“The Integral of My Life Over All My Choices” (Science Fiction, 1,000 words), one of my Flash stories, dropped today on Dreamforge Anvil.

This was the second story of mine to appear in Dreamforge, a semipro science fiction and fantasy online and print magazine. (Although semipro, they are closing in on pro payment rates due to increasingly successful Kickstarter campaigns).

WARNING: There are spoilers in this article, so before continuing past this point please take the five or so minutes required to read this short story: Click Here to read “The Integral of My Life Over All My Choices” on the Dreamforge Anvil website.

Story Origins

For a decade I taught AP Physics and Coached Robotics at a local high school. So I spent many hours listening to and talking with millennial teens. Because competitive robotics involved build sessions that lasted hours just about every day, the students would let their guard down and speak in their native dialect around me. I’ve seen very few science fiction and fantasy stories that leaned into this dialect, so wanted to try a story.

The first draft of this story was much more authentic than the final published version regarding language constructs. Unfortunately, I found that workshop reviewers (who were mostly over 40 years old) could not really make heads or tails of it. So I was forced to tone the language way down both in terms of slang and the use of expletives. I’m sure people who were students during this era (mid 2010’s) will point out places where the language used in the story is not entirely accurate due to this need to make it more understandable to a wide audience.

The title comes partially from an actual conversation I had with a student. The calculus parts of AP Physics were always challenging to teach because most student were learning calculus at the same time as AP Physics. One key concept that students often had trouble with was understanding that the calculus integral operator is basically just a fancy way to do addition. One day I said to a student, “You are the sum of the choices you make, so make good ones.” She replied, “So I’m the integral over all my choices!”

Other influences on this story included teen angst over getting into the perfect college, the idealism and sometimes cruelty that they display, and the question, “What would you do if you met your future self and didn’t like what you saw?”

Theme

The theme of this story is “choices.” As in “Dogman Relates the Parable of Context”, I indicated the theme right in the title.

A college bound mathematical genius meets her future self, and she realizes that future self has lost her idealism–specifically her willingness to take risks to help people. She decides that she doesn’t want to become that person, and resolves to make better choices.

That Screaming Cat

The “screaming cat” subplot appears at first to be inconsequential but ends up becoming a crucial part of the story. From the very beginning we find that both young-me and old-me are cat lovers. However, it becomes clear that old-me loves cats much more than young-me. For example, old-me actually got the cat-playing-with-yarn tattoo, while young-me merely “almost got” it. We find at the very end that this slight difference in the level of their love of cats was the very reason why old-me never had to get a warning to avoid being killed with Sammy. She decided to rescue the cat, while young-me decided to go to Sammy instead.

But we also find, in the very last line, that this difference was quite subtle. Young-me, despite being distraught at Sammy’s demise, decides to take the time to save the cat.

It’s left as an open question whether young-me really does succeed in taming the “dancing chronlines” and saving Sammy. But we’re all rooting for her. I guess the whole point is, she’s willing to try.

Real Time

This is another flash story that takes place nearly in real time. There was a small amount of time skipped over when the main character “gets her fleek going.”

Prose Style

The prose explores a toned-down millennial slang (high school age) from approximately the mid 2010’s in northern New Jersey. Mostly middle class, college bound students.

For those of you my age (I’m 60ish as I write this), here is a glossary:

BAE: Before all else. Your significant other.

JK: Just kidding.

“PJs and best kicks”: Pajamas and stylish boots. Millennials sometimes wear pajamas when going out places.

“Praying to St. Blaze”: Smoking marijuana. Although this phrase as a whole is not millennial slang, the term “Blaze it” meaning lighting up a joint is sometimes used by teens (or at least was in mid 2010s). Saint Blaise is the patron saint of throat diseases for Catholics. So this is a pun.

“I get my fleek going”: She fixes her hair and makeup. This comes from the term “on fleek” meaning, in reference to makeup, eyebrows, etc. “perfect” or “beautiful.”

swagshirt: This is not millennial slang, I made it up for the story. Swag is marketing items like mugs, caps, or shirts with corporate logos (millennials do use this term). Therefore this is a sweatshirt that is swag, i.e. in this case a sweatshirt with the Caltech logo. The artist for this story figured this out perfectly!

wrecked: emotionally spent, distraught. In text messages this is often spelled “rekt.”

You will note that once young-me begins talking to old-me, her speech becomes less slangy. Most teens, when speaking with adults, will revert to more standard speech patterns and avoid slang. Even though she’s talking to her older self, I figured this innate reaction would still occur.

Timeline

Here’s the publication timeline for this story. This story had a moderately long journey from draft to publication.

• This story was written in the summer of 2019 and reviewed on the OWW workshop.
• Over the next several years it was rejected by 11 publications, including F&SF, Nature, Uncanny, The Arcanist, Factor Four, Apex, Metastellar, and others. Although this was disconcerting, the story frequently made it into “Second look” and “held for consideration” piles so I figured that if I was persistent it would eventually sell. I think part of the difficulty was that time travel stories are a bit of a tough sell, since the topic has been extensively explored in short story format.
• Accepted by Dreamforge Anvil on January 29, 2022.
• Published June 12, 2022.

So about 3 years from initial draft to publication. This is somewhat longer than average for my stories.

Conclusion

You are the sum of the choices you make, so make good ones! I made the choice to keep submitting this story despite many rejections, and I’m glad my past self made that choice.