Character portraits: Alex

Name: Alex Caulson
Series: Otherworld
Age: 22
Height: 5’9″
Weight 206 lbs.
Hometown: Pueblo, Colorado

About the character

Alex is a self-described nerd. He’s overweight and insecure. He likes video games, anime, electronics, and other geeky things. At the start of Out of the Past, he holds a bachelor’s in astronomy, a subject that has always been his passion. As history is another one of his interests, he’s trying to specialize in the field of archaeoastronomy, which is how he got roped into an archaeological excursion to Mexico in the first place.

But he doesn’t fit there or anywhere. He never has, and he knows it. Almost all the friends he’s ever had were online, and he met most of them while gaming or on obscure forums—the only reason he even has social media accounts is to keep up with his family. He keeps to himself, rarely speaking up even when he probably should.

When he and ten fellow students get lost while investigating their earth-shattering find, he blames himself. After all, it was his idea to go back out there a day early, before the experts leading the team were willing to set out. Though the others don’t blame him, he blames himself. Why? Because, in his mind, he deserves the blame. If they won’t give it to him, he’ll just take matters into his own hands.

Of the eleven members of the Otherworld expedition, he’s the most out of place. A gamer and internet junkie suddenly cut off from everything electronic that he wasn’t carrying? A fat geek (his words) stuck in a place where everyone walks? He would consider it a miracle that he survived the expedition, but he doesn’t believe in miracles.

Author’s thoughts

Quite simply, Alex is me in almost every respect. He’s younger, of course (22 to my 30, when I first started writing Otherworld), and he has more formal education, but we’re otherwise a lot alike. We’re both huge nerds—in more ways than one. We both read a lot of science fiction. I’d never been in a serious relationship when I created him in 2013; his first started in the summer of 2020, around the same time I was beginning to throw mine away.

That’s absolutely intentional on my part. I wrote Alex as something between a personal deconstruction and wish fulfillment. I’ll grant that the latter took over after a certain point; that point, in case you were wondering, was around Situational Awareness.

In other words, Alex began as a representation of who I saw myself as. Now, as I’m writing the 20th main Otherworld story, I see him as who I want to become. He’s happily married, two words he never would have dreamed could describe him. Though he’s had to sacrifice almost everything he had, he was able to build a life for himself. A simple life, but a life nonetheless. He didn’t realize what he was missing, how important it was to his well-being, until he found it, lost it, and found it again. I…have only made it to the second step of that process.

Of the hundred or more characters I’ve written, this is one of the easiest. The dialogue and exposition don’t always flow, but the inner monologue is easy: I just write what I would be thinking in that situation. That’s usually what Alex would be thinking, so it works out. I can put him into situations and draw on my own experiences to resolve them. Not only does that save me time as a writer, but it’s cathartic for me as a person. It lets me imagine a world in which things actually work out for me once in a while.

Year of hell

(The title isn’t from a song this time. Instead, this very appropriate name comes from my favorite episode of Star Trek: Voyager, the most underrated of the Trek series.)

One year ago, I was free. One year ago, I had hopes and dreams. I believed I had a chance to succeed, to achieve some of the life goals I’ve had for decades. I lived in a country where this was possible, if unlikely for one such as myself. I was depressed, yes, but I felt like I could see the light, that I could reach it, if only I tried hard enough.

A lot can change in a year.

Now, I live in a dystopian nightmare. I haven’t been inside a business in a full year, apart from five seconds inside the America’s Best store in Hixson last May. I went in to get my new glasses. I’d gotten the prescription in February, but then I had to find the money to pay for them. By the time I finally managed that, the whole world shut down, with the notable bastions of intelligence in Sweden and South Dakota. So I couldn’t actually pick up my order until businesses were “allowed” to reopen.

But it wasn’t that simple. As soon as I walked inside, the cashiers demanded a temperature check, so I walked right back out. My mom, who took me down there (can’t drive without glasses, remember), is less allergic to authoritarianism, so she submitted to the illegal medical exam long enough to retrieve what I had already paid for.

Since then, I’ve mostly stayed at home. And that’s most certainly not because I believe that’s the best way to combat a virus.

No, lockdowns don’t work. We have proof of that. You only need to look at the places that didn’t imprison their entire citizenry for months on end to see the real numbers. Similarly, masks don’t work. That’s why I haven’t worn one since December 2019, when I thought I had the flu. (As it turns out, I had the Wuhan coronavirus. You know how I know? Because it was listed as the flu and an “unknown pathogen” on my release papers.) As I haven’t been sick—in the physical sense, as I know I’m seriously mentally ill—since, I’ve seen no reason to restrain my breathing, trigger my anxiety, and curtail my liberty in that manner.

Well, you might think, what about the vaccine? Uh-uh. First off, it’s not a vaccine, because the purpose of a vaccine is to provide immunity to a virus by stimulating the body’s immune system. The Moderna and Pfizer mRNA treatments don’t do this. They don’t prevent you from contracting the Wuhan virus. They don’t prevent you from spreading it to others. They barely alleviate the symptoms. What they actually do is even worse. Ask Hank Aaron. Ask the nurse from Chattanooga who passed out on live TV. Ask the women who’ve had miscarriages, the perfectly healthy men in their 30s who have suffered serious injury or even death.

The virus has an overall fatality rate of around 0.02%, and essentially no reinfection. (Wait, 0.02%? Don’t the official numbers say 0.26%? Yes, but those are heavily inflated. Per the CDC’s own report, only about 6% of deaths can be traced to the virus itself. The rest are due to comorbidities: preexisting conditions such as obesity, heart problems, kidney failure, etc. Since comorbidities aren’t counted for vaccine deaths, we need to compare apples to apples.)

The mRNA “vaccines” cause serious harm in about 5% of cases, and death in as many as 0.4%. We don’t know the exact figures, because they rely on voluntary reporting, and no one wants to point out that Emperor Fauci has no clothes. However you look at the data, though, it doesn’t lie. On the whole, getting the virus is actually safer than getting its supposed cure!

And that’s merely one more truth the world has decided to deny in the past year. But there are many more.

  • Lockdowns are ineffective. They achieve nothing in terms of slowing the spread of an illness, unless you go to the extremes of a certain communist dictatorship and weld people’s doors shut so they can’t go outside. As sane countries are supposed to respect things like basic human rights and dignity, citizens will go outside. And they should, because the fastest way to end a pandemic is to reach herd immunity.

  • The Chinese virus isn’t even a pandemic. Take away the overinflated death counts, where suicides, overdoses, car accidents, and murders are attributed to a virus simply because the victim tested positive in a flawed procedure three weeks before the time of death, and it never reached the CDC’s defined threshold of pandemic status. That’s when approximately 5% of all deaths are caused by the pathogen in question; only by counting every death under the sun were we able to hit that mark even at the peak last April.

  • The makers of the “vaccines” have ulterior motives. Notice that they are indemnified against all liability, and they’ve received billions of taxpayer dollars. These treatments have bypassed the normal FDA requirements, and why? The virus isn’t another Spanish flu. It’s not smallpox or polio. It has killed fewer people than tuberculosis in the past year.

  • People are suffering. The single-minded focus on this particular virus has caused irreparable harm to our society and our populace. Suicides are at an all-time high. Childhood trauma is rampant. Depression and anxiety, as I know all too well, can make plenty of people wish they were dead, or at least not living through this.

  • The media is not on our side. For twelve months, they have parroted the talking points of a specific segment of the political spectrum. Andrew Cuomo was a hero when he sent infected patients to nursing homes a year ago, killing thousands of elderly men and women. The governors of California, Washington, Ohio, Michigan, Virginia, and many other states have acted in a way more appropriate to the old Soviet Union, if not the feudal era. And not only have journalists not called out these gross abuses of power, but they have lauded them every step of the way.

Twelve months ago, even expressing these ideas was heresy of the highest order. You were instantly branded a denier, a skeptic, an alt-right fascist terrorist. You were called racist, sexist, or any number of other hateful epithets.

Now? Oh, it’s even worse. But some people are waking up. There’s a strong anti-mask movement that isn’t hard to find. The worst government abuses and excesses are finally getting pushback. Alternative social media platforms are gaining in popularity, especially now that the big players—Google, Twitter, Facebook—have deemed scientific accuracy and a love of personal liberty to be violations of their terms of service.


It’s been a rough year. In twelve months, I’ve gone from cautiously optimistic to suicidally depressed. The only thing that gives me hope is the knowledge that I’m not alone in this. Anyone who has taken any time at all to think about what we’re being forced to endure feels the same way. We don’t want a “new normal”, where children aren’t allowed to play, where handshakes and hugs are illegal, where you’re a prisoner in your own home unless you agree to undergo experimental genetic modification. No, we want what we had. What was taken from us.

This “pandemic” isn’t worth the name. Compare the total death counts in the US from 2019 and 2020. Shouldn’t those “500,000 coronavirus deaths” show up there? Look at the flu stats for this winter—rather, the total absence of them. Look at the mental health crisis sweeping our nation, and tell me stopping what amounts to a bad cold is worth that cost. Spare a thought for the record number of suicides in the last year.

Because there were a lot of days where I almost joined them.

Future imperfect

Today I met a man
He looked so much like me
I asked him where he’d been
He told me where I’d be

“All the world,” he said, “is
Nothing but a stage
History is just a book
Each life a single page

Authors of our fate we are
Weavers of our destiny
With power to create
The change we want to see

The past for us is written
In ink indelible
The future sketched in pencil
And ever changeable

I have written many stories
Told tales of distant lands
Yet the only thing I wanted
Never fell into my hands

Nothing could come easily
No matter how I tried
So I gave up trying
And many nights I cried

Until my days were running out
My love a memory
I wondered if a bullet
Would be my remedy

I beg of you to listen
Th my words because
I came to show you how to be
Better than I ever was.”


Apparently, I wasn’t done a couple of days ago. Why my mind dreams this stuff up while I’m on the toilet or taking a shower, I’ll never know.

The second leg

This blog is named Prose Poetry Code, but you’ll notice I almost never mention the “poetry” part. I’m just not any good at it.

But inspiration occasionally strikes, so here’s a verse I literally just composed in the bathroom.

I’m a shadow of a man, a dark reflection
Plato’s cave is where I dwell, forever onward
Not allowed to see the sun, nor light of hope
Cursed to watch the hours pass, alone in darkness

If you want something done right…

For my entire life, I have had to rely on others. And never have those others failed me more often than in our system of representative government. Whether in Chattanooga, Nashville, or Washington, the past two decades of adulthood have taught me that those who claim to rule in my name do not have my best interests at heart.

Like any good American, I’m ready to take matters into my own hands. Thus, it is with no small amount of trepidation that I say this:

I, Michael H. Potter, hereby declare my intent to seek the office of Representative for Tennessee’s 27th House District as an Independent in the 2022 General Election.

Democrats in this state’s offices are feckless, powerless. Republicans are willfully ignorant of the plight of the common Tennessean. I intend to stand for everyone in the 27th District, no matter their party affiliation (or lack thereof). No matter their race, sex, religion, ideology, or heritage.

If you live in Soddy-Daisy, I’ll represent you. If you live on Signal Mountain, I’ll represent you. Red Bank, Walden, Mowbray or Flat Top or Lookout Mountain, and anywhere in between: I’ll represent you. Because we are all Tennesseans. We are all Americans.


In the coming weeks, I will open my candidacy at MHP For Tennessee, and I will begin to grow my presence on alternative social media platforms that respect our rights as Americans.

For today, I would like to say that my platform is strictly defined by the Constitution of the United States and its associated amendments. To that end, my primary goals as your representative are as follows:

  • A statewide ban on all government-ordered mask and vaccine mandates related to COVID-19 or future minor pandemics, to be replaced by public education regarding infectious agents that is based on science rather than politics.

  • A requirement that any electronic voting machines used in Tennessee use open source software whose contents are available to the public, with independent security audits performed before and after any election.

  • A repeal of certain laws that disfavor local, in-state small businesses and cooperatives in favor of national or global corporations, such as the anti-municipal internet laws preventing all Tennesseans from benefiting from investment by local power companies.

  • The binding declaration of our great state as a sanctuary for the rights guaranteed by the First and Second Amendments, including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to assemble peacefully, and the right to bear arms.

  • A focus on returning civics and critical thinking skills to our children’s education throughout the state, to combat the spread of harmful and anti-American doctrines such as Critical Race Theory.

  • The creation of public-private partnerships to emphasize skill-based training and hiring, thereby giving more Tennesseans entry or reentry into the workforce without the great expense of a college-level education in fields which have little need for it.

  • A continuous vigilance in pushing back against federal overreach, whether legislative or executive, by exercising our state’s powers of self-regulation under the Tenth Amendment.