think it means I know every single language, which would be tough, since there are/were literally thousands of them. Those who understand it better, want to engage me in an intellectual conversation, which I am unable to provide, because I was a horrible student, no matter how you look at it. I know a little about a lot of things, but I don’t know much about any one thing; not even linguistics. And don’t even get me started on what kind of job people are meant to get with this degree. The answer is, the one I have right now, asshole. Most people don’t have their dream job, but thanks for quite deliberately making me feel like a failure. Fortunately for the people who paid my way through school, the entire ordeal was not technically a waste of time. As a writer, I use the skills and knowledge I picked up every day. My foundation allows me to seek out answers without being completely lost, unlike when I try to research, say, how to repair an automobile. I love language. I love all its little twists and exceptions. I love learning about who speaks what languages, where, when they started, and why. I find it fascinating that the term a napron was so decisively mistaken for an apron that few people even know the truth behind it. And I love that English is the only Germanic Romance language in the world. Language isn’t everything, but if we didn’t have it, we wouldn’t be able to talk about all the other things that matter.

Microstory 941: Sex Workers

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As I believe I’ve said before, though perhaps only in fictional settings, I do not believe the sex industry should be illegal, nor so stigmatized. I often hear people defend their own vices by comparing it to those of others. Despite what the South Park writers would have you believe, being fat is not “just as bad” as smoking. Smoking is a bizarre behavior on its own, but in the end, I don’t care so much what you do to your own body. The issue arises when you do it in public, and you poison other people. Same thing goes for the difference between recreational drugs, and sex. When done wrong, both sex and recreational drugs are bad. They cause friction between loved ones, diseases, and financial hardships. When done wrong, recreational drugs are bad, because they cause friction between loved ones, diseases, and financial hardships. When done right, however, sex is good. It releases pleasurable chemicals in the brain, creates a bond between partners, and in some cases, propagates the species. Yes, there are a lot of bad things attached to the prostitution industry. People are thrown into this life against their will, forced to take drugs to keep them docile, and treated extremely poorly. There’s a lot of violence and blood and abuse that comes with the territory, but it doesn’t have to be this way. I’m not saying that simply making it legal would solve all of its problems. Governments would still have to regulate it, but guess what, the government regulates nearly every other industry anyway, so I’m not asking for anything crazy. Create laws that would protect workers from harm; others that would keep children from all sides of it; and stop making it seem to clients that these people don’t matter. Like the homeless, sex workers are treated like objects, to be used, and if desired, discarded. If they had rights and security, it would be a whole lot harder for someone to not treat them like real people. I don’t know what this all looks like in the long-term. Maybe once most of us have merged our bodies with artificial components, sex won’t seem quite as important, but I know that something has to be done today. People aren’t getting hurt and dying because they’re having sex. They’re getting hurt and dying because they’re not having sex the right way, and because too many oppose proper education, and acceptance. So, let’s hear it for the noble sex workers. I would raise my glass to you, but I don’t do recreational drugs.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 22, 2199

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The first thing that Leona Matic could remember was being killed by one of the mercenaries that she had commissioned to break Ulinthra out of her prison cube. She could recall the sting of the bullet, and the flow of blood spilling out of her wound. She could feel the light of her life dim little by little until there was nothing but a single pixel left. She never actually experienced that pixel being destroyed in her very, very final moment, but it still made her feel small. Though, through the magic of alternate timelines, she knew she had died before, no one had ever shown her what it truly felt like before. But she had apparently asked for it, and she had to trust her own past. The memories began to return to her backwards from there. Interrogating Ulinthra to find the ardusite dagger, retrieving an alternate Horace Reaver from the extraction mirror, watching Brooke Prieto die in a darkburster explosion. They just kept coming at an accelerated rate, until everything she had done before had finally returned, added to the ever-growing pile of parallel memories. The Warrior removed his hands from hovering at the side of her temples.

“I’m not screaming,” she noted. “Why am I not screaming? The others screamed. It always makes you scream.”

“Not always,” the Warrior explained. “You’ve had your brain blended before. It gets easier each time, and your brain is particularly...magnificent. Plus, the way you changed realities has never been done before, as far as I know. That dagger seems to have come from a completely different universe, so there’s no telling what other side effects it brought with it.”

“Where’s Horace?” Leona asked.

“He was never here,” Vitalie told her. “He and I followed Ulinthra to where she hid the ardusite dagger. Despite the fact that cops have been playing that trick on criminals throughout all procedural drama history, Ulinthra fell for it. She couldn’t help but check to see if we were bluffing about already knowing where it was.”

“Who did it?”

“He did, of course,” Vitalie continued. “He tried to tell you; that he knew it would mean his own demise. Ulinthra never existed. We are the only few people who have ever heard of her. Unfortunately, if she never existed, then we had no reason to go get Horace from the alternate reality either. As soon as he stabbed her with it, reality changed around everyone, leaving us with this, and without him.”

Leona shook her head. “We needed Horace to erase Ulinthra from history, which meant we didn’t need Horace, but if we didn’t have Horace, then Ulinthra couldn’t have been erased from history. It’s a vicious circle. A paradox.”

“I can’t tell you why it’s not a paradox,” Vitalie said. “Let’s just let it go, and be grateful that everything worked.”

“Yes,” Brooke finally spoke. Let’s.”

“It appears to be unanimous,” Ecrin pointed out.

Paige sighed. “The motion has passed.” She mimed banging a gavel.

“If that is all,” The Warrior said, “I will be going.”

“Yes,” Leona said, almost thinking they ought to give him a tip, as if he were a helpful bellhop. “Thank you so much, Anatol..for everything.”

The Warrior nodded respectfully, and disappeared.

“Well, he’s right that this feels different. Before, I got blended memories of different times. But this just went back through the last two weeks of my life, with only a little extra from having encountered Ulinthra at Stonehenge before we left for Durus.”

“Yeah, that’s what’s interesting to me,” Brooke said. “There are minor differences in what happened to us between the first time we saw Ulinthra in this time period, and when we saw her again in Panama, but nothing big. I have conflicting memories of recharging my systems on the ship one day, instead of going over navigational calculations; or of Dar’cy and Missy arguing over something trivial, when that actually never happened. But no one died who should have survived. No one was born that shouldn’t have, or anything like that.”

“I guess, in the end,” Ecrin began, “despite all the havoc she wreaked on the world, she wasn’t really all that important. It makes you wonder, do any of us matter? How different would the universe be if any one of us just disappeared?”

“Yes, about that,” a man said as he stepped through an invisible door in the middle of the room. In the timeline that had since been erased, they spent most of their time in Panama, but in the real timeline, Leona only got one day there before everyone went back to Kansas City. A couple years ago, they decided to move to one of the outer Northwest Forest circles, which was where they were now.

Ecrin tilted her head in friendly, mild surprise. “Ennis, how nice to see you again.”

Ennis looked like a mailman, complete with shorts, a cap, and a large satchel. He also had terrible burn scars on his face. “Miss Cabral, hello.” He tipped the cap.

“What do you have for us?” Ecrin asked him. “Anything good.”

“I guess,” he said.

“What did you mean, about that?” Leona asked. “About what?”

“Oh, you were talking about people disappearing, and I have something for you that is relevant to that.” He pulled a thick folder out of his bag, but did not hand it to anyone. “I was meant to come to you earlier, but I’m not allowed on Durus, and I don’t do moving vehicles. I could have given it to you after that, but I was told to leave you alone during the Ulinthra corruption. So I’m here now, at my earliest convenience, to give you this.” He handed the heavy folder to Leona.

Leona didn’t open it, but looked to Ecrin for guidance. She trusted her judgment.

Ecrin nodded. “If The Courier hands you something, it belongs to you. He’s legit.”

“Mrs. Matic,” Ennis began.

“Miss,” Leona corrected.

This confused him a bit. “I’m sorry, but aren’t you pregnant?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Leona asked, appalled and offended.

“Well, it’s just, I was told...who’s the father?”

Now Leona was getting really offended. “That is none of your business.”

Ennis scratched at his chin, then took a notepad out of his bag, and started looking them over. “Oh, you’re only starting to remember. Hmm.”

“What? Are you? Talking about?”

“Okay.” Ennis clapped his hands together to begin his explanation. “There was a man. This man..was named Mateo. A...bunch of stuff happened, and then a really powerful asshole took him out time. Kind of like what you did with Ulinthra. And also kind of like Ulinthra, he owned a planet, but in this case, it was legitimate, and the people who lived on it actually liked him. Since he’s no longer here, however, the rights to that planet fall to his next of kin, which is you.”

“You’re telling me I have some relative that I don’t know about, because someone erased his history?” Leona had seen a lot as a salmon, and knew there were entire timelines she had no recollection of, but this was sounding fishy.

“I’m telling you that you had a husband you don’t remember. He’s the father of your child, which means that child is proof that Mateo Matic did indeed exist. His history wasn’t erased. He was erased. You don’t remember everything he did, nor do most people, but he still had an impact on the way things are today. And the days before, since we’re time travelers.”

Leona once again looked to Ecrin, who clearly had no memory of this either. “Again,” she said, “this man doesn’t lie. If he says this dude existed, then he existed.”

“The more the baby grows inside of you,” Ennis went on, “the more it will have an effect on you. You will start remembering. The Superintendent can do a lot, but he can’t stop that. I didn’t mean to suggest you had to be married to have a child, I just thought you were far enough along to start getting your memories back.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Leona said, trying to wrap her head around having a husband she couldn’t remember. “I’m not saying I believe it, but I’m not saying I don’t. Assuming it’s true, is there any way to prove it? Can you..show me something? Can we get the Warrior back here?”

Ennis shook his head. “The Warrior and The Blender can give you quantum memories from an alternate timeline. But this isn’t an alternate timeline. It’s a corrupted timeline, but still the same timeline. Same same, but different.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, I got blended memories from the Ulinthra corruption, which is what you called it.”

“That shouldn’t have worked either,” Ennis began, “but you made arrangements so that it would. You spoke with The Warrior before Horace used that dagger thing, and prepared him to help you today. That’s not gonna work here. I want to make it clear—and Ecrin can attest to this—I am quite literally the messenger, so don’t shoot me. I didn’t erase Mateo, I can’t put him back, I can’t prove that I’m not lying, and lastly—this is an important one—I can’t put you in touch with the Superintendent. He’s the one who did this, and like a witch’s spell, only he can undo it.” He pointed at the folder, which Leona had yet to open. “That is, if you even wanted him to undo it. Dardius is pretty nice this time of millennium.”

She didn’t know the answer to that. Surely if her memories had been removed against her will, she would want to get them back. Yet this was her life now, and though no sane person would call it a good one, it was one she understood. While she would likely never see Serif again, Leona would never want to lose the memory of her. If they only got together because Mateo wasn’t there instead, then what would happen to her? Could she give up one love for another? “What would that mean for Serif? Was what we had even real?”

“Oof,” Ennis said lightly, “that’s a loaded question. Was Serif real? Technically, no. She was fabricated, but she was fabricated...before Mateo was removed from time.”

“But she was, what? Just some friend?”

“No, you were with her; you and Mateo both. Don’t ask me to give you details on how your relationships worked, I just met you today. Some things I know, some things I don’t.” His watch beeped, as did Leona’s, though she didn’t know why. “Oh, look at that, it’s time. Are you guys going to the show? Do you have tickets?”

“Tickets to what?” Brooke asked.

“The Last Savior’s Last Save? It’s today, in just a few minutes.”

“You mean, she retires after this?”

“Yep, it’s over. The Age of Saviors is kaput. I can hook you up, if you want. I’m pretty good friends with Sanela. Hey Leona, she’s your, uhh...great-something-grandmother...in-law. Umm. Twice removed? I don’t know how it works, your family tree is crazy.”

This was getting to be too much.

Ennis kept going, “so do you guys want to go, err...?” He trailed off an awful lot.

“That would be lovely,” Paige said.

“Yeah, sure,” Leona agreed. She was the last to step through Ennis’ invisible portal. It would be nice to see Étude again, but honestly, all she could think about was what she was going to do about this Mateo guy.

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Fervor: Retourner (Part XIII)

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Despite the best efforts of the doctors, Carol Gelen, Leona’s mother, succumbed to death shortly after being admitted to the hospital. Over the course of the next two weeks, the 2025 pathogen spread all over the world. Patients experienced the usual symptoms of a cold,  including a fever, but with some markèd differences. Normally, a pandemic like this would indeed result in deaths. Everyone is affected differently, but the very young, the very old, or those particularly susceptible to to the symptoms, would not all be able to handle it. Yet, everyone in the world seemed to be affected the same way, regardless of their immune system. It was almost like it had been programmed to protect its hosts until it died off, but if Jesi had done that, why would she have not bragged about it. And if she had been capable of it in the first place, why did she not just do something in the future, where it came from, and leave the 2025 populace out of it? One interesting component of this—which separates it from all other cold-like diseases—is that no pregnant woman was able to give birth while infected. It is believed no child was conceived during this period either, but data that would support this hypothesis was hard to come by, so the idea was relegated to anecdotal evidence. All in all, presumably from having been so close to patient zero at the earliest stages of outbreak, Carol was the only death known to have occurred as a direct result of the disease. Doctors couldn’t quite explain why, though they suspected someone like me existed, so I was able to get away with murder.

As soon as I had the chance, I pulled the version of Leona that I knew aside, and confessed my sins. She nodded, and waited patiently for me to finish, then she hugged me, and said that it wasn’t my fault. She didn’t blame Jesi either, apparently because she knew exactly who Arcadia and Nerakali were, and that they really were responsible. “I suffered for my parents’ death a long time ago, from my perspective,” she told me. “I’ve mourned them, and I know it can’t be changed. I’ve already seen enough of the timeline be altered, and I do not think it wise to try again. What happened, happened. Do not apologize for your role. If it had not been you, it would have been someone else. The Prestons can’t be reasoned with.” Not long after that, Garen Ashlock, a.k.a. The Action, sought Leona out at the Bran safehouse. She and Slipstream were sent on some secret mission in the future, and only the latter returned. Slipstream promised that Leona was not only safe, but exactly where she belonged. Afterwards, she left the group as well, and returned to her life as leader of the tracer gang. She and Leona never recovered all of their memories, specifically the ones in the early days of this Jesimula debacle, but for the most part, they were both back to their old ways. A few days after this, Hogarth and Hilde received brand new identities from The Forger, and chose to use them to abruptly leave Kansas City, and start new lives. Now it’s just me, Mirelle, and little Brooke. We moved out of the safehouse, so someone in need could use it, and came back to my house.

We’re nearing the end of the month, and I’ve nothing to do. It occurs to me recently that I’ve missed a great deal of my schooling, with no intention to return. When I was living in the future, I did as everyone else at that point in history, which was generally not working. Work in this time is a necessity, but not so in a post-scarcity world. People still have responsibilities, but really only if they want to. If, for instance, you want to help build a space station, then you go through an evaluation to make sure you’re qualified. There aren’t any formal education institutions there, though, so if you want to learn something, you go do it yourself. People spend their days enriching their lives by enjoying time with their families, having fun with hobbies, or learning new things. While I didn’t think I would be there long enough to commit to some society improvement project, I did partake in this education. In only a year’s time, because of the efficiency of this tailor-made program, I basically have the equivalent of a high school diploma. Going back to crappy 21st century school just seems like a waste of time. My fathers, if they ever come back, or are even alive, will surely understand. Afterall, I’m an adult now, right?

There’s a knock at the door. I jump up to grab it, thinking Mireille is busy entertaining Brooke, but she’s already taken care of it. Hilde is standing on the porch with a man, and no Hogarth. “Can we come in?”

“You can,” Mireille says, “but can he?”

“He has good references,” Hilde assures her. “He’s here to help.”

“Help with what?”

Hilde’s eyes dart up to me, standing mid-staircase. “Help with Paige.”

Mireille looks back up at me as well. “Come in, then.”

I walk downstairs, and follow them into the living room. “What’s going on?”

“Paige, this is Merton Casey,” Hilde announces. “He can put you right.”

“What exactly does that mean?” I question, suspicious of both of them.

“He can reverse your aging. Hogarth and I have been...networking. We finally found someone who can make you the age you’re meant to be.”

“What if I don’t want that?” I ask.

Hilde nods patiently. “We thought you might feel that way, so we brainstormed ways to convince you that this is for the best.”

“And what did you come up with?”

“Nothing,” Hilde says. “You know the advantages and disadvantages of being a twenty-something with the mind of a young teenager. I honestly can’t tell you which you should choose; I can tell you what I would choose.”

“You would go back,” I nod understandingly.

“No,” she says solemnly. “I’m the product of rape. My mother and I spent so long running from my birth father that I don’t know where I was born. I don’t even know if my mother remembers, wherever she is now. Children are vulnerable, as my mother could have told you when she was eleven.” She waits. “I would have jumped at the chance to grow up, so I could protect myself like she couldn’t, and I wouldn’t have regretted it. But you’re not me, or my mother, and your fathers aren’t my father. They deserve to raise you.” She finally exhales.

“Thank you for telling me that. I’m always here for you.” I take a moment. “Okay, I’ll do it. But don’t make me fourteen. I’ve lived a whole year since then. I’m fifteen now.”

Hilde looks to Merton for guidance, who shuts his eyes and nods slightly. “Now, from what I gather, this is going to be different than when Jesi did it. He’s going to have to get...” she trails off.

Merton looks away in shame.

“He’s not deaf,” Hilde starts over. He doesn’t talk, because women often need his services, and it’s not...great for him to have to do that. He actually doesn’t like doing it at all, and each time has scarred him a little more.”

Now I’m getting scared. “What does he have to do?”

“Jesimula’s power works by altering the passage time within an alternate temporal dimension. She basically made time move faster for you while you were in the bubble, without worrying about things like food, water, and sleep, which you would need to age in the real world.”

“Okay...?”

“Mister Casey, on the other hand, has to...physically alter your age. He has to touch you, uhh...like, everywhere.”

Merton plants his face in his palms, and mumbles something.

“What was that?”

“Too young,” Mireille says. “That’s what he said, too young.”

“You agreed to this, Merton,” Hilde reminds him.

Merton rubs his closed fist on his chest.

“I don’t want you to be sorry,” Hilde says to him. “I want you to ignore your instincts to stay away from a minor, and just pretend that you’re a doctor.”

Merton stands up, and shakes his head. He rubs his chest again, and starts to back away. A woman suddenly appears, and places her hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, Merton. I’m going to make an exception for you. No one will ask you to do this ever again, not while you’re in Sanctuary. Would you like that?”

He tears up and nods graciously.

“Okay, I’ll be there soon for orientation.” The woman somehow makes Merton disappear.

“Dammit,” Hilde whispers, not mad at Merton for not being able to do it, or at this woman for stopping him, but still mad. “Now we have to go find Jesi.”

“No need for that,” the woman says, literally rolling up her sleeves. “I can do it for you. Besides, it was about time I meet my baby sister.”

Hilde and I look in the general direction of Brooke, who is apparently napping in the other room.

“No, not her,” the woman says. “Paige. My name is Meliora Rutherford Delaney-Reaver. Horace Reaver was my father.”

“Was?” I echo nervously. “Is he dead?”

“Oh, heavens no,” Meliora swears. “He’ll be back with Serkan soon. I used the past tense, because he was my father in a completely different timeline. He doesn’t remember me at all. I still consider us sisters, though. I hope one day, you can as well.”

“You used two other last names,” I say. “Are you also related to Leona Delaney, and the infamous Lincoln Rutherford?”

“Yes to the first; a different version of Leona was my mother. The second was my foster father in that timeline. He actually contacted me when he realized what Miss Unger and her girlfriend were doing.”

“How would he know?”

“He knows everything.”

I can barely speak. “Leona and my dad were...together?”

“You kinda had to be there,” Meliora says. “I can explain when you’re younger. Are you ready?”

I lean back against the chair. “Do it.”

Meliora does have to touch me a lot to reverse my aging. She presses on my breasts to make them slimmer, on my head to make me smaller, and on my limbs to make them shorter. She rubs her fingers down my face to youngify it, and taps on my throat to change my voice. It only takes a moment, but once it’s done, I feel like a new person. “You’ll need rest,” she instructs me as her watch is beeping. “We got this done just in time. “You don’t need to tell them about me until you catch each other up on more important things.”

“Tell who?” I ask.

There’s a flash of light from the empty original laundry room, which we don’t use, because it’s in a weird location. Three men fall out of this light, and crash onto the floor. It’s Ace, Serkan, and some guy wearing a mask. Mireille helps Ace up while I’m taking care of Serkan. Meliora is gone.

“Dad, dad, you’re back!” I exclaim. I only realize now that we never decided what I would call which of my fathers. We always just know who I’m referring to based on context.

“Paige, I’ve missed you,” Serkan says, embracing me.

“What have you been doing this whole time?” I ask him.

“It’s not even been a month for him,” Ace explains. “We’ll get into that later. Your dad needs to rest and recover. K-Boy, can you run to the pharmacy for us? You know what to get.”

The masked man stands up for himself, and nods deliberately, like a Power Ranger. Then he runs off at superhuman speed.

« < » > Entire Story

Microstory 940: Virtual/Augmented Reality

< > Table of Contents

At the moment, my job entails traveling to different sites around the city, and sometimes farther. I perform a multitude of tasks, but all of them are what I call auxiliary. Mail, shipping, and printing services are all important components of a company, but they’re not directly part of the company’s primary business needs. The company I work for provides these other companies with these other services, so they don’t have to do it themselves. This has exposed me to a lot of different corporate environments, and has taught me a lot about how people interact with each other. I was recently working at a site that was in the early stages of forming a relationship with a virtual reality company to enrich their employee education program. Because my job at this particular site involved troubleshooting audio/visual equipment, my supervisor there was invited to a hands-on meeting to try out this technology. Which meant I got to attend as well. After the meeting, he and I started discussing how our company could use similar technology to improve our business, and it ultimately got me thinking about how the tools can be good for practically any business. Training at the virtual reality level can be immensely beneficial. If you’ve never tried VR, it really does make you feel like you’re there, because when you turn around, you see the whole room. This gets the brain used to seeing practices and procedures as they would be seen in the real world. When a technician, for instance, looks at a machine, and a part is out of place, graphics can be superimposed in their field of view, which shows them exactly how to repair it, or perform maintenance. This can be used to train new employees, or heck, even be used in the field during real service calls. Theoretically, any layperson could make the repair, because everything they needed to do would be shown right there. Take it a step further and you could program specific daily procedures into a department’s system. An associate could simply look at a piece of mail, and an arrow will tell tell which mail slot it goes in. When they go out to deliver, more arrows will point them down the hallway, and to the right mail stop. This might sound like science fiction, but this level of technology actually does exist. Along with refinement, most of what we need now is data, which I understand is no small feat. Google Glass first came out as a niche technology for nerds who just wanted to try out a new form factor. What they should have done—and are apparently starting to do now—is market the device to various industries. Medical professionals can use artificial intelligence to diagnose a patient, or simply keep data available without physically picking up their chart. A security team can have a list of banned visitors, and spot offenders before they get anywhere near the door. We’re doing a lot of experiments in these earlier days, and focusing on the gaming possibilities, but there are so many other things virtual and mixed reality can do for us. It can make our lives so much easier, and even safer. I’m so excited for the future.