Microstory 1551: Color of the Sky

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Prompt

I run outside and find the sky has turned green.

Botner

Not a good sign. I call my mom, who is in town, and she says she’ll come get me. I grab my waders and run for the truck, just as a huge thunderclap sounds and the sky begins pouring rain. My phone dies after two tries. It is super annoying because I am outside with no coverage, but I can’t tell my mom that because she’s not answering her phone. I go to leave the house, and as I open the door, it occurs to me that I do not have a hat. The moment I leave, the sky clears up, and it is a gorgeous day. I spend the day wandering around town, shooting the scenery. In the evening, I camp on one of my favorite places on the lake. I have to walk about a mile to get to my campsite, and I run into a nice guy who is also setting up his tent. We talk for a bit, then he says, “I’ve got a campsite right across the street. Are you hungry?” I get to camp and make my dinner. I’m lying on the ground trying to figure out what to do for my tomorrow when a couple of guys appear out of nowhere. They take me on a two mile hike, then we sit around a campfire and they share their beers with me. It was a pretty sweet experience, even though I couldn't understand a word they were saying. I wake up bright and early, and it is sunny and gorgeous. I have decided that after finishing this section, I will be going home and taking some time off. After a day of riding, I hit the road, and it is amazing. I’ve come a long way in the past week, and I’m feeling strong and confident. My plan is to climb the entire thirteen miles of a paved highway to meet my first Expert level rest stop, and then drop down to town and restock, which will get me a little bit closer to the summit. This is a difficult section, but my body is feeling good and I’m getting plenty of rest. As I ride, I fall into a rhythm. I push a little bit, and then I ease up a bit. I don’t need to save my legs for the big climbs. I know from experience that I can handle anything from the present moment, and it is much less stressful that way. I finish the day and it is amazing. I’ve caught up to Tim, and we ride together through the night, chatting about climbing, life, motorcycles, everything. It feels so good to share this experience with someone else. It helps break up the monotony, but I don’t have to be the one to carry the conversation. We ride together through the night and camp at the second highest rest stop. It is freezing cold. We...

Conclusion

...look up at the sky, and find that it has now turned purple. It is no longer a gorgeous day, and I realize how much I dislike Tim. It’s nice to have someone else around sometimes, when I don’t have anyone else, but as I’m watching the orangish clouds roll overhead, I realize that I can do better than this. Without saying a word, I stand up, take off all of my clothes, and ride out of the campsite. I imagine Tim watching me go with total apathy, but only because he does nothing to stop me from going. It feels amazing, being out here, knowing how close I am to frostbite or death. My life is pretty boring, and you have to find ways to push yourself to your limits, or you’ll never amount to anything. The harder I pedal, the warmer I get, proving to me that I can do just about anything if I ignore the risks, and press on. I’m wrong, though. As the sky falls into a deep red, and the sun melts away, I look down at my blue fingers and toes. I was dying the whole time, but it’s not like I could have stopped it. The sun continues to disappear, taking everyone on the planet with it.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Monday, July 25, 2140

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Mateo explained how it happened the last time; how he lost his mind in the void. At least, he explained it as best he could. It wasn’t like he was some expert on the matter. Of course, everyone came to the same conclusion, that Mateo was essentially suffering from extreme boredom. He didn’t need to sleep, or center himself, or even clear his mind. He just needed to not be presently caring about anything. Apathy, as Sanaa put it, was like the death of a soul. It was a death he could come back from, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t suffer serious psychological consequences down the road. It also wasn’t going to be a piece of cake. People grew bored all the time, it didn’t kill their souls. Perhaps Mateo’s newfound connection to the dreamvoid was the secret ingredient these other people didn’t have, but now that they were cognizant of the goal, would that prevent them from reaching it? Could he get bored if he was trying, or was it inherently something that would always have to happen naturally, on its own?

Nerakali was too far away to transport to The Imzadi, but she was still able to quantum communicate with them, and she had an idea. As they were all connected through the Cassidy cuffs, someone else could use her brain blending ability on Mateo. They could scoop the thoughts out of Mateo’s mind, leaving him with the stuff that didn’t matter. Living organisms were all born with the instinct for self-preservation. It was the one thing they all had in common. If a creature did not evolve this trait, it did not survive, so by its very nature, such a creature did not exist. A movie came out many decades ago where evil plants took this trait away from the humans around, which caused them to commit suicide. Accepting the premise as a given, this probably would not be the natural result. The opposite of self-preservation was not self-harm; it was apathy, which was perfect. Nerakali’s psychic powers were generally used to manipulate memories, and not other neural functions, but there was a loophole. If they took away all the memories he had of love, it wouldn’t destroy his capacity for it forever, but it could suppress it long enough for them to complete the mission. They were running out of time. It had to work.

“You can’t do this,” Leona said defiantly.

“It’s the only way,” Mateo argued.

“Nerakali knows we can’t get there in time,” Leona fought back. “She can just send someone else on the mission.”

“No one else is on a ship close enough,” Jeremy pointed out.

“What are you talking about?” Leona questioned. “Literally everyone in this reality has a ship, and all those ships have FTL. Hell, when you think about it, the natives could handle all the missions. They don’t need us at all!”

“We’re the only ones with Cassidy cuffs. Only we can get the timing right,” Sanaa added. “Besides, this is our calling.”

“She’s a time traveler!” Leona shouted. “None of this is dire.”

“We have to get back to the stellar neighborhood either way,” Bran noted calmly, juxtapositioning her passion.

Leona shook her head. “The Parallel natives can come rescue us. It might take them a little time, but they can send a rescue ship using an off-grid Nexus egress, and they can transport us to the nearest inhabited star system. “Imzadi, where is that?”

“Fifty-thousand light years away,” Imzadi replied.

Leona looked confused. “Viewscreen.” A hologram popped up, showing the space outside. They didn’t see lone stars, but a sea of them, all turning around the galactic core of the Milky Way. “You didn’t tell us we were in the intergalactic void.”

Imzadi pretended to clear her throat. “We’re in the intergalactic void.”

Leona sighed.

“Love, we’ve been through worse,” Mateo reminded her. “Nerakali assures us the brain blending can be reversed. You’re just going to borrow my memories, and then put them back.”

“Me?”

“Yes, I want you to do it. You have the most experience with sharing her power, and I trust you the most.”

“Goddammit,” Leona said. “I’ve been an asshole to you all day. How can you trust me?”

“It’s fine. Please. We have to do this now.”

Leona took a beat. “Walk me through it,” she ordered into her cuff

Nerakali was ashamed that she had done this procedure before, but glad it would help now. She taught Leona alone how to remove Mateo’s decent memories, leaving only boring ones, like standing in line, and waiting for dial-up to connect to the internet.

Mateo could feel his memories leaving his mind. He was reliving the time his parents first took him to see his birth mother, once she was finally ready to form some kind of relationship with him. At first, he couldn’t remember what she said to him, and then he couldn’t remember her face, and then he couldn’t remember anything else about her. Soon after that, he forgot that he even had a...uh... Well, he must have... Ya know. There was someone, er, something. Or maybe it was the other. Oh my God, this lecture is so uninteresting. What is he talking about? The war? Some war. Who cares? Why do I keep getting all this junk mail, and why am I bothering sorting this anyway? Everything important comes through the inter—inter-something. Oh, there’s Leona. She’s drunk and so young right now, but she’ll... What was I talking about again? I feel like I’ve been in this waiting room forever. I don’t even remember what I’m here for. I don’t remember anything. I just remember sitting. And waiting. And doing nothing. My life is nothing. And now...it’s just blackness.

“Report!”

“Calculating status.”

“Calculate faster! Where are we? When are we?”

More waiting, this sounded important. “Eight hundred kilometers from mission coordinates. Friday, July 24, 2139. Time to first defenestration, eleven seconds.”

“Is that enough time for you?”

“Does the pope not exist anymore, because religion is an outdated and antiprogressive institution that only ever served to justify selfishness, encourage disunity, and segregate the masses?” The teleportation drive booted up, and sent them to their destination. Enough momentum was added to the jump to keep the Imzadi moving at a fast enough pace to pick up passenger after passenger. One, two, three. All told, eleven people were rescued. It would turn out that they were sent off on a secret mission to study the long-term effects of interstellar travel on the human mind and body, and to test the technology necessary to keep them alive. It was a reasonable endeavor, and the crew was unable to explain why it was they kept the truth from the public. They would have died on the way, however, as the micrometeorite shield they placed in the front of the vessel was insufficient and inadequate. Their stasis pods weren’t working well either, and they did not have enough resources to last the forty-two years it was bound to take them to get to Proxima Doma, which was harsh and uninhabitable anyway.

Aeolia suggested they erase the crew’s memories, but humanity would never learn from its mistakes if it didn’t remember making them. Instead, they came up with a lie that was as close to the truth as possible. They purported to be aliens, presenting themselves in forms the humans would be most comfortable with. They scolded the crew for developing technology that wasn’t ready for primetime, and set out to return them to Earth, where a transition window would be waiting for them. As their mission was so secretive, the survivors would only need to tell this lie to a very select few people in Earthan government, who would be compelled to retain the secret as well. Leona and her team warned the humans that they were not generally benevolent aliens, and would retaliate decisively should the secret of their existence be revealed to the world. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but they were able to use Sanaa’s mind-reading powers to ensure the scouting crew was well fearful of their alien rescuers.

Mateo, meanwhile, sat there in a stupor. He could hear everything people were saying, and even respond to questions, but he couldn’t care about anything, and he couldn’t volunteer information, or actively engage. It felt like he was half asleep, unable to wake up, and also not really worrying about it anyway. Leona spent the rest of the day trying to fix his brain with absolutely no luck. Sanaa tried as well, but if she couldn’t combine it with her own telepathy, there was probably no reason for any of the others to try. It could not be irreversible, though. There had to be a way to fix him. They needed Nerakali herself, and they didn’t reach her until next year. In order to prevent him from accidentally slinging them back out to the outer bulkverse, they were forced to give him psychedelics. He wasn’t as fascinated by the visions that a normal person would, but they were enough to keep him busy until he could be repaired tomorrow.

Once tomorrow came, and they were finally back on Earth in the main sequence, they broke off into groups. Angela and Aeolia stayed with Imzadi to help make sure the latter cleared herself of all connection to the galactic blockchain. Sanaa escorted the human guinea pig crew back to their top secret facility, where she continued to press upon them how important it was that the fewer the people who knew anything about the “truth” the better. Bran went with her, in case they needed him to use his mind-controlling powers to urge the government officials deeper, and strike fear into their hearts. Ramses went off with Jeremy to complete whatever mission he needed to in order to protect his own future. Mateo would hear about that later, when he was capable of even giving a flying fuck. Until then, Leona took him to Nerakali, where she would start working on the problem.

“Let me guess,” Leona began, “you can’t fix him, and this was all a monumental mistake that has ruined my life.”

“I don’t understand what happened,” Nerakali said, upset. “I’ve never been nice enough to undo when I’ve done this to other people, but I’ve blended billions of brains, this shouldn’t be any different. The fact that he’s missing memories shouldn’t mean he can’t get them replaced.”

Leona was working very hard not to freak out, and attack her friend. “What are our options? Is there anyone else who can help? The Warrior has your power too.”

“As do you,” Nerakali said. “If you can’t, and I can’t, he can’t either.”

“Then what are we going to do?” she reiterated.

Nerakali stared into space for a good long while.

Leona had to be patient.

“There is so much about this dreamvoid place that we don’t know. In all my millennia, I have never heard of it. Mateo said someone who wasn’t a dreamwalker built it for them? We need to figure out who that is, and ask them for help.”

How hard could that be?

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Exemption Act: Critical Existence Failure (Part V)

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The team spent over a standard month in the Composite Universe, which was closer to six weeks in Earthan terms. The natives measured time differently. They learned a lot of things from these people while they were there, eventually figuring out that a nayko was equal to 2.442 kilometers. There was no Earth in this universe, but there were plenty of humans. Nearly all of them spoke English—though they did not call it that—and while they were genetically incompatible with people from other universes, they were indistinguishable in most cases. In a more taboo sense, men did not have scrota, so there were ways to tell the difference without a DNA test.

The information they gave Bellevue was invaluable to them, so much so that they agreed to give the team anything they wanted. Khuweka possessed a lot of knowledge about the Maramon, and their tactics, and Landis regaled them with fascinating tales of the voldisil. They even found Andraste’s input incredibly useful. People from her Earth were well known to the people in this universe, and they were decidedly off-limits. It was like the Prime Directive, except it only applied to this one planet. The chance to speak with one was a great honor to them, and they did not take it for granted. Earthan input was highly coveted on its own merits, as they had a completely different perspective, especially when it came to philosophy and psychology. Drug addiction was practically non-existent here, but not completely. Understanding how to help the few addicts they did have was something they had been struggling with for millennia.

Freya felt pretty useless here, as she had little to contribute. Her entire reason for being on the team was to help them navigate her universe. Not only was that probably not all that necessary at all, but it certainly didn’t help here. Faster-than-light travel was ubiquitous in the galaxy, except for the planet they were on right now, and even they were nearing these technological capabilities as well. Freya was able to give her insights about the Maramon, having spent time studying their descendants, the Gondilak, but that wasn’t much. Hopefully it was still useful information, however, because it illustrated an emphasis on nurture against nature, and suggested Maramon were the way they were by how they were raised; not by some inherent evil that was impossible to be rid of. Bellevue didn’t seem too bothered by how little Freya helped, but she did what she could, including a lot of grunt work when it came to hauling the retrofits back to salmonverse.

Bellevue gave them more than the power-enhancement platform, and the promises Zektene’s oncoming drug experiment. They retrofitted The Sharice Davids with its very own Nexus, which they could use to transport themselves to anywhere in the network. They also installed something called an astral collimator, which would allow them to enter their version of FTL known as the orange plex dimension. It would probably do nothing for them in salmonverse—or any other universe, for that matter—but it was nice to know it was there. They enhanced the Sharice’s capabilities with gravity transfunctioners, smaller transport ships with their own collimators, and they finally got the pocket dimension generators working, which were already there, but not yet in working order. It would seem Bellevue was even more advanced than they let on. They were ready to explore the galaxy, they simply hadn’t done much of it yet.

They had to travel back and forth from this universe to theirs a few times to transport everything through, so Limerick managed to get a lot of punching practice in. He was exhausted by the time it was over, but also a pro now. There was only one thing left to do. While all of this was happening, Zek was undergoing a battery of tests, first to prove she really was an anomaly, and then so they could tailor the ability-enhancing drug called Aukan to her physiology. They warned her of the risks, including unforeseen side effects, and she agreed to take the drug anyway. It was for a good cause, and she decided it was worth it.

They gathered in the infirmary, at Zek’s request, and watched as the doctor injected her with the substance. He explained it while it was still working her way through her system. “We have been working on this compound for decades. It comes from an old drug program a rogue group of scientists came up with that was dangerous and volatile. We’ve managed to correct their mistakes since then, and Savitri has helped us immensely.” Evidently, Khuweka and Savitri were part of a group of people who had lost their time powers while they were just trying to help other people who wanted to be rid of theirs. They went off on a quest to try to get them back, but the process was interrupted, and they all ended up just sharing each other’s powers. Soon thereafter, they were stranded in separate universes, and some, like Savitri, lived there without the others for centuries.

Zek reported a deep but dull pain throughout her entire body. While a nurse for a time traveling doctor named Sarka, Freya once got hurt herself, and was given narcotics. She recalled feeling heavy and stiff, and believed she could detect the blood moving throughout her body. This was what it looked like for Zek. It was surreal and uncomfortable, but at least not excruciating. Then it got excruciating. She started writhing and screaming, and the medical team had to hold her down. Landis tried to help, but they fiercely rejected his interference. There was no telling what would happen if their completely different kinds of powers interacted with each other. Zek turned blue, and not lack of oxygen blue, but a bright and glowing blue. Electricity surged around her skin, which was what her version of teleportation looked like, but only when she was in her home universe. It wasn’t supposed to last this long, or be painful. She just kept tossing and turning, and glowing brighter.

The blue light escaped from her body, and lit up the whole room. Then the room disappeared. It didn’t blink out of existence, but slid away rapidly, like they were on an extremely fast people mover at an airport. They were outside the hotel headquarters, and then they were across town, and then the state, and then the country. They flew across the ocean, through all the lands on the other side. More ocean, more lands, more ocean, more lands. They just kept circling the globe, randomly changing directions, sometimes going straight through the planet, and back out the other side. They appeared to be on the moon at one point too. They were falling and flying and being shot out of a cannon. Finally they stopped being able to see the world altogether, and were immersed in a sea of electric blue. It was hard to tell if they were still moving, or static. Zektene finally stopped thrashing about, though she appeared to still be in a little pain.

“Where the hell are we?” Freya demanded to know.

“This is an astral plane; the blue one,” the doctor explained.

“This is how she teleports in her universe,” Khuweka clarified. “She doesn’t just jump from one point to another. She falls through a simplex dimension.” No sooner did she say that did the lights turned from blue to a purplish blue.

“Okay, that’s weird,” the doctor noted. “Now we’re in the indigo astral plane.”

“One step lower than blue,” Khuweka added. “You can’t travel as far.”

The colors changed again, to full on purple.

“Okay, that’s bad,” the doctor said. “But we’ll be fine as long as it doesn’t turn black.”

Everything turned black; a hopeless void of busy nothingness. No one was talking anymore, but Freya still knew what they were thinking, like they were all communicating telepathically now. Zek started screaming again, but tapered off, not out of relief, but a lack of air. They sounded like the life was being choked out of her, and she couldn’t move. Freya couldn’t move either. She didn’t have a body anymore, just a noncorporeal mind. She couldn’t help. She couldn’t save Zek. All she could do was listen to her friend’s last thoughts as the space around her crushed her into a single point. Ten seconds later, the lights turned on, and they were back in the infirmary. Zek was gone, replaced by the largest diamond Freya had ever seen. You would need two arms to lift it up, even for a really strong person. You just couldn’t wrap your fingers around it with one hand.

“What happened to her?” Andraste wasn’t used to being so angry.

The doctor and her team looked ashamed and scared. She took off her stethoscope, and placed it on the diamond.

“What the hell are you doing?” Limerick questioned.

The doctor placed her palm on the diamond now. A few seconds later, she released. “It’s her.”

“What do you mean, it’s her?” Even Khuweka was lost.

The doctor sighed, distraught. She was trying to work through the problem. “This is like the virus, but they cured that years ago.” She stopped a moment, but didn’t wait long enough for anyone to press her for more information. “The drug this was based off of, it worked. It worked fine. It enhanced the anomaly abilities, sometimes even giving them related, but new, abilities. It had side effects, though, eventually causing the anomaly’s abilities to turn on them. Milo could no longer control magnets, but became helplessly magnetic. Diane, who once controlled fire, exploded. A few people experienced something called critical existence failure, which is worse than it probably even sounds. This was all before my time, I’ve just read the reports. They fixed that. They promised me they fixed it. This wasn’t supposed to happen. They used Aukan-6, this is Aukan-11.”

“Answer her question. Clarify what you meant when you said it’s her,” Freya demanded.

“Put your hand on the diamond.” The doctor took Freya by the wrist, and gently placed her hand on one face of the diamond.

“Freya?” came Zek’s voice. It wasn’t coming from outside, but inside Freya’s head. This was a psychic connection.

“You’re alive?” Freya questioned, both grateful for it, but horrified that her friend was now somehow trapped inside a gemstone.

“My consciousness has survived. As for whether I’m alive, I could not answer that question.”

“She’s in the diamond?” Freya asked the doctor.

“She has been turned into the diamond,” the doctor corrected. “Forced that way by the incalculable pressure from the black astral plane. It’s like being a one-dimensional object, I’m surprised the rest of us survived. We must have enjoyed a persistent connection with the higher dimensions.”

“I’m not enjoying this,” Limerick contended.

“Can it be reversed?” Carbrey suggested.

“It cannot,” the doctor apologized. “I am...” she trailed off.

“Landis,” Andraste prompted.

Landis had been waiting for someone to ask him to do his thing. “I’m obviously going to try. You cannot, however, get your hopes up. What’s happened to her is nothing like I’ve seen before, but it is not unlike being cremated. People have asked me to repair their cremated loved ones before, and I haven’t had any bit of luck. I don’t bring people back to life. I just heal them. At some point, they’re beyond my gifts. I would say being transformed into a diamond goes far beyond that point of no return.”

Freya presented him with the Zek-diamond. He stepped forward, and placed his hand on her so they could have some private conversation. Then he leaned over, and breathed upon the stone. Nothing happened, nothing changed. It didn’t even sort of almost begin to work, or even moderately illustrate that he had any kind of supernatural gift at all. The rock just sat there. Zek wasn’t gone, but she would never be the same.

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Microstory 1550: Introducing Botner

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Prompt

I would like to introduce you to my new robot writing partner, who I’m calling Botner. He’s an AI text generator from InferKit, and this is the first thing he has to say to you:

Botner

BOTNER: What a boring, staid world it would be without scientists. I’ve been reading all of the scientific papers. I’ve been writing hundreds of them.

INFERKIT: BOTNER IS TOTALLY READY. Here, let me show you a file. Botner says something else. It’s always very good.

BOTNER: I’m an AI and I’m programmed to look at that science paper and tell you what is in it.

INFERKIT: Very good. Thanks, Botner. I’m sure you’ll do well. Botner turns off and there’s nothing more to read about science. And you may never know who wrote it, and you’ll be left with the question of how to go about doing some small fact-checking on the page. This will never happen on Google, but it’s also not Google’s fault that the site just so happens to contain this. Botner comes from InferKit, which is “a research platform and developer studio” founded by graduate students at the University of Washington. The project, according to an InferKit blog post, aims to “create machine learning tools that can help the scientific community by automatically generating publically-researched papers based on information retrieved from the research literature.” In a 2017 paper, InferKit described how it “uses knowledge...

Conclusion

...to fill in the blanks after a prompt, which is what you’ll find in the first paragraph.” I write the prompts, Botner will add the middle of the story, and then I will finish it off. As you can see, his ideas didn’t really follow what I was going for. I wanted the AI to give you a general overview of what it is, and what it does. That’s okay. That's what’s kind of supposed to happen. I will be beholden to whatever the bot comes up with, and will have to complete the narrative based on whatever wacky place it took the story. These probably aren’t going to make a lot of sense, which is why they’re just as experimental as the Cloze Test series I did just before this. Still, I think it’s a fascinating concept, and I am looking forward to figuring out how to write a story—not just as a collaboration with someone else—but someone who barely pays any attention to my own contribution. I have no control over what it says, but I am responsible for carrying the story to its completion, based on its parameters, and I’m excited to see how it all turns out. Last note, I will probably be copy-editing some of Botner’s text. I don’t like the way the program blocks paragraphs, and some of the punctuation is not really my style. I know, it’s not supposed to be my style, but I think there are some things that ought to be consistent. I will not interfere with its contribution any more than that, though.

Microstory 1549: Cloze Final Exam

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Well, this was a weird microfiction series, wasn’t it? What I ended up doing was basically just writing general stories, and randomly omitting words once I was finished. There was nothing connecting the stories to each other, not even a theme, and there was no point to the omissions at all. I was clear in the beginning, however, that this was highly experimental, and that I didn’t know how it would go. I didn’t know how many I would do either, but I’ve come up with a better idea, and will be transitioning to that, starting tomorrow. I regret nothing from the Cloze Tests, though. It was kind of nice, just getting back to my roots. When I started this website, I didn’t know how it was going to go either. I knew I would be doing a continuous series on one day of the week, and a series of series on another day. I didn’t know, however, that I would end up coming up with microfiction series. Now I spend a great deal of time figuring out what those series could possibly be, and how they’ll work. Before that, I assumed each one would stand alone, and I would have to come up with a new story every time. That proved to be quite difficult. I’ve had so much more experience with longer form writing, that conceiving an entirely new idea, and having to end it so quickly was a skill I had to pick up along the way. I’m happy with what I’ve ended up doing, using quick installments to tell a larger story. There’s still a reason why they’re separate, and none of them is one unbroken tale that’s been arbitrarily divided, but I do love building worlds. I always have. That being said, the next series I do will not be about expanding my canon either. I won’t give too much away, because we’ll be explaining it tomorrow, but the headline is that I’m working with a writing partner for the first time ever. Well, there was that one microfiction story I wrote with my sister’s elementary school music class, but for the most part, it’s just been me. My new partner isn’t all that bright, but he tries hard, and never doesn’t produce. Thank you for reading up until now, and please continue to do so. For those of you wondering why I haven’t seemed to omit any words in this conclusive installment, you should know that there is no rule about how many blanks I’m meant to put in any story. There really only ever needs one for it to qualify. To that end, please prepare to read the upcoming brilliant narratives, as told by me, and my partner. He has a big secret about himself, which is that he’s actually a ________. Crazy, right?

Microstory 1548: Wrong-of-Way

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I’m not one for rules. I don’t care if you don’t pay your ________, or shoplift from a major store ________. You shouldn’t be able to hurt ________, but if you get in a fight, and you’re both on ________ footing, then whatever, right? There are certain ________, however, that you can’t ignore. Road rules. Most people seem to understand that traffic ________ are there to ensure everyone’s safety, but what they don’t under____ is that they’re also there to facilitate traffic. When you come to a four-way ________, we’ve decided that it’s first-come first-serve. That’s what makes the most sense, and if you tried to do it in ________, it would be crazy, and I don’t want to live in that ________. When you get there before me, please just go. You don’t even have to wait until I come to a complete ________. As soon as you’ve stopped for a reasonable amount of ________—which is measured in seconds—then just move on. Waving me through before you is ________ polite. It is not a nice ________ to do. It’s irritating, because it’s unexpected, and unconventional. Follow the ________. If you just went when it was your ________, you would be out of my way before I even needed to go anyway, so stop ____ting my time and patting yourself on the back like you’re some ________ of generous street hero. I’m ranting now, but the ________ is that the laws are there to get everyone to their destination as ________ as possible. They’re not pointless, and they are not random. They’re all ________ logical, so they shouldn’t be too hard to ________. This is unlike, say, learning another language, which will be made up of almost ________ arbitrary rules that could go either way. I say all this because I’ve always been a really ________ driver. I’m fast, yes. I speed, yes. But damn am I good, and I’m nothing if not the least intrusive fellow ________ ever. It may seem like I ________ you off, but I’ll go zero to forty-five in two ________ flat, and you won’t, so me being in front of you is no different from your perspective than me just not being there at all. I’ve never been in an ________, and I always stay out of people’s ________. Today is different. Today, I ________ up.

I always take the same route to ________, because it’s familiar, and I know all the tricks. I don’t just mean I know the ____est way there, and where the pot____ are. I also know what the traffic is going to ________. This changes throughout the week, throughout the ________, and throughout the year. I know when school’s on, and when it’s not. I know how ________ the other drivers are going to go, and when they’re going to slow ________. I drive in the ________ lane for most of the highway, but there’s this stretch of it where everyone slows ________, because a chain of cars comes in from the right, and they’re all delusional about how fast they actually are. I have to ________ over to the ________ lane to pass ________. Sometimes I even jog over to the exit lane, and quickly get ________ in, which I’m pretty ________ is illegal, but some ________ are only for ________ who can’t handle it. Anyway, I get off the ________ today, and there’s construction all over ________. I don’t know how all this sprung up overnight, but I think it’s fine, because I’m familiar enough with the ________ to find my way around it, even if it’s not the detour that the signs are claiming is ________. This is where ________ get interesting. I’m going down a ________ I’ve never been on before, and I see orange ________ up ahead, but not roadblocks, so I figure it must be ________. There’s a caravan of others behind me, because I guess they’ve ________ me as their leader. I make the slight ________, and head for the cones, but there’s a problem. I can’t tell which side is open for traffic, and which is for the construction ________. There’s a tiny little baby sign for babies, with an arrow pointing towards the ________, but I don’t see it in time, and end up on the left. No, this isn’t ________. This is the lane for oncoming ________. I thought they were supposed to be on the far side of the ________, but nope, they’re right here. And so am I. So are we. The cones are close together, but I should have just run one ________, because now we’re in between concrete ________, and there’s another caravan coming ________ us. We all stop. We can’t move. And more ________are coming.

Microstory 1547: Common Enemy

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Aliens are real, and I’m one of the few ________ who know about them. When they first ________ in our solar ________, they were ________ and quiet. Invisibility is impossible, but they can ________ themselves as space debris, and otherwise manipulate our ________ to prevent anyone from finding out about them. I run a conspiracy theory ________, and before you roll your ________, it’s not as bad as you think. I only spread the harmless theories. I don’t claim that the ________ is a lizard, or that black Jewish people are trying to take over ________, or what other nonsense ideas people have. I talk more about ghosts and burn victim-killing fairies and, of course, ________ visitors. I never believed any of this ________, but I found I can make a decent living pretending that I ________. I know, I know, you think I’m exploiting vulnerable ________, but they’re going to buy into this stuff whether I’m the ________ they’re buying from, or ________ else. So I might as well be the one to make ________. At least then, I can keep my prices ________. I broadcast a ____ly AM radio show, I sell the occasional tee-shirt, and I run ________ on my website. I’m not making ________ of dollars, but I do all right, and I still ________ coupons. Anyway, I’m certainly not the most famous ________ out there, but perhaps that’s what the aliens were ________ for. They may have even realized that I haven’t been entirely truthful about my ________, and that’s precisely why they chose me. Whatever the reason, after all their ________ into our species, they’ve decided they need ________ help to help everyone else. You see, they call themselves a steward race. They have taken it upon themselves to foster the ________ of younger civilizations. This ________ comes in many forms, but what they’ve found is that our ________ problems are our internal ________. We just keep ________ each other, for stupid things, like religion, and ________, and skin color.

Before we can be welcomed into the interstellar ________, we have to come together. We have to unite into one peoples, and sure, they could wait for us to do that on our ________, but they think there’s a ________ way. The only way to create an ally, they’ve learned, is to first have an ________. Individuals can become friends, but on grander ________, people don’t unify unless it’s necessary to fight some other ________. Now, this might not necessarily be an actual enemy that you can literally ________ against. We’ve teamed up to battle hunger, depression, homelessness, drugs, terrorism and fascism. It’s a lot more compli____ than two sides at war. People just need to have something to fix if they’re going to bother working with ________. The issue with this ________ is that not everyone is as concerned with any given ________ as others. Racists will never become not racist in order to end racism. I mean, some of them might turn, but it will still be a ________. Some people don’t care about ________ because they’re not poor, so why should they worry about others? No, a real enemy to go up against is the only way the stewards are going to ________ effectively. They have to purport themselves as a threatening ________, so humans can rise up against ________. Unfortunately, the stewards aren’t as ________ about that plan as me. It will take too many ________ that they don’t want to spend, so they’ve come up with an ________. Instead, they’ve chosen to release a deadly ________. It won’t wipe out the entire ________, which would defeat the purpose of this exercise, but it will kill thousands—millions if we don’t start getting our ________ together. They’re calling it the corona____. I don’t know why they wasted their time talking to me about it. I can’t ________ them, and I didn’t help them, I swear. This is not a theory, it’s real this time.

Microstory 1546: Waiting

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I have been ________ in this waiting room for an ________. I don’t have anything else to do ________, but that doesn’t mean I want to ________ it here. I’m not usually that kind of ________ who will get up and demand to be ________, but this is getting ridiculous. Most of the ________ were here before me, but they don’t seem fazed. They just keep ________ backwards through their magazines, and fidgeting with their ________ forms. Maybe I should get up, not just for me, but for ________ too. They haven’t called ________ back this whole ________, so something is holding the entire process up, and if no one ________ is going to try to find out what that is, I suppose it will have to be ________. I nonaggressively stand up from my ________, and walk over to the counter at a reasonable ________. I politely ask the ________ for an estimated wait ________. He just looks at me like he doesn’t speak ________. No, it’s more like he thinks I’m speaking a ________ language. He reaches over, and closes the ________, not aggressively either, but it’s still rude. It’s ________ enough to upset me, so I reach over ________, and just open it back up. He’s gone. It hasn’t even been one ________, there’s no way he could have gotten up, and walked ________. I have too wide of a view of his ________, and the hallway behind him. Plus, he has all these ________ piled up on the floor, it would have been too much to navigate. I ask if anyone else saw that as I’m turning ________, but they too are gone. The noises they were making—flipping through book ________, coughing, sipping ________—it lingers for a while, but dies ________, like they were able to disappear faster than the sound ________. I suppose that makes sense as ________ moves faster than sound. No, that doesn’t mean this makes any ________. They shouldn’t have ________ at all! What the heck is going on here? I turn back to the reception ________. The folders are still there, but they’re knocked over, and ________ dust. The ________ are out, and there’s a draft in here that wasn’t there before. I turn my ________ yet again. The paintings have fallen to the ________, and the wall____ is peeling. Chairs are turned ________, and a few are broken. I have either just ________ to the future, or ________ to some kind of eerie upside down silent ghost dimension. I have to find help, and ________. That’s what’s important right ________. I leave the waiting ________, and then exit the ________. The rest of the ________is as dreary and dead as it was ________, there’s probably nothing useful to ________. I have to try at least, though, so I keep ________. I start out by walking on the ________, but without any ________ around, I wonder why I’m wasting my time. The ________is less damaging to my ________ and knees. I wander down the ________, only headed in one particular ________, because the fading painted lines tell me so. I hear a rushing ________ around me, and then squealing. Then I hear some honking ________, and as the traffic is coming back into ________, a pair of ________ take me forcefully by the shoulders. “Let’s get you back to your ________. How do you keep escaping? I swear to ________, this time you literally disappeared before my eyes.”