Day 181 - Sibylline Story

Sibylline Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

As the story goes, the Sibylline Books were destroyed in 83 BC when the Temple of Jupiter accidentally burned. This, of course, was just a story, made up to cover what really happened. After a series of wars and internal strife, several important families took it upon themselves to protect and preserve the books and the powers that they held. There were originally nine books of prophecy created by a Greek prophetess. Six were allegedly destroyed while she and Lucius Tarquinius Superbus haggled over the purchasing price. This of course was not true at all. The Cumaean Sibyl promised Lucius nine books, and he received nine books. And for her efforts she was rewarded with a swift death, for Lucius could not risk her sharing any foresights with his enemies. The legend of the other six was created to keep these books a secret, for those were regarded as the most powerful of the prophecies.

For more than 300 years the three publicly acknowledged books were consulted in times of crisis and during questions of faith. For 300 hundred years the Republic was strong and its powers spread across all of Europe.

Wars came and went and then internal strife took over and the Republic grew weak. The Sibylline Books, all nine of them, were separated, and because there was a sect of religious leaders that feared their powers and wanted to destroy them, the families thought it best to spread the books throughout the Republic. Three of the books were held by three rich and powerful families in the heartland of Roma. Three were taken east, to Byzantium and beyond, but those were lost in transit, either at sea to a shipwreck during a storm or to raiders while a caravan crossed Greece, depending on which reports were to be trusted. The remaining three were to be hidden far away from the capital cities and out of the hands of the corrupt and dangerous. Eventually one ended up in Hispana, another made it all the way to Britannia and a final one went as far as the border near Germania, but reports of what happened to this one were sketchy at best.

Whether the Sibylline Books truly had any power of prophecy is subject to debate, but a large number of people died in the attempt to protect or gain access to them. Decades later Julius Caesar, who was not yet the Caesar the world would one day come to know, spent time as governor in Hispana, where he conquered several local tribes. Later, fighting as a general he extended Rome’s territories north, to the English Channel and the Rhine. He became the first Roman general to cross both and launched Rome’s first invasion of Britain. His invasions signaled Roman strength. But he made no attempt to conquer or incorporate Britannia or Germania into the empire. He took his armies in a tremendous show of force and then left. Perhaps he wasn’t interested in conquering these new lands. Perhaps he was looking for something more powerful.

Soon Caesar’s power continued to grow as though he was guided by destiny itself. As dictator, he made plans to invade Persia. Perhaps he was tempted by the idea that three of the books had indeed made it east. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking. Still, if three books could make a man dictator, imagine what six could do.

After the assassination, Caesar’s personal library was destroyed. There was no official record of what books he did or did not possess. There were reports of theft and looting before the rest of the library was burnt. One witness claimed that three men escaped and rode away in three different directions, never to be seen or heard from again.

Day 180 - Recruitment Story

Recruitment Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Julia was at the convention center attending a job expo. She had spent the day shaking hands and collecting business cards. Julia had no idea what she was looking for. She had an undergraduate degree in communications, but always told herself that was just a first step towards grad school. Early on in college she had considered getting an MBA. A year later it was pre-law. A year after that she had looked into nursing schools. It seemed as if everyone in the know was saying the job market was in terrible shape and most of the best careers for the future were in medicine and technology. She had no interest in medicine, and lacked the skill-set for technology, but her student loans were mounting, so she was just about ready to try anything. She changed majors too many times in college and tried to study too many minors and had ended up spending six years in college to get one questionable degree. She fully intended to continue studying something, even if she didn’t know what yet. The pressure to get a job was mounting though, so for now she was out hunting. She had been to a lot of job expos. She had printed a lot of business cards and resumes and handed a lot of them out. But she was young and lacked experience and she had received very few phone calls in return.

While Julia ate her lunch, she flipped through business cards and brochures and flyers. She separated everything into piles—piles to research, piles to keep, piles to throw out. There were ads for graduate schools, online programs, and software seminars. She threw most of those out. While some sounded interesting, she was in no mood to accrue more debt. Internships and summer jobs were set aside to research later. Business cards were stacked neatly, to be followed up upon over the next several days.

Then she came across a series of business cards that made no sense. They listed no names of people or places, had no contact information, and were most certainly not advertising anything. They all had strange and silly slogans printed on one side, with phrases like “Give in, Give Up, Bottoms Up!” and “Tired from your work day? Go outside and play.” or “Forget working overtime… go start a conga line.” and “Don’t get a job... Join the mob.” She didn’t remember seeing the cards before or who had been passing them out, but she must have passed the person or table several times because she had a dozen cards like that.

Julia wondered who would be handing out cards like that at a job fair. Maybe it was a prank, she thought. Maybe an art or design student was having some fun. Or maybe it was someone’s idea of a revolution. They were all fairly innocent slogans basically telling the reader to enjoy their life more. Some of them made more sense than others. Some of them had poor excuses for rhymes. Some were funny; most weren’t.

After lunch Julia searched the floor of the convention center, trying desperately to find the person that had been handing out these cards. But she had no such luck. Maybe they left. Maybe they had been asked to leave. It made her sad that she missed the person. They seemed so much more interesting than anyone else she had actually met at the expo. She might have believed she imagined it all, except she had the cards to prove it was real.

Julia left the expo early. The job fair was ruined. She couldn’t get the card-maker out of her mind. Her spirit had been reawakened and she couldn’t stand to waste the day searching for a job she didn’t want. Besides, it was a bright and sunny day. That was so much more fun than being cooped up inside all day.

A day later she couldn’t find any of the handouts from the expo. She must have left them all on a table at the convention center. She told herself the cards had been real, but perhaps she really had made the whole thing up. She had no evidence to prove it either way. She decided she would have to print cards of her own and pass the message along to someone else. Perhaps she could save someone from a dead-end job, and if she could save just one other person, then it would all be worth it.

Day 179 - Part-time Story

Part-time Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Alan lived a part-time existence. He didn’t believe in anything full-time. Some people bandied about phrases like “give it your all” or “110% effort.” Alan didn’t know what that meant or why anyone would ever want to give their all to something or someone else. To him, time was just about the only commodity he had, and he hadn’t found anything that was worth a full amount of it.

Alan’s wife Anya was just about the perfect partner for him. They worked incredibly well together as a team. Anya lived a multitasking existence. She was quite adept at handling five or six projects at the same time. She enjoyed the challenge and puzzle-solving aspect to multitasking. She wasn’t very concerned about what exactly she was multitasking, which made things work all the better with Alan, because she could help multitask all the parts of his part-time life.

Alan was a part-time employee with a plethora of part-time jobs. Alan thought this made him interesting. Bosses were not as impressed. Alan had at least two jobs for each day of the week. In the morning Alan delivered newspapers and at night he ran trivia nights at bars and played host at meetup events. On the weekends he was an event planner and worked at seasonal events like fairs and concerts. During his days he rotated part-time jobs – anything from cleaning companies to data entry and reception desks. No single job ever paid all his bills. No single job ever took up a standard workday amount of time.

There were many stresses within his marriage because Alan was always looking for work. Nothing was ever consistent and he got bored easily. Even when he was working, jobs would come and go, contracts would expire, and leads would dry up. Most of his jobs required some bit of chance – did he make a sale, would someone buy something for an online store, things like that. It was fairly inconsistent and happened at random times. Some months were great. Some were beyond poverty. Part-time unemployment might have been a better term.

Being a part-time husband didn’t always work. Alan was always true to Anya, he was never a part-time husband in that respect, but he wasn’t a great husband. A man who was only invested part-time could never be a great husband. He valued her values like he valued his own – part-time. He committed to her hobbies and their activities the way he committed to his own – part-time. If Anya had been a more demanding woman, their relationship would never have worked. He started lots of projects and hobbies and finished few.

In many ways their idiosyncratic nature resulted in them having an unfulfilled, underdeveloped lifestyle. His life at home was wildly inconsistent. He cleaned some of the time, he cooked some of the time, and he was home only some of the time. Rooms were half unfurnished; books were half read; paintings were half painted. Some might call him lazy. Some thought he had attention deficient problems.

Alan was not an easy man to know or get along with. He was often unavailable and regularly had too many commitments and not enough time. He was very social with lots of friends and a large social network. He attended parties often and threw many himself. When he threw a party there was always an eclectic mix of people and there were always multiple themes and activities. He had costume party wine tasting events and beer brewing game nights. His parties were always combinations of conflicting events much the same as his personality was also a hodgepodge.

In the end, Alan never did anything very well, but he did lots and lots of things. And he was always trying to find more to do. He always told anyone that would listen, that time was his only commodity, but deep down inside he was motivated more from a fear of standing still than a fear of running out of time. If he stood still, he would have to fully recognize who he was and learn to accept and live with himself, and the one thing he had never wanted to do was do anything fully. It was much easier to always be on the run and always running faster, trying to fill the void with distractions. If he could just learn to only focus on the distractions, he’d be okay.

Day 178 - Cross-country Story

Cross-country Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

The open road was supposed to be full of exciting possibilities. It was romanticized in literature and on film. It was revered as the best way to truly experience America with its different people with different cultures and customs. Theodore had flown across America, but he had always dreamed of driving across America. He had been saving money for three years. He was going to quit his job and do it. He was going to go and finally experience something unique and special. He had built it up in his mind for a long time. He knew it was going to be a life-changing adventure and he would become a new and different man. He would see the world in a new way. He would have new knowledge and a new appreciation and respect for his fellow countrymen. He couldn’t help but build his expectations up. There was a longing inside of him, a painful desire to do something memorable and real and to finally feel like he was living. Everything always seemed like it was a prelude, to what he wasn’t exactly sure. But he was tired of living in hopes of finally reaching a future. He wanted to live in the moment, in the here and now, and to have that future be the present. He told himself that driving cross-country would do all of these things. He would learn who he was as a man. He would broaden his horizons and find his purpose and his goal and he would finally live. Deep down he knew this was some childish dream and that driving couldn’t really do all those things, but he had a year’s worth of money saved up to live on, and he knew he had to give this a try.

Some people told him to go and see historical sites and to experience the grandeur of nature. Other people had told him to travel the lesser-driven paths and see American for what it really was. He had heard of the current trendy cities, Austin, Portland, Las Vegas, and all the rest. There were cities of culture, cities of debauchery and everything in between. He had no single purpose and no final destination. He was going to drive for as long as he could and see anything that was along the way. If he did this right, he could see the 48 continental states and live a little bit of each. He would know the differences and know what it meant to be an American basically anywhere and everywhere. He might come back the way he came, or he might find something better. He had no outcome in mind. He wanted to experience it all and find a place that could make him happy. If he couldn’t find that, he joked he might “Thelma and Louise” it, although driving off a cliff never really appealed to him.

The day Teddy left, those around him thought that things would turn out one of two ways – he wouldn’t make it a day before he gave up, or he’d be back precisely in one year. Theodore was that sort of guy – he made a lot of plans and for the most part did none of them, never even starting. But if he did start, then he finished. Always. Nobody thought that he’d be gone though. Theodore was a sentimentalist and everyone assumed he would miss his life and his friends too much. No one thought he would find something along the road that could beat the allure of his past. For the most part Theodore would have agreed with his friends’ assessment of who he was. But there was that other side, that side that only he knew about, the side that longed for something more, something special. There was a small part of him that thought he would drive and keep on driving. Roots were overrated. One location to call a home was overrated. There was that small part of him that loved the idea of something new always over the next horizon. Something new meant there could be something special. As long as he had gas money he always had a chance of finding it. All he ever wanted was a chance to get things right, and a chance was all he ended up making for himself.

Day 177 - Border Story

Border Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Laritus had never been to the water’s edge. His entire life he had always wanted to see the ocean. He had read the poems and seen the paintings and listened to the songs, but he had never seen it. The kingdom had no direct route to the sea.

There had been three Great Wars, all fought over the border between nations, and the desire to establish a land route to the water’s edge. His grandfather had been a foot soldier and had been killed in a losing effort. His father had ridden in the cavalry and disappeared during a reconnaissance mission. Laritus had fought as a young man in the 3^rd Great War. Again a losing war, but Laritus had survived. Laritus was happy to have avoided following his family tradition of dying on the battlefield. He had suffered through many unspeakable horrors during the war, but he had survived.

MilaHakra had been one big and bloody mess. MilaHakra was the name of an ancient leader as well as region of the country, one of the capital cities, and the largest most deadly battle of the 3^rd war. Halania had wagered the war on that battle and it had failed miserably.

After the battle was lost, the city was surrounded and under siege. The city and its forces had held as long as they could. But in the end it wasn’t enough. No reinforcements were coming to their rescue. No breakout was possible. Laritus spent six months defending the city and after the city fell, an additional year as a prisoner before the war finally ended.

Laritus was a leader now and no one spoke of the failures from the 3^rd Great War. It was hardly ever mentioned that Laritus had been a soldier at MilaHakra, and there were no records of what he did or did not do during the battle or the subsequent siege. Leaders got to rewrite or erase their own history as they saw fit. There were no songs written about losing battles and the veterans had no desire to remember the horrors that occurred. There were rumors – rumors of cannibalism, whispers of attempts to flee in the night and failed mutinies and attempts to surrender to the city, and then the shame of hiding amongst the women and sick when the city finally did fall.  No one ever accused Laritus of any of these things.

After the war MilaHakra had been stolen by Shogarten as a form of war reparations and Laritus had risen to become a military leader of Halania. A generation later, the deep-rooted resentments from semi-constant wars ran deep. It was obvious that a 4^th Great War was on the horizon. This war wouldn’t be fought for the same reasons as the previous three. A route to the sea would have been beneficial, but that dream had faded long ago. Now there was just resentment and the desire to crush Shogarten. When sibling rivalry resulted in the death of several members of the Shogarten aristocracy it seemed as if the time was right to strike and strike quickly.

Laritus was an aging man and had no true desire to fight, but he was a man of honor and he would do his duty. The strategy of the 4^th war was to move quickly and burn anything in their way as they continually pushed their way towards the capital of Shogarten. Previous wars had been about taking and holding land and trying to defend these gains until a peace could be created. There was no desire for peace during this war, only the desire to destroy. Halania had had enough and they were out for blood.

Laritus got to march through MilaHakra and it was liberated and returned to its rightful country. He had little time to reminisce, but he felt proud to have been part of the force that reunited his fellow brethren.

Three days later he was struck by an arrow during battle. Laritus was left for dead as his soldiers continued on their path. There was no time to care for the wounded. There was no time to hold the ground after battle and regroup. There was only the moving forward on a singular path of destruction.

Laritus had been wandering for days now. He had lost his sense of direction, but he trudged on. Sometimes he stole food, other days he went hungry. He was no surgeon, but he knew enough of battle medicine to sew a wound. He had lost a lot of blood, but he was still moving.

While his armies made a journey of death and demolition, Laritus made a pilgrimage to the sea. He had always wanted to see the water, something that had never been accomplished by three generations of men. He had no idea if his country would win their war or not, he knew he wouldn’t live long enough to find out. His only remaining hope was that he could live long enough to catch a glimpse of that elusive dream. He hoped he was heading in the right direction.