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Monday, March 18, 2024

Microstory 2106: Die, Or Get Caught

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I’m giving in. I have to do what they tell me. These people set me up with my new identity, a place to live, and a way to protect myself from being found by authorities. Either I pay them back with whatever they want me to do, or they expose my whereabouts. They didn’t specifically say that that’s what they were going to do, but they’ve frequently reminded me what they did for me, so I can read between the lines. I never had any illusions that this relationship wasn’t transactional, but I was under the impression that they were going to let me get on a little payment plan. With my job and simple lifestyle, it would not have taken long to finish paying it off. They never said that the favor they’re asking of me replaces the money, though, so I’m pretty sure that they’re still expecting the cash anyway. I still don’t know what I’m going to have to do for them, but I have a when and a where. I was hired to work second shift for my regular job, which goes from 8:00 to 16:00 now that we only have three janitors on the team. As soon as I get off work, I have to make my way downtown using public transportation. They don’t even want me to stop and grab something to eat, but they say that I will want to be fed. I ate a big breakfast this morning, and I’m going to have an early dinner before my shift ends. We’re allowed to take a thirty-minute lunch now, and it can be at any time, as long as there isn’t something time-sensitive that needs to be cleaned. I think I can hold out until the very last minute. My alternate self back in my home universe fasts for fifteen hours every day. It shouldn’t be too hard for me. Hopefully, whatever the secret job is won’t take too long, and I’ll have time to eat something before bed. I’ll let you know how it went in my post tomorrow. Unless I die, or get caught, then you may never hear from me again. My new “bosses” never actually said that I would be involved in something illegal, but we met when they did something illegal for me, so I guess I’ve been assuming that this whole time. Maybe I’ll get lucky, and they just want me to mow someone’s lawn, or babysit their kid for a few hours.

Sunday, March 17, 2024

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 18, 2439

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It took a little time, but Olimpia managed to find where Vitalie!811’s stasis pod was buried. It wasn’t hard to convince her to play the role of a new executive hire for this world. Before she started sending her alternate selves to all the inhabited planets in the universe, she underwent extensive training to learn how to blend in with any culture. She could become whatever type of person she needed to be to complete the mission, like a foreign spy on Earth. She even knew how to make disguises to keep from blowing her cover, which was good, because no one on the team knew how to give their illusion powers to others through new temporal objects. It was a thing, they knew this much, but it was a skill that they would have to learn later, and find someone to practice on.
In the meantime, Ramses figured out how to reverse engineer the comms discs, so they could give one to Vitalie!811. They were probably going to keep doing this on each world. The network was as complex as any, and far more secure. The various Vitalies could stay in contact with each other too if they wanted, leaving the team out of it altogether. If they met other people in the future who could be trusted, they could join the network as well. They would have to be kept separate, though. Members of the team should always be able to tap into their respective conversations, without these hypothetical people being able to do it to the team. The team network, the Vitalie network, and the trusted outsider network: same same, but different. Ramses would have to work on that, along with the million other projects he had on his plate right now.
Today, they were on a break. The nearest system to Ex-811 was nearly two light years away, which meant their relativistic ship had not yet arrived. They were just flying through space, with not much to do yet. It was going to be a bottle episode.
“That’s not true,” Angela contended. “We know where we’re going; we know what’s there, so let’s prepare for it. Let’s make a real plan for once.”
“Or we could stop,” Marie countered.
“If we were to stop,” Angela replied, “we would still have time to do what I said, because we’re still in the middle of nowhere.”
“There’s something else that needs to be done,” Marie insisted, which we may be able to assist with. Leona?”
Leona was preoccupied with something, and not paying them any attention. “Huh? What’s that?”
“What was that thing we were talking about this morning, which needed to be fixed, but we can’t do it while we’re at fractional speeds?” Marie pressed.
“Oh, the reframe engine, yeah, it’s cracked.” Leona held up her tablet, but didn’t bother showing them the screen. “I’m running simulations on it now.”
“So maybe we can stop and do that?” Marie suggested.
“Oh, no, not here,” Leona clarified. “No, we don’t have what we need. Besides, that’s not what requires being at drifting speeds or lower. The testing is what demands it, but we can’t test it unless we seal that crack, or just replace the whole engine.”
Can we replace the engine?” Olimpia questioned. “Do they have one here?”
Leona did the Indian head bobble. “They have reframe tech, yes. Do they have one that specifically fits the Vellani Ambassador? I sure as hell hope not, because I don’t want them to know anything about it. It would just be easier to fabricate it if we had access to parts and equipment that’s used to make them.”
“Where can we find that?” Marie asked. “The dockyard, Ex-741 was destroyed.”
“Well, we know that they build some ships on Ex-182 too, according to Vitalie!324’s intel, as well as the rebels on Ex-666. In fact, we believe that some more advanced tech is kept there, since it’s so heavily protected. We specifically avoided it because it’s probably the absolute most dangerous one, and we decided that Niobe and the Ex-666ers would be responsible for it. If we wanted to go there instead, it would be a pretty long detour. We kind of sidestepped it.”
“No, I don’t think we should do that,” Olimpia reasoned. “You’re right, that sounds entirely too dangerous to so much as approach, even with my ability to turn invisible.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Angela decided. “We’re already on our way to Ex-467. That should be all we’re thinking about right now.”
“What’s there to think about?” Marie poses. “It’s a warehouse that holds secrets.” She threw up airquotes. “The person from there who Vitalie!324 spoke to barely told her anything about it. He either doesn’t know, or didn’t wanna say. There’s no way for us to prepare for that. All we can do is wait until we get there to see what’s what.”
“I think we’re going to have to break into it,” Angela posited. “Between the six of us, we have lots of experience breaking in and out of places, so let’s formulate some strategies ahead of time. They probably have one of those teleportation dampening field things, or whatever they were called. We need to be prepared for that. How does this ship do with surface landings? Do we have a shuttle? Escape pods?”
“We know all the answers to these things,” Leona said.
“Great,” Angela retorted. “Who’s we? You and Ramses? I’m saying that we all need to talk about it, so everyone understands what we have at our disposal. If we’re about to do a heist, I want to be as prepared as possible, so when we finally do get there, we’ll already know what tools are in our toolbag.”
“Okay, okay, okay. That’s fair,” Leona recognized. “And you’re right that it’s more pressing. I’ll stop what I’m doing, and give you the grand tour. We probably should have been more focused on that before, we just had so much going on. Once we’ve done that, we can talk about the techniques we have to get in and out of places. We can’t rest on our laurels with our special powers, because they may not work everywhere, especially not in a place that’s designed to be off-limits.”
“Let’s start with the reframe engine,” Marie recommended.
And so Leona started to show the majority of the team around, including a disgruntled Mateo, who was desperately trying to practice his illusion skills. He never thought he would be as good as any of the others, but he needed to be good enough to fool an enemy. Ramses wasn’t there, of course, because he already knew all of this stuff, and he had plenty of work to do in his lab. They spent hours on this, but it wasn’t boring for most. Leona was so articulate and informative with her lessons, it was as if she had known that this would be requested, and had rehearsed it. But that was a sign of being a true authority on something. She knew it so well, talking about it was an effortless task.
She went over the basic specifications of this reframe engine, which was more fuel efficient than any they had used until now. She also explained why it couldn’t be used, even though the crack running down the side was almost imperceptible to the human eye. She showed them the multipurpose pods, which could be used for stasis, virtual reality uplink, emergency escape, or even just sleeping. She took them to the bridge, where there were hidden compartments that Mirage had to give them access to. There were a few weapons here, but the vessel itself was not armed for space combat. Nor did anyone ever want it to be. As decided, that was the Ex-666 rebellion’s job. They had come full circle now, back to the Delegation Hall. This was modular, able to be modified to different sizes and configurations, but at full size, it took up the majority of the space on the vessel. After all, that was why it was called the Vellani Ambassador in the first place. This was all part of a larger vessel. Mirage thought that it had the potential to be used for diplomatic discussions and heated arguments between warring parties, and she wanted to be able to have it separate from everything else. The Mediator Stateroom was the only one fit for personal living here, designated for a peacemaker to be able to separate themselves from the factions while remaining close by. The team still needed the dimensional generator for their own living quarters, affixed to a door what was otherwise a storage closet.
“You may have noticed that we can walk all the way through on either side of this room, as well as above and below. It’s in the exact center of the Ambassador, and there are no viewports. This was done for strategic reasons as much as for symmetry, in order to protect parties from an external attack from one side or the other. These windows you see here are not real, but displaying the feed from exterior cameras. They can just as easily be changed to display an ocean view...” She hit a button on the remote to prove it. “...or a TV show, if you wanted.” She hit another button to reveal an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which was famous for its many, many diplomatic storylines. “So if you’re bored, you—”
Before Leona could finish her sentence, four people appeared out of nowhere. She recognized them, as did Mateo, but Angela, Marie, and Olimpia did not. It was Goswin Montagne, Holly ‘Weaver’ Blue, Eight Point Seven, and Briar de Vries. The last time they saw this group, an older roster of Team Matic was leaving Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida in the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the same time that these four were going in the opposite direction in the X González. Goswin held his hands up, almost defensively, but more so confusedly. “What year is it? I mean...report! I keep forgetting to say report!”
“It’s 2439,” Leona replied. “May 18,” she added.
“How the hell is that man alive?” Briar asked accusingly, pointing at Mateo.
“Don’t worry about it,” Mateo replied. Briar was the one who killed Mateo the first time. Well, technically Horace Reaver killed Mateo in a completely different timeline, but that didn’t count, because any number of others could have done it in any other of the infinite timelines that came before, of which they were not cognizant.
Briar’s volume increased by the syllable. “No, I am going to worry about it, because if you’re alive, then that means I didn’t kill you, which means I’m exonerated!”
“I suppose that’s true,” Mateo admitted.
Briar was fuming now, back to a lowered volume, but still intensely threatening. “Oh my God, you have been alive this entire time? You understand how they have been treating me? You need to tell them to leave me alone. I don’t have to power The Nucleus anymore. I don’t have to stop the Reality Wars, because I don’t care! I am free! I’m free!” He paused for half a moment. “And I’m out of here!”
“No, wait!” Goswin cried, but it was too late. All four of them disappeared just as quickly as they had arrived.
Leona winced. “That was weird.”
“Hold on,” Marie said, looking around fearfully. “Where’s my sister?” She was right. Angela was gone too now.

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Fluence: Mirage (Part III)

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Goswin wiped the rain from his eyes, and was able to see that this Irene de Vries woman was not alone. A very young child was huddled against her hip. All signs pointed to the fact that this was Briar, but it could also be his son, or his great grandfather, or his eleventh cousin, forty-two times removed. “What year are you from?” Goswin asked. “Oh wait, no. Sorry. I mean, uhh...report.”
Irene smiled. “Trinity used to say that to me all the time. Is that in the time traveler’s handbook, or something?”
“If there’s an actual handbook, I’ve not actually seen it. That’s just what I’ve heard others say. May I ask the boy’s name?”
“It’s Briar.” Confirmed. “Hey, do I know you from somewhere? You look familiar. Have you ever been to the 21st century?”
“Captain!” Behind him, Weaver was power walking up, followed by Eight Point Seven, and Harrison.
“Is Madam Sriav with you?” Goswin asked.
Weaver shook her head. “She didn’t come. We assume she’s still on Lorania.”
“That’s not good,” Goswin mused. “We’ll try to get back to her. Crew, I would like you to meet Irene de Vries, and her son...Briar.”
Eight Point Seven didn’t react, and of course, neither did Harrison. Weaver flinched, but kept it together. Briar was in very, very big trouble, but not yet. Warning Irene that her son would one day become a killer was not going to help. Things could conceivably get better, but they could also get worse. She may decide that the only way to stop this would be to murder her son, and that would not be an okay decision. It wouldn’t work anyway. Briar killed Mateo while he was wearing the hundemarke, which was a special temporal object that created fixed moments in time. No matter how you try to change the past, this will always happen, as will anything inherently necessary to lead up to it. “It’s nice to meet you.” She pulled Goswin towards her, and did her best to whisper in his ear while still being heard through the rain. “We need to get out of here.”
“I know,” he replied.
“If you have to go back to the Middle Way, or whatever it is you did to make this happen a fourth time, then do it again. I don’t care if we end up on the moon. Just get us out of this paradox.”
“Fourth?” Goswin questioned incredulously. “You think I’m the one who took us to Achernar in the first place? You think that this was just something I’ve always been able to do, but the first time I tried was when I was in my 80s?”
“The thought crossed my mind. Maybe you’re salmon.”
“Excuse me?” Irene interjected. “The rain’s starting to come down harder. I really could use some shelter. There’s a cave nearby that we can hide in temporarily.”
“Hey!” a voice shouted to them. “Get the hell away from my mother!” Briar was running towards Goswin as fast as he could, and unlikely preparing to come to a complete stop just to exchange a few choice words. He was in a tackle posture. Fortunately, he didn’t make it that far. Harrison reached out, and lifted him up by his underarms, holding him in the air effortlessly as Briar continued to paddle his feet to no avail. “Let me go!”
“Did he just say mother?” Irene asked, confused and scared.
Goswin waggled his finger at the still struggling Briar. “Stop. Stop! We’re not going to hurt anyone. If you want to protect her, then you will stop moving, and listen to me very carefully.”
Briar went limp, and started to pant.
“Everyone gather around. Not you, Madam de Vries. Please go protect your son.” Once everyone else was in a huddle, Goswin went on. “I have a theory. Briar, are you familiar with any landmark on Earth; anything at all?”
“No, nothing.” Yeah, he had only ever remembered living on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. “Well, except for this.” He held up a photo of Irene in her younger days, smiling in front of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. “It was her favorite place in the world.”
Goswin closed his eyes and sighed. “Okay, I’ve been there too. That’ll work. Think about that place. Think about trying to go there.”
“Why?”
“Would you just do it? The National Museum of Natural History. Think about the museum. Think about visiting there. Don’t think about anything else.”
“Okay, I guess.”
The rain suddenly stopped. They were now in the middle of a grassy park. To one side of them was a giant bosom, and to the other a giant phallus. Behind them stood a red castle, and before them was the target museum, which was the second bosom. This was Washington D.C. all right. They were soaking wet on a bright, sunny day. The tourists around them were confused, and a few of them looked really nervous.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea,” Goswin admitted. “I just didn’t want us to go back to Bida, and Briar doesn’t have a frame of reference for much on Earth.”
“What is your hypothesis,” Weaver asked, “that he’s the one who brought us?”
“Well, it seems like the only possibility,” Goswin determined.
“We didn’t even see him at the other locations,” Weaver pointed out.
“Excuse me?” A man in overalls had approached Briar. “Could you please step closer to your friends?”
“They’re not my friends,” Briar spit at him.
“That is very much not my point, sir,” the stranger said. “Please step closer to them.” He waited, his patience thinning. “Please,” he repeated. “Thank you,” he added when Briar finally complied.
“What is it you need?” Goswin asked, ready for a fight, even though he was not much for violence.
The stranger held up his hands like he was trying to block the sun from his eyes. He jerked them a centimeter away from each other, which served to freeze everyone around them in place. Time was stopped, or at least moving very slowly. He gradually pushed his right hand forward, and in front of his left hand, which pulled back, and moved in the opposite direction. As he did so, time began to reverse outside of the bubble he had erected for them. They watched as the tourists walked backwards. A child’s scoop of ice cream flew back up to his cone from the ground. Once the scene was back to where he wanted it, he closed his hands into fists, and snapped them against each other, pinky to thumb. The five of them felt a lurch, as if the roller coaster ride were just beginning. The man carefully placed his left fist against his nose, and looked over his hands like a sniper. His arms were shaking, but not like he was struggling, more like it was integral to the process. As he slowly moved his fists away from his face, the scene around them began to blur and fade into blackness. They flew forward, also like a roller coaster. Finally, he opened his hands back up, and separated them, stopping the ride.
They were standing in a desert, the three main pyramids of Giza rippling above a mirage a few kilometers away. The slight distortion from the bubble dissolved, and the warm wind began to blow sand into their eyes and noses. “All right. It’s done.”
“What’s done?” Eight Point Seven questioned.
“You’ve been erased from the timeline. No one who witnessed your arrival in the National Mall remembers that it ever happened, because it didn’t. They’re all going about their day, still clueless about time travelers, and the like.”
“Thank you, Repairman,” Weaver said to him as if they were old friends. Maybe they were.
“When you say, we were erased from time...” Goswin trailed off intentionally.
“You just never showed up there,” the Repairman clarified. “Instead, you transported yourselves to this random spot in the Necropolis. You’ve been here the whole time, and if anyone were to ask a lizard or cactus around here what they saw, that’s what they would say.
“I don’t see any cactuses,” Briar noted.
“Then maybe you don’t have to worry about any witnesses,” the Repairman joked. He paused a moment. “Well, bye.”
“Wait!” Goswin stopped him. “Could you help us again...maybe by telling us what’s happening to us?”
“I wouldn’t know, but I heard you blame everything on this guy,” the Repairman said. “What I’ll tell you is that the ability to transport people from a distance is rather rare. It’s not impossible but...in my experience, when multiple individuals travel together without any of them realizing how or why, it’s not because one of them is doing it on purpose, but because there’s some kind of glue that binds them together.” He made a quarter turn, reached out, and opened an invisible panel in the air. They couldn’t see anything, but they could hear the familiar creak of metal scraping against metal. He reached into it, and took hold of an equally invisible handle, which he pulled down. His figure turned into a black silhouette for a split second before disappearing completely.
They stood there in silence for a few moments. “I have another idea,” Goswin finally said, worried how they would take it.
“A new experiment?” Weaver asked him, intrigued.
“Are you up for it? We have to get a handle on this. I don’t really want to spend the rest of my life randomly jumping from point to point.”
“Let’s hear it,” Eight Point Seven encouraged.
“You can’t,” Goswin replied. “I’m going to write four places down, and keep them compartmentalized. You will each think about your own place, and only that place. If he’s right, and there’s some kind of glue between us, it won’t work, because it will be contradictory.” He pulled out his handheld device, and started writing the locations down. He showed Briar the first one.
“Really?” Briar asked incredulously.
“Don’t. Give it away,” Goswin warned. “It’s a magic trick.”
Briar sighed, upset. He was being expected to think about the cliff where he killed Mateo Matic. It was simultaneously the worst and best place for him. What happened there was probably the worst thing he had ever done, so that meant, now that he had been triggered, he wouldn’t be able to think of anything else, even if he wanted to.
The other three, on the other hand, were going to be thinking about the the west entrance to the primary research facility on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. No one ever went back there, so they shouldn’t have to worry about being seen. Goswin was the only one who knew that he, Weaver, and Eight Point Seven had the same spot in mind. If Briar were the one in charge, it didn’t matter what the others thought of, because they would always end up where he wanted to go instead. “Everyone ready?” Goswin asked. “I guess time travel works on psychic powers, so...everyone think about your respective locations, please, and really, truly, desperately try to actually go there. Don’t think about anything else. It may take a while, I really don’t know.”
They stood there in their huddle for a minute or so without anything happening, the humans struggling with the dust storm that was starting up around them. It did work, though. The sand and sun disappeared to be replaced by a dense forest at twilight. Alien bugs crawled around on a tree next to them, as wingèd ones swarmed in their faces. This was definitely Bida. But it wasn’t the cliff where Briar committed murder, and it wasn’t anywhere near the research facility.
“Whose spot was this?” Eight Point Seven asked.
“No one’s,” Goswin revealed. I don’t know that we’re right about this.”
“Don’t be so hasty,” Weaver said, taking out her own handheld. “I can connect to the satellite now.”
Goswin was worried again about how they would take it. “Briar had the...the cliff. You know the one I mean. The rest of us had the west entrance to Pryce’s lab.”
Weaver peered at him over her device. “Only two places.”
“Yes, it was like a blind study.”
Weaver nodded, and tapped on the screen. She held it in front of his face. “We’re right in the middle.”
“What?” Goswin took it from her, to see what she was talking about.
“Exactly equidistant from the cliff and the building.”
“We split the difference,” Eight Point Seven noted. “The Repairman was right. It’s all of us. Whatever each of us wants, this...force between us tries to come up with something that matches our criteria combined. If you wanted Italian food, and she wanted Chinese, and I wanted French, and he wanted Ethiopian, we would end up at a fusion restaurant.” She started pointing at the members of the group accordingly. “If we wanted to go to the years 1776, 1912, 2024, and 2100, we would show up in 1953.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Goswin said. “Briar wasn’t with us on that void planet, or on Dardius.”
“Wasn’t he?” Weaver prodded.
Briar frowned. “I was hiding. I wasn’t planning on showing myself at all, but then you attacked my mother...”
“No one was attacking her,” Goswin defended. He grunted. “We have to figure out how to get rid of this. It could cause us serious problems. If one of us wants to go to Teagarden, and the rest want to go to Glisnia, are we gonna end up somewhere in the middle of empty space?”
“We can’t do that yet. We have to go back to return Harrison and Madam Sriav to where they belong.”
“That’s true,” Goswin agreed. “Can we all come to a consensus long enough to make that work?”

Friday, March 15, 2024

Microstory 2105: Maybe I Should Leave

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It’s been one of those days. I told you in the last post how the scheduling works at my new job. When they first explained it to me, my first question was the obvious one, which is what happens when two people have to be gone at the same time? The answer was that this never happens, so they didn’t have a protocol for that. But of course, this being my life, it happened immediately. I’m not even finished with my training, but we’re already down to three people. One of the other janitors had a family emergency, which necessitated him driving halfway across the country at a moment’s notice. He reportedly didn’t even have time to pack anything. The old man, meanwhile, has fallen ill. He’s awake and alert, but he’s in no condition to be moving around, and doing this kind of work. The bosses are actually making him stay in a special room for treatment. I guess this place has its own little health clinic? They didn’t tell me anything about it, so I don’t think it’s for just anyone to use when they need it. So now it’s just me and the girls. Their initial plan when this happened was to have one of us take a double shift, and maybe someone else takes it the next day? That’s too much math. The reason four of us work on one day is because 24 divided by 6 equals 4. But 24 can also be divided into 8, and that makes 3. To cover the time, we’re each just going to take longer shifts, but we each get a 30 minute lunch break now. This is the way things often work in other universes, and even in other places on this world, so it’s not like I’m reinventing the wheel here.

I’m glad that they’ve taken my advice, because I feel super responsible for all of this. It may sound ridiculous, but hear me out. I’m starting to really worry that I’m the cause of all these issues. Things have been changing since I showed up on the scene, everyone thinks so, even if they’re not making the connection to me. Issues are arising that were not a problem before. It’s not always obvious, like when I first came to this world, and kept getting sick. Someone went missing after I started working at the nursery, and now this? I know, it sounds self-aggrandizing to think that everything is all about me, but come on. I understand that I felt like this before, and there actually weren’t any other missing people, but I’m not making everything up. I dunno. Maybe I should leave this town, and move to another to see if something weird happens there too. Of course, I can’t just run off right away. These people are counting on me. We have to find at least one more person to fill out the roster, and maybe another person after that, and if I go, then they’ll have to look for a third. I’m in such an awkward position. I better get some sleep, and see if I come up with any better ideas in the morning. The people who set me up with my new life are asking me to work for them too, which complicates things even further. I have a feeling that my situation is about to get a lot more difficult.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Microstory 2104: People Are Animals

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My job is going well so far, but I’ve only been doing it for one day, so we’ll just have to see. This place is open 24/7, which equates to a crew of five janitors. Each of us works six hours straight with no breaks, except to use the restroom. When one leaves for the day, the next one comes in. A fifth person sleeps on location, and can fill in if someone is sick. We don’t get paid to take time off, though we can if we need to, but we have to coordinate with each other, and the fifth guy will substitute during that time too. In the meantime, he gets paid for the entire day, whether he has anything to do or not. He’s the one who trained me, because he’s been there forever. The job is simple and tedious. You start at the top floor, and work your way down. Different janitors have different methods to get the work done. Some use the carpet sweeper all the way through, and then go back up to mob the bathrooms, and other tile areas, and then go back up again to collect the trash. Others prefer to focus on one floor, and complete all of the necessary work at once before moving on to the next one. They may not do it the same way every time, and our employer doesn’t care. They want it to be as clean as possible as much as possible. The work that the regular workers do here requires concentration, which means that they require us to be quiet and out of the way, which is why we don’t use vacuum cleaners. Fortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of collaboration, at least not in person, so we’re not constantly tripping over the staff, making it easier to stay invisible.

For one hour at 11:00, they are all having lunch together upstairs. We are not allowed to go upstairs. I’ve not even seen their cafeteria yet, because we’re expected to eat on our own time, but the other janitors have caught glimpses of it over the years, so they know that that’s where everyone is going. Apparently, a sixth person handles that entire area alone, and isn’t part of my team. I suspect that, in addition to eating, they’re having some kind of building-wide meeting. I still don’t really know what exactly they do there, but it must be pretty sensitive stuff. They lock everything up in their special desks, even when they’re only leaving for the restroom. I’ve yet to see a single piece of paper that isn’t still blank. The regular workers are usually really focused on their work, and don’t pay me any mind, not in a sort of disrespectful don’t fraternize with the help sort of way, but more like they’re trying to stay out of my way just as much. I think they’re aware that I’m on a schedule of my own, and they appreciate not having to worry about the mess. And when I say mess, I don’t mean that these people are animals. Honestly, I don’t think we need to clean up as often as we do. They don’t eat at their desks, or do anything else that would make my job harder. I barely have to empty the carpet sweeper, but that’s what’s in the job description, so I’m going to keep doing it until they ask me to do something else. I was under the impression that I was going to get a lot dirtier, but the really gross places, like the boiler room, are handled by a different team too. All in all, I think I’m going to be okay here. I know what I’m supposed to do, and how I’m supposed to do it. They even let us listen to headphones at a low enough volume to hear the environment. I don’t really report to a boss. My coworkers are treating me as one more person in the collective. The woman I’m replacing worked here for 48 years before she retired with six-figure savings. I’ve never dreamed of having that much money. I’ll let you know if anything changes, but I think I’m just going to stick around for now.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Microstory 2103: My New Dirty Job

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I’ve been looking for work. Unlike when I was in Kansas City, and in my past life, I no longer have standards. I used to have certain limitations, which stopped short of cleaning, food preparation or distribution, and interacting with people too much. I think I’m going to still shy away from that last one, since I don’t need to be exposing my wanted face to a whole bunch of people every day. I’m also not good at smiling, whether it’s real or fake. I can grimace. If you need someone to grimace awkwardly, and make everyone in the room feel incredibly uncomfortable, I am your man. What I don’t like about the other two things is that my health and sanitation standards are higher than anyone else’s. That sort of stuff is hard to be around, because it will never be good enough for me, and people find that rather annoying, if you can believe it. But ya know, you don’t know how to wear gloves. You seem to think that makes you impervious to cross-contamination, but that’s not how it works. If you pick up a big piece of poop, throw it in the toilet, and then go back to fixing my sandwich, you’ve just put poop in that sandwich. I don’t really care that it didn’t get on your hands, do I? That was never my concern. Of course, this is an exaggeration, but it’s plausible, since most people seem to think that clothing is some magical barrier that prevents bacteria and viruses from being transmitted, but I’m here to tell you that it’s not. Trust me. I know pathogens. I suppose that all has more to do with food, which is why cleaning doesn’t bother me as much. I mean, it really bothers me, but I can immerse myself in it, and then come out clean on the other side. This temporary place where I’m staying has a perfect system for me, especially with my new dirty job. I’m a janitor, which is kind of always where I thought I would end up. Now all I need is to become an unarmed security guard, and I will be able to check everything off my list of jobs I either wanted, or thought I would have to take. This isn’t so bad. I can clean myself off at the end of the day in the group showers, and then step right into the tub shower. That way, I don’t have to dirty up the tub. I know that sounds like overkill to you, but I prefer it. The washer and dryer combo unit are right there too, which allows me to clean my uniform every night before I have to use it again the next day. It’s not glamorous, but it will get me by...for now.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Microstory 2102: You’re Only Hurting Yourself

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Oh my God, the coppers must think I’m preeeetty stupid if they legitimately believed that I was in Chicago. I literally told you in my last post that I wasn’t going to mention any specifics about my location, and immediately after, I claimed that I was going to be on the Chicago River? You didn’t think that I would catch that “mistake”. It was a total misdirect, meant to accomplish two objectives. First, I wanted to see if anyone who might have been looking for me was trying to use my blog as a resource. Second, I wanted to gauge the response. For my part, I think it was blown way out of proportion. They had the whole city lookin’ for me; for one little guy who hasn’t hurt anybody. You people need to get your priorities checked. A part of me wanted to continue to waste their time and money looking in the right place, but I’m not vengeful and petty like them. So this is the truth, I’m not anywhere near Chicago. I chose it, because I’m moderately familiar with it from my experiences in my home universe, and because I had already made a minor connection to someone there. He was one of the people who answered my ad that was looking for other aliens. I haven’t talked to that guy in a long time, though. Make a list of every place you think I would hide out, and then cross it all out. I would never hide where someone might think to look for me. That’s Lam 101. I never said anything about Philadelphia. Why don’t you check there? Or I know, how about the entirety of China? My advice, cut your losses, and move on to more important cases. As I said, I never hurt anybody, and I won’t. I have no reason to. I’m not dangerous, I’m not angry. I’m just trying to get home. Anyone who doesn’t understand that probably has easier access to their own home, so I’m asking for a little sympathy here. Stop looking for me! I’m not worth it! You’re only hurting yourself. I ran, and I understand that I caused a problem when I did that, but I’m telling you now that you will never find me, so if you continue the investigation, it will be all on you. I will accept no responsibility for whatever resources are expended on it, or whatever it ends up costing the taxpayers of this country. Just leave me alone, and everything will be okay. Yours truly, the ghost.

Monday, March 11, 2024

Microstory 2101: I Won’t Live a Lie

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I’m out! I’m hiding from the authorities...somewhere. For obvious reasons, I’m not going to tell anyone where I am. When I first showed up in this universe, I didn’t have any identity, so instead of finding one on the black market, I procured it through the proper channels. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, but I’ve ruined it now. I had no choice. I got a parasitic infection, which messed up my brain, and started making me act crazy. After the body doctors cleared it all up, the mind doctors came in, and tried to convince me that everything I’ve been doing and saying has been crazy, and they wanted to keep me there for psychological treatment. The little committee I had to talk to twice before I could be released from the hospital brought up the discrepancy in the timeline. If I was infected in early February, why is it that I’ve been talking about being a bulk traveler on my blog pretty much this entire time? Well, some of them argued that the viral and bacterial infections I had before that could explain all that away. Others argued that maintaining the same symptoms across three completely different infections didn’t make much medical sense, and I don’t know everything that they talked about after I left the room, but in the end, I got out of there. It wasn’t enough, though. I was living around people who didn’t believe me, and didn’t trust me, and I couldn’t stay there anymore. I’ll always be grateful to my landlord, and my boss, and I know that none of this was their fault, but I have my reasons. I spent years pretending to be someone I’m not. I pretended to not be autistic. I pretended to be straight. I pretended to like Blink-182! I won’t do that anymore. I won’t live a lie. Even if I have to sleep in squalor, I’m going to live my truth from now on. So long, Boreverse Kansas City, I’ll never forgive you for the way you treated me. Now more than ever, I know that my only goal in life should be to get the hell out of this universe. Even if I never find my friends again, at least I won’t have to deal with you people anymore. For those of you reading this who are on my side, don’t you worry about me getting caught. I’ve got that covered. Some friends helped me set up a shadow workstation. As long as I always post from the cage, I can’t be traced, and as long as I don’t mention any specifics about my location, I can’t be found. I have to go now. I booked a boat ride on the Chicago River. As I said before, don’t look for me. I’m a ghost.