Microstory 556: Are Criminals Running The Core?

< > Table of Contents

Conspiracy theory blog, tabloid, crackpot salon. That’s what they call this publication. And you know what? They may be right. Everything I’ve said here, every time I’ve tried to open your eyes, it may be just all a big pile of nonsense. But what if it isn’t? What if even a small part of the claims I’ve made are true? What would you do then? Would you act, or just accept the status quo. Because the status quo might not be what you think it is. If you’re afraid of the solar system’s leadership as it’s known by the public, imagine what you’ll feel if you find undeniable proof that this leadership is actually full of criminals. Now, hear me out. I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve received some evidence that this is at least partially true. And it would make some level of sense, because the government as we know it doesn’t really seem to exist at all.

Centuries ago, when our ancestor began mapping out our new civilization, one thing they wanted to accomplish was a society that quite literally ran itself. If you set up so much regulation, and so many guidelines, and you indoctrinate the entire population to agreeing with you, you don’t need to do anything to keep it that way. If you break the rules, the law is clear on what happens to you. If you’re dangerous enough, you’re thrown into a solitary tower. If you’re better off leaving, you’re shipped off to an exile planet. If it’s just a minor infraction, you’re taught to curb your behavior. No one has to sit there and decide what happens to you, because we already know. But what if that’s not enough? What if our ancestors realized that this kind of infallible society simply was not logistically possible? We now live with hundreds of billions of people across dozens of planets. The chances that our system works perfectly may be higher than you might find on, say Earth, but still can’t be 100%. Nothing is 100%. Something always gets through.

I personally believe that true automation cannot be achieved, and that you always have to have some kind of oversight. So the question at that point is, who belongs to this oversight? You might assume respected leaders in their fields, or a shadow government of people without any records, or perhaps the Martians just enforce their laws in secret. It probably wouldn’t even occur to you to even consider that it might be criminals. Afterall, that’s insane. But is it? Maybe the fact that they wouldn’t even come to mind is exactly what makes them perfect for the job. Throughout history, on multiple planets, criminals have proved to respectively have a phenomenal grasp of how things work. They’re able to get away with their crimes, because they’ve learned to exploit the system’s vulnerabilities. Who better to shore up our vulnerabilities here than those who were born with the natural inclinations towards using them to their advantage? We don’t really know what prison towers look like. Perhaps they’re luxurious paradises, with everything a resident might need. They’re treated well, able to satisfy their urges through controlled virtual reality, and occasionally asked how to run the galaxy. Doesn’t sound so crazy now, does it? I’m not saying that all of this is true. All I want you to do is think...could it be? What are we missing? What are they keeping from us?

Microstory 551: Defense System Test Reveals Dangerous Flaws

< > Table of Contents

Before our new solar system that we’ve literally built from scratch can be officially declared completed, we need to put on some of the final touches. Though we’ve created a sort of paradise for ourselves, our leadership recognizes that not everyone in the universe shares our vision. The Exiles have made it clear they want nothing to do with us, though that could change in just a few generations. The Anarcho-capitalists ran off to a new galaxy, we’re still not sure where. We know that scattered sects of Amadesis followers remain alive, but inactive. We have no idea where they’ve gone. And finally, there could be other threats out there of which we are simply not cognizant. As much as we would like to be open and carefree, we must remain cautious and vigilant. We must protect ourselves from all known threats, and all unknown threats too. A special department has been tasked with doing this for us. They’ve come up with hundreds of ideas; some good, others not. They’ve whittled them down to things that we can effectively implement, with the right amount of redundancy, but it is still a work in progress. This much has been brought to light.

The Core Defense Strategy is no perfect system, but engineers, and other professionals, are working hard at shoring up flaws. One such of these flaws presented itself during a test yesterday. A fleet of “enemy” ships were built all the way on Montisaltom, which means the CDS system had never encountered it before, and could not perceive it as non-hostile. One by one, and sometimes in groups, these ships were sent to The Core, and programmed to attempt to break our defenses. Most of them failed, but one managed to get through, and could have caused a heavy amount of destruction had it been a real threat. It would seem that there is a small region that lies just before the decided upon system borders, and interstellar space. If a ship exits a simplex dimension in this perfect zone, but then immediately transports itself deeper inside using one of the lower dimensions, it can bypass all alerts, at least long enough to establish a stranglehold. The blue simplex dimension, for instance, is so slow that only an incredibly patient crew would be willing to take the time to travel here from another star system. It could take years. It is for this reason that lower dimensions have, up to this point, remained unmonitored. Basically, we’ve never been worried about global or interplanetary travel within the system. Rest assured, however, that these flaws are currently being removed through some extra programming. Other weaknesses have recently been found as well. For instance, we’ve decided to eliminate onslaughts coming from all stars in the immediate vicinity that a threat might chose to utilize as staging post. The system leadership would like to remind every citizen of The Core that we’re all in this together. If anyone has any ideas for how to improve our society, or protect us from danger, they are encouraged to voice their concerns.

Clean Sweep: Massquerade (Part III)

« < » > Entire Story

Athanaric Fury, A.K.A. The Artist, could very well be the most powerful choosing one born in all of time, in every reality. He possessed an unlimited source of energy, which was why he was chosen to become the keystone of The Gallery once it was created by Baudin. It was his energy that kept it alive, and allowed others to manipulate the timestream, while he spent his time working on his projects. There are many ways to create a person capable of breaking the standard of linear time. Two activated salmon will usually create a chooser. Two salmon, where at least one of them is unactivated at the time of conception, will usually result in another salmon. The child of a chooser will usually be born as either chooser or salmon. The souls of some are so deeply ingrained into the fabric of time that they are born as time travelers, even while their parents are normal. Athanaric Fury happened to be one of those people, and it is trait that made him so important.

The Artist has the ability to literally build entire human beings out of clay or stone. Each one will take decades to complete, but once finished, can be anything Athanaric wants. It was he who built The Prestons. Zeferino, Arcadia, and Nerakali were not born to parents. Athanaric built them long before the Gallery Exodus, just in case something like that ever happened. They were three powerful choosers in their own right. Zeferino could adjust temporal disturbances, Arcadia could extract elements of certain alternate realities and place them in the true reality by ignoring the properties of causality, and Nerakali could rearrange people’s memories so that they could not pick up on inconsistencies. And while in the Gallery, the three of them could carry out their duties on a massive scale. That is, Nerakali need not alter the memories of each individual involved, one after the other.

Unfortunately, Athanaric failed in including a vital trait in these three gallery workers. He forgot to give them humanity, and so they were selfish, careless, and easily bored. They rebelled, much like the earlier Gallery workers, and ultimately either left, or were kicked out. Athanaric was forced out of the Gallery himself, with no hope of returning, and almost no hope of saving time from the choosers. Seeing no other option, he did the only thing he knew how to do, which was to make art. He got to work on sculpting a new choosing one. Known simply as The Mass, this new entity would carry with it nearly every temporal power possible. Though resembling a human in every noticeable way, the Mass was not meant to be free-thinking or independent. It would have no motivations, no dreams, no hate. It was just supposed to be a focal point of temporal energy, something capable of protecting all of time and space from changes to the timeline that could threaten reality.

“That’s all you’re doing with him?” Zeferino asked.

“It is not a him,” Athanaric pointed out. “It just looks like a man.”

“Why would it look like a man if it’s not a man?”

“People are all I know how to sculpt.”

“I’m just not sure why it needs to look like anything. From what I learned before I left, the Gallery wasn’t what was protecting time, it was you. It was just an extension the power that you were providing it. You’re the true Gallery. Can you not do this on your own?”

“I cannot,” Athanaric admitted. “I am strong, but I do not have your and your sisters’ abilities. I can make people with powers, but can wield none of my own.”

“I spent decades in standard dimension, looking for you. I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I’ve done. I’m not just talking about banishing you from the Gallery. Everything my sisters and I did before that was wrong. We were wrong.”

“I have been here for as many years as you, and have spent that time thinking about my own actions. I am your father, I should have made you better. I should have taught you to care, not just to act, and I should have encouraged you to want to learn. Everything you did was my fault, and I no longer feel anger for being pushed into this dimension. I love you, all of you, and I will be here for you from now on.”

“That’s nice to hear. In fact, it is exactly what I came here hoping you would say. I am also glad that you are building this, as you call it, Mass. We must rebuild, and we must do it better this time.”

“That’s what it’s for.”

“Well, I sort of assumed that you would contact The Constructor, and ask him to build a new Gallery.”

“No, that would never work. It’s too late for something like that. It was located in a special dimension that we can not reenter. Nothing like that could be replicated. The Mass is the only way. When it’s done, it’ll solve all our problems.”

Zeferino looked over the new creation. It looked done to him. “What is it missing? Ten fingers, ten toes.”

“I’m still working on the timer. It’s not quite as short as I would like it to be.”

“What timer?”

“It needs to be on a time limit,” Athanaric said, mildly unsure why he would need to explain it. “I don’t want it to spend too much linear time in once place. It should flutter throughout the continuum.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Quantum superposition?”

“What?”

“Never mind. You’ll see.”

“That’s all that you need, though? Just to lower the amount of time it’s allowed to stay in any one timeplace?”

“That’s right, why?”

Zeferino removed a sword from his endless bag and positioned it under the neck of the Mass. “Remove it.”

“Zef, what are you doing? Remove what, the time limit? That’s an important feature. It can’t effectively do its job if it can’t jump across moments. Why do you care anyway? What, were you looking to be, its friend?”

“I’m not looking for a friend,” Zeferino spat. “I’m looking for power. And this right here? This is my power. I want you to take off whatever time limit you’ve already placed on it, and then install my mind into its body.”

“You want to...become..the Mass?”

“I want to become what I already am. I want to be The Cleaner.”

“I’m not doing that.”

“I’ll kill it. I’ll kill it before its born, and then you’ll have nothing.”

“I’ll start over.”

“I’ll kill you too.”

“Then you’ll have nothing.”

“I am prepared to explore other options.”

“Zef, let’s just talk about this.”

“No, let’s stop talking!” He slid the sword across the Mass’ neck and drew a non-fatal amount of blood.

“Okay, okay. We appear to be in a competition that I was not aware may happen. I can do what you ask, but I’ll need my hammer. It’s on that table behind you.”

Zeferino cautiously reached behind him, but kept his eyes on Athanaric. He moved his hand around until finding what felt like a hammer. He slowly raised it up and gave it to the Artist.

“Great, thanks,” Athanaric said before swiftly knocking the hammer on Zeferino’s sword, and sending it across space.

“No!” Zeferino cried.

“Welp, the Gondilak are going to enjoying having a weapon like that.”

“Goddammit! Why won’t you just do this for me? It’s not like I would be taking over someone else’s life. It a mass, it feels nothing, so just give it to me.”

“That’s weird, Zeferino. It’s weird that you want this. Just live your life, let me live mine, and let the Mass do its job.”

“I reject your reality, and substitute my own, which I will be able to do once you give me the Mass!”

They heard the sound of a microwave ding. “Perfect timing.” Athanaric removed his chisel from his pocket. “This contains the completed program for the new time limit protocol. All I have to do is tap the Mass with it, and its body will be useless to you.”

“Okay, okay,” Zeferino now said. “Just put..the chisel..down. You don’t wanna do this. Let’s talk. You wanted to talk, so let’s talk.”

“Nah, I’m done with that.”

He attempted to tap the Mass with the chisel, but Zeferino grabbed his wrist and held it at bay. Athanaric tried to hit him with the magic hammer, but Zeferino knocked it out of his hand.

As they continued to struggle with the tool, a woman walked up. Seeing them fight over something seemingly so innocuous led her to believe that it was not a big deal. “Hey, my name’s Frida Quelen. I found this compass that doesn’t point North, and it’s led me here.”

“The Compass of Disturbance?” When he dropped his guard at the sight of something he had been looking for almost as long as he had looked for Athanaric, he unwittingly gave Athanaric the upper hand.

But Athanaric was not ready for this, and lost control of the chisel, sending it flying towards Frida. It gently hit her in the chest and fell to the ground.

The contact point on her skin burned an orangey-green. “What is happening?”

“Oh no,” Athanaric said, nearly speechless.

Frida disappeared.

“Now it’s mine,” Zeferino said in a confident whisper. He turned around to admire what was to be his new body. Desperate, Athanaric took a gouge from his table and stabbed his son in the back. Zeferino coughed up blood, spitting it into the face of the Mass. Then his old body died.

« < » > Entire Story

Clean Sweep: Formerly Known as The Artist (Part II)

« < » > Entire Story

In the beginning, a lot of people worked in The Gallery. It was one of the first places created once time travel was discovered long ago. Actually, the dimension where the Gallery is held already existed, but its interface was difficult to interpret. Only certain people were intelligent enough to grasp its complexities. And so Baudin, a.k.a. The Constructor, was contracted to design for them a new interface. He chose to help others understand time through art. Each painting represented a single view of a single moment in time. Now, you might think that the Gallery is used to engineer outcomes, which is something it could technically be used for, but its only purpose was to clean up the timeline, and rid it of inconsistencies.

Time travel within the temporal gallery itself is not possible. Though people inside are capable of perceiving reality manipulations, they are not allowed to modify these manipulations further. They are tied to what’s known as the Master Timeline. This is the reality that takes precedence over all others once time travel events have been fully exhausted. Now, this does not mean that the gallery workers understand perfectly how it’s all going to turn out. It’s just that every time a time traveler goes back to alter reality for the upteenth time, the gallery workers only remember that particular alteration. And they only remember this one because, from their perspective, that’s the only one that ever took place. Human perceive time in much the same way, except that they don’t have memory of the alteration, only of the result.

Over the years, gallery workers grew tired of their responsibility. They did not age, and would not die, but they also did not know love, or adventure. They could see people in the timestream making interesting choices, but they could make none of their own. They were slaves to their condition. So they left, but because of the nature of the gallery dimension, they were unable to return. They were free to live out their lives as they pleased, but this caused the gallery to experience diminishing returns, for no new person would be able to enter either.

Recently, relatively speaking, only two people remained in the Gallery, and found themselves struggling to maintain it. The funny thing about time travelers is that they are generally drawn to modifications during a certain period. As exciting as it might be to ride a dinosaur, it offers little satisfaction in the long-run. Despite the fact that most choosing ones can go to whenever they want, they tend to stay within a range of a couple hundred years of their birth, forwards and backwards. Furthermore, the closer one gets to the year 2100 of the Gregorian calendar, the more choosers there are. It is not quite clear why the 20th, 21st, 22nd, and 23rd centuries hold such a concentrated number of time travelers, but most simply accept that this is just the way it is.

The two Gallery holdouts spent some time trying to run the place as best they could, but in the end, they were forced to admit that they were just not good enough by themselves. As time was moving ever closer to a higher concentration of alterations, they grew desperately in need of some help. And so they got creative with how they went about exacting this help. Zeferino Preston was one of their new hires. Though all of them showed signs of rebelliousness, The Curator could see that Zeferino was the most dangerous, because he would sow seeds of doubt in the others.

Zeferino was never happy with being so powerless to change or reverse what the choosing ones were doing, or what the powers that be were forcing the salmon to do. Unlike the original workers who neglected their responsibilities to live out their lives in peace, Zeferino sought power. He wanted to be able to shape the timeline as he saw fit, and he was able to convince Nerakali and Arcadia to share in his dream. He began to generate entirely original temporal paintings, Nerakali began to rearrange people’s memories to her liking, and Arcadia began to establish a disastrous imbalance in reality. Together, these three were causing so much damage that the original two workers were forced to take drastic measures.

“Where’s Arcadia?”

“She’s gone,” the Curator, Erlendr said.

Zeferino repeated himself more deliberately, “where. Is. Aradia?”

The Curator chose to be brave and honest. “I sent her away. I sent her to Earth.”

“But you can get her back.”

“Decidedly no.”

“No, there’s a way. There’s a way to get her back. You have to do it.”

“I am afraid that it’s not possible. If we could do it, we would have brought back our original crew, and you wouldn’t even exist to have this conversation.”

“This is not a conversation!” Zeferino yelled. “This is a travesty! This is mutiny!”

Erlendr remained calm. “It is not mutiny. I own this place. You’re the one trying to take over.”

“Oh, don’t you speak to me in that jazz voice. Get angry! Get passionate! I sure as hell am!”

“I will not become you, Zeferino.”

Now Zeferino was seething. Banish his sister, fine, but insult him personally, and we have a problem. “How does Fury feel about this?”

“He understands. He knows that it’s best.”

“Well, of course he does. Once you’ve cleansed this place of all of us, he can just make more. He can replace us whenever he wants, with whatever he wants.”

“I am not removing you. I want you to stay.”

“What about Nerakali?”

“She will remain here as well. As long as you toe the line, you both have a home in the Gallery.”

“So Arcadia’s banishment had nothing to do with her. You just wanted to punish us. To punish me.”

“I wanted to teach you a lesson.”

“Oh, it’s been taught.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m saying that I understand now. I know what I have to do.”

“What are you talking about, Zef? What is it that you have to do?”

“You’ll see.” Zeferino started to walk away. At one time, the Gallery had a set of workers for security, but they were gone now, and no one could stop him.

“Zef,” Erlendr pleaded. “Zef,” he repeated. “Zef!” he finally yelled.

Zeferino turned around. “That’s my boy. Hold onto that anger. You’re gonna need it.”

Realizing Erlendr was assuming that Zeferino would need time to plan something for the future, he had no choice but to act immediately. He carefully stepped into The Artist’s room carrying temporal painting of a pond at magic hour, and shoved him inside of it.

From the other side of the Gallery, Erlendr could feel that something was wrong. He ran down the hallway and rushed in. “What have you done?”

“Now you’re stuck with me. You banished Arcadia, so I banished Fury. I believe the humans call this eye for an eye.”

“Oh my God, don’t you get it? You’ve doomed the timeline. Now it doesn’t matter whether you stay or go. This place is useless without Fury.”

“Fury does nothing. Well, he did nothing. Now he can go screw himself, for all I care.”

“You still don’t get it. There’s a reason we call him the Artist, instead of The Sculptor. He kept this place running just by being here. His temporal energy powered the gallery paintings themselves. We are hopeless without him. All your dreams of universal domination have been shattered. And you were the cause of your own demise. Congratulations. In only a few days, the paintings will die, and I won’t be able to banish you if I wanted. You were right, I’m stuck with you.”

Zeferino was heartbroken. He didn’t care about the timestream, but he did still long for control over it. Without the power to alter reality, his life had no meaning. Not while in the Gallery, anyway. He would have to leave, like all the others before him. “These paintings aren’t dead yet?”

“They’re running on fumes, but soon the energy reserves from Fury’s power will be totally expended. The paintings will continue to show us the timestream, but we won’t be able to do anything with them. What you see is what you get. You saw to that.”

“Then if there’s no power in the Gallery, Nerakali and I will have to find power in the timestream.”

“You can’t draw energy from the timestream. Believe me, we’ve tried.”

“I ain’t staying here. This place sucks anyway,” Zeferino lied. “I never liked it.”

Erlendr laughed. “Do whatever you want, Zeferino. It doesn’t matter anymore. Go down to the timestream, for all I care. At least you can’t do any worse than you’ve already from done up here.”

Zeferino walked away and muttered under his breath, “are you sure about that?”

« < » > Entire Story

Microstory 63: Martian Law 101

According to Martian Law, it is illegal to recruit a civilian for investigations (e.g. wearing a wire near criminals to obtain a confession). This would place undue risk on the civilian. Whether they have committed crimes of their own is irrelevant. They are never responsible for the enforcement of the law. Martian Law allows for emergency civilian deputizing when manpower is low. They are allowed to pursue and arrest, but still not investigate, and their arrests are subject to much more scrutiny than a trained officer’s arrests would be. There is no such thing as fruits of the poisonous tree. If an officer finds incriminating evidence, they’re fine. If they pursue evidence, but find none, they’re in trouble, so they better be pretty darn sure there’s something to find. Martian law enforcement holds jurisdiction over any culture in the biverse that forms anytime after Mars, the exception being Earth. The reason Earth is protected by Martian Law, but not subject to it, dates back to a policy formed billions of years ago that no one remembers. The idea that Earth must be protected, but free from interference, is so old and inherent that no one knows when or how this cosmological rule went into effect. There are only two cultures that resist the Martians, and the rest of the universe is in a constant state of war with them. For the most part, however, The Exiles just want to be left alone. The Thuriamen, on the other hand, believe their own laws to be superior. Rather, they do not care whether they’re superior or not; they are seeking control either way.

The tree from which poisonous fruit falls.