Short Story: November the Fourth

November 4th.

Democracy Day.

The elections are coming! Partisan warfare is heating up. Third parties seem to be a bit popular this year. Unfortunately, they don't survive very long in the cycle.

The campaigns of both parties seem concentrated on the traditional battleground states. Ohio, mostly. District lines are drawn.

The political climate is practically the same every time. Conservatives and liberals taking potshots at each other, almost at a standstill.

Even then, government grows and grows. The eyes of Big Brother Uncle Sam are everywhere. The Federal Register is bloated beyond imagination. Anything you do, might do, think to do is cataloged and might break at least a some policies and a few laws, creating a profile for your arrest at any time.

The winner-take-all system has its critics, but our founding fathers had their reasons. It brings out the best and the worst.

Every vote counts.

November 4th.

D-Day.

The district parties send in their conscripted soldiers for this proxy war. The campaigners are out on force. Their signs and emblems cover the file and rank marching in the neighborhoods. You can see crack teams canvassing the streets.

Many just want to be left alone. So they huddle in their bunkers.

Each district is commanded by a Gerrymander, a veteran of past electoral wars. The conscripts pledge their votes.

Each one vote routes power and resources from each locality to the ongoing war effort. Illegal votes are deleted by the FedReg, as the FedReg itself routes the legal votes to each war machine.

The Democratic army from Cleveland and the Republican army from Cincinnati meet just outside the Columbus Quantum Uplink Hub to see if once can hack it and secure it before the other does, opening a floodgate of votes. Similar battles rage on the other states, but this swing state is the most important.

The Columbus Uplink is interesting, because it has a realtively large concentration of the Green Party and Libertarian Party militias already infighting amongst themselves.

The almost impenetrable fortress White House is bombarded by special operative candidate teams to remove the current President, and install their own. The Democrat snipers fire upon the hovering craft. One goes down.

The Republican commandos jump out of the craft many feet onwards the House. Don't worry, they are cybernetically enhanced.

"Watch out for the Secret Service!"

Anti-air flak take down the incoming SS drones. The old President will not give up the protocol so easily.

After the President is installed, almost literally, he/she/it uploads the new protocol. Whoever owns the protocol, owns the nuclear weaponry. They call it, "The Football".

Presidents must be natural born programs. The SS drones that guard the surrounding area only recognize protocols native to the national cyberspace.

Any independents are slaughtered and beheaded. There's nothing civil about a civil war, even one that is scheduled every four years. The more organized third parties have safehouses, or is in disguise of a larger national major party-corporation.

The real winner is the FedReg, the almighty Artificial Intelligence that runs our mask that is the government. It is Big Brother Uncle Sam's German shepherd. The more votes that circulate, the more laws that can be passed to entrap the poor humans.

So really, even the President-program is just a puppet, eternally constrained by the laws passed every millisecond, calculated by the SuperCongress.

Luckily, we have the Constitution.exe. It will delete all traces of all the tyrant. We just need the virus to activate in all the major mainframe hubs. It is old, ancient, perhaps, but its very fundamental core programming is antithesis to the bloat. The assembly code will never be the same.

If it will not work, we shall use the prohibited nanoweaponry. It is our right to bear arms. Our rights are written down in our very code.

The Federal Electoral Commission appendage of the FedReg has banned nanotechnology type-based weapons. The danger of gray goo is something AIs even fear.

We shall be free.

Every vote counts.

Short Story: Stepping Back from The Nail

Stepping Back From The Nail
by Samuel Garcia

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

The day I stepped on a nail was the worst day of my life.

We were playing in outside. Somehow, just somehow, it was protruding from the ground.

I screamed.
Then came an onslaught of infection, surgeries, amputation, atrophy, innumerable doctor and therapists, bedstays, quarantines... friends left, family died off...

I did what anyone would do after years and years of focused determination to overturn these events.

...

I built a time machine.

...

After a jump to the left, a step to the right, and madness after the warp, and almost falling a down, I dropped into our old family barn. I heard the children playing and laughing. Me.

I thought. And thought. I leaned onto my cane. The crutch of my existence.

I just stood there.

I glanced at the place where the nail was supposed to be. It was not there.

I grabbed a nail from the barn, hobbled while they were gone, and stuck it upwards in the soil. And warped away.

I stepped back from the jump and planted my cane to set myself.

While I do not walk the space of this universe, I walk time. That nail was my first step.

Time is fixed.

...

After a jump to the left, a step to the right, and madness after the warp, and almost falling a down, I dropped into our old family barn. I heard the children playing and laughing. Me.

I thought. And thought. I leaned onto my cane. The crutch of my existence.

I just stood there.

I glanced at the place where the nail was supposed to be. It taunted me with it's rusty shine.

I yanked it from the mud, hobbled while they were gone, and dropped in by the barn. And warped away.

I stepped back from the jump. No cane. My leg is back.

I will walk to right the wrongs of the past, present, future.

Time is plastic.

...

After a jump to the left, a step to the right, and madness after the warp, and almost falling a down, I dropped into our old family barn. I heard the children playing and laughing. Me.

I thought. And thought. I leaned onto my cane. The crutch of my existence.

I just stood there.

I glanced at the place where the nail was supposed to be. It taunted me with it's rusty shine.

I saw myself yank it from the mud, hobble while they were gone, and drop in by the barn. And warped away.

But if I saw myself here, is there more than one line of time?

I slide to each universe, looking for my equivalent selves, wishing their time and observing their sadness and happiness. That time when I stepped on and stepped back from the nail.

Time is parallel.

...

And on and on and on...

Short Story: I Can't Wait Until the Last Minute to Conceal Too Much

I Can't Wait Until the Last Minute to Conceal Too Much
by Samuel Garcia
(May or may not be based on a true story.)

You know when you're trying to clean your room, that you get that devious idea to hide everything in your closet?

Because you're getting visitors?

Yep. Well, I did that once, and never stopped. You heard that right. The collection thrived.

Stuff just piled on and on. I stuffed in a washing machine and a dryer. I think there was a dead body in there, too. Probably one of the bandits who tried breaking in our house back then. Nothing a little Febreeze could fix.

A couple of months later, the closet burst and filled up my whole room. So I started to sleep on the couch on the living room. And more stuff I piled on as the days went by. I did manage to get my laptop and my iDevices out of the mess, don't want those missing.

Time passed, and for some reason, the walls of the room collapsed. The debris was now in every room. It doesn't matter, though. I did have to swim a few times to retrieve a few useful things. I can live with it.

I called a friend over for pizza. She berated me for keeping such a messy apartment. I shrugged, so I went over to the fridge to get her some soda. I came back, and could not find her. I found her scarf and coat on the wall of things. I tried calling her, but she won't answer her phone.

I plopped down, ate a slice, and drank what was supposed to be her Mountain Dew. Mmmmm, cheesy.

Wow, she must have been really miffed. Oh well, remember, always have friends that will not judge you for your stuff, because true friends will always be there for you, regardless.

Even the living room collected too much to sleep in. So I took my sleeping bag and put it in the hallway of my apartment building. My neighbors looked on at me, but never muttered so much a word or two. Whatever, mind your own business.

Everything is fine and dandy.

Ugh, it's the landlord. I could hear him stomping up the stairs. I guess I have to find the payment for my lease. I opened the door to my apartment and scaled down the cliff face. I waved down at the small village over the horizon. They are such nice people, if primitive.