Microstory 1856: Civil Servant

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Most of the time, when I was a civil servant, I didn’t feel like I could get anything done. There was so much red tape, and pushback from people who didn’t want to spend any money. The entire purpose of government—even local government—is to use money wisely, not to just hold onto it, and not use it at all. My colleagues kept screaming about wasting taxpayer money, but that’s not what I was trying to do. It’s meant to be for schools, roads, and emergency services. And it’s that last one that always got me into trouble. They wanted to dedicate pretty much our entire budget on law enforcement. Seriously, I think if someone like me wasn’t there to stop them, that’s exactly what they would do. One of them actually believed that there would be no need for any hospitals if cops handled everything before it got to that point. That, of course, doesn’t make any sense; that guy was an idiot. I started out as the City Comptroller. It’s the biggest joke in government. Everyone has the right to vote for it, but no one knows what it is. Fortunately, I was responsible for a fairly well-educated city in that regard, so many people actually did vote for me, and they knew why they were voting for me, instead of one of my opponents. Now, I never thought I would have free reign over the finances, but I thought I would have a stronger voice than I did. The Mayor had all the power, just like the TV shows make it seem. And our mayor was the absolute worst. Slimy, corrupt, impassionate, selfish. So many people tried to get him out of office, but they kept losing. I’m not saying he was rigging the elections, but something fishy was going on, and I decided to get to the bottom of it. Luckily, I just so happened to be a brilliant accountant, and I couldn’t get anywhere with my real duties, so I investigated in secret.

Long story short, he was stealing money. Unlike the movies, he wasn’t lining his own pockets, though, which is interesting. Every cent seemed to be going into his reëlection campaigns. Still wrong, still illegal, but I saw his house, and the car that he drove. He was living a surprisingly modest life. Even so, I had to expose him, and I expected my actions to ruin my life. It didn’t matter, because the people deserved the truth, so if I was going to go down, I would make sure he went down with me. To my surprise, that’s not what happened. The city practically raised me up on their shoulders, I was their hero. He went to jail, and I became the most famous comptroller in the country, which as we’ve established, isn’t saying much. It was an election year, so someone else was going to get the spot soon. So many people suggested that I go for it. Even with him out of the way, there was no guarantee that things were going to get better. It wasn’t like he was the only bad politician in the world. My friends knew that the population could trust me to be competent, faithful, and accountable. All I needed to do was convince everybody else. It wasn’t easy, but I fought a hard campaign, and I did it with a lot less money than my primary opponent. As far as I could tell, he was a pretty decent guy, so after I won, I appointed him as my Deputy Mayor. Together, we were going to change the way our great city was run; most importantly, by reworking the budget to be responsible, reasonable, and fair. Only thing is, we’re not going to get the chance to do that. At first, I think it’s raining on our first public address, but then I touch my face, and realize it’s blood. I look down at my deputy mayor. Headshot, he’s gone. Then I feel a sharp pain in my chest, and I fall down next to him. I shouldn’t have dared to dream.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 30, 2388

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“So, this is a retcon,” Leona figured, totally unimpressed—bored even. “We were told that The Artist built three Preston children, but in fact, there was a fourth. You must have been so evil that the others never talk about you, and blah, blah, blah.”

Mithridates chuckled. “No. I wasn’t built, I was born. You think my parents spent centuries not having any children? I mean, even if they weren’t trying, having at least one kid eventually would have been practically inevitable. They don’t talk about me, not because I was too evil—because we’re all evil—but because they were just ashamed that I left the Gallery Dimensions with the rest of the disgruntled workers, instead of sticking by my family.”

“I see.”

“Besides, as far as I can tell, they so didn’t talk about me, that not even my brother and sisters know that I exist.”

Leona sighed, still bored. “Are you gonna...do your speech?”

“My villain speech where I reveal my dastardly plans?”

“Yeah, that one.”

Mithridates smirked. “Don’t have one.”

“You don’t have a speech, er...?”

“Don’t have a plan.” He started pacing somewhat menacingly. “Have you wondered why I’m bringing all of the star systems together, or why I’m taking so long to do it?”

“We’ve noticed it doesn’t make much sense.”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t have to. It’s cra-zy.” With these words, he bobbled his head around, rolled his eyes, and spun his finger around his temple. “The plan is to make everybody think I have a plan.”

“Okay, so no plan, but what’s the objective?”

“To make everybody think I have an objective!” He was so pleased with himself for having come up with a gigantic waste of time.

“Oh, Jesus Christ.”

“It’s pronounced Mithridates,” he countered. “You can call me Mithri, though.”

Leona didn’t want to end up in another battle royale with yet another antagonist. The bad guys always lost, but the team always lost a lot along the way, and she was disinterested in seeing that happen again. If the best option was to jump over all of this, and just move on to the plan to return to the main sequence, that was what she would do. “Look, I’m sure you’re quite happy with—” She stopped talking when she noticed that all the holography was back. The water, the tiny island, the hut; they had all returned. The sky was just a regular blue with one sun, but everything else looked as it did before Mithri dropped the illusion. Baudin’s faux son wasn’t around, though.

Mithri was wearing the same female avatar as before, but she was clothed now. He was walking out of the hut. “Oh, you’re back.”

“Where did I go?” Leona asked, pretty sure she knew the answer to that question.

Mithri checked his watch. “Nowhere. You just disappeared exactly one Earthan year ago. Imagine that.”

She reached over, and desperately tapped on her Cassidy cuff. It was off. It was never off. Something was very wrong.

“Oh, yeah, that technology won’t work here.”

She looked back towards the tooth mountain, in the general direction of the Suadona.

“That technology is fine. Your friends are fine. I’m sure they’ve just been hanging out all year, wondering why you’ve not checked up on them.”

“How do you know so much about us? You didn’t ask me my name, or anything.”

“This.” Mithri grabbed a crystal tablet from a little table. He tapped on it, and presented it to her. She could see a website on the screen, which appeared to be a blog of some kind. The top entry read Extremus: Year 38.

“What is it?”

“It’s the Superintendent’s. This is how he tries to get people to read his shit. Nobody does, of course. Well, not in his universe. The sad irony is that thousands read it in this reality, and billions more in other self-aware universes. Unfortunately, he doesn’t earn page impressions from us. It’s just a mirrored site. You could even call it a quantum mirror?”

“So everything we’ve ever done, you already know.”

“No, not everything. Just what he writes about, and I don’t know how accurate it is. It hasn’t exactly been fact-checked.”

“What are you going to do with me and my friends?”

Mithri yawned deeply. “Nothing. I’ve read enough to know that you’re a non-threat.”

“How do you figure? We’ve fought against a lot of people, and we always win...in the end. Some of them even became our friends.”

“I know, and those enemies of yours have one thing in common.”

She didn’t prompt him to continue. He was going to on his own.

He smiled, recognizing her attempt to take some level of control. “They all tried to defeat you. You were right, when someone fights you, they lose, so all I have to do is not fight. Ya know, there’s this saying in your reality; you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don’t take. This sounds right, but it’s not. You miss zero percent of the shots you don’t take. I mean, can you imagine not running for president of the United States, and then being criticized for not being the president of the United States? That’s so stupid. You should only take the shots you think you might make, and also want to make. I’m not saying you shouldn’t try, or shouldn’t challenge yourself, but come on! You and your team are a behemoth, but an underdog at the same time. I’m not going there. So you tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll just do it, because I don’t care.”

“Because you’re an agent of chaos,” Leona put forth.

“I’m an agent of confusion. Which means, if you stop asking me to do anything I’m doing, it will maintain the status quo, because the status quo is there is no status quo. I can’t lose! It doesn’t matter what you say.”

This sounded like one of those stories where the hero runs into a genocidal artificial intelligence, and the only way to stop it is to force it into some kind of logical paradox. There was an answer that Mithridates didn’t want to hear, and she had to figure out what that could be. What would cause him to lose?

He could see the gears turning in her head. “You’re hunting for a loophole, but I assure you, it doesn’t exist.”

“What if I ask you to kill yourself?” She didn’t really want him to do that, but she needed him to illuminate the boundaries, so she could start with a decent frame of reference.

He shook his head like it was no big deal. He approached his hut, where a relatively sharp bamboo pole was sticking a little too far out. With little hesitation, he shoved himself forward, and let it dig into his neck. Blood dripped down to the sand, followed by the rest of the body. After Leona knelt down to check for a pulse, which she didn’t find, a figure started walking towards her from the mountain. It was Mithri in his own form.

“Was that real, or an illusion?”

“This is like a holodeck,” he explained. “The objects aren’t real, per se, but they are physical, and that body really died. I have mind uploading technology, just like you do. Anything else?”

“Don’t ever hurt anyone ever again.”

He crossed his arms, and looked to the sky as he pondered the demand. “That is a loophole,” he finally decided. “Yeah, I can’t do that one.”

“Because you just like it too much.”

“No, because it’s impossible. I mean, think about someone you love. Mateo, your parents; whoever. You didn’t wanna hurt them, but you did, on a number of occasions. You dated the wrong boy, or you failed a math test. That’s not killing them, or punching them in the face, but it did hurt them. Just because they forgave you for these things, doesn’t mean that pain could be undone. No one can live their life painfree.”

“Fair enough,” Leona agreed.

“I suppose you just need to figure out what you want. If you tell me your objective, I’ll come up with the plan.”

She had to laugh at this, but it did give her the idea she needed. “I want you to become an agent of peace in this reality.”

Now he was laughing. It went on a little too long, actually. He literally slapped his knee. “Have it your way, Mrs. Matic. I’ll become an agent of peace. You’ll pardon me for having to take some time to figure out what that means.” He laughed some more.

She closed her eyes, and tilted her head down respectfully.

“Now it’s my turn.”

“What?”

“Oh, this was a back and forth. You asked me for something, so now I get to ask for something. What, did you think it was gonna be unfair?”

She sighed. “I should have seen this coming, but you should have warned me.”

“You hadn’t asked me to become an agent of peace yet. I was still an agent of confusion, so I didn’t tell you, because that’s confusing.”

“Whatever, Mithri. Get on with it. I’m sure you already have your idea.”

“Two ideas,” he contended. “You asked me to do two things.”

“No, I asked you to do one thing. I asked for a response to a hypothetical about killing yourself. I never actually said to kill yourself.”

He thought about this for a moment. “I’ll allow it. You’re a smart one.”

“I have three timelines of experience to draw upon,” she said.

“I have more than that. What you asked me to do is very complicated, and it’s not going to come without its mistakes. I’m sure you expect something similar from me, but what I’ve learned over the tens of thousands of years is that sometimes simple is best. So I’m not going to ask you to do anything crazy. It’s even going to be something that you weren’t going to do anyway.”

“Just say it.”

“Kill yourself, and immediately transfer your consciousness to the upgraded organic substrate that Ramses engineered for you.”

“It’s not ready yet. She’s only twelve.”

“Yeah, that’s the joke. I thought you were smart.”

“I thought you were an agent of peace. Death isn’t peace.”

He shrugged. “Grace period.”

She frowned, now looking for a different loophole. There didn’t seem to be anything to that. He specified which substrate, so she couldn’t use some android body while she waited for the body to finish developing.

“I’ll give you one alternative.”

“What’s that?” It was probably going to be something even worse.

“Either start using your own new body right now, or make the rest of your team transfer to their own new organic substrates within the year. That will give me enough time to figure out what you even mean by peace. I’m not confident I have the right definition in mind, since I’ve never done it before.”

That was probably better, not worse. They would all be fifteen by that point, which would almost make them look like adults. The prenatal growth hormones and antibodies that they were currently floating in was the only stuff capable of accelerating their aging safely, and without side effects. It wasn’t something they could just inject into themselves afterwards. If they wanted to age after the transfer process was complete, they would need someone’s time powers. The team would surely understand that this was better than her being stuck as a twelve-year-old. Still, they had a right to know. “Let me speak with them first.”

“You can talk all you want, but the timer has already begun. If you jump to the future, or leave this planet in your ship—which will restore function to your Cassidy cuff—then you’ll have no choice but to switch to the alternative. Either you’re a twelve-year-old by the end of the day, or they’re fifteen by the end of the year.”

So Leona began to run. She wanted as much time as possible to figure this out. “It was nice meeting you, Mithri!” she called back, recalling Leona’s Rules of Time Travel number fifteen, don’t antagonize the antagonist.

“It was nice meeting you too!” he replied.

Leona hooked herself up to the computer, and entered the simulation. Her friends were all there. They looked relieved to finally see her. She explained the situation to them.

“Why can’t we just run?” Olimpia asked.

“I don’t know what he’ll do,” Leona replied. “He may just void the deal, but he may come after us.”

“The answer is obvious,” Angela said. “Just transfer us. We can be fifteen, that’s fine. It’s late enough in the timeline that people will understand.”

“Wait, Ramses, can’t you do something about this?” Marie asked.

“Can I accelerate growth after birth?” Ramses assumed. “With some time, yeah, probably. I didn’t invent this technology. I stand on the shoulders of giants, and none of them ever invented forward aging treatment, because it could be used as a weapon, and not much else.”

Leona nodded. “Mateo, you’ve been quiet.”

“Angela’s right, the answer is obvious. He didn’t tell you that you can transfer your mind to another body. He said you had to kill yourself to do it. I’m not okay with that. What we experienced was awful...necessary, but awful. You managed to avoid it, and I would like to keep it that way.”

This was true. They all died to end up here, and she never had to go through the same trauma; at least not for a while. All things being equal, that was the difference, so by the end of the day, Leona’s most recent body was dead, and she looked as she did when she was twelve.

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Extremus: Year 38

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Rita was exhausted as she tried to continue her story, so Kaiora escorted her out of hock, and up to her new cabin. After she slept, Rita was still unable to continue with the story. Explaining as much as she did proved to be more traumatic than she thought it would be. It was tough, reliving the experience. After about a week, she felt comfortable restarting the process, but only with a therapist, who was trained to converse with her in a safe and nonjudgmental environment. Of course, the therapist did not reveal any details to Captain Leithe, or anyone else, but she was able to report that Rita’s truth would not endanger the Extremus mission, or the people. So nobody else had to know anything about it if Rita wasn’t willing to tell them herself. Even so, she could tell them, because others having this knowledge would also not threaten the mission. Until then, they moved on, and slowly reintegrated her into society. She no longer had a responsibility on the crew—nor did she want one. And for the most part, the other passengers weren’t pushy about her giving them answers.

To be honest, Kaiora hasn’t thought much about it for the last 21 months. She wasn’t even born yet when Rita disappeared. And as a Lieutenant, Rita didn’t make too much of a mark on the mission, since she spent so little time on it. She’s important, no doubt, and Kaiora’s glad she’s returned, but if she doesn’t want to talk about it, she doesn’t have to. The Captain has a ship to run, and that’s what she needs to focus on. As interesting as Rita’s tale might be, her therapist was quite clear that it’s not relevant to the ongoing operation of Extremus, so that means it’s personal. And Kaiora doesn’t have time for personal.

The door chirps. A very well dressed Dr. Daud Kreuleck is on the other side of it. “Is there a science awards event tonight?” Kaiora asks him.

He briefly doesn’t realize what she’s talking about. Then he looks down at his garb. “Oh, no. I was...uh, on a date.”

“Oh. Did it...not go well?”

“It went great,” he answers.

Awkward pause.

“But you needed to leave, and come to me for something?”

“I did,” Daud says with a nod. He’s acting really weird, like he’s just on autopilot, and doesn’t know what he’s going to do next. “His name was...”

“His name was what?”

Daud remembers, “Yusef. It was Yusef, sorry. We had a great time. As it turns out, we have a lot in common—”

“Why are you telling me this, Dr. Kreuleck?”

“Can I come in? I would like to come in.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“I just was hoping for some privacy.”

“Okay.” Kaiora selects a contact on her wristband. “Lieutenant Seelen, could you please jump to my cabin as soon as possible?”

Corinna appears in the room behind Kaiora. “All right,” the Captain says to the scientist as she’s stepping back. “Come on in.”

“This is privacy?” Daud questions.

“This is what you get when you ask for privacy with a captain who’s in charge of a spaceship of thousands of people.”

“I’m just.” He growls. Then he walks in, and sits down. “Sorry.”

Kaiora sits down across from him. Corinna remains standing off to her Captain’s flank.

Daud takes a breath. “I’m sorry,” he repeats. “This is all making me sound like a creep, and that is the furthest from what I mean. I’m trying to tell you that, while the date was perfect, I just kept seeing your face on his head.”

“I thought you were trying to not be creepy,” Kaiora points out.

“I just mean, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stop thinking about you.”

“Well, that’s understandable. Like I just said, I’m the leader of a ship.” She looks up at Corinna. “I’m sure there’s some kind of psychological complex going on there?”

“Yes, sir,” Corinna agrees insincerely, trying to remain detached from the conversation. She’s not there to listen, but to protect her superior officer. It’s still not clear if that’s necessary, and the longer this goes without an answer, the riskier the situation becomes.

“It’s not because you’re the Captain, I don’t care that you’re the Captain. I mean, of course I care that you’re the Captain. I just mean—it’s you. It’s just you. I care about you. I’m falling for you. There’s chemistry between us, and you can trust that that’s true, because I know chemistry. You have to agree that there’s something between us. You’re nice to everybody, but you’re particularly nice to me. If you could—”

“Daud. Daud, Daud!”

“What?”

“Stop talking.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You keep having to say that.”

“I’mmmm...” He stops himself from the irony.

“Dr. Kreuleck. I am not interested in your company on a nonprofessional level. I respect you as a scientist, and a member of this crew. But I will not be pursuing a relationship. I apologize if anything I did, or said, led you to believe that there was anything between us beyond mutual professional respect.”

Daud can’t stop fidgeting. He’s heartbroken and upset, but he will get over it. This was the best way to break the news to him. It would be so much worse if Kaiora tried to talk about it, or let him down easy. The hard truth was the only way through. He leans his head back against the top of the couch cushion, stuck in a daze. “Could you please just spirit me away to my cabin? I know you don’t use your teleporter for that kind of thing, but—”

Kaiora does as she’s asked. She sighs once he’s gone.

“I thought you did like him?” Corinna reminds her.

“Fleeting thoughts,” Kaiora dismisses. “Besides, it’s not like I can be with anyone, whether I find someone I truly like, or not.”

“Why not?”

“I’m the Captain, as we established.”

“So what?”

“So the captain can’t be in a romantic relationship. It’s a conflict of interest, or something.”

Corinna frowns. She fiddles with her watch, and uses it to project a hologram of the book of Extremus laws. “Show me in here where it says you can’t be in a relationship.”

“Well, it doesn’t explicitly say that, I mean, but come on...”

Corinna closes the book. She wasn’t expecting Kaiora to literally look for the law. Because it’s not in there. It can’t be. “I’m not saying you should go after...that guy, whoever he is. But if you meet someone, or you’ve met someone, don’t let your job get in the way of that. You are entitled to happiness, and having a responsibility doesn’t mean you lose that. Yeah, it’s true that there are some things you can’t have because you’re the leader, like a completely private or anonymous life. Love isn’t one of those things.”

“Halan never pursued anybody,” Kaiora points out.

“Halan is aromantic. That’s why they chose him.”

“Huh?”

“Obviously it’s not the only reason they chose him—or even necessarily the deciding factor—he’s absolutely qualified for the job, but he was a great candidate, because they didn’t want him to be distracted.”

Was that true? That might actually be true. It would have been almost impossible to pass any laws restricting anyone’s right to love and partnership, so they may have decided that their best alternative was to find someone who wasn’t looking for that. “So you’re only proving my point. Whether it’s an actual law, or not, it means I don’t have time for all that.”

“No, because those people aren’t here anymore. They’re all dead. Well, I think that one of them might be still alive, but he wouldn’t matter. That was their sneaky way of protecting the ship’s interests, but they weren’t infallible. You make your own choices, and when it comes to your personal life, no one can stop you from doing whatever the hell you want. Again, I don’t know who that guy was, but do what you want, and don’t fret over other people’s reservations. You’re not Halan Yenant.”

Kaiora takes a moment to think about Corinna’s words. Hoping they’re true, she reaches over, and selects a destination point on her wristband.

“Are you...going to someone?”

“Thanks, Lieutenant. You’ve been a big help.”

“Squee,” Corinna squees.

Kaiora teleports herself to the executive infirmary, specifically the Chief Medical Officer’s office.

Dr. Holmes is staring at some x-rays on the wall, and looking at a chart on her tablet. “Captain, is there a problem?”

Kaiora gently takes the tablet away from Ima, and replaces it with her hand, to get a feel for it at first.

“Captain...”

Kaiora doesn’t say anything. She just holds the doctor’s hand with her own, caressing her thumb carefully.

Ima reaches up with her other hand to match and begins to breathe heavily. “Captain,” she repeats for the third time.

“I would like to kiss you.”

Ima continues to try to steady her breath. “I’m thirty-four years older than you.”

“Is that right?” Kaiora lays her forehead against Ima’s.

“Actually, it’s...thirty-four years...three months, and six days.”

Kaiora doesn’t let Ima pull away. “You’ve calculated it.”

“Yes,” Ima whispers.

“You don’t know the hours and minutes?” she whispers too.

“One hour, eight minutes,” Ima says, barely audibly.

Now Kaiora pulls aways, and backs up a few steps. “I’m going to stand here. Ten seconds after I stop talking, I’m going to pucker my lips, and kiss. That might mean I’m kissing the air, or I’m kissing you. You will have to choose which.”

Unable to last ten seconds, Dr. Ima Holmes lunges forward, and initiates the kiss. They hold it forever before letting go, each taking a half step back again. “Why did you come here?”

“I had to.”

“This isn’t appropriate.” Ima steps back even farther.

“Yes it is.”

“You’re a baby.”

“No I’m not.”

“I mean I saw you as a baby. I didn’t deliver you, but I’m good friends with the doctor who did. I lived so much before you even showed up.”

“I don’t care about any of that.”

“I do.”

“If you thought you couldn’t get past it, you would have let the ten seconds run out.”

“Ten seconds isn’t enough time to make an informed decision.”

“Ten seconds is sometimes all you have, and I don’t know how many ten secondses either of us has left, but I don’t want to spend them unhappy.”

“I’m going to die comparatively soon, whether we pursue this, or not, and you will have a lot of ten secondses without me.”

Kaiora shrugs. “That’s what you did. You had thirty-four years of ten secondses without me. Calculate that.”

“I didn’t know you. I didn’t...know your smell.” She finds herself walking forward again. “I didn’t know how your bouncy brown hair frames your face, or how my heart flutters when you come into the room, but calms when I hear your soft voice. I was so ignorant back then. If this is mutual, and you feel anything for me like I do for you, I don’t want you to lose it, because I know how I would feel if I lost you.”

“I would rather have and lose you than not have you at all. The distance between us feels like a firestorm, and the closer we get, the cooler it becomes.”

“People will talk,” Ima laments.

“I’ll order them not to,” Kaiora jokes, but she’ll do it for real if she has to.

“I won’t be anyone’s secret. If we start something, we have to go public right away. Can you handle that? Can the mission survive that?”

Kaiora doesn’t wait long to answer, “yes.”

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Microstory 1855: Man in the Street

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Once upon a time, I was sitting at a red light, second in line, waiting for it to change, but in no big hurry. A car pulled up behind me, and started to wait too. Before too long, I felt a lurch. I checked my sideview mirror, and saw that he had knocked into my bumper, and he hadn’t even attempted to back away. My dog’s kennel was still in the back, because we had just gone to the dog park the day before, and if I lived with one fatal flaw, it was my procrastination. So I couldn’t see how the other driver was reacting to this with my rearview mirror. I could tell, however, that he wasn’t getting out of the car. There was probably no damage, because he was moving at less than a kilometer an hour, but I still felt obliged to exchange information. So I did get out, and approached him. I could immediately see that something was wrong. His face was pressed up against his steering wheel, and he wasn’t moving. I instinctively started knocking on the window, and trying to open the latch, but he wasn’t responding, and of course, it was locked. Just due to my interference, he slumped down a bit until his head was pressing against the horn. So it was blaring, the light was green, we weren’t moving, and the people behind us were honking too. There was only one lane, so they couldn’t go around. They probably thought we were stupid for not making a right turn, and dealing with this in that empty parking lot. I knew I had to do something; not for those people, but the hurt person in the car. I remembered that my son bought me and my wife both a special tool that could break through car glass. I ran back to retrieve it, and bashed the back window so I could unlock the stranger’s door. I didn’t know what I was going to do. This was just before cell phones, so I couldn’t call for help. I had once learned CPR, but I forgot all but the basic concept behind it, and I wasn’t sure I could pull it off safely.

As I was dragging him out, a motorcycle cop pulled up. He didn’t know what was going on, but he could see the broken window, and the unconscious man in my arms, so he assumed the worst. He pointed his gun at my head, and started screaming at me. It took a surprising amount of effort to convince him that I wasn’t the bad guy here. The man was hurt, and I needed help. After quickly calling for an ambulance on the radio, the police officer actually began to perform CPR, and I stood back to let him do his thing. Meanwhile, the other cars managed to find openings where they could drive on the wrong side of the road, and get around us. It was a slow process, but it was working, and people just needed to have some patience. One driver wasn’t patient. I don’t know if he didn’t see what was happening, or if he didn’t care, but he was going far too fast, and he was uncomfortably close to the line of cars waiting their turn. I had to think fast. I ran past the cop, and the unconscious man on the ground, took hold of the motorcycle, and summoned all the strength in my body to throw it to the ground. The reckless driver slammed right into it, and that was just enough to divert him away from the cop and his patient. I wasn’t so lucky. A piece of shrapnel shot out of the bike, and lodged itself in my chest. The first guy was still hurt, the bad driver wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, so I could see him halfway up on his dashboard. I think some shrapnel hit the cop too, because his forehead was bleeding. And I thought I was probably going to die. Obviously I didn’t. We all survived, and I’m still friends with the man I helped save, and the police officer. The reckless driver found himself going in and out of jail. This wasn’t his only offense.

Microstory 1854: Life Underground

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I grew up in madness. My parents were both doomsday preppers who—I don’t really want to say that they took it too far—but I eventually came to decide that they weren’t looking at the threat the right way. Is it possible that the world is going to end? Yes, of course. Is it rational to prepare for this eventuality? Assuming it doesn’t interfere with your day to day life, I would say so. That’s where mom and dad got lost. They were so obsessed with the life they would lead if the proverbial esh ever hit the fan that they stopped caring about what life should be like before, or instead of. It wasn’t this sudden thing that they did. It’s not like they read a bad news story, and decided to stuff the family into the bunker, and shut the door behind us. They just gradually spent more and more time focused on it until it was all they thought about, and it was just the way we lived. The farmhouse above ground was only there for show. They actually damaged parts of it to make it look abandoned, so any would-be looters or opportunists wouldn’t think it was worth ransacking. Where once I had my own bedroom, I now shared a corner of two triple bunk beds. My two younger brothers and sister had one set, and I slept above my aunt, who was above my parents. They shared a twin bunk, they were that committed to the lifestyle. The house was fine, and the world outside was too, but no, we were sardines. Because if that bomb ever went off, or a pandemic killed everyone, the best way to be ready was to simply already be doing things how we would when the day came. They still let us go to school for a while, but eventually decided it was too risky to have us wandering the surface. They didn’t even apply to homeschool us, or anything. We just stopped leaving the house. That’s when the authorities stepped in.

Truancy laws are taken very seriously in my country. If you didn’t go to school, you better have a damn good reason. Legislatures even stopped accepting the excuse of needing the kids to work on the farm. Being accepted as a homeschool was tough, because you had to prove you were a competent substitute for a licensed professional teacher. So you can imagine that they were pissed about our situation. It almost got us taken out of the house, but my parents reluctantly agreed to let us go back. But no extracurricular activities, no parties, and no trips. We mostly only went to school. Once a week, father would go out to check the post office box, and it was a real treat if one of us got to accompany him. Once a month, he would restock us—or overstock—on supplies, and he usually needed two of us to help. I honestly don’t know where they were getting their money. This was before working from home was a thing, and since we stopped planting crops, that surely wasn’t it. Maybe one of them came from a rich family, and we lived in squalor because they were clinically insane. I’ll tell you one thing, as terrible as it was, I can’t say I regret any of it. I was designated the family medic, because someone had to do it, and none of the adults was smart enough to pursue the field. I learned some skills on my own, picked up more when they let me out for classes, and got even better when I finally went to get certified as an EMT, and later a paramedic. Of course, I left to live my life, and my siblings followed suit with their own dreams. The youngest had the hardest time, because the parents didn’t want to let her go, but they had no choice. We didn’t want to survive if it meant not living. They both died in that bunker, and I’m in my five bedroom split level, surrounded by loved ones.

Microstory 1853: What I Didn’t Do, And What I Did

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It’s the saddest thing. When you’re dying, you’re supposed to reflect on your friends and family. Some say they should only be happy memories, while others say everything is just jumbled together. But that’s not what’s happening to me. I’m focusing on a single memory that has kind of haunted me for my whole life since it happened. I guess I’ll start at the end, because it might help explain why that particular memory managed to rise to the surface, and outshine all others. Yesterday, my grandchildren wanted to take me out for what I think everyone knew was going to be a final decent meal. I don’t think they thought I was going to actually kick the buck the next morning, or they probably would have just huddled around my bed, and said goodbye. They knew I would leave them soon, though, and it was important that they see me out with fanfare. Now, I don’t think the incident at the restaurant is what killed me, but I guess it’s not too crazy to think that a part of me decided that my life wouldn’t get better after that, so if I wanted to end on a high note, this was the time to do it. I’m making it sound like it was a happy moment, aren’t I, but I did call it an incident, if you remember, and there’s a reason for that. So there I was, sitting in my wheelchair at the booth with my whole family. They were talking mostly amongst themselves. They don’t know how to talk to me anymore, and the younger ones never did. They’re all into computers, and celebrities I never heard of, but I don’t feel distressed, because I enjoy the company just the same. I don’t hate the future, I just didn’t work very hard to keep in touch. I think I did just fine. Man, I’m going on a lot of tangents, aren’t I? The story is that I lost interest in the conversation, and ended up eavesdropping on a mother scolding her daughter for wanting some cake.

Now, far be it for me to decide what this little girl is allowed to have, but it became clear as I listened in that she wasn’t allowed to have the cake, not because it cost too much, or because it would spoil her dinner, but because the mother thought she was too fat. I just had to say something, even though it was none of my business. And the reason is because about thirty years ago, I didn’t say anything in a similar situation, and I always regretted it. A man came into the restaurant while I was having dinner with my family, not unlike the last lunch yesterday. He was very obviously homeless. Unkempt, many layers of clothing in fairly late spring, with a smell. A businessman in a really good mood had just given him a hundred dollar bill, and he wanted to treat himself. Some people stared, clearly not wanting him to be there at all, but one particular man started scolding him for wasting the money on a decadent meal when he really ought to have been saving up, and being frugal. I was a coward, and I didn’t say a word. I didn’t think I had the right. My youngest daughter spoke up, though, and I was so proud of her. As it turned out, the whole thing had been staged. They were filming a TV show where they set up these stressful situations to see how people would react. I basically failed the test, and it wasn’t that I embarrassed myself on national television. It was just that it could have been real, and in many ways, it was real, because not everyone in the restaurant was in on the act. No one blamed me for not standing up for the man—and of course, no one else did, except for my daughter—but I felt bad about it anyway. So that’s why I felt compelled to inject myself in that mother-daughter argument yesterday. It was like my redeeming moment. Huh, you know what, I guess I am reflecting on my family.

Microstory 1852: No Friends

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My dog and I were born on the same day. He was one of the first faces I saw when my parents brought me home from the hospital. Their neighbors didn’t realize that the dog they adopted was pregnant, so they needed people to take in the pups. Frankenstein and I grew up together. There are tons of photographs of the two of us snuggling together in a shared crib. Back then, there wasn’t anything you could do with the photos you took except put them in a physical album in case company came by, and asked—or agreed—to look at them. I was really attached to Frankenstein. I always considered him to be my brother, and I didn’t really have friends beyond him. It probably didn’t occur to me that we weren’t actually related until I was much older. I think I recall asking why we didn’t look alike. My older human brother just laughed, because he thought I was a dummy. He confirmed that I didn’t make up this story once we were well into adulthood, and expressed regret at laughing at me, and just in general mocking my relationship with Frankenstein. As you can imagine, I didn’t take it very well when he died. It’s the cruelest thing God did, making humans live so long, and our pets live so short. That didn’t make any sense to me, and I struggled with my faith a lot after it happened. My parents were concerned, but they didn’t want to be overbearing, so they let me tread my own spiritual path, knowing that it could lead me into atheism. That’s precisely what it did. I decided that it was the only explanation for my pain, and for the pain of so many others. Either God exists, and he’s evil, or he doesn’t. I would much rather it be the latter. The former is such a horrifying prospect. I can’t believe people live their lives under such obvious oppression. My family didn’t disown me, but we did drift apart.

I had to forge a new family with the people that I met along the way. I sort of collected them from the various groups that I was a part of. One guy was on the football team with me. We were drawn to each other, because we both enjoyed the sport, but we weren’t passionate about it. We taught each other that that was okay. I met a girl in one of my classes that I got along with real well. She didn’t know the footballer, in case you’re wondering. Lots of people play sports for their schools, but for us, it was a separate thing. I had a part time job at the grocery store, where I hung out with another guy. I met a cool girl in college. It was about two hours from home, so it was hard to stay in contact with the others. Once I graduated, and started working full time, I strengthened my connection to my old friends, and built some new ones, but eventually realized that after all this time, they still didn’t know each other. That had to be remedied. I decided to organize my own birthday party, even though I hadn’t really celebrated it before. It was just an excuse for them to finally meet. These were the most important people in my life; it was ridiculous that they weren’t friends with each other. It didn’t go well. Politics, religion, general personalities; everything clashed. They tried, they really tried. None of them went into that dinner with the intention of hating the others, but things just kept getting worse. If two of them agreed on something, another disagreed so adamantly that it overshadowed that whole part of the conversation. For the next few months, we continued to try finding some common ground, but never could. I then tried going back to just keeping them separate, but that no longer worked. I drifted from them too, and I haven’t had a friend in decades. Isn’t that just the saddest story you’ve ever heard?

Microstory 1851: Transitivity

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I would get in a lot of fights growing up. I was one of those kids who hated to see injustice, and also who saw injustices everywhere. Bullies, racists, bad boyfriends. If I found out you treated someone poorly, you were going down. Back then, I thought I was lucky to be going to a school that didn’t have the time or energy to deal with someone like me. Sure, I was violent and disruptive, but the teachers and staff had to prioritize disciplining the ones who were the actual bad guys. I’m talking about the bullies I was standing up to, and the kids who came to school with weapons. I managed to skate by, which looking back, did me a disservice, because I struggled to learn basic social skills. It’s not like I grew out of it just because I graduated from high school. I just kept fighting the injustices, and in the real world, people do care about that, and they make the time to punish you for it. I went to jail so many times. If I had had different parents, they probably would have sent me to military school, or something, but they never wanted kids, and that didn’t change when they met me. Since they didn’t care about what happened to me, or even their family reputation, they never bailed me out, so as long as I kept them out of it, they didn’t worry about the jail time. Eventually, the cops remembered who I was, so they knew they couldn’t keep me in the same cells as other people. Jail, and the police station holding cells, were great places to find people who I felt needed to be taught a few lessons. One night, I got in another bar fight—with a guy who just couldn’t take the hint that the lady wasn’t interested—and I learned where the jurisdictional borders were. I was taken to a police station I had never been to before.

They put me in with the general population, where I managed to encounter a rapist who kept getting away with it. The only thing my daddy ever taught me was to never pick a fight with anyone I couldn’t beat. I usually remembered this advice, but not that night. He beat me half to death, and left me in the corner of the cell, next to a drunkard who just so happened to own a boxing gym. He decided I needed someone to teach me how to channel my instincts into something productive. You’ve heard this story before, so I won’t bore you with the details, but yes, he trained me to be a better fighter, but to do it for money and honor, rather than anger. I guess someone important took notice, because that is not even the most interesting part about my life. I found myself being recruited by a mysterious group with rather unclear intentions. They said that a war was raging on other worlds, and that they needed fighters like me. I was hesitant, but curious. It sounded too crazy for me to just walk away from. I couldn’t just forget about it. They put me on this giant spaceship that looked like a train, and said they were taking me to another universe. I ended up fighting in something called the Transit Army, against an alien race who was trying to sterilize billions and billions of people across the multiverse. Again, I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve seen them, I fought them, it happened. I was basically in the infantry on the front lines, because I didn’t have any education, or leadership skills. This is what killed me. The enemy served a fatal blow, and the doctors said they couldn’t save me. My only request was to be returned to my home world. They said they didn’t have the resources, but an individual capable of crossing over himself took pity on me, so here I am, taking my final breaths in the alley behind the gym. I’m laughing, because I know the cops will never solve my murder.