Microstory 2231: Back to Life

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I can’t believe that I’m writing this. Something truly miraculous happened, which all but proves that Nick was telling the truth the whole time about being an immortal time traveler. I guess I better start at the beginning of the story. At exactly 8:15 this morning, which is reportedly Nick’s favorite time, the nurse switched off his life support machines, and let him pass on to the end of his life. I was there with him, as was his former assistant at the jail, Jasmine. We were crying, and telling him that it was okay for him to leave, that we would be able to go on without him. And with those words, his vitals dropped to zero, and he was gone. Not five seconds later, a guy I used to know came in through a door near Nick’s isolation bubble—which is supposed to lead to a supply closet—brought forth by a spread of colorful light. Those who saw it at the right angle report seeing some kind of tropical beach on the other side of the threshold. Months ago, just as Nick was starting his job at the nursery where I worked, a coworker named Dutch Haines mysteriously disappeared. Nick was convinced that there was a supernatural explanation for it, and of course, no one believed it, because they had no reason to. But now we do. Dutch has told me that he was on another world, though we have not had enough time for any specifics, because his reemergence was not the most impressive part of the story. Not at all.

Nick suddenly came back to life. The monitors started beeping again as he was arching his back. Color returned to his skin, and his eyes opened. He pulled the intubator out of his throat with ease, and sat up. For a moment, he sat there, strong and proud. He was not just back to his old self, but a powerful, more confident version. He looked younger than he did the day I met him earlier this year. He pulled the IV needle out of his arm just as Dutch’s door was falling closed. Someone tried to open it again, but found only the supply closet on the other side. I remember Nick positing that his health could be rejuvenated if a link to the multiverse was created, even if only for a few seconds, and he was so right about that. For those few seconds when Dutch returned to us, Nick was immortal once more. He has seemingly gone back to normal since that door closed, but it’s too late for the prion. Apparently, Nick’s immortality came in multiple layers, even though some may seem to cancel out the others, and those layers are there for a situation such as this. In that one moment, the prion disease was cured, and Nick was restored to health. He was invincible and ageless for only that short period of time, but that’s all he needed. He now looks like a normal twentysomething guy, free from all disease, or other medical problems. He can now surely suffer from something new again, but at least he’s not terminal anymore. Now we just need to convince the world that this hasn’t been one big lie. People will say that it never happened—that it was just a prank, or maybe even a long con. But it’s real. Dozens of people witnessed it in person, and millions more watched the livestream. Plus, several doctors diagnosed his condition before the miracle. He was definitely on his deathbed, and there was no way for him to get out of it unless something like this occurred. The doctors are frantically examining and testing him now, but we all already know the truth, don’t we? Nick is meant to be immortal, and he’s not meant to be in this universe. Now more than ever, he must find a way back home, and I for one, am ecstatic for the opportunity to help him

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 12, 2464

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Using a communications array that the Maramon built, Leona was able to make contact with Hogarth Pudeyonavic. She was aware of the membrane thickener that the Angry Fifth Divisioner had deployed, and was working on a way to get rid of it. In the meantime, there was another way out of this universe. Like many other places, time travel was illegal here. And like all other places, there were exceptions. The way A.F.’s machine worked—which Leona now believed should be called a quintessence multiplier, or maybe a concentrator—what used to be known as dark matter would consolidate over the boundaries of the target universe. It would seal up any dark energy leaks, and tighten the borders. What was unclear as of yet was whether this happened like blood platelets clotting a wound from the inside, or more like a bandage wrapping it up from the outside.

The fact was, this process happened in realtime, starting from the moment that it was initiated. It did not extend backwards in time, which meant that the kasma was still accessible from any point in history. Hogarth agreed to send them back just long enough to let them cross over through the aperture, where they could go on their merry way. The only condition was that they not attempt to change the past in any way, even to stop A.F. from completing his mission. If Hogarth ended up solving the problem using such a technique, then that would be her decision, and it would happen on her timetable.

Hogarth could not, or would not, send them back in time in the little ship that Leona had engineered for them. The suspicion was that Hogarth wanted to use the skeleton key that it was equipped with for herself, which was surely okay, and a fair tradeoff for them. In another deal, they also agreed to take the hybrid, Aclima with them. She didn’t want to give them her reasons, but she promised that she harbored no ill will towards them, nor any nefarious plans for the multiverse. As payment for her ticket to the past, she gave Past!Mateo his own suit; helmet and all, so he too could survive wherever they ended up going.

Once they returned to May 30, 2451, the group was free to leave Fort Underhill. They were planning on crossing the kasma, and entering Salmonverse through its own aperture, but decided that they wanted to reunite with the rest of the team first. Now that they were already in the kasma, it was better to return to Stoutverse now, or they may never get another opportunity. They would still find a chance to help Past!Mateo complete his mission on Verdemus, even if that meant having Carlin relapse them to the Goldilocks Corridor in the 2420s and 30s. That was assuming the Maramon wasn’t lying about its significance anyway.

They were floating in the kasma now, listening to their past selves in the Transit deal with A.F.’s wrath. “We have to get on that train,” the present day version of Angela determined. She was speaking through the laserlink. They needed to be able to communicate with each other without interfering with the timeline, so outgoing signals from their comm discs had to be disabled. Laser communication was a great way to send a signal to a specific target—or in this case, targets—without worrying about anyone else intercepting it.

“All right, we teleport to the caboose,” Leona decided. “Stay on the outside for now, and find something to hold onto for a few seconds. I’ll teleport in while invisible, and scope out the car, then signal the rest of you.”

“We don’t have much time,” Marie pointed out, realizing that their past selves were nearing the end of their argument with A.F., and would be bugging out soon.

“We don’t need it.”

Past!Mateo took Aclima’s hand, and they all teleported to what they believe to be the outer hull of the rear car of the Transit. Instead, they found themselves inside of it. They had gotten pretty good at precision, so it didn’t make much sense that they would be off target. Sure, it was only meters too far, but it was weird just the same.

Future!Mateo pulled his helmet off, as did everyone else. “What the hell happened?”

“Let’s just be happy that no one is in here to catch us,” Marie said.

Leona started to look up and down the car. “No, this is weird. Hold on.” She looked through the window. “There’s the next car.” She jogged over to the other end. “There’s the equilibrium. I gathered information about this thing while we were on our way to Stoutverse. Every car is the same size; roughly thirteen by fifty-five by twenty-one meters. This is much shorter. I would have seen it on the floor plans if this were a thing. I think...” She trailed off.

“We’re invisible,” Aclima guessed.

“I think so. There are meant to be fifty-five cars, but this could be the fifty-sixth.”

“It’s like it was made for us,” Angela mused.

“Check out this caboose!” Past!Mateo joked.

They felt a lurch as the Transit flew into overdrive in a desperate play to escape the kasma. Olimpia would soon use the Sangster Canopy to cleave a canal between the two universes to avoid being captured by A.F. All the future versions of the team would have to do now was sit tight, and wait to catch up with their own time period, effectively closing their loops. If they lay low, and waited patiently in secret, they could reveal themselves in four days, and get back to work with the knowledge of the quintessence consolidation machine. They could also engineer a new skeleton key, which should allow them to somehow return to Salmonverse, and make their way to Verdemus. Navigation was going to be the biggest issue, but that was a problem for tomorrow. For now, they just had to be concerned with life support for Aclima for four years.

The secret fifty-sixth car was shorter than all the others, yes, but it was slightly taller. At twenty-four meters, instead of twenty-one, they were able to look through a window to see the rest of the Transit. Wow, it really was inspired by trains. This would be called the cupola. It also had a window in the back, which was showing them what was happening behind. While most of them were watching the ship race through the kasma canal, Past!Mateo was looking in the opposite direction. “Uh, guys? Something looks wrong here, so maybe you oughta look?”

“What is it?” Leona slid over to check out what he was seeing. Brilliant technicolor lights were illuminating the walls of Salmoverse and Fort Underhill. Olimpia’s magical powers were separating them only for long enough to let the Transit pass through. It wasn’t ever meant to be a permanent canal, and in fact, that was probably not physically possible. The walls were closing back in on themselves, and this appeared to be happening faster and faster. She lifted her watch to her face, and kept an eye on the timer. “It’s accelerating. We’re not gonna make it.”

“That’s impossible,” Angela said. “We already know that we’ll make it. We’ve done this before.”

Leona shook her head. “The Transit will make it, but not every car...not this one, and maybe not the next one over. I don’t know. There is a margin of error in my head math that I am not comfortable with.”

“We need to teleport to the next car,” Marie assumed.

“I’ve been trying,” Future!Mateo said. “We can’t do it, not now. I think it Olimpia’s power is blocking us.”

“Or the kasma, or the canal, or the bulk, or the quintessence. There’s no way to know what the problem is.”

“Fine, then let’s just walk over there,” Marie offered.

“Can’t do it!” Aclima declared from one level down. “The door’s locked!”

Leona looked back at the advancing walls of doom. “Brace for impact!”

 Suddenly, the door that Aclima was trying to get through opened from the other side. A man stepped through. “What’s going on in here?”

Before anyone could answer, a burst of technicolors flooded the room from the outside, and threw him across the car, and down a couple of levels. Everyone else fell down too, though not quite as hard. Leona got herself to her feet, and raced down to shut the door, but it didn’t seem necessary. They were exposed to the harsh environment of the equilibrium, but doing just fine. The atmosphere wasn’t trying to escape. Well, there had to be a reason it was called an equilibrium in the first place, right? Still, she closed the door, and reached down to check on Aclima, who had hit her head, but was conscious, and recovering quickly.

Everyone checked on each other, and seemed all right as well, having suffered only superficial wounds. They found a cot in a nearby compartment to lay the man down. Leona looked down at him with a sense of familiarity. “I know him.” She pulled her handheld device out, and started swiping through their list of known persons.

“That’s not important right now,” Marie told her. “We’re drifting.”

“So go check the systems,” Leona ordered. You’re tech-savvy enough. I shouldn’t have to do everything.”

“I know who that is,” Past!Mateo said as both Angela and Marie were walking down to the control terminal. “I remember him from your memories, back when I didn’t exist. That’s the guy in the secret seventh pocket dimension on the Elizabeth Warren. His brother was the one who killed Annora Ubiña.”

Leona nodded. “Right. But it wasn’t his brother. It was his cousin.” She found what she was looking for in the list. “Jarrett. That makes him Hadron.”

Hadron’s eyes were still closed while he swallowed, and adjusted his position on the cot slightly. “That’s me, Hadron Grier.”

“What are you doing here?” Leona asked.

Aclima slipped her hand under Hadron’s head, and pulled it back out. There was a little bit of blood on it. “No more questions.”

“That was one question,” Leona clarified.

“I’m fine,” Hadon said, sitting up, and allowing Aclima to move the pillow up to the wall for him to lean back on. “My medical nanites will heal the wound. To answer your question, I never thought I would see you again. My cousin was sent to prison for murder, but since he did it for me, it was decided that I wasn’t completely innocent. I was sentenced to house arrest for three years. That was fine, I was finally free of the tyranny of Durus. Still, when a magical door suddenly opened up on a wall that wasn’t supposed to have a door, I took the opportunity to cross over.”

“You worked in The Crossover,” Leona noted.

“For a while, until I found myself taking up a righteous cause in Universum Originalis. I should have known that I would end up in a place like this. What goes around, comes around, eh?”

Aclima pulled her suit’s drinking tube past her neck, and hovered over him to let him have some water.

“Thanks, love,” he said. “Are you gonna take me back to jail?”

Leona scoffed. “Ha, what? That was, like, 280 years ago.”

“Oh.” Only now did he get a look around. “I don’t understand what this is. I was in the caboose. I thought maybe you were a boarding party, but this appears to be of Transit architecture.”

“This is the real caboose,” Future!Mateo explained to him. “It was invisible for some reason.”

“I see.” Hadron took another sip from Aclima’s water tube, which from the right angle, looked a little like he was breastfeeding from her.

Angela came back. “Interestingly, this thing can operate on its own power. We think that we can follow the Transit to Stoutverse, but we’ll never catch up. It doesn’t go fast enough.”

“That’s okay,” Leona said. “Time ain’t nothin’ but a thang. Plot a course, and yalla.”

“We’ve already done that,” Angela replied.

“Great. Mateo?” Leona asked

“Which one of us?”

“Both,” she answered. “Go explore this place. Find out how many cots we have, and see if you can find a food synthesizer, or anything else we can use.”

They did end up finding a food synthesizer, as well as a number of cots, though they didn’t really need them all that badly. The most important discovery was an advanced industrial synthesizer, which was compatible enough with the datadrive that Leona already had with her regarding the skeleton key. She was able to build a new one in a matter of hours, which allowed them to cross over into Stoutverse without having to piggyback on the Transit proper as it entered. They didn’t even have to worry about laying low until they closed their loop in this world either. That navigation issue randomly spit them out of the bulk on June 12, 2464, which wasn’t that much later than when they left.

They were able to reconnect with Ramses and Olimpia, who updated them on everything they had been dealing with. The government wanted to use a Westfall visitor as a human bioweapon, and since they couldn’t accomplish that, they just took his blood to develop a serum, which they distributed to the whole population. Despite it seemingly being over, Westfall still wouldn’t let the man go home. They offered to try to take him back instead using their new bulk traveling machine. That seemed to be enough to break reality, though. When Dutch Haines attempted to follow them through one of the doors of the bunker, he disappeared, hopefully back home where he belonged anyway. But there was no way to know. Oh well. They were still going to leave, but they weren’t going alone. Kineret asked to tag along, but this was a complicated situation, because technically, due to her position as the Primus’ lieutenant, it was considered going AWOL. They needed to approach this with care and caution.

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Extremus: Year 80

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Tinaya and Aristotle are stuck in the past, but they are not in a new timeline. Their other selves are still in their midst, but they’re unable to interact with them. It’s like a parallel dimension, but with some bizarre rules. Fruits and vegetables are available here, as if they straddle the dimensional border. But people and animals are practically invisible. They can still detect them under certain conditions, and they’ve pieced the puzzle together enough to determine that the strongest appearances come during moments of temporal energy use. When Past!Tinaya passes through a wall using her mirror powers, Future!Tinaya and everyone else can see her shadow, as well as that of the wall. When Past!Aristotle trots to another celestial body in the solar system, the people in the parallel can witness his disappearance, as well as the surge of power that emanates from the event.

The two of them are not alone here. Vaska made it through, as did a bunch of survivors of the settlement explosion seven years ago. Future!Tinaya saved them with her weird mirror abilities. How exactly that worked, though, she’ll never know. Her glass skin is gone, having apparently been transferred all the way into the big showdown with the explosion. It still happened, just in the main dimension. Now their only concern is finding a way to get there themselves, but they’ve not had any ideas in the last seven years. None of the people on the settlement is an expert in a pertinent field. Not all of them even feel that they should be worried about it at all.

“This is our home now.” Bartel Ateren was assigned the Verdemus mission in the capacity of a botanist. His job was not originally meant to require that he do any actual work on the ship on a regular basis. The people who first set foot on Extremus were never going to be the ones to land on the destination planet. In fact, most of the people who lived there would never see the future world at all. Or so they have always been led to believe. Tinaya knows better, but she’s not supposed to, and she’s not allowed to talk about it. Most people are not aware of the truth, yet they continue to study fields of research that will only be particularly useful on the new homeworld.

Theoretically, the information that their descendants will need to survive and thrive can just be pulled from the central archives, which exist as many copies on multiple servers. Still, it only seemed right that the knowledge be passed down through teachers instead. Again, the majority of students will never get any opportunity to use what they learned, but they do it anyway. Bartel, on the other hand, was not actually a teacher. He was more like an emergency teacher, there to be available should anything happen to the regular teacher before they could pass the knowledge on to the next generation. He was able to move to Verdemus in secret, because he had no living relatives, nor many friends, and the next generation has successfully grasped the necessary concepts, meaning his original job is done. He has since become a reliable leader for the survivors.

“But we’re not really here,” Tinaya argues. “On the other side of the planet, they built a megablock to house the soldiers that are being deployed in the Ex Wars. We have no way of getting there, and even if we did, we probably couldn’t live there, even though there would be plenty of room. It’s inaccessible from this dimension.”

“I don’t need the megablock,” Bartel reasons. “The huts we’ve built here are more than enough for us to be happy.”

“What about your children, and your children’s children? You don’t want more for them? You want them to live their lives with no hope of even contacting the rest of the galaxy, or the ship? If you’re digging in, then you ought to do it right.”

“That’s exactly why I wouldn’t want us to try to live in the megablock. I want them to make their own way, to build a new society from the ground up...literally. This is what they had in mind for the Extremus mission in the first place. Well, not exactly this, but you know what I mean. The self-reliance, and the journey of development. That’s the point. We’re just doing it here and now, instead of out there, and in the future. And anyway, who cares which version of Verdemus we’re on? We can’t leave the planet either way. Sorry, I know Totle’s your friend, but he’s not had any success with his powers.”

That’s fair, they never expected to be able to leave Verdemus in the first place. So they’re stuck on a different Verdemus, so what? What’s the difference, in the end? Well, family; that’s the difference. So maybe this isn’t that great of an argument. “He deserves to go back to his mother and Niobe, and I want to see Spirit again. And Belahkay, and even Omega. Ilias, I could do without, and Eagan is whatever.”

“I can understand that,” Bartel concedes. “But I’m worried that if we succeed in crossing back over to the main dimension, they actually will find a way to return us to Extremus. I was never the kind of person who was angry to be born on a ship that I would never leave, but I didn’t know what I was missing. This place is paradise. The people still on that hunk of metal...they should be so lucky.”

Tinaya smiles at him, and nods. “That’s exactly why we have an obligation to go back; back to the real Verdemus, and then to Extremus. If you feel so strongly about it, you should try to tell others about it who may feel the same. I can’t guarantee that the council will give you the chance. They may decide to shut you up so you don’t ruin their plans. But one thing’s for sure, if we stay here, trapped in this parallel on this planet, there’s no hope at all of spreading the message.”

He tries to take a breath, but a yawn comes over instead, and he finds himself opening and closing his eyes one at a time. “Sorry. Yes. I, uhh...yeah. You’re right. But that doesn’t change the fact that we have no idea how to get back.”

“Vaska has a theory about that.”

“Yes, she mentioned that.” The two of them work closely together, studying the ecosystem to figure out exactly where they are, cosmically speaking, and how they can touch the plants, but not the people or the artificial structures. “It had something to do with a particular plant we discovered, and the other you?”

“She can explain it better,” Tinaya decides. “She’ll be here any minute.” When the bomb went off, besides the people who she saved, only the mess hall remained standing, and only in this parallel dimension. It’s not a very cozy place to live, which is why they’ve built new structures on this side, but they still use this as a communal area. On its own, it’s a temporal anomaly, which is why it’s the only place on the whole planet where other-siders are perfectly visible. When one happens to wander within its walls, which are invisible to them, they can see them. It doesn’t occur often, though.

“I’m here! I’m here,” Vaska says. “Whoops.” She instinctively avoids running into Eagan, who just so happens to be in her path. He’s here a lot. Since they’re in different dimensions, they would simply pass through each other without feeling a thing, but she’s forgotten that for a second. “I can’t remember, how many people are with us?”

“There are thirty-one,” Tinaya reminds her. “Twenty-eight survivors, plus you, me, and Aristotle.”

Vaska nods as she’s inspecting the walls of the mess hall. “I believe that will work.” She peeks through one of the windows. “That corner is slightly closer.”

“You said something about the two Tinayas making contact with each other?” Bartel says. “What does this building have to do with anything?”

Vaska faces Tinaya. “When you told me where you and Aristotle were standing when he tried to trot you off the planet, and you ended up in the Gatewood Collective, were you accurate? I mean, were you precise?”

“Yeah,” Tinaya confirms. It was right over there. Or it will be, rather, later today.” This is the day that they accidentally travel through time. She’s about to close her loop.

Vaska holds up a grassy plant. There’s nothing special about it in appearance. It really just looks like prairie grass, or something else equally mundane. “We can touch the plantlife, but this? This is different. This is special. When we take hold of any other plant, we pull it into our dimension, stealing it from theirs. For some reason, this stuff maintains its connection to the others. I’ve tickled Ilias’ nose with it. He couldn’t see it anymore, and he didn’t know what was going on, but it happened.”

“What does that mean for us?” Bartel asks her.

“This building is a temporal anomaly. The moment Tinaya and Aristotle go back in time is also a temporal anomaly. We need to connect them to each other.” Vaska cups her hands together. “We do that with this plant. I propose we build a chain with our own bodies, linking the corner of the mess hall to Past!Tinaya. She’ll anchor us to the main dimension, and unwittingly pull us through whatever barrier separates us.”

Future!Tinaya and Bartel just stare at her. “That’s...a contrivance.”

“No, it’s not. It’ll work.”

“How do you know? You just made it up.”

“I’ve been studying this plant. It’s a keystone species. Scratch that; it’s the keystone species. The other plants; they can’t communicate with each other without it. It’s like a telephone wire.”

“What’s a telephone wire?” Bartel questions.

“I’m telling you, this will work. We need a chain. But to reach all the way over there, which I’ve calculated to be forty-two meters away, it will require all thirty-one of us. We got a lot of shorties.”

Tinaya looks at her sadly. “Vaska, I know you want this to work, but Bartel’s right. You’re just guessing.”

Vaska huffs a bit, and shakes her head. “The explosion that destroyed the settlement was larger than it should have been. The explosion that destroyed the time mirror, and imbued you with its glass power, was more focused than it should have been. Aristotle’s jumps; Tinaya, your creation of this parallel dimension in the first place—all of these things have been affected by this. It’s all about the grass!” She urgently shakes the sample she has in her hand. “I’m gonna call it timogramen,” she says matter-of-factly, like anyone has any interest in arguing against it. “It explains everything. The way you tell it, dumbasses wasted their time finding suitable trees to make paper, when they really should have been studying this instead. It is unlike anything I have ever heard of before. I don’t know how it evolved, or what else it can do, but I do know that it can send us back to where we need to be. And besides, what’s the worst that can happen if it doesn’t work?”

Both Tinaya and Bartel think it over. It does sound rather random and silly, but she’s right, if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. It’s not like they have some other option which this could interfere with. “Okay,” Tinaya finally says. “We’ll bring it to the group. Hopefully they all agree. Like you said, we need everybody.”

“I’ll help too,” Eagan says. “I believe that you are overestimating the arm span of everyone here.”

The three of them are flabbergasted. “Y—you can see and hear us?” Bartel asks.

“Yes,” Eagan replies.

Tinaya throws her hands up. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“You’re from the future; I didn’t want to disrupt the timeline,” Eagan answers. Oh, that’s actually good logic.

“Well, I suppose that makes sense,” Tinaya admits. “Still, you could have communicated with us.”

“I was gathering information. Why did you think that I was always standing over here? The mess hall doesn’t exist on my side. It’s just ash and ruins.”

“You’re just weird, Eagan; you’re weird,” Tinaya reiterates.

“Fair enough,” he says.

“Are we gonna do this thing, or what?” Vaska asks impatiently. “Time is running out. Past!Aristotle and Past!Tinaya are about to disappear.”

“Wait, can’t we just have them get closer to the building?” Bartel suggests. “Or even in the building? We don’t need a human chain if Eagan helps.”

“No, he’s right,” Tinaya contends. “That would disrupt the timeline, which places all of your lives at risk. If Totle and I never end up on Gatewood, we never find any help getting back here, let alone with Vaska, who we needed to study the—what did you call it?—timogramen? Things have to play out exactly as they did until I finally close my loop. The human chain it is.”

They take Vaska’s proposal to the rest of the group. They have some questions, and they’re just as skeptical about the efficacy of the plan, but they too recognize that the downsides are minimal. One of the biggest issues is just convincing them that they should indeed return to the main dimension. Some of them were brought into this project specifically because their absence from Extremus would not be noticed, like Bartel. Others left families on board, who signed confidentiality agreements. They want to get back to them, which they were promised would be done regularly with the time mirror. So their side of the argument eventually won out.

Vaska takes a team out to harvest more of the timogramen. They crush the grass up, and lather everyone’s arms with it. It’s apparently meant to act as some sort of natural conduit of temporal energy, which will pass from Past!Tinaya and Past!Aristotle, all the way to the mess hall. Eagan was right. After they all line up, Future!Aristotle on one end, and Future!Tinaya on the other, they do find themselves short. Eagan adds himself as an extra link between Aristotle and Chef Webster. They complete the chain just in time for the special event. Tinaya places her hand on the shadow of her younger self just as she and Aristotle make the jump, which will ultimately send them to Gatewood. The power surges through her, and then down the line of survivors until it reaches the mess hall. Then it passes back again. It goes back and forth a few times before bursting out in a blinding light. When it recedes, the chain has been broken as most of them have fallen to the ground, but it is not yet clear whether it worked.

“Tinaya?” Spirit asks. “That was fast. Did it work? Hold on, did you end up going to Extremus after all? Are all these people from there?”

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Microstory 2230: How Bad It Can Get

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A pattern has presented itself. His body has a new parasite now too, and it’s going after his organs. The doctors are desperately trying to stop it, but it’s gotten its grubby little appendages in everything; his heart, kidney, liver, and especially his lungs. You name it, it’s being attacked. He’s unresponsive at this point, but he managed to say one final thing. He basically wants to be put on display, to raise awareness for prion infections. The hospital board is currently weighing the issue. They’re not sure if he’s in his right mind, though. He’s still being kept alive, because he’s still full code, but at some point, that is not going to matter. His body will continue to decay, regardless of how they try to treat the problems. We still have no clue where these damn things are coming from. They must have been hiding in there before he went into the bubble, and the decline in health from the prion allowed them to rise up all at once. They will all be very surprised if he makes it through the next weekend. I’ll let you know via social if we begin to display him on a video feed, or something. It might sound unsettling, but I do believe that it’s what he wants. He wants you to see how bad it can get, so you can be more careful.

Microstory 2229: So Let Go

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I’m so distraught. We all are. I don’t know that I really wanna say anything here. Nick is currently fighting a war on three fronts. It was bad enough that he contracted a virus due to his weakened immune system, but now a bacterium has found its way into his body too. It probably happened at around the same time, because the odds of it happening after we took him back to the hospital are staggeringly low. He was placed in an isolation room, where only certain people could enter after being thoroughly processed, but that might not have been enough. Now he’s also in a plastic bubble as an added layer. So you still have to clean up to enter the room in the first place, but even then, you can’t touch him unless you use the glove ports on the sides. Anyway, this bacterial infection is just as bad, though it comes with new symptoms, which of course, makes it so much worse. Nausea, vomiting, and everything else that could go wrong with your stomach; that’s what’s happening to him right now. That’s on top of the fever, cough, and dizziness that he has from the virus. Honestly, I can’t believe that he’s still alive. It’s a miracle that he’s able to survive all this. The machines should only be able to do so much for him. At some point, your body just can’t take any more. But his is. He’s holding on for dear life. It’s almost like he’s waiting for something specific. You hear about that, where terminal patients won’t let go, because they have unfinished business, or they’re worried about their survivors. This should not be a problem for him, because everyone is going to be okay without him. He did a lot to start a new department in his company, a new project for the county, and maybe even a new movement. The world will keep turning without him, driven if only partially by the contributions that he has already made. I see him as a spark that will light the fire, and it will be up to the rest of us to keep the flames going. So Nick, this post is to you. You can go now. You don’t have to suffer anymore. Go find out what’s on the other side of the veil. We’ll miss you, and we wish that you could stay, but the pain must have reached the point of being unbearable. So let go, and finally rest in peace. I promise to keep this site going at least through your memorial services.

Microstory 2228: More Advanced Care Now

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Nick is back in the hospital, and this is where he’ll stay for the rest of his life. It seems that we were too quick to decide that he was capable of staying at home. We weren’t back in the apartment for more than a few hours before he started having some real problems. His temperature was going up each time I checked it, eventually reaching a full fever. Soon after that, he started coughing, and feeling dizzy even though he was just lying in bed. The nurse had already left for the evening, but I called her back, and she agreed that he couldn’t stay there untreated anymore. For a normal healthy individual, these symptoms could be treated on their own using over-the-counter remedies, but Nick is in a really vulnerable position. He requires round-the-clock care, and the kind that I’m not qualified to provide. They conducted rapid blood tests, and confirmed that it’s a virus. Again, a normal person might be able to fight it off on their own, or get some medication after a quick doctor’s visit, but that’s not enough for him. He’s hooked up to machines, which are monitoring him for a team of top-notch medical professionals. But where does that leave me? I know that, when you add it all up, I’ve not known him for very long, but we’ve grown pretty close in that time. I’ve seen sides of him that no one else has. So I can’t just leave, even though he has more advanced care now. There’s a protocol for this situation. It’s called a “hand-off”. And I’ve officially done that, though I am still here, just now as a friend, which is what our relationship was when we were co-workers. He doesn’t have any real family in this world, so I’m going to do what I can to make him feel safe and comfortable, even though it’s not my job anymore.

Microstory 2227: Die Eventually Too

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The hospital board has come to a decision. Well, it’s a compromise, really. Since Nick is terminal, and all that we can really do for him is keep him comfortable, and safe from secondary infections, he will be allowed to return home for the time being. He and I will not be alone, though. While I’ll continue to live there, and be available 24/7, a nurse will be coming in every morning for a ten-hour shift. I can provide him with his basic needs, but there are some things that I can’t do, and I think that the hospital wants to cover all the bases. There is no additional cost for this service. It’s a sort of compensation for the generous contributions to science that he’s making by donating his still living body now, and his deceased body in the future. We shall see how it goes, though I’m pretty optimistic about it. This is only a tentative plan, though. If something goes wrong while I’m here, but the nurse is not—or even if the nurse is here too—then they might move him to the hospital for good. The sad thing is that something bad probably will happen eventually. This is all about putting off the inevitable, which may make you wonder, why not just go ahead and check in now, just to be safe? Well, if we surrender to that, why don’t you check into the hospital right now, because you’re going to die eventually too. Life is about living it, and everyone has the right to determine for themselves what that means, and where to do it. Yes, he’ll likely have no choice but to get a room eventually, but why lower his morale now when we have the ability to maintain his high spirits? Anyway, he’s having some trouble speaking these days, but he’s found ways to vocalize his thoughts to me, even while he struggles, so I think I’m going to be able to use his words for tomorrow’s posts.

Microstory 2226: Not Giving Up on Him

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If you’ve been following Nick’s social media posts over the weekend, you’ll know that his health fell into a steep decline. He was still alive, and still aware of me in the room, but he couldn’t keep his eyes open for more than a few seconds, and he had a hell of a time speaking. His tremors went away, though. He was very still. I made the decision to keep him comfortable, and let him have the weekend. I was going to monitor him closely, and check him into the hospital if he did not get better in the next two days. Well, he somehow did get better. He was awake and alert this morning, and able to form full sentences. Sadly, his tremors came back too. It’s like his body shut down to take a break, and now it’s back to how it was last week. So he’s not cured, or anything, but I see it as a promising development. The doctors aren’t so optimistic. This is an unusual symptom for the type of prion that he has, but it’s not unheard of. He’ll go through dips, and come out of them as if he’s gotten better, but then he’ll go right back down. They want to keep him overnight to get a better read on the pattern that he’s on right now, but the dips don’t necessarily warrant a permanent stay, which is good. They expect him to recover from each dip. Now, if he starts having trouble breathing, that’s when things have gotten too bad for me to be able to care for him alone. But until that happens, the medical staff are willing to accept his wishes to remain in a more comfortable and familiar environment. He’s with PT in the hallway right now, trying to keep his brain and body active. The best way to fight the misfolded proteins is to exercise the good proteins. The disease is slowly taking over, so he has to be as much himself as possible. I’ll encourage to keep trying to formulate his own words for these posts to stave off the inevitable for as long as possible. He agrees that this is a good idea. And who knows, he may find himself regaining the ability to type it all out himself. I’m not giving up on him just yet.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 11, 2463

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Carlin McIver knocked on the door, and waited patiently. Kineret opened it, even though she knew that he was on the other side. She looked him up and down as if she hadn’t seen him before. Then she sighed, and looked behind her where her boss was working. “Have you changed your mind?”

“Have you?” he prodded.

“I’m steadfast in my convictions.”

Carlin peeked over her shoulder at the Primus. “Or is that just what you would have her believe?” Kineret didn’t believe in using the Westfall boy as a bioweapon any more than he did, but this was what the world government was trying to do, and she had to fall in line. As influential as she was in her position, she wasn’t a god. He was only hoping that she would eventually openly admit her disapproval, so it would at least be on the record.

“Did you need something, Carlin? Because if you’re not going to change your mind about sending one of the sick Ochivari to their homeworld, the Primus has nothing to say to you.”

“When was the last time you even had an Ochivar as prisoner?”

“It’s true, it’s been slow, but we’ve never gone longer than eight months without a new incursion. We’ll get a new test subject soon. I’m hoping that you see reason. We have a saying where I’m from, all’s fair in love and war.”

“That it’s poetic does not make it true. Where I’m from, we call that an aphoroid, not an aphorism.”

“Goodbye, Carlin.”

“Madam McArthur, Madam McArthur!” a man in uniform yelled from down the hallway. He was running towards them.

“Slow down, soldier. State your business.” She was being protective of Naraschone.

The soldier caught his breath. “We found ‘im. The weapon.”

“Where was he, an oceanic island?” Dutch Haines, a.k.a. The Dragonfly Slayer. He was the carrier of a disease that seemed to only affect Ochivari. They wanted to send him to the aliens’ homeworld to wipe them all out, but some people believed that to be a war crime, including Ramses Abdulrashid, who decided to put a stop to their hopes and dreams by abducting Dutch, and hiding him somewhere. Since Ramses only existed in the timestream once a year, even if they had the means of extricating the information from his brain, they would only ever have twenty-four hours to get it done. For two years now, all available resources had been funneled into the manual search. They had evidently finally been successful in that mission.

“No, he was living in a cave above the arctic circle. He was actually only about forty kilometers from the nearest settlement. He was apparently quite comfortable there, albeit alone.”

“Is he on his way here?” Kineret asked

“Yes, by chopper.”

She looked at her watch. “Team Matic comes back in three days. We have two to make this happen if we don’t want further interference. Divert them to the Ochivari prison. The Primus and I will meet them halfway.” She looked back at Carlin. “You’re coming with.”

“Oh, no thank you,” Carlin said.

Kineret just darted her eyes to the soldier, who knew what that meant. He took Carlin by the shoulders, and escorted him away.

A half hour later, all three of them were in Carlin’s jet, along with Primus Mihajlović, as well as a small strike team, and of course, the pilot. He didn’t love them using this for a mission that he did not agree with, but it didn’t really belong to him, and anyway, that wasn’t the problem here. They were likely planning to coerce him into transporting Dutch to the Ochivari home universe, and he was worried what their methods would be. This was a civilized society, with laws and everything, but they didn’t all make a whole lot of sense. For instance, a prisoner of war could only be held for a certain amount of time before they were legally entitled to a return trip home, but the laws determining what the prison could do to them within that time frame were a lot less clear cut. Did Carlin qualify as a war prisoner, or were they just going to call him a guest, and in that case, were there any laws dictating their treatment of guests? Were there other loopholes? And what about Dutch’s rights? Did he have any, or was he nothing more than a walking, talking, Sunday chillin’ weapon of genocidal proportions?

They arrived in the Subarctic North, and landed by the prison. Dutch was already there, taking a nap in something called the VIP room. Carlin was dragged in there too, which served to wake the former up. “Hey, dude.”

“You been doin’ okay?” Carlin asked.

“Same as it ever was.”

“That can’t possibly be true.”

He just shrugged. Dutch was a carefree guy who once worked at a plant nursery, and seemed to take everything that happened to him in stride. Surely there was a limit to that. Surely dying in a strange universe after spreading a deadly disease to upwards of billions of aliens would be enough to wipe that kind smile off his face. Once the Ochivari realized what was happening to them, and that Dutch was responsible, were they just going to let bygones be bygones? Probably not.

“You know this isn’t right, right?”

Dutch shrugged again. “They need me to go to that universe and kill all those funky-lookin’ people. They need you to send me there. Way I see it, we just keep refusin’, no matter what they do to us, their plans ain’t happenin’.”

“I wish I had your confidence,” Carlin lamented.

Dutch stood up, and opened his arms up. “Come on. Come on,” he urged quietly.

Wanting to keep this oddball on his side, Carlin approached, and accepted the hug. It was actually kind of nice.

“With this warm embrace, I donate to you...half of my confidence.” He pulled his chest away, but kept his hands on Carlin’s shoulders. “It’ll grow to full-size before too long, like a lone lobe of a liver.”

Carlin unwillingly released a chuckle, and looked away as he struggled to tamp down his own smile. “Man, is that how livers work?”

Dutch nodded with a wider smile. “Yeah.”

Carlin breathed deeply, and separated fully from Dutch to pace the room a little. “There’s a way to put an end to all of this. I could just send you home. I don’t know about you, but it sounds like the safest place for you. Do you want that?”

“I don’t know that that would be a good idea. The government is aware of your power. Why would they put us in a room together, knowing what you’re capable of? Seems sloppy to me.”

Carlin looked over at the door. “You’re right. Sloppy, or...part of a plan.”

“Have they experimented on you? Maybe they have a way of overriding the navigation, or just suppressing your powers altogether.”

“Yeah, that’s...that’s certainly possible. This whole situation is fishy.”

“I’m willing to try if you are.”

“It’s too risky. You can’t go within two meters of an Ochivar without making them sick. By the time you can run away, the damage will have already been done.” Carlin shook his head disappointedly. “They’re playing mind games with us. They know we can’t try without being absolutely certain. We’re in this room together either because they have indeed screwed with my powers without me realizing it, or because they knew we would be worried about the possibility, and end up stuck. Either way, it’s hopeless.” He had a way of finding out the truth, but it wasn’t a peaceful solution, and it would burn a pretty big bridge. Plus, a lot of things would have to go right for him to even be in a position to gather the truth. He didn’t want to threaten Naraschone’s life anyway. He didn’t agree with her, but he wasn’t about to take her hostage for it.

Kineret stepped into the room. “You’re still here.”

“Yeah, it was locked,” Carlin reasoned.

“Right, but you could have sent him home.”

“Or is that what you wanted all along?” Carlin questioned.

Kineret didn’t understand why that should be so nefarious. “Yes, we figured you would want to do that.”

“Did you mess with my power somehow?”

“We would have no clue how to go about that. We took blood samples from you years ago. The power isn’t in your blood, it’s in your brain, and I think you would remember if you had had brain surgery.”

“Would I?” Carlin pressed.

Kineret exhaled, annoyed and tired. “Your powers are fine. We don’t need him anymore. Elder came up with a new plan. All we required were more blood samples from him. His job is done now.”

“Blood samples for what?” Dutch asked.

“The virus,” Kineret began. “We’ve abandoned our plans to attack the homeworld. We’ve decided that our only concern is our world. So we will be distributing it to our people, and our people alone. It won’t end the war, but it’ll get us out of it. And I guess that’ll just have to be good enough.”

“You’re gonna spread a virus to the whole planet? You don’t see a problem with that?” Carlin asked her.

“Obviously I do, but Elder is confident that it will not mutate into something that can harm humans as well.”

“Oh, right. Elder Caverness, the security guard with no background in epidemiology. Glad you got your top people on it.”

“I swear,” Dutch said, “I never donated any of my confidence to Elder.”

Kineret winced, having no clue what that meant. “Send this man home. This will be your room alone, and you’ll only be given rations for one person. Your job for the government is done as well. You’ll be permitted to leave when Team Matic does, if they should ever come back with a way to travel freely.” She unceremoniously left the room.

Carlin tried to open the door, but it was locked again.

“We can try to share the rations,” Dutch suggested.

“No, she’s right. There’s no way they could have messed with my power. I’m from another universe, it’s not that easy. Very few people in my universe are called metachoosers because they can do things like that, and they’re always on the run because of it. If any rando scientist could figure it out on their own, that wouldn’t be such a problem.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone with these people,” Dutch said sadly.

“I’ll be fine. I should have sent all three of you home when you first got here. I was under the impression that you were here for good reason, but...well, I suppose that’s still true. I guess I just never thought it would be for a distasteful reason.”

“There’s a parable from my world. A man was late for dinner after he was working in the fields,” Dutch began to recite. “When he did return, the dog had eaten his portion while the family was asleep. So he returned to the fields, and picked some vegetables to eat instead. That night, a storm rolled over the lands, and destroyed the fields. And the farmer, he, uhh...well. Hold on. A farmer went home for dinner, and the dog. The dog... What was the dog doing? There—there was a war. And the farmer’s son...”

“Dutch?”

“Yeah?”

“I think I get it.”

“Okay.”

Carlin didn’t get it, but Dutch was never going to get to the end of this story. It was time for him to go. Unfortunately, fate had other plans. Carlin relapsed him back to his universe, or at least he attempted it. It was unclear whether he ever made it at all, because seconds later, Dutch walked through the door. Westfall brought him here, so this was where Westfall wanted him to be. There was no getting around that. They still didn’t know who was the mysterious force running the show, but there was probably no overriding that kind of power.

Kineret and the government believed them, and allowed them to stay in the VIP room together, one portion of rations each. A few days later, Ramses and Olimpia came back. They were not happy about what the Primus had decided to do. Ramses looked over the data as best he could, but he was no epidemiologist either. He understood how profoundly unpredictable the variables were, though. Just because Elder thought he knew how the virus worked, didn’t mean he was right, or that things wouldn’t change in the future. Just the very idea of a difference between the future and the past had to be thrown out the window. They may not see the consequences for centuries. The people of Stoutverse may never know the damage they caused. But Ramses knew one thing, Elder’s plan didn’t work the way he wanted it to. Humans were going to die. That was how the multiverse worked.

Ramses also wasn’t down with the whole VIP room in the prison thing, so he swiftly teleported them out of there, and placed them somewhere safe. While not particularly luxurious, they had everything they needed on the island, including one important thing. If Dutch was ever going to find his way back to his universe, it likely required constant access to a door.

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