Microstory 2070: Godlings All The Way Down

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Workspace Labs text-to-image Duet AI software

I’m sorry about bummin’ you all out yesterday. I’ve just been thinking a lot about my past, and my life. Why don’t I tell you a little bit about it? ‘Kay? You can read it or not. Like Superman, I grew up in Kansas. And like Superman, I had superpowers. But unlike Superman, these powers weren’t useful for flying around, rescuing people. They gave me glimpses into other worlds, which allowed me to write their stories down, and pass them off as fiction. I eventually realized that some of these stories were taking place in a universe that was located inside of my very soul. You see, that’s what all inhabited universes are; the complex development of a person’s soul, who you might call a god. We are all gods with godlings, and all godlings are gods. It’s godlings all the way down. No one knows where it ends, and no one knows where it begins. Some may want to answer such profound philosophical questions, but I am not one of them, because it would not change the way I live my life, which has always been a little less than the best I can. I’m not what you would call responsible or productive. I’ve not written any stories for a long time, because that’s not me anymore. I no longer have access to those worlds. If I did, I would be able to find Cricket and Claire. My alternate self could. He probably knows exactly where they are, and I bet he’s telling their continued story without me. He used to be able to send me messages, which we called updates, but your boring planet locks all those out. My own story is still getting out to him, but I’m lost. Alone. With all of you.

Microstory 2023: Kansas

< > Table of Contents

In September of 2004, my papa had worked for the private submarine company for more than two years, and he had not taken any vacation. His boss, who was his friend, was worried about him, so he asked him to take the time off, or he would lose it. But papa didn’t like to just sit around, doing nothing. He wanted to be accomplishing something. One of the hobbies that he picked up was bicycling. Whenever he had the time, he liked to ride his bike from his house to his sister’s place, which was about 20 miles away. It took him a couple of hours, and it was a workout, and he really enjoyed it. He decided to take his longest ride yet. Instead of just going a few towns over, he wanted to go a few states over. He plotted a route that went all the way from Chicago to Kansas City. What a lot of people don’t know is that there are two Kansas Cities. One is in Missouri and the other is in Kansas, of course. They’re right next to each other, and the one in Missouri is actually larger. He had already been to Missouri, because of his friends who lived in Independence, which is considered part of the whole Kansas City area. The distance from where he started was over 630 miles, and it took him two weeks to ride the entire way! He rode about 45 miles per day, which is pretty impressive, I must say. He couldn’t really explain to me why he chose to go there. He just wanted to. Once he made it to Kansas City, Kansas, he spent one night there. He donated his bicycle to a charity for kids. Then he took a plane back home. I think this was a pretty cool thing that he did, and I’m so proud of him. Maybe one day, I’ll do something like it, but probably not to Kansas City, since it’s 1,700 miles from here!

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 24, 2399

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Canva text-to-image AI software

During World War VI, Captain Tarboda Hobson was an active member of the air force, serving by dropping supplies into quarantine camps so no one would actually have to go inside. When a new vaccine was released, he would drop that in too. Of course, a new strain—or an entirely new pathogen—was coming into power seemingly every day back then, so he never took any time off. Even that seems like nothing compared to what he’s doing now. He’s taking advantage of his new chance on life, and trying to help as many people as possible. What he’s been doing is technically against global law, but it’s a gray area when it comes to Leona’s nation. Of course, he’s utilizing resources from the U.S. government, but he’s just pretending that that’s not really happening. It’s not his job to be concerned with the politics anyway. He and his new team have one objective, which is to rescue people who are being trafficked all over the world, and to relocate them to Leona’s magical new building. He forgot how much he loved doing this, not worrying about making the decisions. He flies, that’s what he does. It’s all he does. Well, he sometimes pilots in boat mode.

Today is different. He’s being temporarily reassigned to a new mission. While Leona does whatever it is she’es doing stateside, he’s on his way to the Island of Madagascar. The religion of Daltomism supposedly originated here. According to Mateo, who’s here with him, this might not be completely random. If you drew a line from Kansas straight through the center of the Earth, and came out the other side, Madagascar would be the nearest landmass. These are called antipodes, though the place where they’re going is not the exact opposite point. The exact opposite would be in the middle of the ocean, as it usually is, since the Earth is mostly water. This was close enough, and it is Leona’s belief that Dalton chose this region because it was the farthest from The Constant in what is now Kansas. That’s where all the mysterious immortal people live that Tarboda hasn’t dealt with directly yet.

“Don’t we think this is all happening a little too quick? Word around the government water cooler is that Leona’s about to announce something big.”

“It has to happen fast,” Mateo explains. “The Reality Wars are starting early next month. Dalton Hawke is the last piece of the puzzle. If this is where he founded his religion, we have to know about it.”

“How did you find this place specifically?”

“Our new friend, Imani gave us a copy of Word of Dalton, Book II, which she can evidently get in a lot of trouble for. Vearden was researching it for us before his...” Mateo trails off. “He thinks it describes this part of the jungle.”

“What do we think, there’s a hidden temple somewhere around here?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, we may find out soon.” Tarboda slows down, and shifts into hover mode. “We’re at the coordinates you gave me.”

“Is there, like, a camera on the bottom of this thing?” Mateo asks, looking at the floor. “I would like to see what’s directly below us.”

“Is there a camera?” Tarboda echoes with a laugh. “Ha!” He engages erasure mode, removing the floor entirely, showing them what it would look like if it didn’t exist, and they could just float in the air.

“Whoa. I’ve seen stuff like this before. I have an idea of how it works, but it’s still trippy to stand here. Can you scan for structures, or whatever?”

“Uhhh...” Tarboda taps through the manual on the built-in screen. “Scan. Here we go.” He presses the button. Nothing happens that they can see, but the computer says that it’s scanning. “It didn’t find anything. No ruins.”

“That’s not surprising, or someone would have found it a long time ago. I’ve always wanted to do that thing where we—”

“Wait.” He looks at the screen. It’s detecting radiation from that body of water.”

“Bad radiation?”

“Slight radiation.”

Mateo has to duck his head down to see the lake through the floor. “Does that mean we can’t do the thing?”

“What thing?”

“Sliding down to the ground on ropes hanging from the helicopter.”

“No, we definitely can’t do that.”

Mateo hangs his head.

Tarboda smirks. “Because this is not a helicopter. I’ll get the gear. That button over there will open the center floor hatch.”

Mateo goes over to open it. The floor reappears, but only in that spot. The hatch drops a little, then slides under like a pocket door. Tarboda drops the lines, and starts to get himself fitted with the climbing gear. He looks over the edge to see that the lake is closer than it was before. “What the hell? The jet has been moving on its own.”

“It has? You didn’t move it?”

Tarboda drops the gear, and runs back over to the cockpit and looks at the screen. The scanner didn’t find much before, but it’s found something now. All sorts of debris and wreckage is down in that water. It’s much deeper than it looks from a distance. “Close the hatch!”

Mateo slams on the button again. The floor starts closing back up. Just as it does, the jet tips over, sending him slamming against the back wall.

“You okay?” He asks.

“I’m all right!”

“I’m tryin’ to get us out of here!”

“Something’s pulling us down?”

“Yeah,” Tarboda calls back. “Hold on, we’re gonna start pullin’ some Gs!” He engages the thrusters, but whatever invisible force is tugging at them is reacting in kind. It won’t let them go, and it’s stronger than his beautiful new plane is. They gave this to him to please the team. They’re not going to give him a second one. “Try to climb back up here! I can’t get us out!”

“No! Jump, Tarboda!”

“What!”

“Jump down here! Trust me!”

These people brought him back to life; he has to do whatever they say. He undoes his belt, hangs between the seats, then lets go. They’re not perfectly vertical, so he slides on the floor, heading right for Mateo, who has his wrist up to his face. Suddenly, the jet is gone, and he’s tumbling on the ground. He gets himself to his feet and looks up to see the jet being sucked into the water, but not before it implodes.

Alyssa’s here with them. “Crushed it.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 25, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

Alyssa has been driving all over the region of central-Western Kansas which her brothers discovered to be a black hole of religion. Everyone in the area reports no religious affiliation. She’s interviewed a few dozen residents in several towns, and they all seem like normal people. They don’t act culty or cagey. None of them refused to answer her questions, except for a few who were late to an engagement, or otherwise preoccupied. They didn’t apparently move here with the intention of being in a community of like-minded atheists. Most of them didn’t even notice. Everything here seems completely above board, which means that something has to be lurking in the shadows. There is a force at play here that keeps itself secret; there has to be, or all the time Carlin and Moray spent researching the phenomenon was a waste. She doesn’t want to believe that. When they return from their space trip, she has to show them that she followed through on their suspicions, and found something worthy of investigation, even if it’s a bad thing. Even if it’s a good thing, for that matter.

Now that she’s failed to come to a conclusion, she decides to switch tactics by exploring the literal center of the religious black hole. She rechecks her coordinates. This is the center of her brothers’ map, and it’s the location of one of the presumed time travelers that Ramses detected with his big brain scanner. That can’t just be a coincidence, but this also can’t be what she’s looking for. This is the center of all of it? It’s nothing special, or at least it doesn’t look it. Maybe it leads to a giant high tech underground complex, like the one under her farm. This could hold the key to the answers they’ve been asking since they arrived. She’s standing under this dilapidated shack on stilts in the middle of nowhere. Surely no one lives here, that would be ridiculous. Then again, stranger things have happened to her already.

Alyssa doesn’t see any no trespassing signs, and again, this would be a terrible home for someone, so she decides to take a risk, and get a closer look. She climbs the ladder all the way up, and into the tower shack. The inside looks like a shack as well. It’s pretty clean, with no debris or equipment, but she ought to watch her step, because some of these boards may not be stable enough to hold her weight. It’s a long way down. There is nothing here, except for one window, and a mirror. The mirror is hanging there on the wall, so completely out of place. It’s not old and dusty, but new and pristine. Alyssa stumbles back when she realizes that she doesn’t have a reflection, but she doesn’t have time to figure it out. She was right about the instability of the floor. One leg crashes right through it, leaving the other leg at her side, causing her to hit herself in the crotch. She tries to get her breath back, but she can’t. The pain in her groin is almost too much to bear. Not only did she hit it hard in the fall, but now she’s doing the splits, which is not something she’s trained for.

She doesn’t want to move, because she’s afraid that any motion will cause the whole structure to fall apart, and then that will be the end of Alyssa McIver’s life. She’ll never see her brothers again. She’ll never fulfill whatever future Mateo and the team believe is waiting for in the alternate reality where they’re from. Okay, she packed climbing equipment. Kansas doesn’t have mountains, but it’s not as flat as the coastal elites believe. We do have edges, and it is possible to fall off of them, and it just made sense to be prepared for such an eventuality. If she can just spin her backpack around, and open it up, she might be able to find a rope, and throw it over something here.

As she’s starting to do that, she sees something move out of the corner of her eye. Is that—no. There’s not a hand coming out of the mirror like a Japanese horror film. It’s not being followed by the top of a head. Nope. Nope, nope, nope. This is not happening. She has to get out of here. How long will it take to hit the ground if she falls right now? Is there time to spin this backpack around, open it up, find the rope, and throw it over something? Probably, right? Let’s see, take the square root of her weight, and multiple it by the height of the shack. Carry the one, and no, she doesn’t have enough time. She’s either going to fall to her death, or get eaten by the ghost monster coming for her. Neither one sounds appetizing, but the ghost monster may spare her life if she spreads the message about how they died to as many people as she can, or something like that.

The figure finishes climbing out of the mirror, and does a front roll down the wall. Then she stands up, and reaches out a hand. “Let me help you.”

“Who are you?”

The woman doesn’t want to answer. “Don’t worry about it, just take my hand.”

Alyssa lets the stranger pull her to safety. Together, they jump over to the ladder, and make their way down to the safety of the ground. She finally recaptures her breath. “This is the center of unusual religious activity. Are you the cause of that?”

The stranger doesn’t want to answer that either.

Alyssa sighs, and takes out her tablet. “Nerakali Preston.”

“Huh?”

“Meliora Reaver, Xearea Voss, Ariadna Traversa.”

“What is this you’re listing?”

“Sanaa Karimi, Aquila Bellamy, Amanda Moss, Cambria Buchanan, Susan Glines, Natasha Orlova, Ellie Underhill, Téa Stendahl...”

“Are these meant to mean something to me?

“Ida Reyer, Aura Gardner, The Officiant, The Overseer, Tonya Keyes, Dr. Mallory Hammer, Danica Matic, Dilara Cassano, Marcy Calligaris!”

“Stop! I don’t understand!”

“I’m listing names of people that you could be, because when I land on your name, your microexpressions will tell me that it belongs to you. I have dozens more to get through, unless you would like to speed this up and tell me who the hell you are!”

She doesn’t speak.

“Quivira Boyce, Catania Porter, Bhulan Cargill—there! There, that’s it. I bet you didn’t think I’d find it, but you’re Bhulan Cargill.”

“That’s Mateo Matic’s list, isn’t it? That’s the cleverest thing that man ever did.”

“Are you the cause of the religious black hole?”

Bhulan still won’t answer that question.

“Daria Matic, Dodeka Sarkisyan, Lita Prieto—”

“I thought you already figured out what my name is.”

“Now I’m just doing it because it seems to annoy you. Answer my questions.”

Still nothing.

“Khuweka Kadrioza, Hogarth Pudeyonavic—”

“Fine. Yes. I’m the cause of what you’re calling the religious black hole, but not by choice. I’m just a prisoner here.”

“Who did this to you?”

“That I don’t know.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 21, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

Alyssa comes out of her room, and looks around at the empty communal area of their hotel suite. It’s been empty for days. Mateo and Ramses are stuck is some sort of something or other. Leona and Winona are off doing whatever, they won’t talk about it, but it kind of sounds more personal than operational. Arcadia and Vearden are dealing with family issues. Kivi never lived here anyway. Marie was the last to leave, and she hasn’t called in since. Seems mighty weird, Alyssa living here all alone. Not only is it too much space for one person, but she has the least amount of experience with any of this. She’s just a farm girl from Central Kansas. That’s the problem, isn’t it? They don’t trust her with anything, so they don’t ask anything of her. At least not anymore. They asked her for a lot in the past. The temporal energy has dwindled, though, so she’s of no use to them as an illusionist. Still, a quick call would be nice.

She has to do something. Living it up in this fancy place is making her feel terrible. Maybe Marie needs her help tracking the other time travelers, but she doesn’t know how to ask. Let’s find out where she is. Alyssa pulls out her device, and looks for Marie’s location. Her device hasn’t moved in a long time, and it’s not where she had her surveillance nest set up. She zooms into the satellite view of the friend finder app, but she can’t tell what this building is. She has to cross-reference it with the regular map. It’s showing those coordinates to be a mental hospital, which doesn’t sound good. No one else’s device is on, or they’ve switched off location tracking. Either way, they’re not picking up. She can sit here alone and be useless, or she can try to help.

Seeing no better option, Alyssa looks up the number to the hospital, and dials. “Hello, English?” she confirms. “Yes, I’m looking for a friend. We share our location history, and she’s been there since yesterday afternoon.” She waits for a response. “Her name is Sydney Bristow?” It’s the alias that Marie has been using, and apparently the name of an agent on a TV show from her reality called Alias. “Oh, really? Well, does she have outside communication privileges?” She does, but Marie will have to call her if she’s feeling up to it. “My name is Alyssa, she’ll know me.” She hangs up, and waits.

Ten minutes later, her phone rings. “Sydney, are you okay?” The phone may be tapped, she doesn’t know what kind of laws they have over there, so stick with the alias. “Yeah, I can see where that might get you into trouble, if you weren’t talking to the right person. Well, how can I get you out of there?” Marie doesn’t want to leave. “You’re happy there? What, are ya gonna stay there forever?” Not forever, just a few days to clear her head. “Your friends need you. I need you, I don’t know what to do.” Marie has one idea. “You think I’m ready for something like that on my own?” Yes, it’s just reconnaissance. “That’s the problem, we don’t know what—or who—I might run into.”

They keep discussing it for a little bit, Alyssa asking to fly to Manila herself, and be there for her. Marie doesn’t want that, and she’s the one controlling the purse strings. The trip would cost about ten thousand dollars, and still, no one else is available to help. Marie has to go, so she leaves the choice up to her, and hangs up. Alyssa thinks about it for a few minutes. This is her moment to prove that she deserves to be part of the team, and she doesn’t always need help from other people. She grabs her coat, and heads downstairs. If she’s gonna do this, she’s gonna do it right. She needs to shop for supplies. Who knows what she’ll find in Springfield, Kansas?

Microstory 1730: The Crux

< > Table of Contents

No one is old enough to remember what happened. It’s always just sort of been this way; a hill in the center of our little doughnut-shaped town where four roads meet. I don’t mean that it’s two roads crossing each other. Each of the four has its own name, and while it’s not impossible to get from one to the other by driving over what we unofficially call The Crux, it’s not recommended for regular cars. The hill is deceptively steep, and for some reason, it’s always rather muddy halfway up, on all sides. It’s a bit of a pain, but it’s much more reasonable to go around it on one of the other roads. It’s not a problem for people who live here. We know the hill is there, and we know heading towards it is going to get us nowhere...unless we’re trying to get to the hill itself, of course. Tourism is already hard to come by for us, and this just makes it harder. None of the internet maps knows it’s there, and don’t know it’s a bit of an impediment, so they direct folks right through it. We keep trying to get them to remove it from their system as a traversable road, but we’ve had no luck so far. Again, with the right vehicle, it’s possible to drive over it, but we’ve had some issues with people who don’t know what they’re doing. We actually have four ways of getting out of such a mess if it happens to you. The auto repair shop is on South Avenue, the county’s largest tow truck company is on Backbone Road, the dealership is on Krouka, and there’s a gas station on Heap Lane. It’s not all that necessary—problems don’t occur all that often—but it’s nice to know that people will have options, so they’ll think twice about saying bad things about us. Crux notwithstanding, ours is a fine town, with good, progressive people, who like to lead the simple life, but understand how the city operates, and why others would prefer it.

Anyway, today I’m sitting on top of the Crux with a bunch of friends. It’s got a good vantage point of the surrounding area, so we hang out there all the time. Flat Kansas being what it is, it’s nice to be above it all sometimes, ya know? So we’re sitting there, watching a small car we don’t recognize come down Krouka. They probably drove in from Great Bend, looking to fish in our world famous pond, where it’s pretty much guaranteed you’ll catch something. As the car approaches, we realize just how tiny it is. I bet only two people could fit in that thing, and maybe one bag each. There is no way it’s gonna make it up the Crux. We don’t even bother picking up our chairs to get out of the way this time. That little thing comes up there, from this perspective, lookin’ like a ground squirrel wondering if the mailbox poll drops nuts. It slows down, but doesn’t stop. Most people get out, and take a look around when they don’t know what the hell is going on here. They’re holding their phones, and spinning around to see if they’re facing the wrong direction. These people don’t even do that. They stop for five seconds, back up about fifty meters, and then gun it. They go towards this hill as fast as they possibly can, and they make it up pretty far. My best friend inches over to the side, afraid we’re all wrong, and they’ll actually go all the way. It doesn’t. It stops midway, and rolls back down, smoothly, though, like they saw it was gonna happen, and put it in neutral to be safe. Some of us laugh, but most are relieved, because we know how bad it can get. We’re about to go down to tell them about the dealership when their car transforms. This...laser gun—I guess you would call it—comes out from under the hood, and blasts a tunnel into the hill. We later see it’s large enough to fit a semi-truck. They even laser the other two roads, before driving off without so much as a you’re welcome.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Wednesday, July 1, 2116

« < » > Table of Contents

Mateo met with Camden Voss of the IAC, who agreed to send him up to the year 2114. That was about as close as he could get to his people. Other time travelers would have been able to get him closer, but he knew Camden would do it without asking for anything in return, and he just wanted to get as close as possible. If he had to wait two years until the next transition window, then so be it. In fact, maybe this was best, because he had no way of knowing where exactly the window would show up, so he needed time to figure that out. That could be left as a problem for tomorrow, though, or maybe next week. For now, he just wanted to relax, and take in the sights. The powers that be couldn’t get to him, even though he was in the main sequence, because this new clone body didn’t have his original pattern. He was finally free—away from Leona, but still free, and if it could be done for him, it could be done for her too.

In 2030, workers finished the construction of a highly advanced intentional community called Hexagon City. They broke ground on former farmland just outside the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. Starting from scratch so late in human history allowed them to build with a better understanding of the future in mind. Living spaces were predominantly vertical; not nearly as large as the megastructures people were erecting all over the world right now, but taller than most skyscrapers of 2030, and designed for maximum efficiency. A railway loop, two-way buses, elevators, and people movers connected the residents to one another, and they were all connected, so traffic jams were a thing of the past. It was completely self-sustainable, growing its produce in vertical farm cylinders, and producing its own renewable energy. It wasn’t a prison; people could come and go as they pleased, but no cars were allowed within its borders, so if you wanted in on this, you had to get with the program.

Following the Kansas model, several more like it were built over the decades, in various locations that were inspired by the original designers, but not a whole hell of a lot. Engineers and futurists knew it was only a matter of time before the extremely consolidated arcologies would be possible, so it never really caught on. Their heyday was short, like the one car phones enjoyed before cell phones overtook them in popularity. The hexagons would one day be bulldozed, but for now, they remained, and just as many people still lived there, even though there were better options. Mateo and Leona had heard of this place back when they were first jumping through this time period, but never managed to see it before it faded away. She probably never would. That reminded him of how sad it was—

“Mateo.”

“Yes? Oh, it’s you.”

“I finally found you,” Jupiter said. “It was not easy. I had to contact a lot of your friends, and they all thought they knew where you were, because there are two versions of you in this reality.”

“Ah, yes,” Mateo remembered. “I’m on Tribulation Island right now, though. I wouldn’t go back there. Too many people would recognize me.”

“I figured,” he said. “I didn’t bother checking.”

“How did you even know that I existed at all?” Mateo asked. “Didn’t I die in the Parallel?”

“You did,” Jupiter confirmed. “You’re completely dead. There’s a body, and everything. Which doesn’t make any sense, because you’re fated to die on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. The universe should have automagically transported you there to avoid a temporal paradox. So it was suspicious.”

“Yeah, I can’t explain that,” Mateo said.

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“You’re right, I won’t.”

“Let’s sit.”

“Okay, but I’ll lead.”

“What?”

“I’ll ask the questions here!” Mateo said jokingly. “Seriously, though, I will. When we’re done, you’ll agree that I legit can’t explain myself to you, even though I technically could indeed tell you my truth. Let us begin. Are you my enemy?”

This question made Jupiter squirm. “No, sir.”

“Why did you pretend to be?”

“Would you have helped, if my brother and I had asked?”

“Why wouldn’t we?”

Jupiter bobbed his head, like he was weighing his options. “We toyed with the idea, but we decided that there was no way for us to explain our motivations to you. You help people all the time, of course, but only people who seem to need it. We didn’t need it; we just wanted it. Perhaps we chose the wrong path, but we determined the best way of recruiting you was to make you think you had no choice. You always make the right call when someone tries to get you to be bad. You’re used to having an enemy to fight, or an obstacle to overcome, so we gave you that.”

Mateo nodded his head. “I still don’t get your motivations, though. You’re pushing people through transition windows to the Parallel, but then letting us send them back? Why? Surely there would be easier ways to save their lives, if that’s really all you’re going for. It feels like there’s some master plan that we can’t see, because we’re too close to it.”

“There’s no grand plan. I mean, obviously we’re rescuing people we think can help the future. Jericho Hagen, for instance, is better for the timeline when he embraces the future of the adjudicative system than he is when he operates against it. The best way to do that was to stop him from being around while the new system was forming. Fourteen years ago, Jericho returned to this reality, pretended to be his own son—to avoid having to explain where he had been for the last twenty-two years—and started a new life; a better life. But that’s a personal situation. We’re not grooming him to have some profound impact on the people he meets. We mainly wanted to help him, just like we wanted to save your once-mother from the 2025 pathogen, and The Escapologist from the collapse of her reality.”

“But why these people?” Mateo questioned. “Sometimes we skip, like twenty years worth of people who can be saved. It seems a little unbelievable that the only ones you care about are the ones we’re around to help.”

Jupiter giggled. “These are the people that you’re helping, because you’re around to do so. You’re not my only team. You just never see the others.”

“Oh.”

He smiled. “I know you know you’re not special. You’re part of something great, and that’s good enough for you.”

“Yes, of course. I guess I still just don’t understand why you felt the need to create the Parallel in the first place? Why don’t you just teleport in and pull people to safety?”

“I can’t teleport, Mateo, just like you can’t jump backwards in time on your own, or see the future. The Saviors, like Daria and Xearea, are responsible for doing what you describe. They break into hotel rooms to stop men from beating their sex workers. They appear behind someone sitting on a park bench, choking on their sandwich. That’s what they can do. The Kingmaker goes all throughout time, doing similar things, for a particular breed of person. I’m different. I can access alternate realities, but only for a specific reason. I have the power to copy myself, and I do this by reaching into a different reality, and extracting my alternate self from it. But I can’t actually go explore his reality, because it doesn’t really exist. He’s from an unstable, collapsing timeline. The difference between our two worlds has only happened on the quantum level. The Arborist can go to truly separate timelines, because she’s reaching backwards in meta-time. Maybe I’m not explaining this right. When you go back in time and change something—take note of the airquotes—you’re not really going back at all. What you’re doing is staying in place, and pulling the past to the present, so that you can branch into a new timeline. Again, I don’t have the ability to do this, but the Parallel is a loophole. It’s an alternate reality that is not also an alternate timeline, which means I can access it physically. I created it so I can help people in my way, because that’s all I got.”

“I understand,” Mateo told him. “You’re doing what you can. What can I do? How do I get back to my friends?”

Jupiter removed a pair of Cassidy cuffs from his bag. “I repossessed these from your other body. There’s a proximity feature that will transport you to one of the others, should you choose to go that route.”

“What other route would I go?” Mateo was confused.

“I told you about those other teams. You could join one of them, and do the same thing, but with a different pattern. You might wanna consider it. Leona has mourned your passing twice now. It could be traumatic to make her go through that again. This really is a choice, which you have to make. I’m not trying to coerce you, or even persuade you to go either way. I’m just giving you the option, which I probably should have done in the first place.”

Mateo had to seriously consider this offer. For a while now, Mateo had felt like a burden for Leona. It kind of started from the very beginning. When they met, his situation was so intriguing to her that trying to move on from him would have seemed like a wasted opportunity to learn something interesting about the universe. Then he gave her his kidney, and brought her onto the pattern. Even after creating the new timeline, which changed all of that, he couldn’t do anything to stop her from reentering his world. Then he disappeared from existence, and she had to go through a lot to get him back. Then they got separated by the intergalactic void, and then he had his indiscretion with Cassidy Long, and then he died. He had put her through too much, and if he let himself go back to her, he would probably do it again. He had two patterns; uncontrollably jumping forwards in time, and also making his wife’s life more difficult. But that was the caveat, wasn’t it? She was his wife, and suggesting that everything was his fault was actually also taking away her agency as an independent human being. She made a lot of her own choices, and it wasn’t fair for him to dismiss those because of his guilt. Her being his wife also meant that he had to do everything he could to put them back together, because that was what marriage was.

“Get me to 2116.” Mateo extended his arms, like a bank robber who knew he had been caught.

“As you wish.” Jupiter snapped the cuffs onto his wrists, while simultaneously pulling them both through a transition window. Then he tapped on one of the cuff’s interfaces to activate the proximity feature.

Mateo jumped two years and three months into the future.

“I knew it,” Leona said, taking him into a neck hug. “I knew you couldn’t be dead. There’s something fishy with the extraction mirror they used to bring you back. What do you know? Where have you been?”

While he was talking to Jupiter, Mateo was working through an explanation for his absence in the back of his mind. He wanted to get as close to the truth as possible. There was no reason his friends weren’t allowed to know about 2014, or Camden, or even his discussion with Jupiter Fury. He just couldn’t say anything about Bida, the clone tank, the people who brought him back to life, or how they did it. That was a secret that deserved to remain hidden. “Do you remember walking through Holly Blue’s homeportal? Do you remember what it felt like?”

“Yeah,” Leona said. “It was kind of slimy, but it didn’t leave behind residue. Still, I felt pretty warm for a long time afterwards. My theory is that the de-aging process is a form of reversing entropy, so heat concentrates into you.”

“Well, that’s what I felt, just after I died.” Mateo used airquotes. “One second, I was heading for the ground, and the next, I was walking through the cemetery, and I felt very warm. It’s like the homeportal did leave a residue, which saved me from death, I guess by making a new copy of me, or something. Anyway, I made my way to the IAC, asked Camden to send me to 2114, where Jupiter found me, and gave me back my cuffs.” There, that was it. That was a good version of the truth. “I don’t want you thinking you’re invincible, though, Leona. It might have been a one-time deal, or it’s just now worn off for you, I don’t know. Don’t tempt fate.”

“I don’t intend to let myself almost die,” she assured him.

Mateo was glad to hear it. “So, what did I miss with you guys? I assume Jericho went back to the main sequence through Xearea’s window? Did Ariadna go with them?”

“I’m here.” Ariadna popped her head out of the AOC’s airlock. “I was thinking about leaving this year, but there doesn’t seem to be an upcoming window for me to stowaway.”

“Well,” J.B. began, “you only got one more year. We’re in July now, so the Bearimy-Matic pattern is exactly like the original Matic pattern was, and will stay this way for thirty more days.”

“Let’s not waste our day off,” Sanaa said. “I, for one, could use a break. Who’s up for a game or RPS-101 Plus?”

“What’s RPS-101 Plus?”

“Oh...you’ll see. I just hope I don’t get fenced again.”

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 1256: Elliot Channing

< > Table of Contents

Most people can probably accept that, while they’re the hero in their own story, others may not look so favorably upon their actions. Elliot Channing hated this possibility, and was on a constant quest to somehow become the hero in everyone’s story. He knew this was an absurd goal, and he wasn’t delusional, but he figured the closest he could get to achieving it would be to get himself into politics. Elliot could always see the difference between a good politician, and a bad one. He would often overreact to other people’s claims that all politicians were dirty, and could not be trusted. It was his own damn fault for getting into those arguments, as he would goad people into them by volunteering his opinion unprompted. His was an altered perspective, however, as he believed these were debates that would bolster his experience. His efforts did not prove pointless, as he was routinely elected into higher and higher office, until he really made his mark as a Missouri state senator, where he served his eight full years. By then, he had had a lot of experience in lower offices, including having been part of the House of Representatives for eight years, and he was showing no signs of stopping. Many believed he was going to be Missouri’s next Governor, but life took him in a different direction. He suddenly pulled out of the race, and permanently joined the City Frenzy committee. He never vocalized his reasons for this, but the truth was he was instructed to do this by an individual who claimed to be able to see the future. The Frenzy was a different kind of race; a literal foot race, but it was important to the Kansas City economy. And if it was important to his constituents, then it was important to him. After all this time, making sure both Kansas and Missouri were  financially and socially prosperous seemed like the most important thing to accomplish. Though he had been a lifelong civil servant, most of the electorate did not pay much attention to him until he switched tactics. The average voter only notices whether a candidate has a little D next to their name, or an R. He didn’t feel like he wanted to be part of that anymore, and also that he wasn’t doing much good. It was under his leadership that the event committee grew, and eventually took on more than the annual race. Soon, they were drawing in crowds from all over the country—and even out of the country—for all sorts of concerts, fairs, sports exhibitions, and more. It’s uncertain whether anyone would have called Channing a hero, but he was inarguably a celebrity, and he decided that this was what he truly wanted all along.

Microstory 1169: Ambrosios

< > Table of Contents

Thousands of years ago, there lived a man named Ambrosios. Not much is known about who he was when he was first born, or even whether he had time powers. If so, he had long since forgotten them, in favor of the only thing he seemed to care about. Some people are born with slowed aging, or don’t age at all once they reach some arbitrary ceiling. Others can reverse their own aging, or otherwise renew themselves. Full immortality, however, is so rare that only one person is known for sure to have it naturally. Meliora Rutherford Delaney-Reaver has pretty much every power, and there’s no reason to believe that anything can kill her. In order for anyone else to reach this level of immortality, however, they must drink the immortality waters. This sounds easy enough, but of course, the drinking is only the final task. First, you must procure the ingredients. You must find them in the right order, and you must do so quickly enough for them to do you any good. Like regular water, immortality water goes stale after a certain period of time, and loses its power to grant whatever component of the recipe that it was meant to when it was still good. Unless contaminated, it will most likely still be good enough to drink, but it will no longer help in your quest to never die, and if you still wish for the cure to death, you will have to start this quest all over again. The ingredients can be found all across time and space. Each one is easy enough to get to, but getting to all of them in the right amount of time, and drinking them in the right order, is harder than you might think. There are ways to preserve the water before it loses potency, and this can give you more time, but few people have access to the right resources. After all, the first trick is knowing exactly where each water source is, which ingredient it is, and how much to mix. Ambrosios managed to complete every task; an impressive feat for someone born so early in the timeline. People who had powers back then struggled with it, because their grasp of the concept of a timeline itself was difficult for them to manage. His efforts were not without their consequences, however. His success changed him in ways he never could have foretold. If he was being honest with himself, his immortality wasn’t what made him so misanthropic. He always kind of had an issue caring about other people. What it did do to him, however, was make him incredibly paranoid. And that would only get worse. He alienated all of his friends in the obsession with discovering the water, and hurt what few remained by his side in his final triumph. He then became convinced that there was a way to undo his immortality, and that people would be seeking it. To him, everyone was an enemy, so he isolated himself completely. Whenever there was even a hint that anyone else was around, he would pack up his belongings, and quickly escape somewhere else, even if it was really just a false alarm. He lost touch with reality, and started making up stories about the universe. By the time he was finally killed—by his own irrational actions, by the way—nothing he said made any sense, and he died alone.

Microstory 1168: Valda Ramsey

< > Table of Contents

Hilde Unger was the furthest along in her pregnancy when the town of Springfield, Kansas was forced through the Deathfall portal, and landed on what would come to be known as Durus. Shortly after arriving, she realized the monsters that were attacking the townsfolk were leaving her completely alone. It was as if something was protecting her. A cursory glance made it likely that all sufficiently pregnant women were safe from the monsters. At first, Springfield concluded that these monsters somehow had ethical limits, or at least an instinct to preserve young life. Perhaps they were like the practical fisherman, who throws back the small fish, so he can catch it later once it’s grown. They would come to understand that the children born within the next several months after the event were special. They possessed time powers that provided the town with a means of fighting back. But Hilde was not around for these developments. Following the very first monster attack, she and her new friend, Hogarth separated themselves from the group. Hogarth was the one responsible for shielding Springfield from the portal that, without her intervention, destroyed nearly everything that fell into it. Her job was not over, for she still needed to find a way to send everyone back home. After a brief, but harrowing journey, they found themselves in the company of a man named Paul Harken (a.k.a. Hark), who had survived the trip long ago, and was already living on Durus. He attempted to transport them back to the town, so Hogarth could complete her new machine, but something went wrong, and they ended up about five years in the future. A new society had formed since they were gone, and it was not a good one. It was led by a tyrannical psychopath nicknamed Smith. He saw how special the newborn children were, and manipulated their parents to make sure he was part of their lives. Valda Ramsey, having not yet been born, was able to skip all his manipulations. Though she was now the youngest, she was vital in deprogramming her peers. The more they aged, the clearer it became that they were destined to be the leaders of tomorrow, whether they were qualified for the responsibility, or not. Valda needed to ensure that they would be qualified, and would make ethical decisions. She became a leader of leaders, who kept constant watch over the other source mages, in case they got any bright ideas about returning to the kind of world they were living in during the Smithtatorship. Unfortunately, her legacy would not be a positive one. She would many years later break one of her own people’s cardinal rules. Though her actions would come to be crucial to the survival of the human population on Durus, history would only remember the negative, and she would be blamed for the sacrifices that came with it.

Microstory 984: Live Theatre

< > Table of Contents

I grew up in the same world that you did, even though I make a lot of jokes about being born on a Keserint space station orbiting Pluto hundreds of thousands of years ago, or in the future. One of my biggest regrets is allowing myself to be influenced by so many bad sources of information. As a man, I’ve had it extremely easy, never feeling like I had to transform myself into the perfect people in magazines, or like I wasn’t allowed to wear pants. I did, however, contribute to the negativity this world has offered, almost always without even realizing it. My parents were always very loving, and believed in diversity, but there were so many other things vying for my attention, that not even their good teachings could insulate me from everything. I once had a teacher in middle school who got off on a tangent about some associate of hers who underwent gender reassignment surgery. She talked about how gross that was, and charged us to never do anything like that. She wasn’t an absolutely terrible person, but she was a clueless jackass who didn’t know what she was talking about, and that sort of behavior would never be tolerated today; not even in Kansas. I didn’t feel as sick about the idea as she did, but I didn’t question her position either. I spent years being indifferent to transgender people; time I could have spent being a vocal ally. That teacher fucking blocked something good in me with ignorant darkness, and I will never get that time back. People have died because children are highly impressionable, and are being taught to agree with just about everything a role model says. I’m optimistic about that teacher, and have enough faith in her that she’s changed her beliefs, possibly without even remembering—and thusly not feeling guilty about—the damage she inflicted on young minds. I recall her being fairly open-minded and liberal otherwise. She was just as much a victim of society’s rules as I was; more so, because she was older. The reason I’m saying all this is because, especially when I was younger, I’ve been conditioned to be resistant of certain things that I later realize I like. I had to overcome society’s expectations that I not like live theatre, because I am not a girl. I was expected to like sports and boobs, and nobody outside of my family even thought to let me question these assumptions. I like RENT, and I like listening to show tunes, I miss Smash, and I very much wanted to win the lottery for Hamilton tickets when my family took a trip to New York City in 2016. I even determined the physiological characteristics of a species in my stories based on the possibility that I may be able to help write a musical about them decades from now. They have two sets of vocal cords, so they can sing notes humans can’t, and singing is vital to the conception, and early development, of their offspring. The point is that gender roles are a social construct, rather than a biological one. You would probably agree if you saw Book of Mormon.

Microstory 968: Evolution

< > Table of Contents

Over the years, I had some teachers that I liked. They were cool, or helpful, or otherwise impactful. True, there was not one that really stands out; that I can point to today and say, “that one. S/he did a lot for me”. But the real problem with education, in this country at least, is that it’s designed to have students regurgitate whatever the policymakers believe they should know, regardless of who they are. Understand this, the problem is not the teachers’ fault. Humanity has been looking at education all wrong for all this time, and it’s gonna take a lot of effort to dismantle those institutional ideals. In the past, education was for the elite. You had to be born at the right station to get it, and you had to be a man. Though this is no longer the case in the western world, it still has an effect on us. I grew up hating school because no one had the time to find out what I liked, or how to relate it to me. I would have loved to have studied a number of topics in school had I known back then I liked them. One of these things is astrophysics, which I’ll discuss later, but another is evolutionary biology. I am positively fascinated by all the different little organisms, and how they’ve mutated to fit their environment. Dragonflies have arms in their mouths to catch prey, and live underwater in nymph form for up to five years, before maturing into adulthood, and living another several months on the wing. Why? Why does it do this? Why does it spend so much time in the water, so little time in the air, and then just die? Why do lobsters never stop growing until they die from exhaustion when it starts taking too much energy to moult? Which came first; the honeybee, or the flower?

Scientists can study the traits of various animals, plants, and other organisms all they want, and they can infer what might have led to any given mutation surviving in a species, but no one really understands what it took to get to this point. There are only a handful of examples of evolution happening right before our eyes. Most of our understanding of it comes from a fairly static perspective of its present state, because we’ve not been observing scientifically for very long. I want so badly to go back in time and watch the Tree of Evolution split, and split, and continue to split over aeons. I want to experience the changes in real time so much that I’ve created characters that are time travelers and immortal, so this is exactly what they’ve chosen to do with their lives. I just haven’t found a good story to introduce them, but they’re coming. Education is a very linear construct. You learn simple stuff when you’re young, and gradually introduce more complex concepts. A few people have a bunch of degrees, but most of them are geniuses, because colleges don’t really expect you to keep coming back. It is simply not a feasible or affordable life plan. Yes, there are other options, like educational online videos, but I still think it would be best if I had an authority who could prepare a structured syllabus for me to follow. No one told me how amazing evolution is, especially not since I grew up in Kansas, where half the people were telling me that God made humans from scratch six thousand years ago. In case evolutionary biology is your thing, and you still haven’t reached a point of no return, then this is your opportunity to change course. Don’t you wanna know why platypodes and echidnas are the only mammals that lay eggs?

Microstory 967: Let America Vote/Jason Kander

< > Table of Contents

As I think I may have mentioned once or twice, I hate Donald Trump. He’s a piece of crap Russian spy that doesn’t deserve to be anywhere close to a position of power. I was so heartbroken and frustrated after the 2016 election, but that anger turned into an urge to do something about it. I had always voted, and voiced my support for favored candidates, but I hadn’t really ever taken any action. Like many others, I wanted to do more. Fortunately, a movement was growing that would give us more opportunities to do that than ever before. One other race I was watching closely that year was one for the Missouri senator. I recalled watching a commercial from the Jason Kander campaign—you probably saw it; it was wildly popular—where the army veteran expresses his support for common sense gun laws while assembling a firearm blindfolded. I wish I could have voted for the man, but I don’t live in Missouri, so that decision was out of my reach. But again, I didn’t have to be so passive; I could have helped. As luck would have it, Jason Kander was the one to help me get started on that road. He founded an organization called Let America Vote for the sole purpose of working against voter suppression, which has become a rampant problem in our country in recent years. No matter what they say; widespread voter fraud is very much something of which there is no evidence, and voter suppression is literally destroying this country’s democracy, one lost vote at a time. I had no idea how bad it was, but it’s despicable. I signed up for Let America Vote’s emails, and starting donating some money, but that wasn’t the end of it. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting happened, leading me to start following  Emma González, and the March For Our Lives movement. Then I signed up for email updates from MoveOn, and ActBlue, and Vote.org, and the Sharice Davids campaign. I donated more money, and I tried to spread the word of truth even more. My Gmail account uses multiple inboxes, rather than tabs, or whatever. I filter my emails according to source or topic, and get about 20 political messages a day. I don’t always read them them when they come in, but I always catch up eventually, and nothing goes unread. After I was mostly finished coming up with this list of 99 things that I love, I assigned each one a random number in a spreadsheet, and used the sorter to randomize that list, because I’m not going over them in any particular order. It just so happened that this installment fell on election day, though, which I find interesting. So if you’re reading this, right when it’s released, that means it’s 16:15 central time. If you’re in my time zone, you have less than three hours to get out there and vote, if you haven’t already. I believe in Jason Kander, and Let America Vote, and all organizations dedicated to rights of the people, and the betterment of mankind, rather than just the wealthiest few. If you agree with this, then today and next election, #votethemout! If you don’t, then fuck off!

Microstory 966: Kansas City

< > Table of Contents

I was born at a very young age in central Kansas. We moved around a lot, but always in either Kansas or Missouri. I live close enough to the border that I still spend a lot of time on the other side—I even work there all the time, including today—though I have no intention of moving to KCMO permanently. As I grew up, I felt like I didn’t understand the way people lived on the coasts. I didn’t dislike them, but I perceived a difference between me and them. I’m a midwesterner, and have no interest in changing that. A lot of people love where they’re from, or where they live now. But I do want to point out a difference between my town, and these others, while simultaneously making it clear I don’t think this applies to literally everyone. There’s an obsession that runs in the blood of all New Yorkers, and all Angelenos, all Seattleites, and so on. Many are so fiercely loyal to their respective cities that they either think everyone who doesn’t live there desperately wishes we were so honored, or we’re simply loyal to our own terrible homes. Go Interchangeable Sports Team! How many television series do you know that are set in one of the major coastal cities, or Chicago? Too many to name. Wikipedia lists only a handful set in KC, and I’ve only heard of two of them. I think the Z Nation gang passed through once. None of them is or was shot anywhere near here. Switched at Birth never had any seasons, and all the houses used blatant California architecture. So what’s the difference between you and me? Well, I love Kansas City. I love living in the suburbs, so a trip downtown isn’t too far, but also isn’t right here. We have all the good restaurant franchises, and a hoppin’ nightlife, even though that’s not my particular scene. That’s just like you. The difference is most of us recognize that it’s just a frickin’ city. There’s nothing inherently different about living here than somewhere else. You may think Hell’s Kitchen has the best pizza shop in the world, but guess what? The best anything doesn’t exist, because billions of other people live on this rock, and every one of them has their own tastes. This need to express an us versus them mentality is only detrimental to humanity’s progress, and does not reflect reality in the least. So thank you, Kansas City, for being citizens of the world. Someone should make a show about you. We can start with the thirteen or so I’ve come up with that don’t take place on alien worlds.

Microstory 956: States’ Rights

< > Table of Contents

I used to be pretty opposed to the concept of states’ rights. The way I see it, we are meant to be a single nation, under a singular set of laws. Since I live near the border of Kansas and Missouri, I cross state lines all the time. My closest movie theatre is on the other side of State Line, and a lot of the places where I work are in downtown KCMO. I’ve never been able to see us as that different, even though I know we are. I know there is a lot of racism left in Alabama, and a lot of pot in California. Oregon does tend to be more progressive, and Tennessee is all about country music. For as patriotic as conservatives claim to be, they sure hate their own country, and are fiercely loyal only to their state. But like many things that changed in November of 2016, my perspective shifted dramatically, and it bothers me a lot. In a few short months, we started seeing massive changes to the way laws are handled here. Our so-called president is abusing his power by rolling back protections for minorities, immigrants, women, and members of LGBTQ. They’ve even taken steps towards getting rid of a free and fair internet. The fact that these changes seem to benefit directly the wealthy individuals driving the changes seems to be completely lost on Trump-voters. Or maybe they just hate black people so much that they’re willing to accept whatever terrible repercussions that affect them personally come with it. All I know is that I’ve never been so glad for states’ rights. State leadership is starting to fight back, by maintaining the previous administration’s policies on things like sanctuary cities, and clean environment initiatives. They’ve even taken steps towards keeping their citizens using a free and fair internet.

The point of my continuous story of The Advancement of Leona Matic is to give you a really quick overview of what things will be like in the future. By having the main character only live one day every year, we get to skip through all the boring parts, and see how things are going to change. In this future, the boundaries between nationstates slowly begin to blur. The European Union adds more members, and warmly welcomes back certain former members which shall remain nameless. A North American Union will form, likely at around the same time as an Asian block. As Africa continues to develop and progress, they too will form similar subcontinents; though they will likely be divided in some way for some time. China will probably assert itself as an unrivaled superpower the likes of which this world has never seen, but that too shall pass. India may do something similar, but more on an organic economic level than a forceful one. Generation by generation will come, each one less focused on spreading out than the last. Eventually, people will only live in as much space as they need. It will no longer be fashionable to buy the biggest house possible, but instead to have gone out and experienced more exciting adventures. It won’t matter where you live anymore, so we’ll build extremely dense arcologies that house millions of people vertically. We’ll move out beyond our atmosphere, living on orbital stations, satellite bases, other planets, and even asteroids. There will be division once more, but they will be far less violent, and in time, they will dissipate as well. Things will get better. Just like today we laugh at how women had to wear corsets, and weren’t allowed to vote, our descendants will laugh at how we once exchanged money, and built walls between each other. Until those days come, though, we need states’ rights, or else this unsustainable oligarchy drives us towards insurmountable anarchy.

Microstory 920: Youth Programs

< > Table of Contents

If there’s one thing I’ve learned since the beginning of this series, it’s that creating a list is a lot easier than expanding upon it. I’m ashamed to say that it took me a long time to come up with ninety-seven things that I love. Yes, that means I still have two empty slots that prove how negative of a person I really am. I tried looking online for ideas, but people are...what’s the word? Basic. People are basic. They like rainbows, and the smell of coffee in the morning. They like curling up with a good book, and—my God, this isn’t a joke—long walks on the beach. I’ve not been to a heck of lot of beaches—being landlocked in Kansas—but even on those few, never did I see a single person taking a long walk. Anyway, the point is that I love the idea of youth programs. I like that children are being engaged, and that they’re learning, and gaining new experiences, and that they have a safe place to go. I don’t however, have much experience with them, though. When my sister and I were younger, we were often placed in programs during the summer, so we would have something to do, and because our parents needed to work. It wasn’t until I was older that I discovered kids go to summer school because they have trouble completing requirements, or understand material, during the regular year. I’ve also been to summer day camp, sports camp, and participated Boy Scouts activities. They had me do these things because, like I said, I didn’t have anything else, but also to try to figure what I liked, and where I excelled. I was well provided for, well-educated, and I lived in a safe environment, but not everyone has that. While I don’t personally carry a connection to any sort of youth program (except for that one time in middle school when a group of us went to pair up with elementary school students at an underfunded school, for literally one day), I did want to take a moment to give them a shoutout. Thanks for looking out for our kids. We’re gonna need them if we ever wanna clean up this mess.