Microstory 948: Clean Meat

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I love meat. Meaty, meat, meat. Here it goes down; down into my belly. Mm-mm-mm. I love cow meat, and pig meat, and bird meat, and sea meat. When I was younger, I was willing to eat any kind of animal, as long as it wasn’t lamb or veal. Why those exceptions? Well, they’re babies, and I think eating babies is monstrous. But maybe that’s just me. Other than that, I was up for anything. Cow tongue, escargot, caviar; whatever, I’m a pretty adventurous guy. I never had any interest in becoming a vegetarian, but somehow at the same time, I always wanted to be a vegetarian. I never liked the fact that something had to die so that I could live, but I did it, because I needed the protein. Things are different now, though. I’m educated enough to know that there are vegetarian protein options, I’m living late enough in history for those options to be readily available, and now all I need is the money. I would love to go full vegetarian right now, but I just cannot afford the substitutes I would need to stay healthy. If I had better self-control, and wasn’t a recovering binge eater, I might be able to get away with it. After all, the majority of your diet is meant to be carbohydrates anyway. That doesn’t work, though, when the you can’t get full just from eating fruits and vegetables, and ended up eating thousands of calories a day to compensate.

A few months ago, one of my cousins was being celebrated for having graduated from college. Family from all over came to the area for a lunch, which was being catered by a local fried chicken place. They came in with this huge tin of dark chicken meat, and I wanted to throw up. My favorite food had always been chicken, but that looked so...Usonian (you would call it “American”). It was excessive and wasteful; it kind of opened up my eyes. I decided I wanted to change my lifestyle, but I knew I couldn’t just go cold turkey (pun well intended). Ironically, I’ve actually kept the chicken in my diet, along with other fowl. I also continue to eat seafood, though it’s fairly expensive in landlocked Kansas, so it’s mostly birds. Chicken. It’s mostly chicken. All I did was cut out the mammals, which is perhaps the easiest way to explain it. I’m saving up money so I can by a car, but once I have that, I’ll start saving...so I can adopt an older child. But maybe someday down the line, I’ll be able to afford—and consistently stomach—all those nuts, lentils, tofu, quinoa, and yogurt. Hopefully soon, though, I’ll have an even better option. They call it clean meat. You know me; I’m great at naming things. Seriously, using my linguistics resources to figure out how to name things is a special skill I have that’s surpassed by few others. I’m the one who came up with the term materianet, for anyone reading this in the future when it has finally replaced the ridiculously-sounding “internet of things”. Clean meat is an odd choice of words, and an entirely politco-marketing one. It’s not any cleaner than regular meat, but it is less cruel. What they do is extract a few cells from a living creature, let that creature continue to live, then engineer the sample to grow on its own. It’s a fascinating process that is presently still in its infancy, but it is showing real promise. Imagine the staunchest of carnivores capable of devouring any meat they’d like without having killed a single animal. Despite all those restaurants that make you wear use forks for soup—or whatever other crap they do—this really will revolutionize the food industry, and I’m extremely pleased with the prospect.

Microstory 947: Chipotle

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Not until I was checking my calendar to see what my next story was meant to be about did I remember that I’ve already sort of written about my love for Chipotle. It was a weird one, and I don’t expect you to read it. In fact, you probably shouldn’t. It was early on in my career, so I didn’t have much experience with the short form. Anyway, people love everything about food, don’t they? They love to cook it, to watch others cook it, and most importantly, they love to eat it. We’ve come up with so many different dishes, and so many different ways to eat them. We can’t go one day without at least one new restaurant that’s attempting to do things differently; sometimes even with the hope of revolutionizing the industry. There are restaurants with no lights, and/or blindfolds, supposedly so it enriches your sense of taste. We all know that’s actually nonsense, because this isn’t a comic book, and no one is Daredevil. You can’t impede a sense for an hour, and except the others to suddenly be extraordinarily enhanced. All you’re doing is giving people food without them knowing what it is, while also giving waiters ample opportunity to covertly lick the glasses, and make obscene gestures with their hands. Molecular gastronomists use science to try to make food better in some significant, but ultimately pointless, way; some don’t let you use utensils; and some don’t let you use chairs. There’s a restaurant for all tastes, and for no tastes, which is one reason why half of them fail within the first year. Yes, people do love to eat, but I am not one of these people. I would be totally satisfied with scifi food cubes, if given the option, and would actually prefer it. Why, I just watched an episode of a show I’ve already seen, because tonight’s programs had not yet begun, but I also couldn’t write and eat my soup at the same time. Food is a burden, and I would sooner eliminate it from my routine, if someone found me a way, than try out some edgy way of eating. However, if I had to pick a favorite restaurant, it would be Chipotle. Their menu is easy to understand, and their lines quick to move through, assuming you don’t have some jackass ordering for the whole office without using the catering system. The ingredients check all my boxes, and the meals don’t leave messes. I love it so much that I had to institute a once per week limit, which I knew I would break if I didn’t make this deliberate plan. I’m currently trying to make my waiting period longer, but it’s not easy. My closest store location is too close to my house, and I have trouble getting through my drive home from work without being hungry. I’m just glad they don’t deliver, because if they did, my bank account’s tummy would start grumbling. Still, thank you, Chipotle Mexican Grill, for being you.

Microstory 946: Taxes

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I know it’s an extremely unpopular opinion, but I very much love taxes. In 2011, I worked for the IRS for a short stint during tax season. A year later, I worked at H&R Block as an editor in a temporary capacity in the Learning Department for several months. Almost exactly a year after my first day, I was rehired there in a similar position, which only lasted a couple months. I applied for these jobs very much on purpose, and only don’t still do them, because I was just a temp, and they weren’t going anywhere. Now, why would I like taxes? They’re a pain to fill out, and “that’s my hard-earned money”. Well, that’s true. You did earn that money, so the question is now, what are you going to do with it? Are you going to buy more guns? Cigarettes? Tiki torches? Or do you want to spend it on improvements to your community? Libertarians would say, “hell no” to the latter, and “you should be able to, if you want,” to any other option. If you think spending a day or two filling out tax forms each year is a huge hassle, you are in for a real treat, if we ever get rid of them. Let’s go on a hypothetical walk, and take a look around. You’re on a sidewalk, next to a road. Let’s say it’s the evening, which means there are streetlights, lighting your way, along with traffic lights keeping cars from killing you. There’s a county hospital. That’s a public a school. Right across the street from that police station is a fire station. Wave hello to that postal worker, on his way to delivering your paycheck. Oh, now we’re in a not so great neighborhood. These people are struggling to get by, but fortunately, the government helps them out. They provide them with a little bit extra, to make their lives easier, so they have some money left over, which they spend on goods and services, which stimulates the economy. Which helps us all. See that house with a flag in the front, still in “bad” neighborhood? A marine once lived there. Not anymore, though. She was killed in action fighting for your freedom, and is survived by her husband, and two little children. Your taxes paid for her gear, and then it paid for her memorial services. Your taxes paid for that road, sidewalk, and lights. It paid for police protection, fire safety, health care, community education, and mail. It even paid some welfare, and other assistance programs.

Some of things I’ve discussed you like, and some you don’t. Some you use, and some you don’t. But I guarantee you know at least one person who has, at some point, benefited from each of these things. An educated populace is a prosperous one, and I think it would be difficult to argue against the idea of safety and health. You may want these individual services to be paid for by the consumer on an as-needed basis. You may want everything to be privatized, so that companies compete for your business. That’s what capitalism is about, so why wouldn’t we use it for this? Well, because that would be hell. I don’t want to have to pay a toll every time I switch from one street to the next. L.A. traffic would look like racetrack compared to how that would be. Maybe we simplify it, by adding stickers to your car that indicates which streets you’ve paid for, and which you haven’t. Could you imagine the amount of manpower it would take to regulate this, however you set it  up? A labor shortage would put this nation into just as much turmoil as unemployment has in recent history. You may hate taxes, but they are the most efficient means of distributing wealth across the whole country. I’m not saying it’s a perfect system. There are so many ways we can make it better. I don’t understand why I fill out any forms at all. The government should know where I work, how much money I earned, and even what I did with it. Just take what you need, send me a statement, and give me back my Aprils. I also don’t always agree with what they spend my tax dollars on, but the solution to this is not to simply eliminate the concept completely. The solution is to vote for civil servants who I believe will change laws according to what’s best for society. If you agree with this sentiment, then come the next two elections...#votethemout.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 23, 2200

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For centuries, civilized humans struggled for their rights and livelihoods. Life was a long and violent land rush that only ever ended in death. You took as much as you could, and hoped the heads you stepped on didn’t rise back up and retaliate. The sooners were the rich, and stragglers the poor. But as time wore on, people started realizing that there was no real point to this. Having a lot of money, and a lot of things, were unfulfilling exercises. As the old guard died off, their descendants began looking at life differently. They found that having everything they wanted was not more enjoyable just because there were those without. They still slept well at night in their comfortable beds knowing that others were doing the same; better even. Priorities shifted from the individual to the common good. It started to feel more rewarding the less poverty there was as a whole. Perhaps it was the promise, or threat, of an alien encounter, that only drew nearer as the years went by. Perhaps children are generally just better people than their parents. Whatever the cause, the reality was clear: money was a waste of resources.

Crime plummeted exponentially once society realized that the majority of them were perpetrated by those who felt slighted, underappreciated, and wanting. Early signs of this peeked through the global consciousness in the 21st century when superior paid services were chosen over inferior or illegally free ones. There was little place for illegal online downloads, for instance, when great content was affordable and easy to access. But it would take decades to truly see the potential of a world where labor and capital were not valued more than the benefits they provided. Still, crime was not entirely extinguished, for need was not the only reason. There was just no way to safely satiate the hunger of those who just want to hurt others. Virtual reality simulations alleviated some of this, but without a real sense of risk, they could only take it so far. Terrorists, rapists, serial killers, and the like, still felt the need to explore their impulses, and no amount of placating would be able to stop them.

Étude Einarsson was born with a destiny, to save the lives of strangers. Her predecessors had extremely strenuous careers, but hers was relatively easy. The world just wasn’t all that dangerous anymore. Deadly accidents were almost exclusively the stuff of legends and histories. The real danger came from operating in outer space, which was outside of The Savior’s purview. Even that was becoming safer anyway. And so the biggest problem positively contributing members of society faced was human nature. The Last Savior’s Last Save was seen firsthand by a couple hundred people, though nearly all invisible. A special choosing one named Sanela Matic had the ability to travel through time as witness to historical events, but was unable to interact with it. As The Screener, she could present an event to others, like a four-dimensional film. Normally she did this on an individual basis, but this was an important moment in time traveler history, and the powers that be wanted it to be shared. She and her audience were not the only ones there, though. Loa recorded the entire thing in her own brain, which was a secondary skill she had been working on for years. She would now have it for her lifetime, and anyone capable of contacting her would be able to request a viewing.

At the very last fraction of a second, Étude was teleported between the would-be killer, and his intended victim. He was reportedly not a well man, who became obsessed with murder mysteries as a child. He had apparently grown up studying these crimes, ultimately deciding to make a plan to see if he could get away with it, even in this day and age. At the end of the 22nd century, it was hard to do anything without people knowing about it. They accepted the lack of privacy since it was replaced by a deep sense of apathy. Just about anything one does could be discovered by others, but few worried about it, because—unlike the olden days of ubiquitous social media—few cared enough to do so. With the population of the solar system quickly approaching the first hundred billion, there just weren’t that many public figures. If you wanted to be famous, you had to agree to a level of transparency formally considered absurd. Even without fame, the hopeful murderer was easily caught by authorities, shortly after failing to hit his target. The bullet harmlessly struck Étude’s distribution vest, and that was that.

When Leona returned to the timeline, she heard Étude had been given a real identity, and was presently testing her way into medical school in one of the midrange circles. There weren’t many human medical professionals anymore. While other fields had plenty of room for people who just wanted to expand their knowledge, humans were too dangerous and inefficient at medicine. It was typically illegal to practice medicine without a certain threshold of operational upgrades. Even then, most patients preferred fully automated treatment, so not even many transhumanists had much work. The less advanced regions of the planet, and less developed offworld colonies, were the only ones willing to stoop to that level. Étude was supposedly sick of being limited in her movements to the one world, so it was believed her intentions were to travel to one of the exoplanets, where she could theoretically have plenty of opportunities to demonstrate her skills.

Brooke and Ecrin had been recruited into an elite task force, or something, overseen by the aptly named Overseer. They were jet setting around the solar system, investigating crimes, and rescuing people during classified missions. There were rumors that they were leading a team of people who helped destroy Ulinthra, as well as the timeline she had created when taking over the world. If true, revolutionary Holly Blue would surely be part of the team as well. Paige left without saying where or when she was going. Vitalie was finally starting to grow up, having been fully removed from Leona’s pattern. It was unclear as of now what kind of lifestyle she was planning to lead, and whether she would ultimately choose to die like a normal person.

The two remaining were presently sitting in their apartment, finishing up breakfast, when someone knocked on the door. Leona opened it up to find someone she recognized. “Kivi Bristol. How nice to see you.”

“You know me?” Kivi asked.

“Of course not,” Leona lied without skipping a beat. “Come in, though.” Kivi was an interesting person, whose temporal circumstances no one seemed to understand. There were multiple versions of her, born under completely different conditions, at different time periods, who were each generally unaware of her counterparts. She always had the same name, always looked the same, and was always about the same age. There was no telling how long she would last, and once she disappeared, it was sometimes a while before anyone remembered she had been there, and realized she was gone.

“Thank you, I’ve been walking for a while. Yours was the first place in this circle that opened when I knocked.”

Leona nodded. “Yes, people are having fun in their virtual environments, even here. Where are you from?”

“Center circle.” She tilted her head, not in pride for her answer, but willingly prepared for what she assumed would be the inevitable ignorant questions. The outer circle was the most advanced of all, though still less so than most pockets of civilization on Earth. Each further circle was more backwards than the last, until reaching the center. Some people there lived like ancient pioneers, with no electricity, or even the simplest of comforts, while others stayed in shelters they fashioned out of the materials in their environment. They weren’t, strictly speaking, isolationists, but they did reject technology. They warmly welcomed visitors, but not if they came with too many distractions. It was also a no-fly zone. Drawing on memories of Amish and Mennonite Rumspringa, residents of the center circle are encouraged to go out and see how people lived in the other circles. Unlike Rumspringa, this happens at different ages—sometimes as late as the last legs of life—and sometimes involves multiple trips. Conversion to the lifestyle was also a lot more prevalent, so their numbers balanced out, and remained pretty consistent.

“So, what can we help you with?”

“I was hoping you had some water.”

“Sure, I’ll get it,” Vitalie offered.

Kivi continued, looking directly at Leona, “and I was hoping you had some clue as to why I recognize your face from a recurring dream I’ve had.” She graciously took the water, and started gulping it down, but maintained eye contact.

Leona shrugged. “Eh, time, right?”

“Pardon?”

Leona sighed, not knowing how to get into it. How do you tell someone they’re not as unique as they may have thought? “Vitalie, you’re the only one who can explain this. Why don’t you sure her what you got?”

“Really?” Vitalie wanted to confirm. “Do we just do this for everyone we meet?”

“I already know her,” Leona explained. “She’s not just some random center circler. Please.”

Vitalie created a projection of herself on the other side of the room. It smiled at waved, then quickly segued into a not impressed expression. People in the future tended to be fairly receptive to the truth about time travel. A lot of science fiction tropes ended up becoming real, so there was a little less wonder in the world. This did not always work, though. Kivi looked between the two Vitalies in shock. She seemed confident this wasn’t just a hologram, possibly because she had likely never seen one of those either, and it caused her to faint.

She didn’t wake up when she fell to the floor, but something did fall out of her pocket. Vitalie picked it up, and opened it. “What is this?”

“It’s the Compass of Disturbance,” Leona replied as she was dragging Kivi to the couch.

“That sounds morbid.”

“Temporal disturbance,” Leona added. “It finds and stabilizes tears in the spacetime continuum. It’s a tool.”

“Why does this girl have it?”

“I do not know.”

“Should I splash water on her face?”

“Should I even answer that?”

“Well, we do need answers.”

“She’s not dead. We’ll get them. Help me clean the table while we wait.”

Kivi woke up a few minutes later, and drank more of her water, but couldn’t say anything at first.

“Are you feeling okay?” Leona asked.

Kivi nodded “Yeah, I was just...surprised. I’ve never seen anything like that before. We don’t even have television.”

“Where did you get this?” Vitalie asked her, not wasting any time.

“My friend gave it to me,” Kivi answered. “She said to walk towards the outer circles, and not stop until I started seeing double. I didn’t know she meant it so...literally.”

“Who’s your friend?” Leona asked.

“A million bucks says you’ve already heard of the person she’s talking about,” Vitalie bet.

“She didn’t say anything about you two,” Kivi said. “She just gave this to me as a gift, and told me to keep moving. I needed to go on my walkabout anyway, so I didn’t question it.”

“What’s her name?”

“Shuhana. Shuhana Shenare.”

“Never heard of her,” Leona admitted. “You owe me a million dollars,” she said to Vitalie.

“I would seriously doubt it,” Kivi said, finishing the glass. “She’s just a humble shepherd.”

“Wait, is she a shepherd, or The Shepherd?”

“Hmm,” Kivi began. “Ya know, she does seem to act like she’s the only one in the universe.”

“Scratch that, Vitalie,” Leona said, eyes fixed on Kivi. “I owe you.”

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Brooke’s Battles: Beginning (Part I)

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Things were not normal in Brooke Victoria Prieto-Matic’s life. She was born on an island millions of lightyears from where her parents belonged. She was taken from those parents at a very young age, partly because of her condition. Her father was a time traveler with no control over his own travels. He and some of his friends had angered another traveler; one with enormous power, who forced them to remain away from Earth. She was apparently, however, not without mercy. Knowing that Brooke would be born without the ability to experience nonlinear time, she arranged for a friend to transport her across the universe in a small alien ship. It took millions of years, and though Brooke was asleep the entire time, the ordeal had forever bonded her to the life. When they finally arrived safely on Earth, humans were only starting to venture out into space. Brooke always knew she wanted to be a pilot, but in order for it to be exciting, she would have to wait until civilization had progressed further. And in order to do that, she needed to live long enough to see it. While a lot of her friends were capable of reversing their aging, or being some level of immortal, or just skipping over the boring parts, she had to rely solely on science. She decided to become a transhuman, and augment her body to survive longer, under strenuous conditions.

While time travel itself was still out of her reach, its influence on people she cared about would still have an effect on her. For almost the last twenty years, Brooke and a team of friends were on vacation. They spent time in Panama, Kansas City, and a few other places, before settling on the Northwest Forest circles. But that was not the whole truth. Also for the last twenty years, they were trapped under the rule of a tyrant with the ability to rewind every day once, then use her foreknowledge to control others. They had not only defeated her, but used a special weapon to undo everything she had ever done in her entire life, leaving the few of them with conflicting memories of two contradictory timelines. She could remember her extended sabbatical, which according to everyone else in the world, was what actually happened. But she could also remember being poisoned, tortured, and even killed. And so her break from work could not be over, because she was traumatized, and tired as hell. But of course, that wasn’t how life worked.

Early this morning, a message from a mysterious stranger appeared on her handheld device, as it did for one of her friends. Ecrin was not immortal, nor was she transhuman, but she was naturally ageless, and presently a few hundred years old. “I am not doing what they ask,” Ecrin said, “and neither should you.”

“Do we have anything better to do?” Brooke asked her, just playing devil’s advocate. “Besides wait for Leona?” Leona was another one of their friends, who only lived for one day every year. She was due back soon.

“Not die,” Ecrin offered. “We’re really busy not dying. For most people, it’s a passive endeavor, but for people like us, we have to actively work at not dying.”

“This true.”

“I don’t care who this is, or what they want, I’m staying as far from it as I can. The only thing that would get me to go is if I thought someone I cared about was in trouble.”

Their handhelds beeped. This is not an option. Please come at once.

“Argh!” Ecrin shouted slightly. “They’ve hot miked us!” She broke her handheld in half. “Break yours too.”

“What?”

“Come on, just br—” She was unable to finish her sentence before she literally disappeared, which was something that happened to people in their world from time to time.

Another message came to Brooke’s device. Doubt will not be tolerated. I’m only not apporting you here as well, because you’re pristinely ungifted. Please proceed to the highlighted route. Your friend will not be harmed either way. Brooke left immediately, and started running.

She only stopped upon reaching her destination, which was a small two story building. Most of the structures were wiped from the surface of the Earth, because they were wasteful and unnecessary. People nowadays lived amongst millions of other in tight clusters in strategic locations once belonging to independent nations. The rest was given back to the plants and animals. Still, a few disparate buildings remained, some to aid communication, and safety in the wilderness, but others were just kept secret.

She had to break herself into the front door with brute strength, into a medium-sized, darkened room. Ecrin was there already, in the middle of a conversation with some woman. Dozens of others were wandering around. None of them looked like they knew what they were doing there.

“Brooke, this is Holly Blue,” Ecrin said, nodding at the woman. “From the other timeline. She was one of the leaders of the resistance against Ulinthra.”

“I was what?” Holly Blue asked. Brooke remembered the name, and the individual, but had never had the pleasure of meeting her.

Another woman began to walk towards them from across the room. “A leader, like me,” she said in a Louisiana accent. “That is why you are here. You’re also a damn fine technician.”

“Explain,” Brooke demanded. The rest of the people wanted to know as well, but in a more puzzled way, since they had no frame of reference for any of this.

The woman in charge turned around and stepped back to address everyone. “My name is Magnolia, but you can call me The Overseer. I have gathered you here because each and every one of you was directly involved with the ultimate downfall of Ulinthra, a.k.a. Arianrhod, whether you remember it or not.”

Someone in the crowd held up his hand, but didn’t wait to be called on. “Who’s Ulinthra?”

“Exactly,” the Overseer said. “She was a time traveler from the past...a shockingly powerful one, who used her gifts to take over part of the world. You all helped rid her of the timeline, which is why you now don’t remember it.”

A lot of people scoffed and shook their heads.

The Overseer continued, “where were you just moments ago? You were scattered all over the word—one of you was all the way on Luna—but now you’re here. How? I apported you here, using my own power. Any doubts you have about the validity of my claims will soon be eradicated, I promise you this.”

“Why do you remember her?” Ecrin asked. The few of them had had the memories blended into their brains, but no one else should have had any clue.

“I have my sources,” the Overseer answered. “The real reason you’re here is I’m not the only other one who remembers. Ulinthra was obsessed with maintaining her control. She sought a number of contingencies, should anyone exercise an advantage over her. One of her experiments involved protecting a small group of her most devout followers from an alteration to the timeline. Their job is not to find a way to bring Ulinthra back from nonexistence, but to continue her legacy and vision for a world under rule. You are here to stop that.” She gestured for both Brooke and Ecrin to stand at either side of her. “This is Brooke Prieto. She will be your pilot. This is Ecrin Cabral. She will be your leader. Both of them remember Ulinthra, and all the terrible things she did. They were both killed by her doing, and have more reason than anyone to fix this before it becomes a real problem. I have reason to believe Ulinthra’s loyalists are organizing on Orcus and Vanth, so you will be starting your investigation there first.”

Orcus was a distant dwarf planet used primarily by criminals, who rejected modern unity in various ways, for various reasons. Since mandatory work was eliminated, so too was money itself. At this point, crime was something somebody did because they liked to do bad things; not because they just needed to get by. They were the worst kind, because they couldn’t be helped. If you were looking for a bad person, there was a good chance they were on Orcus, or its moon, Vanth, or at least had ties to them. They had no limits, no moral code, no guestlist. All were welcome, including law enforcement, because they held zero sway. It was a lawless nation that the current decision-makers didn’t feel were harming the solar system significantly enough to warrant being stopped. Many disagreed.

A man named Platinum Creaser stepped forward. Brooke remembered him from the other timeline, where he died fighting alongside Ecrin. He spoke partially to the Overseer directly, but also the rest of the group. “I don’t much care what you think you know about some alternate version of me. And I don’t care what everyone else is going to do, but I’m gonna go.” He started walking towards the door. “I suggest you do the same, before this crazy person gets you killed.”

As Platinum was walking away, the Overseer waved her hand towards him, and created a black portal on the floor, into which he fell. “I was having my doubts about him anyway. Anyone else want to pass up a once in two lifetimes chance to save the world?”

No one said anything, because though Brooke was confident that the Overseer had simply apported the deserter back home, it looked like she might have killed him.

          “Good.” She took hold of a small, blue device attached to her belt loop, and pressed a button on it. The floor started lowering below the ground. Some of the less-enhanced humans stumbled at the sudden movement, but nobody fell over. “Then I present to you, your home for the next however long it takes for you to ensure the Ulinthra loyalists are taken care of.”

“Is that...?” Ecrin began to ask.

“Yes,” the Overseer confirmed, then went on to explain what they were looking at, but Brooke didn’t need an explanation. Before her was one of the most magnificent creatures she had ever seen. It was the kind of vessel she had dreamed of flying. Yes, it was chock-full of weapons, but it was also possessed the most resilient of bulkheads in history. Such an elegant design, and always underestimated. Lots of enemies tried and failed to destroy her years ago, before the nations were united towards the common good of the world. She was old now, but still looked as beautiful as when she was first built. Brooke actually witnessed her launch back then, and remembered reading the reports of her heroic peacekeeping efforts over time. She was decommissioned after the fighting ceased, and never brought back online, not even in the alternate reality with Ulinthra. A man named Darrow had once predicted that Brooke would be piloting something like this, but had not given a name. Today, Brooke knew that he was telling the truth about her future. Never in a thousand years did she think she would be at the helm of a warship, certainly not this one; the most glorious ever. “Ladies and gentlemen...The Sharice Davids.”

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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.