Microstory 2017: Rhode Island

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After my papa was finished with college, instead of going out to get a job, he decided to attend a place called Watch Hill Naval Academy. He had to take more classes in order to learn how to be an officer in the Navy and work in a submarine. From the records that my dad found, papa first took a 3 month course to teach him what it’s like to be a military officer. After that, he spent another 6 months learning about nuclear power, which sounds really scary and cool. Then after that, he spent another 6 months using what he learned working at an actual nuclear power plant. Finally, after all that, he got on a sub to learn to operate it with a crew of other officers. Submarines are really dangerous, and hard to use. That’s why he had to spend so much time learning these skills, because if someone messes up on a submarine, it could mean everyone on it dying all at once. Unlike the way it is on a ship, if something goes wrong in a sub, you can’t jump off and swim away. Not only can you not breathe underwater, but the water is really heavy, and it hurts for it to be on top of you when you go deeper and deeper. My papa was really smart, and he also cared about people, which is why he wanted to use his engineering degree to protect this country, and make the world a better place. I’m so proud of him, and I wish I had known all of this about him before. The military is a noble and difficult profession. Probably no one in our class will join the military, but if it turns out to be true, it will only probably be one of us, according to the math.

Microstory 2016: Missouri

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Papa graduated from Promontory University in the Spring of 1996 when he was 22 years old. Like I mentioned before, he met a lot of friends at college, and some of them belonged to a religion called Mormonism. He didn’t believe in the same things that they did, but they still got along with each other. A few of them had families that lived in Missouri, so they invited him out for a big graduation celebration. They had actually already been to a few other parties, but this was the only one that was over a thousand miles away. It took them three days to drive all the way there, which they did to save money on plane or train tickets. They drove through Wyoming and Nebraska on their way there, but of course, he had already been to those two states anyway. They slept the first night in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where some of his old friends lived. Remember that he lived in Buffalo, Wyoming for about ten years when he was younger. On the next night, he once again helped his college buddies with somewhere to sleep. He still had lots of family in Grand Island, Nebraska. He wanted to help them with where to sleep because his friends were going to give him somewhere to sleep once they arrived in Missouri. They lived in Independence, Missouri. The party was really big, with I think over a hundred people! Some of them were just family members, but others were other graduates who had gone to schools in other parts of the country. He stayed with one of his friends’ parents for three nights. He slept on the floor in a bedroom with five other people. Can you imagine? When it was over, he took the train back home to Idaho alone.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 30, 2421

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It was really dark when they arrived on Worlon. Not a single star could get its light through the thick armor of clouds in the atmosphere. They decided to stay near the Nexus, because it was probably the safest place on the planet. There was no sign that the Ochivari who once lived here still kept this place active. They might never have used it at all. Once they developed the ability to travel across the bulkverse, it may have seemed mostly pointless. That, or it had just been enough time. Venus wasn’t responding to them at all; not even Leona. They were where she wanted the team to be, so she was perhaps done providing her guidance. There were countless other Nexa in multiple universes too, so she could have also been quite busy from whatever perspective of time she experienced.

They left the Dante on Flindekeldan. It was funny, they were gifted this giant capital ship that was capable of true faster-than-light travel, but they gave it away again almost immediately, deciding to limit themselves to one of its shuttles. Shortly thereafter, they gave that away too, but that didn’t leave them with absolutely nothing. Ramses was hard at work every day he was in the timestream, and left a lot of the intervening time to a stunted copy of the Constance intelligence. This version of Constance had no personality, and no sense of free will. It could continue solving calculations on its own, but had no need for companionship, or any other form of stimulation. Ramses couldn’t even talk to it. He had to input commands manually. They were developing a lot of projects simultaneously. One of them involved the pocket dimensions that were being stored in the shuttle. He found a way to separate them from the vessel, and make the access portals small enough to fit in one’s literal pocket.

They were skin tight silver bracelets; stylish and not uncomfortable. They served as doorway access keys. Leona and Mateo shared access to the same door, while the rest each had their own abode. Ramses and Leona had a second bracelet, which granted them access to their shared laboratory. Once an individual was inside their respective room, they could then open doors to each other’s rooms, but not from the outside, unless they were wearing extra bracelets. The pocket dimensions could not be stored and established with these bracelets, though. It wasn’t like they could open them from anywhere. They first had to be built at a chosen location. Ramses could do this with a larger device ahead of time, which was sufficiently powerful enough to generate the pocket dimensions. When they were done with a particular location, they could be collapsed again, and rebuilt elsewhere. While active, they were invisible and intangible, even to the team members. One could walk right through it without realizing it if they couldn’t remember where it was. They had to have the intention to open their door with their bracelet by hovering it near where the lock would be if they could see it.

After Ramses taught them how all of this worked, they decided to go to sleep. None of them required the rest, but dangers could be lurking outside. It was best to be fully functional once the sun rose. They didn’t know when that would be, so he quickly rigged up a light sensor on the Nexus to awaken them at the appropriate time. He was still trying to figure out how to set up security cameras on the pocket dimensions. Being invisible to the world outside inherently meant that everything else was invisible from inside as well. Transmitting images in spite these complications was not going to be easy. The scientists still had so many other things to take care of.

When the sun sensor woke them up, it was shortly after midnight central. No one was in a hurry to leave their pockets but Mateo. He opened his invisible door, and took a breath of fresh air. And fresh it was. This world was apparently free from all pollution, having recovered from centuries of it brought upon by its native inhabitants. No one on the team knew all that much about the Ochivari. In fact, Mateo, Angela, and Marie probably knew the most of all. It wasn’t clear when they abandoned their homeworld so it could be brought back to homeostasis, but they had returned at some point this past year. A group of them were standing at the entrance to the Nexus, hanging out as if smokers on a break from work. They stared at him, shocked at his sudden appearance, and not sure what to do about it. Mateo could tuck himself back through the door, but then what? They would just wait for him to come back out again eventually. “Hello,” he called politely. He cleared his throat, and closed the door behind him. “How do?”

Even though they very much looked like aliens, Ochivari had very humanoid faces, and very humanoid facial expressions. One of them raised his eyebrow like Mr. Spock. He pulled a handheld device out of his pocket, and seemingly snapped a photo of Mateo with it. He tapped on the screen a few times, and then showed it to his friends. “Mister Matic.”

Mateo rolled his eyes. More fans. Cool. “I see my reputation precedes me. “Friends or foes?”

“We’re friends,” another Ochivar claimed. “We took this planet back from the Ochivari a few months ago.”

“Forgive me, I thought that’s what you were.”

“No,” the first one said, shaking his head. “We’re Krekel. Same species, technically speaking, but with different ideas about how to deal with aliens. Particularly, we don’t cause harm. You are in no danger around us.”

“I appreciate that,” Mateo replied, having trouble believing it. He wanted to trust them, but he had heard nothing but bad things about the critters that evolved on this planet, and his personal experience supported this position. When did this reportedly good faction break off, and under what circumstances exactly?

“We see that you’re still concerned. What can we do to make you feel more comfortable and safe?”

“We could sing,” another one suggested.

“Oh, yes, let’s sing.”

“No, that’s okay,” Mateo said, trying to sound as polite as possible.

“Nah, it’ll be good. You’ll love it.” The Ochivari—or rather the Krekel—gave each other some space, and started to play. They didn’t do anything with their mouths. The sounds they made came from them rubbing their wings and legs together like crickets. Cricket. Was that related to Krekel?

It was actually rather good and mesmerizing. Mateo didn’t even notice that everyone else had come out of their pockets to listen. Once the orchestra was done, they took a bow, and let the humans clap. “Are we sure about them?” Mateo asked quietly.

“No,” Leona admitted.

“I am,” said someone else. It was Ellie Underhill. “They’re fine. They’re friends!” She waved over at the Krekel orchestra, who all waved back.

“When did you get here?” Leona questioned.

“About the same time you did. I teleported down from The Phoenix.”

“That’s in orbit right now?”

“We’re using it to protect the Krekel. They can’t travel in ships, because they’ve not figured out a way to transport them through their bulk portals, so they require protection if they want to maintain a stronghold on this planet. The Ochivari have few qualms killing the dozens of people that would need to be sacrificed to accommodate the mass of a starship.”

“What makes the Krekel different?” Angela asked.

“They’re from a different timeline. They were taught how to travel the bulk without killing each other. That’s why Ochivari are so angry all the time. Every time they do it, there is a strong chance that they’ll die, and an equal chance that a friend will. Without that, the Krekel were able to keep their social civility. You really are safe here.”

“Okay, we’re safe,” Leona began to reason, “but that doesn’t explain why we’re here. We were sent.”

“You were?” Ellie was surprised. “If that’s true, then it has nothing to do with the past. Something is going to happen, and whoever sent you wants you to be here for it. Now I’m worried. Nobody sends you nowhere without a reason.”

“It’s probably a good thing you brought that ship,” Marie decided. “What, are you on a break?”

Ellie shook her head. “No, the work is done. Somebody did it for us.”

“Wadya mean?” Ramses asked.

“Everyone still left on Violkomin was transported to their new homeworlds all over the galactic neighborhood. It wasn’t all at once, but it was a lot quicker than it would have taken for us to do it with the Phoenix.”

Everyone looked down at Mateo. He chuckled softly. “You’re welcome.”

“You’re responsible for that?” Ellie questioned him.

“Not me personally. I asked a god.”

“Oh. Well, thank you anyway, and thank them for me. That’s a load off my chest.” They stood there awkwardly for a moment. “So, do you want it back?” she offered.

Rames reached over and unlocked the door to his personal living space. “I don’t think that will be necessary. We have everything that we could possibly ever require.”

“If you don’t need the Phoenix anymore either,” Leona concurred, “find someone new who does.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll do that.” Ellie took a breath, and clapped her hands. “Anyway, we were just about to share a breakfast. Humans and Krekels don’t eat the same foods, but we have plenty to share. That is, if your bodies even need that anymore. Mine doesn’t, but I still like to partake anyway.”

“That sounds lovely.”

“Are they going to be there?” Mateo asked, pointing.

“Those are just the Nexus guards. Subordinaries. I do not know them. We’ll be dining with the Domini.”

“Are they nice?” Olimpia asked.

Ellie grimaced a little. “No. We’re working on it. They’re dictators, but I’m trying to introduce them to democracy. They’re mostly peaceful, unlike their Ochivari counterparts, but they’re not altruists.”

“We better get dressed,” Leona decided. She opened a door, but not to her and Mateo’s dwelling. She went into the lab instead, and later showed up at breakfast armed. It wasn’t necessary then, but they were all grateful that she repeated it the next day.

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Extremus: Year 65

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The peacetime has persisted. First Chair Aleshire was anything but a lame duck during his final term. He left very little for Tinaya to have to accomplish, especially since she had her own—now completed—list of things she wanted to get done before she was even elected to the highest position. More meetings. That is what she spends her days dealing with. There is a committee for everything on this ship. There has to be, to keep people gainfully employed, so their contribution scores can stay high. There is only so much work that actually has to be done to keep people alive, so they contrive some jobs that aren’t absolutely necessary. And the First Chair is required to be at every meeting that doesn’t conflict with the time of a different one. In such a case, there is a priority list that dictates which one takes precedent. And yes, there have been meetings to make sure that the priority list itself is reasonable, and still makes sense. She has had to go to those ones too. They’re at the top of the list.

She needs a break, so she went to bed really early last night so she can have some time to herself, and of course, she’s going to do that in Attic Forest. It’s still a very popular hangout spot, but she wants to be alone. As First Chair, it’s hard to do that. Even when only a few people are around, they like to crowd her, so the best time to go upstairs is when everyone is asleep. They tried to institute visiting hours up here, because people kept sleeping in the grass, but they proved to be quite unfavorable. Instead, they made sleeping against policy at all hours of the day, and civilian security patrols the grounds to prevent it from happening. That’s something they never thought they would need, but natural forests have uneven soil, creepy critters, and bad weather. This is a highly controlled environment, making it a great place to sleep. But if they let anyone do that, they would have to let everyone, and it would fill up quick.

She steps through the entrance, and is surprised to see a number of people already out and about. A couple is walking by with their robot dog. A family is enjoying breakfast at a picnic table. If there are this many people this close to the entrance, who knows how many there are total? No, this won’t do. She’ll have to find somewhere else. Fortunately, there is still one perfect spot that nearly no one knows about yet. She quietly backs away before anyone sees her, and heads downstairs. It has been five years since she planted the Central Sequoia on the lowest level. It grows faster than a normal giant sequoia, so it now stands at five meters tall. There’s less room to move around, but she can sit on the floor, and lean up against it. Plus, there’s no policy against sleeping here—because the general public isn’t meant to know about it yet anyway—so if she falls under, it’ll be okay. But this chamber isn’t empty either. Senior Forest Guide Cainan Suárez is already here, but not for the same reason. He appears to have brought a girl.

“Since when has she been authorized?” is the first thing that Tinaya says.

“Madam Chair!” Cainan and his partner scramble to put their clothes back on.

Tinaya doesn’t mind the sex in an inappropriate location thing, but not in this particular location with whoever this young woman is. “Who are you?”

“This is Dominica. Dominica Bravo.”

“Can she not answer for herself?”

Cainan taps on the girl’s shoulder. When she looks back at him, he lifts both palms upwards, presses one palm towards her, and then taps his two first fingers together in the shape of an X.

Dominica faces Tinaya again. She sticks her index finger in the air, and holds her other three fingers against her thumb. She taps it upon her chest, then drops her hand down diagonally, and taps the opposite side of her torso.

“D-Lord; Dominica,” Cainan interprets. “That’s her sign name.”

Someone whose knowledge Tinaya absorbed when she and Lataran had that mishap with the mind sharing machine that Omega and Valencia built knew sign language. So she knows it too. She pops her index finger upwards out of her fist, and rubs her fist against her chest. “I understand. Sorry.”

Dominica opens her hand, and taps her thumb against her chest to say, it’s fine.

Tinaya signs everything she says from now on. “You two really should not be in here, especially not if you’re going to do that. Don’t you have your own cabin?”

“I wanted to take her someplace special,” Cainan explains, also translating everything into ASL.

Dominica signs, I’m sorry.

“It doesn’t sound like it’s your fault at all,” Tinaya replies, “but please tell no one of this tree. It is going to be a surprise in the future.”

I understand. I’m good at keeping secrets.

Tinaya looks up at the security camera. It’s showing a solid red indicator light, rather than a blinking one, which means it’s been tampered with. “What did you do?”

“It’s just a simple loop,” Cainan clarifies. “Three hours long, during a period where no one was here. No one will suspect a thing.”

Tinaya checks her watch. “The system is going to start watering the tree in an hour, and if the camera doesn’t see it happen, it will trigger an alarm.”

He smirks. “I factored that in. The loop perfectly matches the watering schedule.”

Dominica scoffs, and smacks Cainan in the shoulder.

“I mean Dominica scheduled it. She’s the computer genius. I’m just the tree guy.”

I’m not a genius. I run the graphics for most of the daytime game shows. Some of the most iconic game shows that Earth ever created have been replicated here on Extremus, like Jeopardy! and Password. Someone keeps requesting to make a version of Survivor in the Attic Forest, but it would require cutting down trees, and somehow digging a miniature ocean in the corner, so that’s not gonna happen. If they wanna do that, they can code it in virtual reality. That’s not technically beyond Tinaya’s jurisdiction, but she has no control over what people do with their own minds, and VR is considered predominantly an extension of personal thought.

“She’s just being modest,” Cainan counters. “Her job does not exemplify the limit of her skills.”

Dominica turns away bashfully.

Tinaya nods and sighs. “Go back to the residences.”

“Separately, errr...?” Cainan asks.

“I ain’t your mama. Just don’t break any more laws, okay?”

“Okay.”

Thank you, Madam First Chair.

After the younger ones are gone, Tinaya stares at the spot where they had spread out the picnic blanket. It didn’t look like they had, uhh...finished, but it still no longer felt like an acceptable place to sit and relax, which was the whole point of coming down here. Perhaps it won’t seem as strange after enough time has passed, but now she’ll have to find yet another place to be alone, besides her own stateroom. That’s not a good choice, though. There’s a reason she doesn’t do that. That’s where she experiences stress dreams about all of those meetings, and she sometimes takes work calls there. It’s not particularly calming for her anymore. Her best hope is going to the spa. It’s not open 24/7 for most people, but it is for people like her. She tries not to take that kind of thing for granted, but desperate times...

A man is chuckling from behind the tree, which is just wide enough to obscure her vision of him. He quickly steps out from it, though. It’s Arqut Grieves. “Kids, right? They are unruly in any culture.”

“They’re both in their twenties, as am I for the next few months. They’re not kids anymore. How did you know they were here?”

Arqut reaches up as high as he can on the wall, and taps what at first appears to be nothing but air, but a secret invisible camera appears for half a second each time it’s touched. “Redundancy. They’ve been coming here for weeks.”

“You’ve been...watching them?”

“Heavens no, I’m not a creeper,” Arqut defends. “The AI watches them, alerting me to when they arrive, and when they leave. Then it erases its own memory. It’s not just them either. It watches for any visits. You come here about once a month. Lataran and her guy have been here a few times, just talking. That’s it, though. The four of them loop the regular camera. You’re the only one who just turns it off.”

“I need access to that camera,” Tinaya contends, pointing towards where the invisible one is. “Along with any others. And I need to know any other secrets that you’ve been keeping from me.”

“Consider it done,” he promises. He looks at her funny.

“What is it now?” she questions.

“You always come here alone.”

“So you do watch me.”

“No, but I notice your arrivals. You never come with your security detail, which you’re not supposed to do. I’m very protective of you, and it was hard to not do the math, and recognize that you’re the only one who doesn’t use it as a makeout spot.”

“Is this about the marriage you want me to go through with to boost my approval ratings?” She nixed that suggestion from Cleader last year, yet he keeps pushing for it. He’s actually planned a lot, even though she doesn’t even have a partner. It’s very weird and awkward, and it makes her uncomfortable. Obviously, she doesn’t want to have to do this. She doesn’t want to get married, and even if she did, she would want to fall in love first. Not only that, but she doesn’t want to worry so much about reëlection. That is not what civil service is about. “I keep having to tell you that I am not interested. If I get the vote next year, that’s great, but if not, that’s okay too. All I care about is trying—”

“I love you.”

“Huh?”

“Sorry, I know that sounds like I’m suggesting that I be the one who you marry but I’m just confessing. I love you. I always have. This place is...it has a magical power. I couldn’t help myself but to tell you. I’ve been keeping it to myself, but I felt...compelled.”

“Arqut...”

He suddenly looks like a deer in the headlights. “Never mind! I’m just joking! Ha ha ha!” He teleports away.

What the hell was that?

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Microstory 2015: New Mexico

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Papa met a lot of cool new friends when he went to college in Utah. He was still friends with some of them even as an adult. A few of them were at his funeral. One summer, after he was finished with his junior year at Promontory University, some of these friends decided that they wanted to go hiking and camping. Normally in the summer, papa would go home to stay with his parents, but he wanted to go on the trip too. They had done trips like this before, but always somewhere close. A mountain called Wheeler Peak would have taken them twelve hours to drive, but none of them wanted to be on the road for that long, so they bought train tickets instead. The journey was actually longer, because trains have to make a lot of stops, but it was much more comfortable. It was a popular destination for college kids, so a train went pretty close to both places. They still had to take a car to get to the mountain. They didn’t want to spend money on a rental, so they hitchhiked, which means they asked for a ride from a stranger. Dad says never to do that, because it’s dangerous, but papa and his friends were okay. They hiked for several miles up the mountain, and it was really hard, but they enjoyed it. I’ve seen the pictures that he took while he was there. They’re very beautiful. Once they were finished with the hike, they went back to the train station, and took different trains, because they needed to go to different places. Papa did end up going back home to Idaho until it was time for his senior year.

Microstory 2014: Utah

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Promontory University is a college in Utah that’s near Salt Lake City, to the north. The city is named that because it’s next to the Great Salt Lake, which is a really big body of water that has salt in it, like an ocean. It actually has more salt in it than the oceans. I don’t understand how it works, but Mrs. McKinney told me that she’s going to teach us the water cycle in a couple of months, so we’ll probably all learn more about it. Anyway, after the big trip in Europe, my papa decided to go to Promontory University. My grandma said that it was only about 2 and a half hours away from where they lived. So he was able to be out of the house, and learn how to be an adult, but he could also drive back home, and then back to his dorm in only one day if he really needed to. I don’t think he ever had to do that, though. He loved being at school. It’s where he learned the skills that he used when he got a job. That would not happen for a long time, though. After he graduated, he joined the military, but we’ll talk more about that in a few slides when I talk about Rhode Island. At Promontory University, he studied Architectural Engineering. That’s what people use to draw out buildings before other people build them. But he didn’t do much with buildings. His work had more to do with vehicles. That will come up again later too.

Microstory 2013: Maine

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I’ve been telling you stories about my papa going all over the country, but that’s not all he did. He also went to other countries. After he graduated from high school, he and his parents didn’t think that he was ready for college. He wasn’t stupid or too young. They just thought that he should do something else first. A lot of people do something called a gap year, which is when you wait to go to college. This often means traveling to other places. What my papa decided to do was to go on a big ship all the way from the United States to Europe. Specifically, he went from Maine to Portugal. Portugal is a country in Europe where they may sound like they speak Spanish, but it’s actually its own special language called Portuguese. They speak it in Brazil too. Papa did a lot of driving, but he flew in planes sometimes too. This time, he flew to Maine, and stayed for a couple of nights before the ship left. It left from a city called Portland. You’ve probably heard of the Portland in Oregon, but there’s also one in Maine. The ship was this really big thing called a freighter. They carry a whole bunch of cargo across the ocean. Even though it was really big, there weren’t that many people on it. Papa didn’t work for the ship company, but they let him ride for very little money as long as he helped clean. It took three weeks. When he got to Portugal, which the capital of is Lisbon, he spent another couple of nights there, and then he started to backpack all over Europe. The whole trip took him about four months. Dad thinks that papa went through a storm in the middle of the ocean, but he’s not sure, and he obviously made it home safe and sound.

Microstory 2012: California

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As I mentioned on the last slide, my papa one time went to two different states. Actually, he also went through Utah, but he would not have counted that yet, because he didn’t even stay the night. After the college tour in Arizona, he went on to San Diego, California. It was here that people were holding a convention for EmptyCon. You’ve probably never heard of it. They don’t do them anymore, because most of the fans are dead now. The first time they did it was the first convention in the history of the world. Soon after movies were invented, a bunch of them were made that told the story of a man who accidentally traveled to a thing called EmptySpace where there weren’t any suns or planets. Aliens only had ships, and there were stars that were far away that gave them light. I’m not sure how they were able to build ships without planets, but whatever. Papa was probably the youngest fan of the movies, which are kind of stupid now that scientists know more about space than way back before. He spent the rest of the weekend in San Diego, talking with other fans, and the people who owned the movies, but none of the actors who were actually in them, because they were long dead even by then. I’m not into the movies, and neither is my dad. That’s not a problem, though. Both of them taught me that it’s okay to not like everything that the people you love like. I did some things with my papa, and sometimes he did things on his own. It’s the same with my dad. They did things without me too. Always keep an open mind, though. They taught me that too, so maybe I’ll start liking EmptySpace one day when I’m older.