Microstory 978: Chocolate

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I just took a big sniff inside my bottle of melatonin, because it smells like chocolate. I didn’t know this brand did that to their product, so I certainly didn’t buy them for that reason. They don’t even advertise the smell, which is weird. My allergies, made it so it would take me weeks to realize what the scent even was. The reason I do this every night is because smell is surprisingly well-associated with memory; better than most other senses. Even sight can’t compete in some respects. I worry about forgetting that I’ve already taken my medicine, and overdosing, so I have to find ways of reminding myself, which makes me wonder why pharmaceutical companies don’t do this with all of their pills. They want people to take them, right? So make it worth their while. Anyway, it’s probably not a shock to you that I love chocolate. Bear with me while I go off on a tangent. I just got in an argument with someone on Twitter today who absolutely could not understand why I could possibly have the audacity to not like sports. He just couldn’t fathom it, I mean it has everything. If you’re looking for entertainment, sports is the best, and personal preference doesn’t exist. Everybody likes sports, and anyone who doesn’t has a severe—and likely terminal—medical condition, and is missing something in their life. We shall never know happiness. We shall never know peace. My point is that we all like different things, but I’m notably irregular. I like disco, I hate Star Wars; I listen to Selena Gomez and The Offspring; and I don’t really enjoy eating food all that much. One thing I do like to eat, however, is chocolate...just like everybody else. You see, chocolate isn’t like sports. Chocolate is perfectly tailored for human consumption (once processed appropriately). The reason anything tastes good at all is because our ancestors needed to know what foods were safe to eat, and which were not. When I say ancestors, I’m talkin’ way, way back. This is how organisms have survived for literal aeons. Chocolate is very good, and nature wants us to know that, as does evolution. I don’t go one day without eating the stuff, I like it so much. Almost all of the various protein and granola bars I eat include them as a significant ingredient, so I’ve been living like this for years. I try not to be too much like you neurotypicals, but I cannot resist the chocolate. Huh. I guess I do have a medical condition.

Microstory 977: Rain and Petrichor

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People hate the rain, and they hate gray skies, but the same feeling of comfort you experience with the color blue is what I experience with gray. Two of the few scents that my allergies allow me to smell are poop and popcorn, which don’t smell all that dissimilar to me, so you can imagine how important it is when I encounter something pleasant, like petrichor, or rotten eggs. Most know that water is vital to life, and if we want to find it on other planets, it’s probably going to require that water in liquid form. But standard water alone is not enough to make complex life. It is the water cycle that promoted evolution in its earliest days, and continues up through today. This cycle is an extremely delicate process, with more moving parts than you may realize. As I’ve recently learned from an educational YouTube video (shoutout to It’s Okay to Be Smart) the primary reason there is so much rain in the Amazon rainforest, and not so much over deserts, and other places, has to do with the purity of air. Contrary to what you might have been taught, rain is not completely pure. It never is, actually, because that would be impossible. Amazonian trees excrete chemicals into the air full of tiny particles, which water molecules attach themselves to and grow. Too few of these particles, and not enough liquid water can form into clouds. Too many, and it can’t form at all, because now there are too many cooks in the kitchen. Every day, greedy people all over the world are doing their damndest to destroy this planet. The rainforest provides us with our oxygen, and the life-giving water cycle. Your actions impact everyone, whether you realize it or not. Throughout history, cultures have had mixed feelings over rain. It is both cleansing, and saddening. Rain can wash away your problems, and clean you of your past mistakes, so you can start anew. But rain also marks death. If movies and television are to be believed, it should be raining everywhere, everyday, 24/7, as long as someone important has died, which is everywhere, everyday, for the grieving survivors of about 151,600 people. I see rain differently. I know that it can’t wash away my sins. They belong to me, and I’m responsible for them. My problems don’t go away unless I do something about them. I don’t feel sad in the rain either, because I find it harder to associate it with crying tears than the average person. Rain, to me, is just another example of how rare and impressive this world is, and how perfectly suited it is to us. I’ve spent some time researching, and I don’t think we’ve encountered another planet where it rains liquid water, and liquid water alone. You should count yourself lucky, so the next time you need to write something down, maybe stay out of the paper, and reach for your phone instead.

Microstory 976: #MeToo Campaign

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This series is meant to be a list of things that I love. I love disco, and chocolate, and Stargate. But I can’t say that I love the #MeToo campaign. It’s on this list because I’m glad that this, and related movements, are finally happening. For too long, women have been silenced. They’ve been expected to do not make waves, and to just move on with their lives. Men are conditioned to believe that they are entitled to their thirst for sex and power, and are charged with chasing those dreams relentlessly. I’m horrified every time I hear a new story about some kind of sexual misconduct, or abuse. Each time sounds like a surprise, but if you read deeper, you find that it’s not a surprise. People knew what this man was doing for a very long, and the only reason we’re hearing about it now is because it’s what’s trending. It’s not that all these twisted men got together, so they could coordinate their attacks. This is a systemic problem that has been going on forever, and it’s the revelations of them that are happening all at once. I once made this morbid joke that the only men I would be shocked to hear about doing something like this are Tom Hanks, Colin Hanks, and Jason Ritter. There are more people out there who aren’t abusers, but it’s becoming more and more difficult to trust in that reality. Like any social media movement, it has not come without its faults, or criticisms. It is unclear to some what the hashtag is supposed to accomplish, besides raising awareness, because awareness does not always breed action. It’s important to recognize that a hashtag, no matter how much it’s spread is not capable of truly transforming society. Each case must be examined independently, and abusers have to experience true accountability for their actions. Judges must stop passing out “get out of jail free” cards because their crime happened in the past, and there’s nothing we can do about it now. Could you imagine if we did that for every crime? “Well, we didn’t catch you before your murdered all those people, but the law says we have to let you go. It’s only illegal if you haven’t done it yet.” The entire justice system, in this country at least, needs to change. Statute of limitations is a legal concept; not a moral one. There is no limit to the amount of pain a traumatic event can cause a survivor. One does not simply get over it because enough time has passed. I can’t use the hashtag myself, because I have never experienced anything like this, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing I can do to help. I can start with #IBelieveHer, and I can continue to listen.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: Prototype

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Leona looked behind her to make sure that Khuweka wasn’t gesturing towards someone else. There was no one else there, so she must have been gesturing towards her. Everyone was waiting for her to get this machine going, but she had no idea. “Why would I know how to work this thing? Just because I’m smart and educated, doesn’t mean I’m qualified to operate a machine that travels to other universes.”

“Well, not you specifically,” Khuweka said, “but that compass should do the trick.”

Leona looked down at her tattoo. It wasn’t moving or glowing, like it usually did when it wanted to tell her something. “How would I interface this thing with the controls?”

A gentle alarm began ringing from one of the terminals. Khuweka leaned forward and peered at the screen. “I can’t say for sure. All I know is you’re meant to get us out of here, which you should do quickly, because they’re coming.”

Leona started to wave her arm over the console, even pressing her skin against the smoother parts, but nothing worked. “Maybe you need to rethink your source, because I don’t think my compass can do what you say.”

“I was told you would have everything you needed,” Khuweka said cryptically. “They’re getting uncomfortably close.”

“Oh wait,” Vitalie said excitedly. “Hogarth needed a flashlight to check under the panels, and we noticed something strange.” She took out the Rothko Torch and shined it on Leona’s tattoo. The compass began spinning around and swirling. The light reflected off her arm, and scattered about the command center in all sorts of colors. More of the system awakened, and an engine of some kind started powering up.

“What are we looking for next?” Hogarth asked loudly through the noise. “Think about that, and if Khuweka is right, the compass will tell the machine! Even though that sounds insane!”

Leona did as she was told, and started thinking about the HG Goggles. She didn’t know exactly what they looked like, but their original owner, Hokusai Gimura once described them as steampunk. The engine noises subsided into a steadier and more tolerable volume, but never ceased.

A man walked in from the other room, wearing a t-shirt and shorts. He was scratching his mussed up hair on the back of his head, yawning, and blinking at the lights. “What’s going on here?” He looked around at them after his eyes were finished adjusting. “Most of you are human.”

“Hi, I’m Kivi. Who are you?”

“Vito.”

“Bulgari?” Leona asked.

“Yeah, heard of me?”

“Yes,” Vitalie said. “You died in pocket four. You were trying to help Serif and little Adamina get back to the ship.”

Vito yawned some more and walked over to a corner. “You were terribly misinformed. I can turn invisible.” He pushed some buttons and revealed what looked suspiciously like a coffee pot. “Anybody want anything? It kind of tastes like tea and urine, but it wakes ya up.”

“I think we’re good,” said the other man, whose name Leona still hadn’t learned.

“I would love some,” Khuweka said graciously. “It doesn’t taste like that to me.”

“Have you been here the whole time?” Vitalie questioned.

“Not the whole time. Missy, Dar’cy, and the rest of the people who wanted to have their powers removed went back in time, and showed up not long after the universe was created. We lived in secret for awhile. Or I should say that they lived in secret. I lived in super secret, because I was invisible.”

“So it doesn’t work?” Leona asked. “They keep their powers.”

“No, it worked,” he replied as he was pouring Khuweka a cup of the Maramon tea. “A few of them wanted their powers back, though. The rumor was Eden Island would allow them to do it, so that’s where they went. I followed them in secret, as per usual.”

“That’s impossible,” Khuweka said. “I was on the island when that group showed up. You were not there, and you could not have been invisible, because the thing that took people’s powers was inescapable. It affected everyone in the whole world, except for Serif, because she wasn’t there.”

“It affected me too,” Vito said, taking a sip. “It was different for me, though. I was in a state of invisibility at the time, and it was in that state that I remained. I needed my powers back if I wanted people to see me, which is why I went with them.”

“Where are they now, the ones who wanted their powers back?” Leona asked him.

He lifted his cup towards Khuweka. “She can fill in the rest.”

Khuweka hesitated, but knew she needed to explain herself. “Like I said, I was there, because Serif asked me to be. She gave me a sample of her healing nanites, which I was intending to supply to your friends. Something went wrong, and everyone there, including me, ended up with all of the powers. I can teleport like Curtis, disintegrate like Lucius, thread objects like Dar’cy, diagnose powers like Avidan, create time bubbles like Missy, and slip time like...uhh...never mind.” She was referring to the older Dubravka, who little Dubra here had yet to become, so it was best to leave her out of the story. “They’re also immortal, like I always was.” She glared at Vito. “As far as I know, though, I can’t turn invisible.”

Vito smirked. “Are you sure? Have ever tried?”

She didn’t answer.

He continued, “you knew what the other people’s powers were, so it was easy for you to replicate them. You didn’t know about me, so it never occurred to you.”

“I guess I could try now.”

“Stop,” Leona nearly shouted. “You were telling us what happened to our friends.”

“Right,” Khuweka said innocently. “Sorry. From what we gathered, hey were sent to other universes.”

“From what you gathered? What does that mean?”

“You know that big circle of Maramon you found yourself in when you first arrived in Ansutah?” Khuweka prompted.

“Yeah...?”

“They were attempting to travel to your universe, through a portal created by a woman named Ezqava Eodurus. You may know her as Effigy.”

“Yes,” Hogarth recalled. “I do know her.”

Khuweka continued, “Some good people, including Hogarth here, corrupted that portal. That’s what created those monsters on Durus. Whenever any of my people tried to cross over, they came out wrong on the other side. But it was their only hope, because very few of us knew that the prototype Crossover was still somewhere in Ansutah, and even few knew where exactly. Apparently Vito’s been sleeping in it.”

“Guilty,” Vito confirmed.

“How did Vearden, and all those other humans get their hands on the real Crossover?” Leona asked.

“There was a technical error when we all accidentally slipped time to the future, to a time when Maramon still had control of the machine. What we believe happened was it expelled everyone inside of it throughout the bulkverse, seemingly randomly, before the machine itself was lost in one of them. Effigy presumably landed in your universe, and was trying to call for reinforcements. And now we’re here, in the prototype, trying to travel to one of these universes.”

“Are we going to run into one of our friends then?” Leona asked her.

“I assume they’re as immortal as me, so it’s possible, but we would have to land sometime after they did, and the chances of us happening upon one of those universes are pretty slim. We just don’t have the data.”

Leona sighed. This was a lot of information, and she didn’t feel like much of it was useful. It was better when they could hope Missy and Dar’cy had completed their mission, but now there was so much more to worry about.

“This is all amazing to know,” the other man said. “I do have some business back in my home universe, so how long will it be until we get there?”

Khuweka pressed some buttons, and looked at the monitor again. “There’s no telling how long it will be until we get back, because I don’t know what these kids are trying to find. It will be another eight months or so until we arrive at our destination.”

“That won’t work,” Leona complained. “I’m going to disappear in a few hours. Where will I return?”

Khuweka tilted her chin. “I don’t think you’re going anywhere. You’re one of those salmon, right?”

“Yeah...?”

The white monster almost laughed. “Yeah, I don’t think the gods who control you can reach you here. You should be good.”

She turned out to be right about that. The eight of them spent as many months in the Crossover prototype together. It was equipped with a quantum food replicator, and just enough living quarters for each of them. Leona asked why her baby was apparently not growing the whole time, but Khuweka had no certain answer for this. Though metabolism persisted throughout the journey, the bulkverse itself didn’t follow the same rules of time, so maybe all aging was halted. The Prototype also had tons of original entertainment, but all of it was from Ansutah, and thusly all in the Maramon language, which ultimately led them to learning it in a conversational capacity. Khuweka learned how to turn things invisible, while Dubra learned everything she would have in a school setting had she not been sheltered by her mother for her whole life. They learned all about each other too. The other man’s name was Kallias Bran. He seemed to not be salmon, nor choosing one, nor chosen one, nor spawn, yet he had a lot of experience with this life. When it was all over, Khuweka led them out of the machine, and breathed in the fresh air over a cemetery. It was chillingly quiet. “Welcome to whatever it is they call this universe.”

A voice came from above, “most people don’t name their universes, because they think theirs is the only one.” The woman gracefully hopped off the roof of the prototype, and landed on the ground with no problem. “People here are different. We call it the Composite Universe. You came to this world at a bad time, though.”

“Why is that, Savitri?” Khuweka asked, apparently having already met this mysterious young woman.

“Everyone’s dead.”

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Brooke’s Battles: Bounty (Part VII)

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Sharice’s code had not been corrupted, and she had not switched allegiances. Through months of bureaucratic debrief, Captain Cabral, Brooke, and the rest of the senior crew learned from her that the captain of the Zerzan had figured out a way to bypass the chain of command, and communicate directly with Sharice. He and his people had gathered intelligence leading them to believe that a different faction on their side was intending to destroy the center Northwest Forest circles in an attempt to escalate the war. The problem, according to them, was that up until that point, they were fighting against their enemy using that enemy’s rules. They believed there were no such things as rules of engagement, or war crimes. The difference between anarcho-primitivists, and the primitivists living in the center circle was the anarcho part. They were not content living with little technology all on their own. Either the entire populace fell in line, or they would have to die. Anarchy, like many other forms of social politics, doesn’t work if they’re constrained by some other form of government’s idea of civility.

For instance, in the 21st century, most countries were capitalistic. Everything was valued at whatever anyone was willing to pay for it. If enough people couldn’t afford something, and the producers were incapable of sustaining their business at those price points, that price would drop. While other countries attempted to create some antithesis to this, it was impossible. Every nation traded on the international stage, so whether they liked it or not, and whether they believed or not, they were all capitalists. It was unclear whether the more violent faction of anarchists would have succeeded in their mission to force the solar system to stoop to their level, because thanks to the bravery of the late Captain Torben Altink, their whole plan failed. Evidently, he had attempted to open talks with the system leadership, to explain the growing threat to them, but was mostly ignored. As the Sharice and other warships took the enemy ships down one by one, power perpetually shifted amongst the winners. By taking out their competition, the violent faction was able to consolidate power, and basically do whatever they wanted.

The Zerzan had all but given up their fight to stop them when a random crewman came up with an idea. Since they didn’t have the resources to take on their internal enemy themselves, they would recruit the Sharice. They lured Ecrin and Brooke in, then secretly began talking with Sharice. The original plan was for Sharice to take total control over the ship itself, and follow the Zerzan back to Earth, where they would fight off the other faction together. Her mistake was not even trying to convince her people to listen to the Zerzan. In the end, with both vessels crippled, their only hope was to commandeer the drop ship, and take it straight down to the other faction, sacrificing Captain Altink in the process. Now the only question was, how did they get their hands on a Lucius-bomb?

“I am not at liberty to say.”

“What are you talking about? I’m your mother,” Brooke said.

“I’m your commanding officer,” Ecrin said to Sharice.

“Yes,” Sharice began, “and you’re the one always talking about the chain of command. I am not at liberty to say.”

“Are you telling me someone higher than me ordered you to keep quiet about the Lucius-bomb?” Ecrin asked.

Sharice waited to answer. “I’m not, not saying that.”

“How far are we to intercept?” Ecrin asked.

“Seventy-two minutes,” Sharice responded. While the crew was only now hearing her justification for recent events, the system leadership heard everything months ago. They were satisfied with the explanation enough to grant her full duty privileges, so she could return to work. They were presently on their way to capturing a fleet of space pirates.

“Oh, so you can answer some questions. It’s nice to know this old dog still has a little pull on this ship.”

“Ecrin,” Sharice started to say.

“Captain,” Ecrin corrected.

Sharice pretended to clear her throat. Of course, she didn’t have a throat, but she found that human speech relied on brief pauses, false starts, and other disfluency to maintain a bond between one another. These meaningless utterances are vital to natural language, because perfection can sound rehearsed, which comes off as didactic, or condescending. “Captain,” she echoed, “You know I would never do anything against your best interests if I didn’t have a good reason. I didn’t put that bomb on my drop ship, and I did not want it there. When an opportunity to get rid of it came along, I seized it.”

“When was it put there?”

Sharice cleared her hypothetical throat again, but didn’t say anything.

“Miss Prieto,” Ecrin prompted.

“Answer her,” Brooke ordered.

“During the quarantine,” Sharice said.

“That makes sense,” Brooke said. “A lot of people came in that I didn’t know.”

“So there’s no telling who did this, let alone who ordered it,” Ecrin said with a sigh.

“Unless...” Brooke began, sending Ecrin a coded message through her gestures.

Ecrin stepped back gracefully. “Use the meeting room.”

Brooke stepped into the other room. “Sharice, isolate yourself in here, and hand over control to the helmsman on duty.”

“Why?”

“We need to have a private conversation, that’s why.”

“Isolated.”

“Sharice, we can’t do our jobs if we don’t know what we’re up against. Right now, we’re going off to capture precisely five stolen interplanetaries, three boarders, and a command ship. And we know that’s what we’re up against because we’ve been investigating these crimes. We’re not just flying blindly, hoping we’re not outmatched. If someone was able to hide a Lucius-bomb in the drop ship, they could have hidden something else. Hell, you may not even know about it. Your internal sensors can’t see everything. Your relationship with the crew is built on trust. We all agreed to come back after what you did, because we trusted you believed you were doing the right thing. I’m here to remind you that you’re my daughter, I’m your mother, and I’m asking you for a name. The chain of command is important, but if the person who made you do this already broke that chain, it’s up to us to stop them. Do you understand?”

“Yes, mother.”

“Go ahead then.”

Sharice didn’t say anything.

“Go ahead,” Brooke repeated.

“Holly Blue.”

“What?”

“Holly Blue put it there.”

“Holly Blue is not Ecrin’s superior officer. Ecrin is hers.”

“I’m not talking about the chain of command from the Sol military. I’m talking about a higher level of authority; one that goes beyond anything any human could understand.”

“When you say human, do you mean human like Ecrin is biologically human, or human like Richard and Allen are humans.”

“The latter,” Sharice answered.

“There is no hierarchy in the world of choosing ones and salmon,” Brooke argued.

“If The Last Savior of Earth tells you to do something, you do it.”

“This was Étude’s doing?”

“She had the intelligence. She knew this would happen, because someone with powers told her the future.”

“She’s retired,” Brooke pointed out.

“She’s quit working for the powers that be,” Sharice said. “That doesn’t mean she’s quit saving people.”

“What else did she do?”

“The Lucius-bomb is all I knew about. Like you said, though, my internal sensors weren’t designed to pick up every little thing that happens on this ship.”

“I need to speak with Holly Blue.”

“She’s busy preparing for the intercept.”

“Sharice, if she’s built more bombs, or something else bad, she has to be stopped and questioned. What is she planning to do with the pirates? She cannot be allowed to continue.”

“I assure you she has no intention of harming those pirates. The plan is to stop them peacefully, just as we did all those other ships.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can, though. Please, don’t tell the captain, not until we close this case.”

“Very well, but I want you monitoring her movements with what few internal sensors you do have. I’ll pilot the ship myself if you can’t divide attention.”

“Understood. And mother?” she said as Brooke was about to leave the room. “Thank you, I love you.”

“I love you too.”

An hour later, they were upon the pirate fleet, which made no threatening moves towards the Sharice. Nor did it attempt to outrun them. Ecrin ordered Sharice to hold steady for a while, to feel out the situation. The pirates were hoarders, but no evidence suggested they were violent. They never harmed the rightful crew and passengers of the vessels they stole. They always packed them in lifeboats, and programmed a time-delayed rescue beacon. It would seem all they wanted were the ships themselves, almost like they were building an army.

“Sir?” Holly Blue offered. “Should I release the EMPs?”

“No. Open a channel.” Ecrin waited for the comms officer to set it up. “Rover One, this is Captain Cabral of the Sharice Davids. Please respond.”

“This is Rover One,” someone responded immediately, in audio only. “We call it the Midas, though.”

“Midas,” Ecrin acknowledged. “Please lower your defenses and prepare to be boarded.”

“Sure thing,” the pirate agreed.

Ecrin looked over at Brooke.

“Maybe they know they have no chance,” Brooke suggested. What else would cause them to be so accommodating?

Ecrin turned to the bridge crew, and started delegating. “You, coordinate the transitions. Scan for weapons and tech, and put everyone in hock. Keep the leader separate from everyone else. I’ll want to talk with him first.” She walked out to prepare for the confrontation.

The pirates followed direction with absolutely no problem. When one of the guards questioned this, they all said they were actually following orders from the boss. He had some plan to get out of this, and they trusted him to follow through.

“Where’s my prisoner?” Ecrin asked as she was waiting in the interrogation observation room.

“Uhh...he’s holed up in his quarters,” one the guards reported. “He says he’s only willing to talk to you on his ship.”

“Force him,” Ecrin ordered.

“We’ve been trying. We can’t break through.”

Brooke shook her head. “Don’t do it.”

“It’s obviously a trap, sir,” Holly Blue concurred. “I’ve seen this movie a million times.”

“So have I,” Ecrin said. “But those characters didn’t have what I do.”

“What’s that, sir?” Holly Blue asked. “Us?”

“No,” the captain replied as she was checking the power on her belt. “They didn’t have emergency teleporters.” She looked back over to Brooke. “If something goes wrong, this ship is yours. You’re going to have to deal with the Holly Blue situation yourself.”

“The what?” Holly Blue asked, confused and offended.

“How do you know about that?” Brooke asked. She never reported what she had learned from Sharice about the Étude and Holly Blue conspiracy.

“I hear everything. Sharice, put me on that ship, and bring back our people.”

Sharice apported Ecrin over to the other ship. After a few torturous ignorant moments, she said, “receiving visual.”

“On screen,” Brooke ordered. The monitor showed the inside of the pirate ship. Cameras were following Ecrin down a passageway, and up to a door. It opened automatically, and let her in. No man was in this room, though. When Brooke was piloting the Warren back from the rogue planet with Leona and the gang, something went wrong with one of the pocket dimensions they used to hold a higher passenger capacity. A boy had the ability to create a new being out of nothing with every draw of breath. He didn’t make humans, though. Some called them white monsters, because they were tall and as white as a chicken egg. They called themselves the Maramon. Most had stayed in their dimension, which was eventually transformed into an entirely separate universe. One of them was stuck in this universe at the time, and Brooke hadn’t kept track of what they did with him. The Maramon smiled at the camera and lifted a small device. He pressed a button, and his ship disappeared.

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Microstory 975: Millennials

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Not only have I never identified as a millennial, but I’ve also never identified as any generation. That’s probably because the whole generation system ignores individuality. I’ve been known to do it, which you can see by running a simple search on my website, but we really shouldn’t categories large groups of people based on trivial properties. I can’t necessarily relate to a man born on the exact same day at the exact same hospital as me, because we were each born to different parents, and raised by different people, in different places. Our contemporaries have different expectations of us, and we hold different worldviews. These are truths that I think you’ll find it hard to argue against, even if you believe in astrological nonsense, yet you expect me to relate to everyone born anywhere in the world within a range of, what, twenty years? I don’t believe all that, and if you think about it for a minute, I doubt you really do as well. It’s an absurd suggestion, that we all behave the same way, and agree with each other over all or most things. When someone says something about a millennial, usually how they contrast with others, they’re generally just talking about young people. But the reality is that young people always see things differently than their older counterparts. If this weren’t true, we would still be stuck obsessed with ridiculous religion doctrine that once kept us from progressing and developing. Those complaining about us were once under comparable derision from their own predecessors as they were protesting the Vietnam War. It’s funny how they’ve forgotten about that. So is there any real difference between us and them? Well, not if you get too specific, but there are some generalizations that can address the mainstream, but it still gets complicated.

I keep hearing people talk about voter trends, and how the younger crowd disenfranchises themselves, but if they did vote, they would overwhelmingly vote liberal. Okay, well here’s the problem. That’s always been the case; young people tend to not vote, and old people tend to vote. This suggests that those people, who once did not vote, are now voting. Why aren’t they voting liberal, like they supposedly would have before? They’re the same people, so what changed? Did they all just become assholes who only vote in their best interests, rather than the greater good? Yes, that’s exactly what happened. They’ve settled into their lives, usually believing themselves to have worked their asses off—whether it’s true or not—and start seeing less accomplished as failures. That too has always been the case. Children are dreamers, who believe in the good of the world, only to grow up jaded by the hatred and selfishness they didn’t realize was out there. So let’s go back to this idea of the millennial. The true difference between this generation, and all who come before us, is that we’re sick of this shit, and we’re never gonna grow out of that. We will continue to fight for fairness, and love, and inclusion, and equality. We will snuff your tiki torches, and we’ll investigate your Russian spies, and we will vote your asses out! As we get older, and start coming into positions of power, we will actually start changing things, because your way was never truly working. You just thought it was. So go ahead and scoff at the kids who don’t know what they’re talking about, because you will one day be as dead as your rotten ideals. I’m gonna live forever. Kids have always thought they were invincible, but because of medical science, and other technological advancement, it’s actually true for us.

Microstory 974: Weird Twitter

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A few years ago, I was trying to publish my book. Well honestly, I’ve been trying to publish my book since forever, but constantly fail, and frequently give up. During this particular attempt, an agent actually responded to my submission for representation with advice. They said that I basically already had to be famous before agents would even bother considering me. In the olden days, this meant getting published in little-read magazines, and slowly gathering a base, until you’re (inter)nationally recognized. It’s kind of like how a band has to start out playing in small town bars, because Madison Square Garden isn’t going to call them out of the blue. While the internet has changed how we access content, the dynamic has remained roughly the same. I can’t make any money at what I do until I prove I can do it without making any money. Before I had a website, I  only had two avenues for releasing my work. I started posting my microstories on Facebook, and I set up an entirely new Twitter account for fiction. The plan was to tweet extremely short stories, which sounded good on paper, but every time I attempted to write one, it just came off as humorous. Or at least it was in the comedy genre. As far as whether any of my tweets are funny, you’re going to have to decide for yourself. It took more than two years before I made any true nanofiction, and it lasted that entire year. I’m doing something similar for 2019, and then reshaping my whole schedule for 2020. Yes, I’m that far ahead with my plans. Anyway, as I was saying, what I later learned is that these “jokes” had their own special name. They’re apparently called Weird Twitter. Understand that these aren’t just one-liners like you would hear Mitch Hedberg say. His jokes were just as absurd, and often didn’t come with context, but what makes Weird Twitter so different is that they’re usually unrelatable. I have a few running gags that you would only notice if you were really paying attention. I often joke about the present condition of the hit series Breaking Bad, as if the number of seasons it had, or when it premiered, was ever in question, which it isn’t. The joke is that there is no joke, because I chose it at random, and could have chosen any other show to express the same absurdity. I also post fake conversations with my parole officer, which would make sense if he existed, or if say, there was a rumor I was an ex-con. The fact that I’m so far removed from that life is what makes it less of a joke, and more just, well...weird. I love that Weird Twitter, and other humors accounts are out there, like this one I just discovered called Tess as Goats. Look it up, it’s hilarious, and Tess-approved. I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t follow any other Weird Twitter accounts personally. My nanofiction account does, but I don’t check that feed, unless I have notifications. I only hope that other people aren’t doing the same thing, and are actually reading my stuff, because that’s why I create it. I certainly don’t do it for my health. That would be weird.

Microstory 973: Survival

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This slot was originally scheduled for Healthcare (When It Works) but since I know very little about countries and regions where it works, it didn’t seem appropriate. All I know is that Usonia isn’t one of them, but that’s all I’ll say about it, other than mentioning the fact that Obamacare saves lives. Instead, I’m going to take this opportunity to admit that I’m a survivalist. The only differences between me and the doomsday preppers you see on television is that I’m smart enough to not advertise all my secret plans to the world, and also I don’t have any. Some preppers have the money to build or commission bunkers. Others have purchased luxury space in old missile silos; dumping tons of money into something they probably won’t ever need. The less wealthy kind of prepper just squirrels away food and resources as they can, and reinforces their homes as much as possible. These tend to rely on their firepower, because they believe profoundly in gun ownership, so they would be spending money on them either way. I’m not any of these things; I really just come up with end-of-the-world stories, and have trouble distinguishing them from reality, which is true of all my stories. And that reality is that the end of the world probably wouldn’t happen all of the sudden. Yeah, maybe a supervolcano will erupt without warning, or an asteroid will decimate these lands. It’s an interesting thought experiment. Assuming you survive the initial event, what would you do next? Are you a series regular on this post-apocalypse series, or just zombie fodder? The most likely scenarios, however, will involve a slow-burn of destruction. Hell, we might be heading towards the end of civilization right now, and not know it. King Dumpster is certainly doing his level best to make that happen. Just like the truth behind most holidays, no single day will mark the end. Institutions will slowly erode. People will stop having faith in their leadership, and the market will drop steadily as fear replaces hope. Before the nuclear missiles fly off to enemy countries, sanctions and bad trade deals will create extreme tension amongst once-friends. Allies will leverage each other for control, until there’s nothing left to control but a big pile of crap. Sure, maybe the bombs will drop on everyone, but the most likely outcome is that people will just give up on life. Governments won’t be able to survive anymore. Ineffective factions will attempt to take their place, but a lack of vision, and no sustainable distribution of resources will just make things worse. Infrastructure will fall, and no matter how deep you dig into the ground, your life will have no meaning. You’ll live on down there, but nothing will get better, so if you’ve already had children, it’s best that they don’t. I’m fascinated by disaster scenarios, but those stories only ever end one of two ways. Either everyone dies, or the cataclysm gives rise to a societal phoenix. They usually ignore the possibility that we’ll trudge on long after any arbitrary defining moment, until our descendants suffer diminishing returns. So I guess what I really love isn’t survival, but civilization. I love the world, so let’s do everything we can to protect it, and make it better.