Endless Nebula

You see this?

That's not a river. That's the South Canal in Mesa, Arizona (Phoenix metro area).

This is a view of the East and South canals. At least half of all the Phoenix metro canals were originally built by the Hohokam (from roughly 200-1400 CE), and are still in use (restored) today.

Phoenix, Arizona actually has more miles (kilometers) of Canals total than both Venice and Amsterdam. No, really. Phoenix has about 180 miles of canals, many of which are built on ancient canal foundations.

below is an aerial view photo taken in the late 1930's of one branch of Phoenix's canal systems:

Also have the "Montezuma Castle," if you need a castle:

When you’re stumped and you don’t know what’s not working for your writing, or you don’t know where to go next, take out a rubber duck (or any equivalent friend/inanimate object, I like to use my dogs) and start explaining every single detail as if the rubber duck knows nothing about writing or about your story. Explain out loud what’s going on, what part you’re up to, why you’re stumped, and what you know you need to get to when you figure out how to get there

Polly Exhaled, relieved to finish the call. As soon as his lens adjusted back to the room, he began to pull up the feed of bureaucratic documents he now had to work his way through. Before he could start, Jules caught his eye. She was sitting by the window, lounging unprofessionally on the pale yellow cushion attached to the seat. She was throwing what looked like a datashard into the air, catching it again before it could hit the floor. If he'd seen anyone else, including himself, doing this on company time, he would have reprimanded them without a second thought, but not Jules. Jules was special.

Polly smiled as he watched her— fascinated that she could entertain herself with something so simple when she was surrounded by interfaces. To an outsider, it would be clear that Jules, lounging by the window, was the CEO; and Polly, laboring away at his desk, was the assistant, but the opposite was true. While Jules' was technically a personal assistant, most of what she did consisted of reminding Polly to be present— grounding someone who would otherwise lose himself in his work.

Hearing his lack of movement, Jules caught the datashard one last time and turned to face him.

“Ya' doin' okay, Polly?”

Polly smiled hearing his own name. Among her other duties, Jules was also the only person in the Union who Polly had trusted with his true Identity— in fact, she was the first person Polly had met capable of understanding gender.

“Yeah, I'm fine, Jules. I suppose the monotony is getting to me again, that's all.”

“Then stop working. It's not like anyone would know if you let a 'pseudo fill out those forms. You should work on something fun, like that liminal space research.”

Had he really forgotten to tell her what happened? Or, maybe, his unconscious mind just didn't want to disappoint her.

“Project got shut down,” he explained, not making eye contact with her as he did.

“What?! Why?” Jules stood up, walking up to his desk like an angry investor.

“It was pointless, Jules. Leenad set up hundreds of stations in liminal locations, none of them found anything.”

Expecting disappointment, Polly averted his gaze. When Jules didn't respond, he looked back up at her, hands on the front of his desk like an angry teacher, though her expression told a different story. She looked at him like he'd just said something magnificently stupid in that way only she could get away with.

“What?”

“Polly— if the key to falling out of space time is liminal spaces, you can't set up research stations inside them. If a space is a destination, it is no longer liminal.”

“I don't think spacetime is that sapiocentric—”

“Who says it is? Just because this sort of thing only happens in areas we perceive as liminal space doesn't mean our perception causes it. Come on, give it one more chance? For me?”

Polly never even tried to resist Jules puppy dog eyes— he just stood up, letting her drag him by his wrist to his office door.

“Come on! Let's go get Leenad,” Jules said, dropping Polly's wrist just before they entered the hallway, beginning their charade once more.

I am a social worker. I have worked in community mental health and in home-based healthcare. And it is much, much easier for me to help you when the situation you're in is not yet a full-blown crisis.

"I'm out of money and have been for a while and now I haven't eaten for three days." This is a crisis. A crisis where I'm likely going to have to put you in the car and take you to the nearest food bank--except food banks require appointments now, and the next opening is in four days, so you're staring down the barrel of a week with no food. That's obviously not going to work, so, let's call eight different food banks until we've found one that has an appointment the next day...except it's in the neighboring county and you can't drive. So now I'm calling your doctor to try and brow beat an emergency plan of care update out of him so I can come back the next day and drive you to the food bank. And we haven't even started on the "constantly broke" part of the problem.

"I don't think I have enough food to make it to my next paycheck. I have (xyz) in my house and that will only last until (date)." This is bad, but not a crisis. We have a few days. We make you an appointment at the food bank and contact your brother to make sure you have a ride there. Now we can spend our visit talking about what bills are causing you the most problems and make a jump on a long-term solution, like looping in a community action agency to cover your utilities and getting you an OTC card from Medicaid to cover some of your groceries every month.

"I'm ten months behind on rent, and my landlord said I have a week to get out, or the cops will throw me out. I don't have the money, and if I get evicted, I have nowhere to go." This is a crisis. Every single thing we do here is going to be some version of a Hail Mary. In Michigan, we have the state emergency relief fund for rent issues, but process time is well over one week. There are community action agencies that we can call to assist you with payment, but they are unlikely to have sufficient funds to cover nearly a year of back rent. We can contact legal aid clinics to try and prevent your landlord from evicting you, but they may look at your case and determine that too much "fault" lies with you. Most likely, I'm going to have to put you in touch with homeless shelters and the public housing office.

"I'm two months behind on rent and I don't think I'll be able to pay next month either." This is bad, but not a crisis. This is solvable. We have time to apply for SER, or put you in contact with community action agencies. We have time to review your finances and see if you qualify for a public housing wait list or other forms of ongoing rental assistance. We have time to talk about a million possible adjustments to try and ease the burden of your rent.

"I am the sole caregiver for my elderly parent who has dementia and is emotionally volatile and fully dependent on me. I have not slept through the night in weeks and I have not had an actual break for over a year. I am having screaming meltdowns multiple times a week and I am threatening self-harm unless someone comes to collect my parent and take over all caregiver duties." This is a crisis. This is a crisis where the ethical code of my profession demands that I call 911 and report the conversation to them. They will likely come to the house and interview you. If they determine your threats were serious, they will have you forcibly committed to a psych ward. Your parent will either be dumped into a random hospital or rehab center, or left in the house on their own. Upon release from your psych hold, you will be expected to resume caregiving duties as though nothing happened. Except, now, adult protective services is actively investigating you, because it was determined you may be an ongoing danger to your parent.

"I am the sole caregiver for my demented parent, and I have not had a break in a couple of weeks, and I feel angry and weepy most of the time." This is bad, but not a crisis. We can get you in touch with volunteer groups for respite, and apply for state funded programs to get more day-to-day help, and talk about long-term planning for when the dementia symptoms get worse. We can get you the phone numbers for crisis lines and enroll you in a support group.