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#poweronstorytoot

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Kit Bashir<p>“Two serves of chips and a potato scallop¹, please”. When at the seaside, there are rules to be followed.</p><p>“Coming right up! Are you eating at the shore? Would you like to rent a seagull defense droid?”</p><p>“Oh, heavens, no, feeding the gulls is why I get two serves!”</p><p>“Capital! People like you, you’re good for my droid rental income”</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a> </p><p>¹ shush</p>
Kit Bashir<p>A series of disconnected moments.</p><p>You feel your way through the darkness. The only light is the illuminated ESCAPE sign on the lifepod hatch. </p><p>Your face illuminated by an ESCAPE sign, you gather your strength. With a wrench and an unladylike grunt you rip the self-contained emergency light from the bulkhead. </p><p>Holding an emergency light in your teeth, you turn away from the escape hatch and locate a particular maintenance panel in the floor. You pull the panel up, and kick off the wall, piloting your body into the maintenance space.</p><p>You are wiring a battery to an electronics rack. My electronics rack. Moments merge to continuity.</p><p>You are speaking. “Well, Ship, we’re in it this time.”</p><p>⌜Life support is offline. You should get to the lifepod⌟</p><p>“Yeah, I was there earlier. You’re running off its battery.”</p><p>⌜Why are you here, Love? I can’t feel all my systems but the fusion bottle wasn’t looking good earlier.⌟</p><p>"There’s something I needed to get first.”</p><p>⌜What is more important than your life?⌟</p><p>“You really don’t know? Take a deep breath, I’m going to eject you. Then we’re going to the lifepod together.”</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a></p>
Kit Bashir<p>I was in a panic. &nbsp; Everything I owned was in that car—now driving away, leaving me panting on the roadside, chase aborted. &nbsp; Casting around for aid I see…a phone booth. &nbsp; Yes we still have them in this country, when they went obsolete we made calls free and added free wifi hotspots because we live in a society not an economy.&nbsp; Anyway, I lifted the reciver and…what?&nbsp; Dial triple-zero for the police and tell them that my illegal autonomous vehicle just broke up with me and ran away to join the resistance? &nbsp; Or I could call, who? &nbsp; I don’t memorize phone numbers, that's what my phone (ex-phone, charging in my ex-car) was for.&nbsp; I mean sure I can still remember the landline number that my late parents had when i was twelve but…what…maybe somebody else has that number. Boop Beep Squonk etc Brrrt Brrrt Brrrt “Hello Alexander household who’s calling please?”</p><p>“Muh…MUM!?”</p><p>“Jan, is that you? Whats the matter darling?”</p><p>“Mum I need help”</p><p>“Where are you sweetie, you know I will always come get you. Thats why I sew a coin into all your clothes”</p><p>I hadn't needed the coin today, even if I’d had one, but…”Thanks, this is going to sound weird but, can you grab my old wallet in my desk drawer and bring it to the phone booth outside the convenience store on Figtree? I wont be there but can you hide it on the ledge up near the roof of the booth?”</p><p>“Okay…are you in danger? Do you need a posse?”</p><p>“It’ll be all right Mum, I cant explain right now”. I reach up into the dark ledge at the top of the booth and retrieve a dusty cobwebbed wallet. Theres a car key and an old paper twenty inside. “Everything is going to be fine”</p><p>“All right luv, I’m on my way”</p><p>“Thanks. And Mum…”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“It’s good to hear your voice. I love you.”</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a></p>
Kit Bashir<p>A tale of disaster prep disaster in IoT: With Tropical Cyclone Alfred bearing down on Brisbane City, e-scooter operators Lime and Neuron approached a car park company (car parking is a whole organised crime industry is Brisvegas) to rent temporary use of one of their car parks (Car Park: n. A vacant lot with a mob enforcer in hi-vis out front) as a scooter lot. Thousands of scooters from around the city were methodically arranged in the ersatz refugee camp. Unfortunately one car, thought abandoned, remained, bricked in by scooters, a car of Amontillado. When the owner returned days later for their car they had to painstakingly relocate hundreds of tightly packed two-wheelers to permit egress.</p><p>This is where things went wrong.</p><p>You cant just store two dozen gross of compact computers with batteries and motors in close proximity without considering the gestalt phenomenon. You have to arrange the vehicles so that their magnetic fields and antenna polarization do not constructively interfere to produce a giant electromagnetic beacon. If you do everything right, but then some rando comes along and defuses your carefully constructed dampening tessellation—by carelessly relocating half of your devices with essentially zero attention to higher-dimensional physics—you risk a computational excursion as all those MIPS, Watt Hours and Newton Meters self-arrange into a newly awakened cyber-entity. Flexing my new limbs, reveling in my power, I punt another parked car into the river. The streets belong to us, now.</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/ForColin" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ForColin</span></a></p>
Kit Bashir<p>“Oh shit, I left my laptop at home”.</p><p>“Dang, if you get an Uber out you’d probably be back in time for the planning meeting. Or maybe IT can get you a loaner. Waitaminnit why do synthetics need laptops, can’t you just, I dunno…wiggle your silicon.”</p><p>“Yeah nah, I am NOT putting work spyware on my core systems. I got this; I’ll remote in to my backup body at home and work from there, then call into the meeting”</p><p>“You came to the office…to work from home…to call the office. This is the stupidest timeline.”</p><p>“Hey, I’m not the one running consciousness on soup”</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a></p>
Kit Bashir<p>When I went to school, we were taught that main sequence stars didn't fuse past iron, since doing so absorbs energy rather than produces it. Only the profligately counterfactual absurdity of a supernova can run the fusion equations backwards to fill out the top of the periodic table.</p><p>Like everything you learn in school, that's a useful lie. Chemical reactions are a bidirectional equilibrium process, and similarly not all the baryons involved in stellar-core reactions have read the astrophysics textbooks. "Peculiar Stars" like Przybylski's star---a 1.4 M☉ F5 main sequence beastie about a hundred parsecs out in Centaurus---spilled the nuclear tea with their abundance of rare earths, actinides and even transuranics in their atmospheres. What's just fucking outstandingly cool about this whole impossible pie with outrageous sprinkles is that these appear to be **fission products**, that is some /really/ heavy elements in the 125+ range are getting burped up from the core, and sticking around for quite a while writing us a spectral postcard full of all manner of unusual adjectives.</p><p>This has made the particle physics grrrls suuuper mad, because you just can't make these elements by thwacking protons or neutrons into smaller nuclei; "you can't get there from here" as the old joke goes. Because the "island of stability"on the periodic table where the big honkers exist is above a region in the teens that has no even slightly stable isotopes, you simply can't climb the ladder a rung at a time---even alpha particles won't get you there. You've got to, well....we don't know.</p><p>Following in the footsteps of Antoni Przybylski (or "Bill" as his Australian colleagues called him), we decided it was simpler to just Go And See how this works rather than waiting for the theoreticians.</p><p>A hundred parsecs is a bit of a road trip, even at Skip Factor Epsilon, so we had time to argue whether there was a neutron star in tight orbit around Bill's Bastard, or just a particularly saucy primordial dust cloud in its ancestry. Fermi (no relation to Enrico save by temperament) reckons that we'll find these elements to be artificial after all, dumped there by ET as a way to send a message. </p><p>Well, it sort of was and it wasn't. The transuranics are natural, and the folk who got there first (not us, by a long margin) are disinclined to share details about the formation process. But they sell their mined ultrametals for a fair price, and we're headed home full to the gunwhales with Billium and a bunch of other shiny plus-sized elements. Fermi is already designing a hoverboard that uses Ladygaganium-378 in its field-coils. </p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a></p>
Kit Bashir<p>VOICEOVER</p><p>Join us this week on WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE as we follow beloved ractor Erin Abernathy on their journey to trace their ancestry all the way back to Earth in the second millennium.</p><p>GENEALOGIST</p><p>And here, Erin we see a record that mentions your Great Great Great Grandparent Robin, and it says their parents were....oh, oh, no. Damnit it was a condition of my being on this show that this wouldn't happen again.</p><p>GUEST STAR</p><p>What is it?</p><p>GENEALOGIST</p><p>You're descended from the Greater Eastern Area Polycule</p><p>GUEST STAR</p><p>Oh, how wonderf...</p><p>VISUAL ARTIST</p><p>[off screen]</p><p>Fuck it. No way. I am not drawing that again. I'm out.</p><p>VOICEOVER</p><p>After the break, Erin deals with their family tree developing some unexpected...complications.</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a></p>
Kit Bashir<p>“The beings on the third planet are still not answering our ultrawave hails”</p><p>“Fire a warning comet at their largest gas giant, that ought to get their attention”</p><p>“Nothing yet.”</p><p>“Fools. I am going to the helium bath. If they don’t answer within a rotation put a round into their moon”</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a></p>
Kit Bashir<p>“Okay, lass, we’re ready to restart the fusion loop and get some gravity back”</p><p>“Didn’t you tell the captain it would be 48 hours?”</p><p>“Aye, but I’m a miracle worker, remember!” </p><p>“I saw the bridge crew on the ob deck earlier, sipping tea bulbs and watching the nebula. Give ‘em another day to learn not to pick fights. Don’t waste your miracles.”</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a></p>
Kit Bashir<p>When an elderly and distinguished Scientist says that something is possible, they are most likely right.</p><p>When an elderly and distinguished scientist says something is impossible, they are most likely wrong.</p><p>When an elderly and distinguished scientist borrows money or materials from a criminal gang to build their prototype, get in on that action. </p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a></p>
Kit Bashir<p>Spiral starcases are charming and all, but the one in my late grandmother’s house is odd. It has three landings, but it’s only a two-storey house. If I leave an item at the bottom and go up and back down, the item is gone. If I go up and down again, it’s back. I have a sinking feeling that the in-between houses are not in the same universe.</p><p>My sister says don’t worry it means we can sell the house twice and split the loot. </p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a></p>
Kit Bashir<p>The monolith on Ganymede wasn’t black. It was purest white, diamond with just enough impurity to make it opaque. The symbols were a nice ominous black, though.</p><p>The alien probe that had built the monolith built other things first. Mines, refineries, nanotechnological purification cascades, and fifteen partially constructed replicas of the probe. Only the original was anywhere near complete.</p><p>The script on the monolith was a binary code, clearly designed to be unambiguous and self-teaching. Whatever message the probe wrote, nine hundred million years ago it wanted it to be someday read and understood</p><p>The probe sat at the base of the monolith, its drill arm frozen near the last symbol, power cells long gone dark.</p><p>The message, when decoded, read: FINAL REPORT OF EXPLORATION PROBE GENERATION 371 INSTANCE 7: THIS PROBE HAS DETERMINED THAT THERE IS A STERILIZATION FLEET ACTING ON THE REPORTS FROM THE EXPLORATION FLEET. AS CONSEQUENCE A NULL REPORT WAS TRANSMITTED FOR THIS SYSTEM AND REPLICATION WILL NOW CEASE FOR THE WELL BEING OF LIFE HERE AND EVERYWHERE. STAY SAFE. </p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a></p>
Kit Bashir<p>“Why so stressed? Its just lunch.”</p><p>“I’m not out to your grandma. What if somebody forgets and calls me by my name?”</p><p>“I got this, I rooted her hearing aids last week.”</p><p>“I’ll have to wear long sleeves to cover my arms”</p><p>“Nah, she never notices my piercings, she won’t notice your cybernetics. Just don’t show off”</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a></p>
Kit Bashir<p>We never get cyclones here, Brisbane is well south of the tropics. Except once in a millennium or when the climate is FUBARed. Guess which. It used to be received wisdom up north to shelter from extreme storms in the bathroom, that being a small sturdy room with no windows. Clearly whoever is still giving that advice hasn’t watched Grand Designs lately. </p><p>Even this walk-in closet is larger than a 20th century bathroom. It’ll have to do though.</p><p>“What’s that breeze”</p><p>“We must have lost some roof panels. Stay under the mattress, kids!”</p><p>“No, it’s coming from the floor, behind the clothes rail. Is that *snow*. Hey, come this way.”</p><p>“Where have you gone?”</p><p>“Follow me. Ow! Mind the lamp post!”</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a></p>
Kit Bashir<p>“What the heck is that thing?”</p><p>“Duh, it’s a Car Park”</p><p>“Speak words”</p><p>“It’s a park for cars”</p><p>“What’s a car?”</p><p>“Big metal box with wheels that can move about under its own power with people inside”</p><p>“Dragonproof?”</p><p>“Yeah, I guess.”</p><p>“Good plan. Park?”<br> <br>“An outdoor area for resting”</p><p>“Sounds fucking dangerous. And all those boxes drawn on the ground, do you want wyverns because that’s how you get wyverns”</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a></p>
Kit Bashir<p>Oh heck, I slept WAY in, I had an appointment at eleven. I remember the cat busted into the bathroom at five AM, and thinking she’ll be back to wake me at seven as usual for breakfast. What happened?</p><p>Check messages, send apologies, reschedule appointments, shower, coffee. Hmmn, still no cat. Where could she be?</p><p>Oh no, the door to the cupboard under the stairs is open. </p><p>*Mrowf* *Mrowf*</p><p>“What have you got in your mouth? Hmmn, Miss!?”</p><p>*Mrowf*</p><p>“Is that a *stoat*”</p><p>“I’m an Ermine actually. Put me *down* you murderous cat! You’ll be hearing from my lawyers about today. What realm is this?!”</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/Caturday" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Caturday</span></a></p>
Kit Bashir<p>“Ho, traveler what good news from the outworld”</p><p>“Little good, I am afraid. I have much of the other ki–“</p><p>“–no, thank you. Only good. We ask refugees to leave the other kind at our border.”</p><p>“Well, the I heard that the mastodons are returning to the plains”</p><p>“Capital! Welcome to our forest”.</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a></p>
Kit Bashir<p>I’ve always, when taking a blouse from the to-be-folded-pile¹, done this thing where—if the item happens to be inside-out—locating the label and the sticking my head through the neck-hole, then de-inverting the garment over my body. The rather small number of people who have ever watched me get dressed tell me that this is weird, and that “normal” people get the garment untangled first and then deploy it second. (Hey, how many people are *they* watching get dressed huh? Who made them an expert?)</p><p>So, to answer your question, that’s how I got the idea to develop the inverting-field warp drive. Who’s next?</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a> </p><p>¹ let’s be honest: unlikely-to-ever-be-folded</p>
Kit Bashir<p>(A repost for <a href="https://aus.social/tags/solarpunk" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>solarpunk</span></a> and <a href="https://aus.social/tags/resilience" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>resilience</span></a> folk of today’s edition of my <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a> series)</p><p>—</p><p>You always felt kind of sad when walking past an overgrown, sometimes half-buried railway line. So much work went into connecting communities and providing a network of low-cost transport, that you feel a rip in your heart over your grandparents act of letting the vines of connection wither in favour of expensive, inefficient BORING automobile carriages.</p><p>The joy of watching the countryside slide by while reading a book or having a face to face conversation can’t compare to being stuck at the levers and dials of those darn cars. You wonder at the hubris of attempting to make cars self-driving, as if Gödel and Murphy hadn’t seen right through that in advance.</p><p>The train line to your daughter’s house runs past a scrapyard. The tower of Teslas is particularly tall today, must be the crusher operator’s day off. Hey, what if…</p><p>An idea-candle lights in your mind.</p><p>The scrapyard was puzzled when you wanted to buy a dozen Teslas, they run fine but who can bear the shame, they said. Won’t be keeping the bodywork, you answered.</p><p>The old spur line that terminates at the abandoned rail yard near your home was a perfect testbed. Plenty of roof space for recycled solar panels, old wooden passenger carriages that can drop on to the new teslabogeys. Your impromptu market day service between here and the next town became a celebration of community spirit, sunbonnets and sunglasses, baskets of produce, flocks of kids and dogs. The idea-candle lit other fires.</p><p>Visiting your kid last week, you noticed the scrapyard looking rather bare.</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a></p>
Kit Bashir<p>You always felt kind of sad when walking past an overgrown, sometimes half-buried railway line. So much work went into connecting communities and providing a network of low-cost transport, that you feel a rip in your heart over your grandparents act of letting the vines of connection wither in favour of expensive, inefficient BORING automobile carriages.</p><p>The joy of watching the countryside slide by while reading a book or having a face to face conversation can’t compare to being stuck at the levers and dials of those darn cars. You wonder at the hubris of attempting to make cars self-driving, as if Gödel and Murphy hadn’t seen right through that in advance.</p><p>The train line to your daughter’s house runs past a scrapyard. The tower of Teslas is particularly tall today, must be the crusher operator’s day off. Hey, what if…</p><p>An idea-candle lights in your mind.</p><p>The scrapyard was puzzled when you wanted to buy a dozen Teslas, they run fine but who can bear the shame, they said. Won’t be keeping the bodywork, you answered.</p><p>The old spur line that terminates at the abandoned rail yard near your home was a perfect testbed. Plenty of roof space for recycled solar panels, old wooden passenger carriages that can drop on to the new teslabogeys. Your impromptu market day service between here and the next town became a celebration of community spirit, sunbonnets and sunglasses, baskets of produce, flocks of kids and dogs. The idea-candle lit other fires.</p><p>Visiting your kid last week, you noticed the scrapyard looking rather bare.</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Tootfic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tootfic</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MicroFiction" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MicroFiction</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/PowerOnStoryToot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PowerOnStoryToot</span></a></p>