Microstory 1876: Necessary Work

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Gross things don’t bother me, and they never did. I don’t remember how old I was, but there was one time when we walked in to find a dead rodent in our classroom. It was just a single room back in those days, if you can believe it. We all just learned together, I don’t know how we got anything done. Anyway, our teacher was afraid. He probably would have had us conduct our lessons outside that day if it wasn’t the middle of winter. That’s probably why the animal crawled its way in there in the first place. Though I suppose it didn’t do him much good. Something had to be done about it, and I was the only one willing. The other kids stayed away from me starting that day. You would think they would be grateful that I handled it like a champ, but I guess that level of graciousness is just not something you can expect from a child. It doesn’t matter, the ostracization didn’t bother me none. I made it out of my small town. I made a new life for myself in the city. I had a few jobs here and there; all of them fit for a lady, even though that’s not how I would ever characterize myself. One night, I was riding in the passenger seat with the boy who was courting me when a deer ran out into the road, and got herself hit. She was bleeding and convulsing, and like the rodent, something had to be done. Once again, I was the only one capable. I grabbed a tire tool from his truck, and bashed it over the deer’s head to put it out of its misery. And of course, just like before, the guy was more freaked out than appreciative. He drove me back into town, and never called me back. But I didn’t care, because this was how I found my calling.

We left the deer on the side of the road, but I didn’t want it to rot there permanently, so I walked myself to the animal control center. I told the guy what had happened, and he said he would take care of it. It’s not that I didn’t believe him, but I wasn’t sure I trusted him, so I demanded he take me back out there right this very minute. Well, he couldn’t leave the place unoccupied, so I agreed to wait until someone else returned. Then we did go out there. He lamented that I severely undersold how large the animal was, but I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. I could help him load up the carcass. He said that was against protocol, so I asked him if my being there at all was protocol, so he gave in, and let me help. To my surprise, we drove the thing out to a bird sanctuary, so the meat wouldn’t go to waste. I mean, it wouldn’t have gone to waste in the wild—something would have turned it into its meal—but I liked that they had a way of disposing roadkill responsibly, instead of just tossing it away like garbage. I was sick of being a secretary, so I asked for a job, and as hesitant as the bossman was, my new friend vouched for me, and I started a couple weeks later. I know that it’s not glamorous work, but someone has to do it, so it may as well be me, rather than some poor little thing who retches at the sight of blood and guts. Not everything about the job is like that, though. We would also get calls for animal abuse and neglect, and that was the part that I hated the most. Animals die, it happens, but there is no reason to take responsibility for a helpless creature if you’re not going to treat it right. So I wouldn’t say I loved every minute of my life, but I always felt useful, and I can die happy. I made pretty decent money, and retired with more than enough to support myself, and my family. Well, that’s about all I have to say for myself. I’m sure you were expecting something more interesting, but some of us just do what we can, and try not to make too many mistakes.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Boltzmann Brane

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The men continued to struggle against each other. Mateo and the team’s visions started coming back to them until it was clear enough for them to see that most of them didn’t recognize the fighters. Mateo did. One was part of Lucius’ group in the universe where he got his soul back. The other only looked familiar, but he couldn’t place him. He did get the feeling that he wasn’t a good guy, though.

“Listen, I know we don’t know each other yet,” Lucius said, sort of contradicting himself, “but could you help us get this guy out the airlock?”

“It’s not an airlock,” his friend said. Man, what was his name?

“Whatever.”

“Uhhhhh...okay,” Mateo said. He looked like a fifteen-year-old, but Ramses built his body to be stronger than the average person, so he didn’t find it too difficult to help.

“Are you freakin’ serious?” the bad man cried. “Stop, you son of a bitch! Get me—no! Argh!” The other dude was right. It wasn’t an airlock. They didn’t place him in another room, and then close the doors between them before opening a set of outer doors. They just threw him directly into the void. He was caught in some kind of current, and pulled away before he could grasp onto anything.

Lucius’ friend shut the door again. “Thanks, Mateo.”

“How do I know him?”

The friend sighed, and thought about it for a moment. “Oh, you were there. Yeah, when Cain and I were sent off on our respective missions, you were in the room.”

Mateo tilted his lizard brain.

“On Gatewood,” he continued. “When you were trying to get the Ansutahan humans safely across the threshold?”

“Oh, yeah!” Mateo said, remembering. “Oh...yeah.”

“Don’t worry,” Lucius comforted, “this one is good now...we think.”

“It’s complicated,” the other guy—Abel; his name was Abel—said.

“What also must be complicated,” Lucius began, “is how you remember any of this when you’re barely out of diapers. This all happened when you were adults.”

“We are adults,” Leona explained. “We just had to move into younger bodies.”

Lucius nodded. “I see. Well, you wanna come back to the other room, and meet with the rest of us, or...?”

“I’m afraid he doesn’t have time for that,” came a voice from behind the team. It was someone they hadn’t seen in a very long time, and never knew all that well. Back when Arcadia Preston was forcing Mateo and Leona to plan their wedding before they were ready, many of their guests arrived via The Crossover. It was a special machine that could travel between universes, and it was larger than anyone knew. It even included a hotel, which this man here was apparently responsible for. They just called him Bell.

“Bell,” Leona said.

“Yes, that’s me. Have we met?”

“Maybe not yet for you.”

“Okay,” Bell said. “Well, like I was saying—”

“Before you explain,” Mateo began, “could you tell us your real name? I feel weird not knowing it.”

“It’s Apothem Sarkisyan,” he answered.

“Sarkisyan. Are you related to a Dodeka?” Leona asked.

“She’s my sister.”

“Running hotels must run in the family.”

“It really doesn’t,” Apothem said bluntly. “Anyway, Lucius..Abel, thank you. You can go now.”

“What do you want with them?” Lucius asked, worried about his friends.

“I assure you that I will take great care of them. They are all on the guestlist.”

“The guestlist for what?” Lucius pressed.

“Come on,” Abel urges, taking Lucius by the upper arm. “It’s fine. It’s not nefarious. It is a great honor. I still don’t know if I’m on the list.”

“Don’t tell anyone else we’re here,” Apothem warned.

“Of course not,” Abel replied as they were stepping away.

“The guestlist for what?” Angela echoed.

“You have been selected to witness the birth of a Boltzmann Brane.”

“Are you serious?” Ramses questioned with great interest. “They’re real?”

“This one is,” Apothem confirmed.

“Wait, where’s Medavorken?” Olimpia asked.

“He’s on his own path,” Apothem claimed. “Follow me.” He led them down the corridors, into what Mateo recognized as a black box theatre. Except instead of a stage, the couple hundred or so seats were angled towards a large window to the equilibrium space outside. “Welcome...to The Stage,” he said proudly.

“So this is a show?” Olimpia asked.

“The greatest show this side of the bulkverse,” Apothem said.

“Did you bring us here?” Leona asked.

“No, but I knew you were coming, because like I said, you’re on the list. And as our first guests, you shall have the privilege of the first row.”

“When does it begin?” Marie asked.

Apothem stood up straighter, and looked at her. Then he looked over at Angela. “Which one of you is Angela Walton?”

Mateo interrupted before Marie could point to her alternate self. “They both are.”

Apothem pulled at an embellishment on his uniform sleeve, which revealed a scroll of e-paper. He studied it for a moment. “One name, one person...” He looked up to the group, and added, “one ticket.”

“One of them can have mine,” Mateo volunteered.

“You don’t have to do that,” Marie said with unwarranted shame. “I’m the temporal intruder. I’ll recuse myself.”

“No,” Mateo insisted. “I don’t know what this is we’re supposed to see, but I’m sure I’ll get little out of it.”

“It’s the spontaneous emergence of an ordered intelligence in the vastness of infinite spacetime due to random fluctuations in a balanced thermodynamic state,” Ramses explained poorly.

“Huh?”

“It’s a person who just suddenly exists due to the crazy amounts of time that have passed, rather than as the result of some logical series of causal events,” Leona translated, though even that was a little much. “But he doesn’t mean a Botlzmann brain as in B-R-A-I-N, do you? You mean B-R-A-N-E, which isn’t a person, but a universe?”

“It’s both,” Apothem disclosed.

“Hot damn,” Ramses said, which didn’t sound like him at all.

“The tickets are transferable,” Apothem went on, “but there are no plus ones, no extra seats, no double bookings, no waitlist. We invited a certain number of people, and since time doesn’t matter here, we don’t worry about whether everyone can make it. Every one of the two hundred and sixteen guests will make it, and they’ll arrive sometime in the next hour, from our perspective. The six of you will have to work it out amongst yourselves, but there is no loophole.”

“They can have my seat.” It was Gavix Henderson, an immortal from another universe who was present, not only at Mateo and Leona’s wedding, but also their engagement party a year prior.

“Sir, you don’t have to do that,” Apothem said.

“You and I both know that this event is not a rarity,” Gavix said to him. “It’s just easier for the humanoid mind to comprehend this particular instance in three dimensions. I’ve seen it before, and I’m sure I’ll see it again.”

“Very well,” Apothem acquiesces. “You may exit.”

“Thank you for this,” Mateo calls up to Gavix, embarrassed for having let him get so far before he remembered.

“Yes, thank you,” Marie echoed, since it was she who would be taking the seat.

“Just invite me to that fancy weddin’ o’ yours,” he returned, not turning around.

“We saw you there,” Leona said.

“Nah, not that one.” He rounded the corner without another word.

It was hard to describe what it was Marie would have missed. No, literally, it was hard to describe. It wasn’t exactly an explosion, which was how scientists back home had always described the big bang. But was this even the same thing, or entirely different? Mateo was at one end of their group, sitting right next to a clearly intelligent and knowledgeable individual, who explained a little more about what they were witnessing. Like stars and planets coming together particle by particle, chunk by chunk, and collapsing into their gravitational forces, something called bulk energy was becoming so hot and dense that it was transforming itself into solid matter. So it was less of an explosion, and more an implosion, though he said that this made perfect sense, because the explosion would be seen as such from inside the universe in question. But from out here, all that energy and matter had to come from what we would consider a low entropy state. This was evidently the greatest mystery in his field of brane cosmology. In a given universe, entropy increases, so why does it happen in the reverse in the outer bulkverse? Why does it operate so differently from the metacelestial objects that it creates? And why, from their puny human eyes, does each one look like a knife?

Well, Mateo had trouble following the man’s lecture, but it was still fun, and made a lot of sense while he was saying it. The team was grateful for having been around to witness such a thing. Apparently, like Gavix said, branes form like this all the time. His own did at some point, as did everyone else’s, but dimensionally speaking, they were all like partial eclipses, while this was a full eclipse, as seen from their position in the greater cosmos. After it was sufficiently over, the crowd began to stand, and move over towards the refreshments, where they could get to know one another.

There didn’t seem to be anything they all had in common. Some were scientists too, but others were just regular people. Some of them already knew about these other branes before today, but some hadn’t heard of any of it. Why and how they were chosen was another mystery their new friend couldn’t explain. The team itself was pretty special, but only within the context of their own pocket of that bulkverse. Out here, they were small fish in an infinite ocean.

“I don’t know of anyone in my universe who could help ya with that,” said an older gentleman by the desserts. He had a thick southern accent, and didn’t look anyone in the eye. This wasn’t out of a superiority complex, but more like his eyes would wander around, and he would forget where exactly he was meant to be directing his words. “I tell you, maybe that genie over there could help ya. Her special thing is she refused to grant anybody any wishes on her world, which is why the rest of the genie council, or whatever, sort of exiled her.”

“Why would she help us if her defining characteristic is that she doesn’t help people?” Leona reasoned.

The old man chuckled with delight. “Yeah, I guess yer right ‘bout that.” He took another swig from his flask. “I’m such a dumbass sometimes. By the way, drinkin’s legal on my planet. I feel I hafta say that, cuz some people think it’s weird.”

“It’s legal in ours,” Mateo said.

“Oh.” He widened his eyes, and presented the flask.

“No, thank you.”

“Aright.” He shrugged his cheeks as if to say your loss.

“Well, it was nice meeting you,” Angela said to him, gracefully stepping away. The others followed like magnets. “Seemed too eager to give children alcohol,” she said once they were out of earshot.

“We told him we weren’t as young as we look,” Olimpia reminded her.

“I know, but a normal person would still hesitate to believe it, let alone act on it.”

“What is normal?” asked a woman they hadn’t noticed before. It was Thack Natalie Collins of voldisilaverse.

“Miss Collins,” Mateo said. “It’s nice to meet you in person.”

“Likewise.” She shook everyone’s hands.

“Wait, you put us on the list, didn’t you?” Mateo guessed.

Thack sighed. “It was either this, or have you join the Newtonian Expats on their adventures. I wanted to give you a break. I know you reconnect with them in the future.”

“If you know all you know,” Leona began, “then you must know both of someone who can get us back home, and provert us to more appropriate ages.”

“Yes to the second one, but no to the first. We all came here through Westfall.”

“What’s that?” Olimpia asked her.

“Basically...we don’t know how we got here,” Thack said cryptically. “It’s a special feature of the Crossover. It just happens. You walk through a door, and you’re in a different universe, and most of the time, you don’t even realize it. You just end up going back home, and living under the belief that everyone you met on the otherwise simply lives on the same world as you. Of course we only went halfway, and made a stop here.”

“Sounds trippy,” Marie decided.

“The point is it’s not. You don’t notice unless you knew enough about brane cosmology before. Anyway, this is my friend.” She reached over without looking, and ushered a young woman into the huddle. “She’s not technically a proverter, but she can accomplish the same thing in her own way. Just tell her how old you wanna be.”

“Hi, I’m Xolta McCord.”

Leona frowned at her with rage. “We’ve met.”

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Extremus: Year 42

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Ship Superintendent Calixte Salmon pings the door. “Thistle, please give us a moment,” Kaiora asks the computer, who relays the message to the hallway.

“I don’t understand why he has to be here for this,” Corinna complains.

“It’s technically a change in personnel,” Kaiora explains.

“It’s really not,” temporal engineer Kumara Bhasin argues.

“Something could go wrong, and he has to know about it,” the Captain continues, holding firm. “This has been approved across all levels of government...except him.”

“Very well,” Corinna says.

“Let him in,” Kaiora orders.

The door opens. Calixte looks around, intrigued. The Captain, the Lieutenant, the temporal engineer, and Head of Security Errol McLain. This ought to be good. “What’s this here?”

“Superintendent Salmon,” Kaiora begins, “this is a formal briefing regarding a new investigative initiative that has been approved for use by a team of two, which will be using a new brand of time travel technology to witness past events. The purpose of this mission will be to gather intelligence that will help us better understand the origins of the hostile entity known as Fake!Rita Suárez. To be clear, the two agents of time will not be able to affect the past in any way. They cannot be seen, nor heard, nor otherwise detected. They will merely watch the past events from a...unique observation dimension. We tell you this because there is a chance that something will go wrong, which could result in a shift in crew assignments. Engineer Bhasin and Officer McLain will be sent into the past, but once they have learned all they believe they can and must, they should return to this very moment. If they do not, we will have to assume the worst, and move on without them, and it will be your responsibility to backfill their positions. Do you have any questions?”

“Thousands,” Calixte answers. “But they extend beyond my purview.”

“All right, then,” Captain Leithe says. “You may go now.”

“No, thank you,” he says plainly.

“You are not approved for audience privileges,” Kaiora tries to tell him. “The launch does not require your attendance.”

“Yeah, but I wanna be here anyway.”

“Superintendent, please...”

“Captain, please...you owe me,” Calixte says, widening his eyes suggestively.

Kaiora is literally taken aback. “That was two years ago.”

Calixte chuckles, and looks at his watch pointlessly, “the favor doesn’t expire.”

“This is all you want, just to watch this?” She reiterates. “Then we’re even?”

“Then we’re even,” he agrees.

“Fine.” Kaiora sighs, and looks over at the away team. “Are you two ready?”

“Very,” Kumara replies.

“Indeed,” confirms Errol.

“Greenley?” Kumara asks.

“Are you sure about this, sir?” Greenley Atkinson is Kumara’s current temporal engineering apprentice. There was one before her, but he wasn’t able to handle the stress, so she hasn’t been doing this for very long. He designed the machine that’s going to take him and his partner into the past, but she’s going to have to actually operate it. It should be relatively simple, but of course, that doesn’t mean she isn’t nervous. “Are you sure I’m ready?”

“I have every confidence in you,” Kumara says genuinely.

She nods, trying to express that same level of confidence in herself.

“Come on,” Kaiora says to Calixte as the time witnesses are stepping into the machine. “The rest of the leadership is watching from the observation room.”

“No, that wasn’t part of the deal,” Calixte contends. “I asked to watch from here.”

“You didn’t say that.”

“Well, I’m saying it now.”

Kaiora sighs again, and looks to Corinna, who has stopped midstride. “Go on. Yeah, it’s suspicious, which is why I’ll stay here too.”

“Okay,” the lieutenant accepts.

“So tell me about this technology,” Calixte asks as Greenley is running the final diagnostic on the machine. “You all act like it’s something weird and new. It’s not just regular observational time travel?”

“No,” Kaiora begins. “It’s a special temporal dimension. Well, it’s technically spatio-temporal, but its defining characteristic is that it runs in reverse. When the two witnesses exit the machine on their end, they’ll watch this entire interaction a second time, but in reverse. Then they’ll watch themselves go through the final briefing. Then they’ll watch their awkward conversation with the governmental officials. Then they’ll watch themselves walk backwards out of the room. They will continue like this for the next six plus years. Once they reach the moment the cargomaster discovered the box that the fake Rita was found in, they’ll follow it back to whatever celestial body it was retrieved from, and continue investigating until they get some answers.”

“So they can interact with the real world. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to teleport to the origin point,” Calixte points out.

“There are a few loopholes to the technology,” Kaiora admits, “but I would hardly call that an interaction.”

“If you say so,” Calixte says, unconvinced. “Anyway, they’ll have to interact in some way, or how are they going to eat for six years?”

The Captain’s eyes widen in fear. “Oh my God, you’re right. We didn’t think of that. Holy crap, we have to stop the experiment, they’ll die!”

The witnesses and Greenley stop what they’re doing, and stare at her.

“I’m kidding,” she says to them. “Carry on.” She rolls her eyes. “They’ll have plenty of food and water. We figured out how to reverse engineer Fake!Rita’s miniature dimension. We’ve stored a ton of supplies, and even living spaces, in their packs. Don’t worry, we have thought of everything.”

“I’m sure you have,” Calixte says insincerely. “I’m sure you have.”

She rolls her eyes again, and gives an a-okay sign to the witnesses in the form of a question. They return the gesture in the affirmative. Greenley shuts them into the machine, and initiates the launch sequence. “Eleven...” Kaiora and Calixte stand back a little more, but don’t leave. It’s not particularly dangerous to be in the room when it happens, but the observation room is certainly safer.

Kumara and Errol take each other by the hands. They’re not afraid of the tech itself. It’s been tested, and proven sound. They just have to prepare themselves for the long haul. They would have rather just jumped back to the time period of their choice, and entered a different observational dimension, in order to avoid messing with the timeline. Not only was it possible, but it would have been easier. That’s how they would have done it had Valencia not written a paper on this weird temporal dimension years ago. Still, if Kumara had to sit through all this, at least he was with the man he loved. Errol felt the same.

As Greenley begins the countdown, Calixte has one more thing to say. “One question—which actually does pertain to my job—do we think it’s wise to send a married couple on a potentially hazardous mission together?”

“Six...five...four...three...”

Kaiora looks over at him, and says in a clear and unambiguous tone, “yes.”

“One...launch.”

It’s immediately clear that something has gone wrong. They can hear the energy flowing through the machine, but nothing happens in the chamber. Instead, they hear a commotion in the observation room behind them. Kaiora and Calixte look up through the window. Electricity is arcing across the metal beams, freaking everyone out, and causing them to jump and crouch away in fear. One of them tries to get out, but the door won’t open. The energy builds, and builds, and builds. Corinna, being the smart one there, realizes what’s happening. She makes eye contact with her captain, and salutes her just in time before the power reaches critical mass, and spirits them all away.

“What the hell just happened?!” Kaiora screams.

Greenley shakes her head, petrified and confused.

“I think...” Calixte tilts his head. “I think that is the machine, and this is nothing.” He points to the observation room, and then to the machine that Kumara built. The two of them are still in it, and trying to get out, but their door won’t budge either.

“You don’t seem too upset about this,” Kaiora accuses.

He smiles. “Why would I be? I think we did pretty good, eh? Only missed one. Why wasn’t Lars here?”

“This was you?”

“It was us,” he corrects.

Kaiora’s eyes dart over to Greenley, who still looks horrified and sad.

“No, not me and her. Us!” He waves his hand back and forth between his stomach, and Kaiora’s.

“What the shit are you talking about?”

“Oh, come on, Captain, you don’t have to pretend anymore. We got ‘em. We got almost all of ‘em. They’re gone, they can’t stop us anymore.”

Kaiora’s hands shake as she’s reaching them up, desperately trying to hold herself back from strangling him right here and now. “I don’t know what you’re saying. I didn’t do anything! I don’t know how you did it, or who helped you, but I wasn’t part of it!”

“Yes, you were!” Calixte cries. “We’ve been working on this plan for two years!”

“Argh!” She moves past him, and steps up to the machine. “Can we undo this? Can we get them back?”

“I don’t even know if they’re still alive,” Kumara shouts through the little view window, which muffles it terribly.

Kaiora turns to Greenley. “Get their door open, and then all three of you need to report to hock. If you don’t, I’ll know you’re in on it...got it?”

“Yes, Captain,” Greenley answers.

She spins back around. “As for you, I already know you’re in on it. So I’m just gonna send you there.” She reaches for her teleporter controls, but they don’t work. The screen is dead, and none of the buttons do anything. “Goddammit.”

“Oh, did you forget to charge it this morning?” Calixte jokes.

“It doesn’t have to be charged!” she shouts. “The ship charges it constantly! Argh!” she repeats. “Come on, I’ll escort you there myself.”

She places him in zip cuffs, and heads for the door. It opens before they reach it. Someone who looks exactly like Kaiora is standing there, holding some kind of gun. She could be from the future, or a mirror universe. Or she could be a clone, or a hologram, or any number of things. All the real Kaiora knows is that she’s fake, and she’s evil, and she was probably good friends with Fake!Rita.

“Oooooooooooohhhhhh,” Calixte lets out. “That makes more sense.”

“You are such an idiot,” Fake!Kaiora laments.

“You really thought I was plotting a coup?” Kaiora questions.

He shrugs innocently.

Fake!Kaiora shakes her head. “I told you to put me in the room too. The whole point was to get rid of her, so I could take her place. Now that’s going to be a lot harder.”

“Yeah, you did say that,” he utters apologetically.

“I can’t work like this.” Fake!Kaiora unceremoniously shoots him with the gun. He just disappears completely.

“An Ant-Man gun?” the real Kaiora guesses.

“Basically. It’s better, though, because we can replace him with one of our own.”

“Go on and get on with it,” Kaiora urges.

Fake!Kaiora laughs. “It’s not that easy. I know that captains have a failsafe. Your consciousness will just be preserved for future use.”

“Old Man did that to Halan against his will. It was a one time thing.”

“No, it wasn’t. I’ll have to find some creative way of dealing with you. But in the meantime, those three can die.” She turns her weapon, and fires it at Greenley.

The apprentice lifts her hands defensively, but not just out of futile instinct. The bullet doesn’t stop, but it slows to a crawl. They can see a wave of energy emanating from Greenley’s right hand, possibly ultimately originating from a ring she’s wearing on her middle finger. The left hand is farther out, like it’s keeping her steady. As she slowly pulls her right hand in towards her chest, she leans back at a slightly slower rate. She then curves the hand outward, which forces the bullet to curve too. Once it’s covered the curve, she pushes forward, sending the bullet in the opposite direction it was going. It heads directly for Fake!Kaiora, who—despite having watched it in slow motion with everybody else—doesn’t have time to dodge. It hits her, and she disappears.

“Is that just something you keep on hand at all times?” Kaiora asks her.

“Captain, you’ll forgive me, but there are just some things that I can’t tell you. It’s to protect my job, and yours. I promise that I didn’t know all this was going to happen.”

“You just theoretically saved the ship. So I’ll let it go, but if something ever comes up again that places your loyalties in question, I might not be as accommodating.”

“I understand, Captain.”

“Good. Now get them of that thing so you and Mr. Bhasin can figure out what the hell went wrong with it, and how it was sabotaged. Don’t think this mission is over. It’s even more important than ever. Someone has to go back in time and rescue our people.”

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Microstory 1875: Or Dig a Bigger Grave

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I didn’t have any friends in high school. I had a stutter, so I didn’t like talking to people. I would wish I liked it, and I think the other kids would have been nice enough about it, but I was too self-conscious. One day in literature class, the teacher had us read a story together. Each student would take a paragraph or two, and then she would call on the next kid. I was so scared, and didn’t pay any attention to them, as I was just trying to figure out how to not embarrass myself. I couldn’t even start. I couldn’t say the first word, so I asked the teacher if I could opt out. She said it wouldn’t be fair to the other kids who never had that option. A cursory glance at my classmates suggested that they couldn’t care less, because they didn’t have speech impediments! She refused to listen until my hero swooped in to defend me. She scolded the teacher for being insensitive and unfair, and I never had to read out loud again. I was also in love for the rest of grade school, and into university. We happened to go to the same institution, where she would smile and wave at me on the occasion that we  passed each other, but we didn’t speak and I didn’t ask her out. After we graduated, she married someone else, and moved to a different country for work. Maybe a decade later—no, it was more like fifteen years—the internet created this new thing called instant messaging, and I pretty quickly reconnected with her on the most popular platform. I was over her by then, and mostly over my stuttering problem, but it was cool to be nostalgic a couple times a week when I had time. After a few years, I found myself scheduled for a business trip in her area, told her as much quite innocently, and was immediately invited to a small dinner party. And small, it was. She and her husband had only invited one other guy; a coworker of hers.

The dinner was great, and so was the company. It was nice, showing her how much my life had improved, and being able to finally have the nerve to thank her in person for what she did for me that day. It was a nice moment, which will forever be clouded by the darkness that followed. The other dinner guest had been sweating and rocking for a time, but trying to power through. But then, after convulsing for a few minutes, he fell off his chair, and died right before our eyes. We were all shocked, but I sprang into action. After checking for a pulse, I grabbed the phone, and desperately asked the couple what the emergency number was in their country. It wasn’t like I could just look it up. They didn’t want to tell me, and I eventually got them to admit that they were afraid of the authorities believing that they had anything to do with it. I argued with them, but they would not relent. They said he was already dead, and there was nothing we could do to undo that, so I might as well help move the body. I continued to argue but they told me they could blame it on me, since I was the one who brought the tea. I questioned that, and soon realized that this was no accident. It was murder, and my tea was the weapon. They revealed that they had secretly added something called yew seeds into his cup, and they told me they had to do it because he sexually assaulted her at work numerous times. I didn’t want to help them, but I didn’t think I had a choice. Once we were finished digging the grave—which I did mostly by myself—they apologized, and admitted that I drank a lower dosage of the poison, which meant I would die too, which was why they made me make such a large grave. That was the week I learned that I was at least moderately immune to yew seed poisoning. Bonus, I didn’t even go to jail.

Microstory 1874: Statistic

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Hi, my name is I’m not supposed to tell people that. Mama and daddy said I shouldn’t tell people anything, but I don’t get why not, because I like people, and they seem to like me. They always smile at me when we pass them, pushing my own stroller. I think they think it’s cool how I get out and push it myself. A lot of other kids still don’t like to walk. I see them reaching up to the nice lady, so she’ll pick them up, and sometimes she does it, and sometimes she doesn’t. As soon as I figured out how to work these things under my butt, I do it all the time. Shh, don’t tell mama I said butt. I’m not supposed to say that. There’s a lot of things I’m not supposed to do that my parents don’t like. I don’t remember them, though. They’re always yelling at me like I’m supposed to know something already, but I don’t always. For like, there are kids in my class—well, there were kids in my other class, but I don’t go to that class anymore, ‘cause my parents took me out. I don’t think it’s a class, is it? We learn things, but people call it something different, I don’t remember. I’m not old enough for real class. I see it on TV, big kids sitting at really tall desks, and they’re writing things down. I can use a pencil, but I can’t, like, write a book, or something. I don’t know what they’re doing all day. I can read books, and some other kids just look at the pictures, but I like the letters. I like how each one means something, and when you put them together, they can mean something else! Is that what people are doing all day with their pencils, they’re writing the books I read? What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, I was in a—preschool! That’s what they call it! They said, you’re not in real school yet, this is just preschool, which I don’t know what that means. It’s got the word school in it, so I think it’s school. What was I saying?

Okay, so I was in a room, and there were lots of other kids in it, and then my dad got real mad, and he said some things, and they said I couldn’t say those things too, but I can’t remember what they were anyway. This was a loooooooong time ago, like, many days. So they took me out of that room, and now I think we drive to a different building, and there’s a different room, but everybody looks like me. That’s what I noticed, there were other kids in the other room who looked different. They had different skin colors, and I saw one boy in a dress, and the other kids made fun of him for it. I didn’t really know why it was funny. I don’t see that boy anymore, or the other kids with other skin. I guess that’s fine. I don’t really know. Oh, that’s what my daddy said, he said, don’t talk to those colored kids, and don’t—hold on, I’m tryna ‘member. It was, stay away from that faggity fag. I don’t know what that is, but since I’m in a different room, I don’t think that happens anymore. I like to learn. I mean, I like to have fun, but I like to learn too. There’s so many things in the world, have you seen them? The other day, I was alone in the house. Well, I wasn’t alone, but my daddy was gone, and my mama was asleep, I think. I went into a room I never been in before. I saw my daddy go in there, but he wasn’t there then, so I went in. There were all sorts of things there that I didn’t know. I’ve never seen them before. There were books, though, which is what the big kids write all the time. I pulled one off the bottom shelf, and it was heavy, and I couldn’t read it, because the words were really long, and it was hard. I’m back in here today, because I think if I just keep trying, I will figure it out. But see, here there’s something shiny on the table. It’s black, and really heavy too, and there’s a hole, and what does this butt—

Microstory 1873: Disturbing Others

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In my day, in my country, homosexuality wasn’t just frowned upon, it was outright illegal. I’m talking death by a thousand cuts, illegal. While the rest of the world was coming to terms with it—and in some parts, embracing it—mine was strictly against the so-called lifestyle. I didn’t think much about that sort of thing while I was growing up. I just dreamed of having a real family. I was too young to recall my parents, and the people who ran the orphanage either didn’t know anything either, or didn’t care enough to give me an honest answer. One thing I’ll say is that they were not abusive. They gave us very little food, mind you, but I think that was less their fault, and more due to a lack of funding. But they didn’t hurt us, or execute unreasonable punishments, or any of the other things that may become the catalyst for your favorite creepy horror film. I knew about the homophobic thing, but I was so young that it never came up. Until it did. One day, two twin sisters were introduced to us. One thing I remember noticing about them is that they never wanted to be apart. They held hands the entire time, and I’ve since wondered whether that had to do with whatever trauma broke up their family, or if that was just the way they were. One of them happened to be assigned the bunk under me, while the other was right next to her. The problem was, this whole codependence thing didn’t go away just because the lights shut off. That night, they asked me and the girl on the other top bunk to come down, and then they dragged one of them over, so they could sleep right, right next to each other, just like they probably did at home. I remember finding it funny that they didn’t ask, but it didn’t bother me. It didn’t seem to bother the other girl either. The two of us were friendly, but we weren’t friends. Not yet anyway.

The next morning, our surrogate mother came into the room to make sure we were awake. She immediately noticed the joined bunks, and scrunched her nose at it, but she didn’t make the twins put them back as they were. She didn’t even say anything. She probably wasn’t worried about it setting some kind of precedent, and since boys and girls were obviously separated into different rooms, it wasn’t going to cause any other problems as we grew older. I think it didn’t quite occur to her, though, that two unrelated girls were also part of this sleeping dynamic. But seeing her face is what made me realize it was a little weird. But not that weird, right? Well, we made it work. The twins were happy, and I was getting to know my new friend. It was a lot easier to whisper to each other in the middle of the night without disturbing anyone else, so that was a pretty special perk. As you may have guessed, things changed over time. We were both aging, processing hormones, and developing feelings. I honestly can’t say if she ever felt the same way about me as I did about her, and looking back, it might have been best if I had stuck around to find out. But I was so scared, and I was just thinking about myself. I knew that my feelings were real, and they weren’t going away, and the only way I was going to survive was if I left. So that’s what I did. With no money, no connections, I fled the country. It was easier than you would think. Other refugees were fleeing for other reasons, and as long as I always hung around an older woman, people would just assume that we were together. I lived like this for years, crossing borders, and spending some time on the other side before moving on. It wasn’t until I crossed the ocean before I felt comfortable being myself, pursuing my truth, and living without fear.

Microstory 1872: Losing Sleep

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I was a little monster as a baby. I sometimes kept my mama up all night and all day. The doctors could explain the crying—it wasn’t much more than a normal baby’s—but they couldn’t explain why I never went to sleep. Except I was crying more, because unlike most people, nothing could stop me. According to her stories, she hired a nanny to take shifts. She could have raised me on her own if not for my little peculiarity. As I grew up, I started figuring out how to express myself through other noises besides screaming, but I never did learn how to sleep. In my school, the younger children would take naps. The teacher ended up moving me over to the bookshelves, and gave me a little reading lamp, so I could keep myself busy. I wasn’t the only one who needed the extra accommodations. A boy in my class also didn’t need to nap, but in his case, it’s because he slept all the way through the night. I called him my opposite, but my mother noted that a true opposite would be in some kind of coma. There’s just something different about the way my brain works that makes it so I don’t need any sleep to function. Not only that, but I can’t sleep at all. I’ve never done it even once, which is sad, because the whole dreaming thing that people talk about sounds positively fascinating. I asked the boy to tell me his dreams, so I could live vicariously through him; which is a word we learned through a book that had no place in that classroom. He said he couldn’t remember his dreams, but the next day, he was able to regale me with his stories. He said just wanting to remember them made it so that he now could. Years later, he would admit to me that this had been a lie. He had come up with the stories on his own, because he didn’t want to disappoint me. That was so him, from start to finish.

College was difficult for me, because the schoolwork was so easy. Well, it wasn’t easy, but I had more time to study than the other students. Everybody hated me, but it’s not like I was an overachiever. I was just bored, and as much as they liked to party, at some point, they would have to go to bed, and I would still be up, so I had to do something to pass the time. I tried to have a roommate my first semester, but that didn’t work out, because I would disturb her sleep, and that wasn’t fair. Once the boy and I were married and living together, my situation saved us a little money. I was able to be productive for more hours of the day, and hell, he only needed a twin bed. Anyway, my coworkers were as jealous as my classmates. It’s just that I found it easier to do my paperwork in the dead of night when the hemisphere was asleep, and not work so hard during regular business hours. Then came the time for us to grow our family, and I was hesitant, because there was no way to know what kind of child would come out of me. Would they enjoy the same benefits? Would they have some kind of corrupted version of it that left them tired all the time? I didn’t think we could risk it, and my husband was okay with that. We chose to adopt instead, which was no problem, because there are so many other good reasons to adopt. We went to the agency to submit our application, and after some time, we were selected for a child who we were told required special needs. For reasons they couldn’t understand, this little girl never slept. Obviously, we knew we had to make her part of our family. I mean, who better than me to raise a woman like that? It was decades before science progressed enough for us to take a DNA test. Wouldn’t you know it, she was an exact match. I mean exact. I still don’t know how, but she is my twin.

Microstory 1871: Soft Peddle

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I’ve never done drugs in my entire life. I drink a little, just to kind of chill out at the end of the day, but I don’t like to party, or anything. Some of my customers have asked me how I can conduct business if I’ve never used the product myself, and I don’t think it’s too crazy that I don’t partake. A lotion salesperson probably hasn’t used every single type of lotion in the store; or perfume, or whatever. And caskets, what about caskets? Not a single casket dealer has ever used one of their own models. Or rather, they haven’t used it for its intended long-term purpose. I suppose there are maybe a few freaks out there who get down like that, and that’s what draws them to the industry. The way I see it, I don’t need to know what it feels like to take a pill of certain properties. I just need to understand my clientele, and what they’re looking for. My business came out of nowhere. I had a lot of emotional problems when I was young, and my parents had the idea to just throw mind-altering drugs at everything. I took this, and I took that, and I tried cocktail after cocktail. Nothing helped until I delved deep into my issues, and focused on getting better through traditional therapeutic techniques. But then I had all these pills left over that nobody—nobody—asked me to dispose of. I guess I was simply expected to take the initiative to drop them off at my local pharmacy. Well, I didn’t, so I just kept everything with me, and when I went off to college, I didn’t bother sorting them out. I grabbed all of my medicine, and threw them in the top drawer of my desk in the dorm. Some of it I still needed, like my allergy meds, generic over-the-counter pain management, and melatonin. But it was all in there, in the back, and one day, when a neighbor asked me if I had something for his headache, a business was born.

He saw what else I had, and told me I was crazy for just sitting on them. I could make some serious money if I started peddling it to other students. It wasn’t the most insane idea. I mean, a few of those things could really help them focus on studying, and taking tests. Still, I was hesitant, so I closed the drawer, and dropped it. The other guy didn’t drop it, though. He started spreading word around, and somehow, without me even making a single sale, people were starting to call me The Pharmacist. They were in such need, and I wasn’t, so who was I to stop them? They were all adults capable of making their own decisions, and if this was what they wanted, fine. I didn’t truly understand street value at the time, so I didn’t charge them very much, but I had so much volume, so I made a huge profit, because I didn’t pay for any of it myself. As time went on, word spread farther beyond the dorm, and across campus. I was the guy to go to if you were looking for a little help, and didn’t technically have some stuffy doctor to agree to it. By the time I ran out of my supply, I was approached by a real life drug dealer who wasn’t happy I was taking business away from him. I apologized, and said I wasn’t in it for the long haul, but he wasn’t hearing it. He said I had to go talk to Fartle. I didn’t ask him where Fartle got his nickname. Or the spider tattoos. Or the gun. Fearing for my life, I agreed to start selling for him, as long as I never had to sell anything that had to be injected or snorted. He was fine with that, so that’s what I did. I didn’t call myself a drug dealer until the first time I went to jail, and the judge made me say those words, or he would double my sentence. When I got out, I found myself free of Fartle, but I still felt compelled to sell. I’m too good at it, so I’ve been doing it for ten years. I regret nothing.