Microstory 1979: From the Shadows

< > Table of Contents

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

Leonard: No, she’s still not here. Ophelia? Ophelia? Can you hear me?

Micro: *walking up from the shadows* I’m blocking all signals.

Leonard: Report.

Micro: *smiling* Report. You’re learning, young padawan. First off, are you okay? You, Ophelia, and the prisoner? How did you get back here?

Leonard: We used one of Anaïs’ contacts to get across the borders, and then a bus.

Micro: *nodding* I’m glad you’re okay. I wanted to help, but we couldn’t tip Sachs off. Not that it mattered. Parsons escalated things at the safehouse, and we were forced to reveal the truth in front of Sasho. We still don’t know if we can trust him. That’s why I asked you to come here. This was our only way to keep Vogel safe and alive until we can figure out how many moles there are left in the government. He is alive, isn’t he?

Leonard: He’s fine. He’s in a safehouse that I set up for myself while I was free, but before DExA began. *looking around* I assume this is yours?

Micro: All I could do was hope that your parolee told you where the Salmon Civic Center would be if we were in Salmonverse.

Leonard: We had lunch in this area once in my home universe. He pointed it out. Seemed innocuous and meaningless at the time.

Micro: I’m glad that he did.

Leonard: I’m taking Vogel to Parsons. Enough of this cloak and dagger crap. We are not equipped to hold onto the suspect on our own, and every day we spend in the cold gets us closer to being burned.

Reese: I’m pleased to hear you say that. *walks up from the shadows*

Leonard: This was all just a test?

Micro: Have you heard of Lima Syndrome where you’re from?

Leonard: No.

Reese: We don’t have it either. Apparently it’s when you start to sympathize with someone you have in captivity. I had to be sure you weren’t compromised. Or Ophelia.

Leonard: Oh, the Grapley Effect. Yeah, we have that.

Reese: *hands Leonard a folder* This is what we have on Sachs. I had a friend from my military days look into it independently to verify it. He’s been playing us the whole time.

Leonard: I assume he took a shot at Vogel to shut him up?

Micro: That’s our assumption as well. We need to find out what—and who—he knows.

Leonard: *looking over the documents* This begs the question...

Reese: Director Washington? She’s the one who assigned Sachs to our department. Yeah, I’m worried about her loyalties too. That’s not our job, though. The Internal Compliance Commission will investigate on their own.

Leonard: In the meantime, what happens to us?

Reese: We’ve been shut down. But there’s hope for us yet.

Leonard: In what way?

Myka: *coming out of the shadows with a bunch of others* We’re working out of here now. Congratulations, Miazga, you’ve just joined a rogue operation.

Leonard: Not my first.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 20, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

Marie has been staking out this apartment for the last two days. This is the kind of work that she used to do for SD6. She was taken off of all such assignments when her team showed up, and that became her only priority, both on a personal level, and for the government. This still has to do with time travel, but her team isn’t involved. They’re looking for people who have experienced an inordinate amount of time for a normal living human, or just have unusual brain chemistry. The orbital scanner that Ramses built, and which Mateo installed on a Snowglobe satellite, only mapped where these targets were at the time of the last scan. This information is now over a week old, so if any of them were just on vacation, or something, they’ll probably never find them. This may all be a waste of time. She hates this now. She hates everything she used to love or like. She’s just bitter and angry, and nothing seems right anymore. She shouldn’t take it out on the team, though, and she knows it. Hopefully they understand, and won’t hold it against her. Maybe getting herself a win will raise her spirits.

She has the extra mobile scanner that Ramses left in his hotel room. He didn’t have time to write up a manual, and the data burst he was able to send from the time bubble he and Mateo are presently trapped in didn’t say much about it. Even so, it seems pretty self-explanatory. Marie was able to adapt it to a tripod, and place it next to her other surveillance equipment. She doesn’t know which unit in the apartment complex is housing the target, but they’ll have to go through the front door at some point, and when they do, this thing should beep to let her know. It starts to beep. The scanner doesn’t communicate with the digital scope, of course, so she has to cross-reference the time codes to find who she’s looking for. Three people entered the building at about the same time, but two of them appeared to be together, and the scanner only caught one unusual brain. That’s not a guarantee, but it’s a safer bet. She pulls up the photo, runs downstairs from her surveillance nest, crosses the street, and enters the building.

“English?” she asks the lobby supervisor.

“Yes,” he replies. “But my shift is over. Divina will be out soon.”

Just as he’s saying that, the woman she was looking for steps out of the back office in her uniform. The scanner beeps. The two of them exchange a few words in Filipino, and then the man leaves. “Yes, can I help you?”

Marie isn’t prepared for this either. She doesn’t know what to say, so she just goes with the tried and true code words. “Yeah, thank you. Listen, I’m in the mood for some fish. Do you know of a good restaurant that serves salmon?”

The lobby supervisor starts to consult her computer. “There is a really great seafood  restaurant down the street, but I can pull up a comprehensive list for you.”

Hmm. That didn’t work. Marie holds up her scanner, which thankfully, doesn’t look like a weapon. Yeah, her brain is definitely unusual.

“I’m sorry, do you live here? We’re really only meant to help residents.”

“I’m a time traveler from the 19th century, trapped in your reality, hoping to find others like me. We have been looking for a way back home, but we don’t want to leave without first checking to see if anyone else would like to join. I believe you’re one of us.”

“Of course, ma’am. One moment, please.” She calls the authorities.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 6, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

The team tried to play it cool with Amir. They let him get a few meal vouchers for them, so they don’t starve. Heath is the one who needed these the most. Leona and Marie have realized that they can last a little bit longer without food, even though their upgraded bodies aren’t operating at full capacity. Kivi is apparently in the same boat, even though she supposedly originates from this reality, and never received any upgrade. Perhaps all Kivis are like that. She certainly does have a special ability, which they’re thinking now may not be just this thing that she happens to be good at, but which is actually somehow supernatural. She found Amir pretty quickly, as if he was giving off a smell. If it’s real, and not a coincidence, that is certainly a talent that they could use in the future.

Amir has been very helpful and kind, but they’ve gotten to the point today that squeezing information out of him covertly is no longer working. It’s time to take a more direct approach, and just tell him why they’re here. “Listen,” Leona begins, “thanks for all your help, but I think we need to be honest with you.”

Amir drops his whole face towards the floor. “You didn’t just think I looked like a nice guy,” he figures. “You were sent in here to retrieve me.”

“So you know?” Leona asks.

“I’m only in here to get away from people like you. Who do you work for?”

“We weren’t sent here to extract you,” she begins. “We ended up across the border for unrelated reasons, and I think the Senator just thought it would be a great opportunity to exploit our skills again. We had no idea you existed until a couple of days ago, I swear.”

“Senator Morton has something on you?”

“No, Honeycutt,” Marie clarifies.

Amir shrugs. “Never heard of him. Who knows how many links in the espionage chain are between you and me?”

“Do you want to live here?” Kivi asks him.

“Not particularly,” Amir answers. “It’s just the safest place to be. I didn’t think anyone would be able to find me, and even if they did, the government wouldn’t want to help. I’m not sure how your boss convinced them, but maybe he’s more powerful than Morton.”

“He’s not our boss, he just has a grip on us,” Heath contends.

“I’m sorry to hear that, but I’m afraid I’m not going anywhere. Either you get out without me, or you stay here for the rest of your lives. I don’t care what it takes, I’m staying away from Arctos.”

“Arctos? What is that?” Leona asks, thinking about it, but still needing answers.

“That’s what they call themselves,” Amir says. “Their symbol is a bear.”

Marie looks at Leona. “Leelee, is that...?”

“Bears eat salmon,” Leona says. “That must be what it means.”

“Yeah,” Amir remembers, “they used to talk about salmon all the time, like it was some kind of rival organization.”

“We’re not rivals,” Leona tells him. “We’re targets. Did you hurt any of them? Did you work for these Arctos people, or something? Did you escape?”

“I didn’t work for anybody,” Amir claims. “I was their prisoner. Or their test subject, it was always unclear to me. They thought I was salmon at first until tests somehow proved that I had nothing to do with them.”

“What kind of tests?” Kivi asks.

Amir shakes his head. “Mostly involving water? I don’t know, it wasn’t torture, but it was weird. I couldn’t say what they were looking for. Yes, I did escape, because some of them thought that I should be let go since I wasn’t really salmon, but others seemed to think that I was associated with them in some way. I really don’t know, can we stop talking about this, please?”

So the Honeycutts know more than they have let on so far. Or maybe they’ve been letting it on just fine, but the team has been blind to the truth. There are people here who are aware of time travel, and now they know that there are other time travelers. Amir must be connected to them, perhaps by relation, or he saw something as a child he didn’t understand. Regardless, they all have to get out of here. They don’t know how long Amir has been on Melville’s radar, so maybe he’s not any less safe than before, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s definitely not safe now. “We can’t,” Leona says apologetically. “In fact, we’ll need your help more than ever. Can you get us back to the shore? Can you get us to the Dead Sea?”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 5, 2394

« < » > Table of Contents

Skylar led the team into the building, and up the elevators, which was a tight squeeze with her bodyguards. As the sister of the apparent leader of the entire metropolis, it was understandable that she needed to be protected. The only weird part was that they made no attempt to pat the team down, or assess them as a threat in any way. Perhaps they just knew enough about the future.

They spilled out at the top floor, and headed to the left for the Night President’s Office. This should be interesting, learning why there was a different president for each half of the day. Skylar nodded to her guards as they entered the Night Vice President’s Office. They stayed outside by the door, and gave them some privacy. Instead of sitting at her desk, she chose a chair in the center of the room, and had everyone choose a spot on one of the two couches. “I don’t normally work here. By design, we’re usually kept separate to insulate against a discontinuity of government. We knew you would head here for help first, though, and at the moment, my brother has to sleep, so I’m the only one available.”

“This sounds like a fascinating form of government,” Ramses pointed out. “Night and day?”

Skylar laughed. “It’s by necessity. One of us wanted to run for office, and the others sort of had to follow suit. We never thought we would win, because of our unusual situation, but the people seem cool with it, and we’re making it work.”

“You’re making what work?” Marie asked. “What’s your situation?”

“We’re gargoyles,” she answered. They had seen a lot over the years, but a stone monster person would be a first. She giggled again. “A specific kind of gargoyle. Oliver and I are the originals. We were born this way. It’s what the powers that be chose for us. Due to a series of unlikely events, we transferred our patterns to Kostya and Lucy, except diametrically. We only exist between sundown and sunrise. They only exist between sunrise and sundown.”

“So you can’t cooperate?” Leona noted.

“We leave each other messages. That’s not the issue.”

Olimpia tilted her head, and twitched an eye. “Love,” she guessed.

Skylar nodded. “Oliver loves Lucy, and she him. They haven’t seen each other in person in a very long time. There’s one way that we could do it, but...there’s an obstacle. That’s what we were hoping you would be able to help us with.” She checked her watch. “It’ll have to be next year, but...would you be willing?”

“Depends on what it is,” Mateo said cautiously.

“Of course,” Skylar said understandingly. “You’ve heard of the Salmonday Club?”

“Yeah,” they answered, except for Angela and Marie.

“It adds an extra day between Saturday and Sunday,” Leona explained to them. “It exists within a pocket dimension of extra temporal energy. Clubgoers spend one minute inside, but it feels like twenty-four hours.”

“People run in when the timer starts,” Ramses continued, “and rush back out before time runs out at the end.”

“Wait,” Angela said. “What happens if they don’t get out in time?”

“They jump to the end of the next week,” Leona answered. “If you never left the club, it would always be Salmonday for you, and you would basically live for fifty-two days a year. Their pattern would be not unlike ours.” She turned back to Vice President Spout. “Is that why you think we can help, because of our pattern?”

“No, it’s because we don’t have any teleporters left,” Skylar clarified. “The obstacle is pretty simple, you should be able to jump past it, and once inside, you can shut it down. If you can do this for us, we can get you back to the main sequence.”

“You say obstacle like you don’t wanna talk about what it really is,” Olimpia realized.

“It’s an abyss,” Skylar said. “Some of that temporal energy escaped, and formed a cloud around the entrances to the club. Fortunately it has never spread farther, because that would be bad. We don’t know how slow time moves inside, but it’s very slow. We can see people just stuck there in place. There’s a way to purge it, but again, it’s inside the club, and we can’t reach it. You wouldn’t just be helping my brother and the love of his life touch each other once more. You would be freeing all the innocent curious people, and the volunteers, who have been trapped for decades.”

“Why do we have to wait until next year?” Angela asked. “We still have a few hours left before midnight central.”

“All four leaders have to sign off on it,” Skylar began, “and the other three refuse to do so until they meet you. If we had known exactly where you were going to show up, we could have planned it better, but unfortunately, our seer wasn’t that specific. So here’s what will happen—if you agree to even entertain the idea—”

“We’ll do it,” Leona answered plainly. There was no doubt about it. This was right in their wheelhouse, especially now that they were full-fledged teleporters.

“That would be great. Just so you understand, I’ve met you, I sign off. I’m easy. I trust our seers, and the historical records that have recounted your dealings with the Fourth Quadrant, and other points in spacetime. Next year, when you come back, it will be nighttime again, and you can meet Oliver. Come sunrise, you can meet with Lucy and Kostya. Does that sound fair?”

“What are the chances they won’t sign off?” Mateo asked her.

Skylar sighed. “Nearly zero. I think this is more of a CYA operation. We need the citizens—the voters—to know that we didn’t just send a team of strangers to a hazardous temporal anomaly, on a potentially dangerous mission, without so much as shaking your hands.”

“Okay, we’ll do it,” Leona repeated.

“You don’t need to discuss it?” Skylar pressed.

“We can feel each other’s emotions,” Mateo divulged. “We’re all in. We would know if there was any reluctance amongst us.”

“Very well,” Skylar said, standing back up. “I’m just now realizing, though, that we did not factor in any rest time for you. You can wait to meet my brother until later. It just can’t be after 6:56. Well, it needs to be reasonably before that. I suppose we could—”

“We’re fine,” Leona interrupted again. “We don’t need very much sleep anymore either.”

“Brilliant,” Skylar said. “I wish I had that luxury. I only exist an average of twelve hours a day, but I still need to sleep at least seven.”

The team looked around at each other, particularly Ramses and Leona.

“What? What is it?”

“The way we understand it,” Ramses started to say, “the powers that be have no control over salmon once they cross into other realities, like this one.”

“I assure you, we are still bound to our pattern.”

“Yes, you are,” Leona presumed, “but there might be a way around that. Our pattern, for instance, was encoded into our neurology. Take it away from us, and we’re no longer us. This is tantamount to murder or suicide. But that was done to us by a man...a very powerful man. We’ve not been beholden to the PTB for years. The fact that our current pattern matches the original one was deliberate and arbitrary. He could just as easily have chosen some other random pattern.”

“What are you saying?” Skylar sat back down, curious. “This man could do the same for us, but change our pattern?”

“Oh, no,” Mateo said. “We wouldn’t have you deal with him. It would be us. Well, it would be Ramses and Leona.”

Ramses reached into his bag, and retrieved an object that resembled an ancient wireless cellphone charging stand. He set it on Skylar’s coffee table. It looked wholly unremarkable, but it was incredibly advanced. “This is called a nanoforge, specifically a lab creator. I might need to tweak it a little bit, but the last time I used it, it was for the same thing you’ll need. It’s mostly automated, but you’ll have to provide it with raw materials, and it’ll let you know what those are. It can build a cloning laboratory, based on the number of gestational pods you require, and the speed of development you wish to wait for. You can then transfer your respective consciousnesses to your new bodies, and if all goes well, you’ll leave your patterns behind. You’ll be a salmonfree you.”

Skylar was shocked. “You would do this for us? You would grant us this technology?”

“It comes with an expiration date,” Leona clarified. “You won’t be able to keep it. The lab will literally implode, as well as the forge. We’re not in the habit of interfering with the development of a given culture. We don’t know what you would do with cloning tech if you don’t already have it. If you would like to invent it yourself afterwards, we won’t stop you, but we’re not going to let you just jump into it...except to help the four of you this once.”

“Of course we’ll still shut off your weird time cloud,” Olimpia reminded her. “It’s not an either-or thing.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

Ramses took out his tablet, and paired it with the nanoforge. “I’ll stay here to program it. The rest of you should scout the location.”

“Yes,” Leona agreed.

“Why don’t you...?” Skylar began, but trailed off out of seeming embarrassment.

“Go ahead and say it,” Mateo encouraged.

“Would you consider just staying here? We do have a way to get you back to the main reality, but I think you six could do quite well here, and you’re always welcome.”

It was certainly a thought to think on, but they had already considered it as an option while they were still in the Fifth Division. They didn’t leave because of any particular danger they were in. They were always in danger. They wanted to return home. Leona was about to say as much when a feeling she received from Mateo changed her approach. “We’ll talk about it. Thanks for the offer.”

They teleported away, except for Ramses, who was working on the nanoforge, and Marie, who felt like sticking around.”

The next day was as breezy as Skylar made it sound. They met with her brother, Oliver soon after returning to the timestream. They then waited several hours, when the two of them were stuck in impenetrable time bubbles, and the other two were free of theirs. Apparently, each one lasted a few seconds, but spanned roughly half a day. It didn’t matter what time of year it was, or where they were. Their pattern was coded to this region, according to the rotation of the Earth. Sunrise and sunset times changed every day, and their patterns changed with them. Winters were better for the night team, but summers were better for the day team. One day, they would be free of all that, and that day was going to come sooner than they could have imagined. The cloning process was going to take years to complete the safest way, but there was a workaround in the meantime. In fact, it could be a permanent solution if that was what they chose.

Fixing the Salmonday Club temporal issue was easy too. The emergency shutoff button was exactly where everyone said it would be, in the manager office. Mateo and Marie teleported in alone, pressed it, and the nightmare was over. It was no longer a club for Salmonday. They could start it back up again, but would probably just demolish the place. The intention was to repurpose it as a neutral zone for the two disparate leadership factions to reunite periodically, but they shouldn’t need it anymore.

Shortly before sunset, and after ensuring that the leak was repaired, they flipped the dimension back on, and let Kostya and Lucy inside. Once the Spouts were back, Olimpia and Leona transported them there too. After witnessing the heartfelt reunion between them, Leona presented them with four Cassidy cuffs. “Unlike the laboratory, these will not self-destruct. They can also not be reprogrammed according to your whims. They’ll work with your DNA only. You can’t even swap them among each other.” She handed each one to the salmon, careful to make sure she didn’t get them mixed up. “All you’ll be able to do is suppress your pattern. They’re not communicators, they’re not teleporters. I left the clock on there, but that’s it. They’re all juiced up, and should last you centuries. You’ll probably have to transfer your consciousnesses to other substrates to survive that long anyway.

“Thank you,” Lucy said graciously.

“Thanks to all of you,” Kostya added.

“The seer did not predict any of this,” Oliver said.

“I’m sure they saw it coming,” Leona figured. “They just didn’t tell you about it. They like to withhold.”

Skylar frowned, and hastily attached her cuff to her wrist. “Put them on,” she ordered the other three. Put them on now.”

“It’s okay,” Leona said. “There’s no rush. I mean, it’s fine, but...”

“It’s not fine,” Skylar said in an apologetic tone. “We’ve been withholding as well. We can’t get you back to the main sequence. That’s never been something we could do. We probably would have had migration with those kinds of capabilities. Our technology has grown, since we sped up time to match that of true Earth, but we didn’t advance as fast as them, I’m sure. I’m sorry, we lied.”

The team smiled. “We know.”

“You do?” Oliver asked.

“We’re good at reading microexpressions,” Marie told them.

“You’re not mad?” Lucy asked.

“Don’t inspire anger in them,” Kostya advised.

“Really, it’s all right,” Leona assured them. “We’ll find a way eventually.”

“Eventually has come!” came a voice from across the room.

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, April 4, 2028

« < » > Table of Contents

The first thing they did was let Leona get caught up with her mother, whose last few years of her life were somewhat uneventful. Despite this being a harsh world to live in, there were, at least, no dangerous people around. Having never seen humans before, some of the predatory animals posed serious threat to the camp, but they weren’t impossible to deal with. They did once see a creature that looked more like a dog, and less like a wolf, so that suggested humans evolved at some point, but died out however long ago after that. An archaeologist or anthropologist would probably have a grand ol’ time studying this whole planet. Their first encounter with another person came when FBI Agent Austin Miller found them one evening after spotting the smoke from their fire. Miller was not happy with the fact that they knew his real name was Hello Doctor, but it was once part of Declan’s curriculum. For his training, he was expected to learn as much past and future history as possible. His teacher, Darko didn’t want him to be surprised by the appearance of anyone in his life; friend of foe. It was the only subject he studied that his classmate, Slipstream did not also study. She remained in the dark about time travel until years later.

Evidently, Agent Miller discovered time travel himself in 2026, when one of the Springfield Nine wreaked havoc on Kansas City, for hazy reasons. Paige Turner was able to erase most of the damage he had done, so that few could remember anything had ever happened. Miller happened to be one of these few, though he wasn’t entirely sure why. Either way, it inspired him to investigate the matter in secret, starting with a temporal object he found called The Omega Gyroscope. He discovered this thing could either create or access alternate timelines. He was in the middle of a long-term study of one of these realities when Paige returned with her fathers, and a group of other people who were trying to stop whatever he had planned. Miller was reluctant to explain his motives clearly to Declan and Carol, but whatever they were, they resulted in him becoming trapped in the other timeline, along with the Reaver-Demir gang. Everyone else managed to escape, but Miller had to sacrifice himself to make it happen. When he did, he somehow ended up here, in this empty world.

“Can you get me back?” Miller asked.

A third of the group looked to Holly Blue for the answer, while another third sought Leona’s expert opinion. The last third waited for Ramses to respond. “We sure can,” J.B. said, confusing everyone. He was a great guy and all, but he had been a salmon his whole life, so his educational experience was sadly limited. “What? Jupiter said we could go back with the people we return to the main reality. If we could go back, then anyone else should be able to as well. All we need to know is when and where the transition window is.”

As if commanded by J.B.’s words, their cuffs all beeped simultaneously. It was directing them to the northwest, for a distance of about nine kilometers. Carol Gelen was very fit and young for her age, but she was still seventy-eight years old, and nine kilometers was a lot. It would take them around two hours to get there at regular pace, but if she slowed them down, they might not make it in time. There was no way to know, because the Cassidy cuff didn’t give them a window deadline.

“She’ll be fine,” Declan explained. “I built something for this exact problem.” He led them around back, to a tool shed sort of thing. Inside was a little cart, just large enough for one person to sit in. Straps were attached to the front, suggesting that it could be pulled by a goat, or a large dog. But that wasn’t the case. Declan put the straps over his own shoulders, and rolled it out of the shed to give Carol more space to step in. She did so with no argument, implying that they had already discussed this, and it was the plan all along. Declan grabbed the end of a second set of straps from just inside the cart, and handed them to Mateo. “We’ll go ahead and get going. The rest of you should fill up on fourth meal, and catch up with us.”

Austin Miller pulled a portable torch out of the stockpile, and lit it from one of the ground torches. Then all four of them headed out. They were over halfway through the trek by the time the others caught up with them a couple hours later. They weren’t exactly walking on a paved road, so the wheels still slowed them down, but at least Carol didn’t have to exert all of her energy.

Once they were at their destination, Ramses lifted up his cuff, and looked through the augmented reality. “They’re train tracks. Like. A lot of them.”

“Ah, the railyard,” Declan said. “Makes sense.”

A familiar horn rang out while Mateo was sitting in the cart to have a rest. “Am I the only one who can hear that?” he asked.

“No, we can as well,” Holly Blue confirmed.

“The Transit will probably be coming from another universe,” Mateo said, “rather than just another reality. Why are we here?”

“I don’t know what it is,” Holly Blue admitted. No one else did either. Leona and Ramses had both heard of The Transit from The Stitcher, but neither of them knew anything about it.

Only Mateo seemed to have any real knowledge. “It’s a giant train that recruits people for some multiverse army.”

As proof, the Transit appeared from its portal, and stopped before them. The doorway opened, and none other than Slipstream herself stepped out. “Declan.”

“Bo!” he shouted at medium volume.

“It’s been a long time,” she said. “Longer for me, I bet.”

“What’s going on here?” Holly Blue demanded to know.

“Declan Aberdeen,” Slipstream continued, sort of ignoring her. “You have been conscripted to The Transit Army to fight the Ochivari.”

“Do I have a choice?” Declan asked.

Slipstream hesitated to answer. “We’re the good guys. You may technically refuse, but...I wouldn’t recommend it. We need you.”

“Dec,” Holly Blue said, “no.”

“You let me train to become a superhero,” Declan said to his mother. “This is my chance to finally put my skills to good use.”

“A superhero, and a soldier, are two very different things,” she argued.

“He’ll be using the skills he has,” Slipstream explained to her. “Some people, like me, will just be there for hand-to-hand combat. Other people have powers. Others, like Declan, have tech. He’ll be fighting alongside the greatest warriors the bulkverse has ever seen, across thousands of worlds. We don’t plan to die. This isn’t that kind of war.”

“I don’t want him going to any kind of war,” Holly Blue maintained.

“Mom,” Declan started, “I gotta go. I love you.”

“No.”

“No, you don’t love me too?”

“No, I’m not letting you go.”

Declan took her into a hug, and repeated, “I love you.”

She hugged him back, but could not echo his words, because in this situation, I love you was just a synonym for goodbye, and probably from her perspective, also meant you’re going to die, so I won’t ever see you again. So she couldn’t say that.

And then he went off to war.

When the Transit disappeared through its portal, no one’s memories were erased, and Mateo didn’t understand why. They didn’t have time to question it, though. Just like before with Carol’s arrival, the scenery flickered in and out of existence. They saw a man standing on the tracks, his legs tied to both rails. His eyes were shut tightly, waiting for the train on its way to come clear him from the face of the Earth. It was only meters from colliding with him when the transition completed, and pulled him all the way into The Parallel. Now that he was no longer flickering, Mateo and Leona could see that they knew the man. It was Elder Caverness, also known affectionately as Guard Number One. Along with Kolby Morse, he once detained Mateo in the second main reality, and sent him off to meet his police detective cousin, Danica.

Elder reopened his eyes, but kept his face scrunched up. Once he looked over, and found that he was perfectly safe, he breathed a sigh of relief. “Ah, you saved me! Thanks a bunch!” He tried to step towards them, but couldn’t. “But why am I still tied up?” Now he narrowed his eyes. “What do you want?”

“Someone else saved you,” Mateo explained to him. “He kept you tied up. We can free you, but just give us a little bit.”

Austin Miller stepped over with his torch. “I can take care of those ropes, since we don’t have any real knives, and those knots look impossible.” It took some time, but he managed to burn Elder’s ropes enough to free him.

“Thanks, Geri Thomas,” Elder said.

“Who?” Miller questioned.

“Don’t worry about it.” A traumatized Elder walked some distance from the tracks, and looked around some more. “Where the hell is the highway?”

“You’re in a different reality now,” Leona replied.

“Oh, okay,” Elder said.

J.B. consulted his cuff. “The next transition window is thirteen hours that way.” He pointed. “I guess the exit is sometimes in a different place than the entrance.”

Before they could formulate a plan, the Transit horn sounded again. It reappeared in the exact same way as before. Slipstream didn’t walk out of it this time, though. Neither did Saga or her new partner. It was someone none of them seemed to know, and she didn’t walk out at all. She literally flew over to them, and landed gracefully on the ground. “Hi. My name is Ellen Snider. I’m looking for Elder Caverness.”

“That’s me,” he piped up.

“You wanna go fight some aliens?” she offered.

“Yeah, okay,” he agreed. He took her by the hand, and let her lead him back up towards the train.

“Wait,” Holly Blue stopped them. “Where’s my son?”

“Who’s your son?” Ellen asked.

“Declan Aberdeen. He may be going by Declan Blue.”

“Hmm,” Ellen said. She pulled up a phone, and started swiping through it. “Declan Aberdeed. Yeah, he was conscripted four years ago. They dropped him back home a few months later. You haven’t seen him?”

“No, he must be back in the main timeline, in some other time period.” Holly Blue looked relieved.

“Oh wait,” Ellen said. “This is called salmonverse, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Holly Blue replied.

“Yeah, he’s not here,” Ellen said apologetically. “Most branes don’t have names, and this particular world is one of the unnamed. “I’m sorry, I’m just a recruiter. I don’t know why they placed him there, but it indicates that they did it on purpose, or that he requested relocation. I wish I could help.”

Holly Blue was seething. “Just go.”

The tried walking away again.

“Wait,” Austin Miller jumped in. “Can I come with?”

Ellen tilted her head. “You’re not on my list.”

“So, what? You need fighters, right? I’m a trained FBI agent.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Ellen said. “But come on. We do indeed have a few volunteers. They have to go through more rigorous testing, though, since their timeline doesn’t exhibit their abilities well.”

And so Hello Doctor went off to war as well, along with Elder Caverness, leaving Holly Blue at a loss. At least her son was still alive. Of course, time travel being what it was, being alive at any point in time wasn’t really relevant to someone who existed at some other point. Things were even less concrete when accounting for other universes, whose timelines didn’t sync up with each other in the slightest. She had to find a way to get to this other world, and she had to be there in the same time period as him. She should have thought to ask for a ride before the Transit left again. There were no more fighters in the group, so it probably wouldn’t show up a third time. She just wasn’t thinking clearly. Or perhaps she was only trying to believe he was exactly where he belonged. Surely innocent people required his services in this other brane.

Mateo, Ramses, and J.B. took turns carting Carol towards the transition window. Everyone else scouted ahead, and did their best to clear a path to make it go more smoothly. There wasn’t much time to blaze a trail, though, so they mostly just picked up sticks, and kicked rocks away. They arrived with plenty of time to have another meal, and send Carol back home. Unfortunately, she would be alone, but they gave her directions to the Salmon Civic Center, where someone there would almost certainly help her get her life back on track. Either way, she would most likely be dead by the time they had any chance of seeing her again. The next jump took them just over nineteen years into the future.

« < » > Table of Contents

Fervor: Out of Action (Part VIII)

« < » > Entire Story

While Slipstream, Hogarth, and Leona showed no signs that they could remember anything about their lives beyond their childhoods, they were also receptive to mine and Hilde’s help. If we couldn’t find a way to make these people trust us, I don’t know how we could have helped. We went back to the Bran safehouse, and took care of them as best we could. At first, we thought a good night’s rest would be enough to get them out of this, but they woke up just as lost as before. Then we thought we might be able to jog their memories with a few context clues, but there was only so much we could do. Slipstream was easy. We knew where she lived, where she hung out, and who her friends were. None of it helped, of course, but the tracer gang insisted she stay with them just the same. Hogarth was the next easiest, but was still without hope. Hilde tried to remind her of the time they spent together, but since their hometown no longer existed, we couldn’t show her familiar objects. Not that it mattered, because this wasn’t working anyway. There was nothing we could try for Leona, since none of us really knew her. Baby Brooke seemed to think they hadn’t known each other for that long, so theirs wasn’t a strong connection.

On the third day, nearly out of ideas, Hilde and I decided to try something crazy. One thing I’ve gathered from this time traveler underground is that if you don’t know who might understand you, there was a word you can use. Salmon are a special class of temporal manipulators who have no control over their—well, you couldn’t really call what they have powers; it’s more like nonlinear time happens to them. I don’t really quite understand why it is they’re called salmon, but it’s a really good buzzword. Normal people will just think you’re talking about fish, but a time traveler will easily figure out that you’re trying to communicate with them secretly. Unfortunately, since there weren’t any possible travelers around, all we could do was put out a local advertisement, and hope that someone relevant happened to see it. It took days for it to work.

While Mireille was babysitting one regular child, and three two grown-up children, Hilde and I hung out all day at Mendoza Park. We’re sitting on the edge of the fountain on the fourth day since the memory loss when a young woman in sunglasses sits right next to us. We think she’s here for us, but there’s no way to tell. She takes out her phone. “Hi, mom. Yes, I can go to the store after work.” She turns to face us, and slides her glasses down the bridge of her nose. “I’ll pick up some of that good salmon from the bulk store.”

“Oh, thank God,” Hilde says. “We’ve been waiting for you for two days.”

“One and a half,” I clarify.

“Well, we knew something was strange when someone noticed you put out an ad just to ask whether the fish in Cleaver Fountain were salmon,” the woman says. “I’m Agent Cabral. And you?”

“Paige Turner. Hilde Unger. Who’s we?”

“I run an international coalition of intelligence agencies,” Agent Cabral says. Does she not have to keep that a secret?

“Let me guess, the government found out about people with time powers—”

“Hardly,” Agent Cabral interrupts. “We have a few choosers and salmon field agents, but we don’t revolve around them. What can we help you with?”

“Someone erased our friends’ memories,” Hilde explains. “She might have gotten some drug from the future, we don’t know. I just want my girlfriend back.”

“Are you sure it isn’t due to quantum blending?” the agent asks.

“What is that?”

“Was it a drug, or did the person manipulate reality to make them forget? There’s a big difference in how we solve this.”

“But you can solve it?” I ask.

“If it’s a drug, I know someone. If it’s because reality’s been jacked up, probably not. My organization does not have the same resources it once did. We’re probably on our way to shutting down.”

“Let’s assume it was some drug, and go from there,” I suggest.

“Okay. Follow me.” She stands up, and leads us to a more secluded part of the park, covered by trees. She takes out her phone again, and makes a real call this time. “Ashlock? Three to beam up.”

I feel something tugging on my chest, and pulling me backwards. I’m suddenly standing in what looks like the living room of a house that someone has remodeled for small business use. I’m having trouble reclaiming my balance, and a man is pointing a weapon at us.

“Stand down, Kolby,” another man says. “I obviously invited them here.”

“We don’t know who these two are,” Kolby states.

“These two children?” the other guy asks. “I think we’re safe. I trust Ecrin’s judgment.”

“Your name is Kolby?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“Kolby Morse?” I add.

He lowers his weapon. “You’ve heard of me?”

“I met your partner in J.U. Mithra Labs,” I tell him.

Kolby clears his throat. “Please don’t talk about him. It’s not safe.”

“Of course.” I turn to the other guy, and give him my hand. “You must be Ashlock. I was to understand you could help with our friends’ memory problems?”

“Uh...not me,” Ashlock says. He looks over at Ecrin Cabral. “The doctor is on a mission in 2022 Maine right now. She’ll probably be back in an hour. In the meantime, Kolby made sandwiches.”

As hard of a man as he seems to be, Kolby makes a complete 180, and starts to smile proudly. “And avocado toast.”

“So what is it you have goin’ on here?” I ask with tofu sandwich in my mouth.

“We help people,” Ashlock answers.

“Help people with what?”

“It’s a complicated system, but basically I send our field agent to the body of someone in the past to help them, and people around them.”

“You could even say you...put right what once went wrong?” Hilde prodded.

“Yes,” Ashlock says with a grin. “A friend of mine came up with the idea, and he says that show inspired him.”

“Do you only send one person into people’s bodies?” Hilde asks.

“I can only send Quivira. She’s the one with the power to possess others. If I want to send someone else, they have to go back as themselves. We do it this way so we don’t have to convince the humans to trust us when we try to make things better.”

“And the doctor?”

“She can go back as herself,” Ashlock explains, “because she carries credibility. She’s a psychiatrist, which we find to be vital to the success of our operation. You’ll meet her, but probably not Qui—.” He suddenly stops and stares into space. His eyes dart back and forth, and his lips move a little, like a child learning to read.

“What’s he doing?” Hilde asks.

“He’s talking with someone in the past,” Kolby replies. “It’s kind of creepy, but you get used to it.”

“He’s both Ziggy, and Al,” I note.

Kolby keeps smiling, and goes back to his lunch.

Ashlock comes out of the trance. “Hammer will be here soon. She says I should action the three patients here, so she can examine them at the same time.”

She wants you to do what with them?” Hilde asks, thinking she should be offended.

“That’s just what I call my power. It’s what I did when I summoned you to me. I pull you out of one time and place, and land you somewhere else. In this case, it’s time travel without the time. They call me The Action.”

“Who calls you that?” Kolby asks, obviously already knowing the answer.

“I prefer Ashlock,” I remark.

Ashlock isn’t pleased, but Kolby is. “Most people do,” he says.

After we finish eating, Ashlock sends us to our unit in the Ponce de Leon, where we retrieve Hogarth and Leona. Hilde then goes to the tracer gang headquarters alone. It takes her so long to presumably convince Slipstream’s friends that we’ve found a way to help her that a Doctor Mallory Hammer comes back from the past before they return.

“Pleased to meet you,” Dr. Hammer says.

“Do you need to rest?” Kolby asks protectively.

“I’m fine. They do have beds in 2022. Anyway, are these my patients?”

“These two are,” I say. “The third is on her way.”

“Okay, we’ll start without her. Privately.” She leads them to the examination room, which was probably once just a bedroom, while I wait here. Before she leaves, she asks Ashlock to check on her primary patient, so he goes down to the basement. While I’m not told specifically to stay out, it’s clear that the basement is a no-go zone.

Ecrin has to go upstairs to make a call, so now I’m just alone with the security guard. “Was he doing okay?” he asks of me.

“Who?”

“Elder. My partner.”

“I thought we couldn’t talk about him.”

“Not around others, but you can tell me what you know.”

“His name was Elder?”

“Yeah. Elder Caverness. I’m guess this means you didn’t spend much time with him?”

“Few minutes,” I lament. “He doesn’t seem the happiest where he is, working for the woman we’re trying to stop right now. He’s doing okay, though...convinced he’s exactly where he needs to be.”

Kolby nods. “That sounds like him.”

“I think he misses you. Do you ever see each other?” I ask.

“Radio silence, by design. Please don’t mention him to anyone else. His mission is too important.”

“Of course.” I zip my mouth closed, locked it up, and break the key in half with my bare hands.

Ashlock comes back upstairs, having actioned Hilde and Slipstream here. He escorts the latter to the backroom, then comes back to wait with us at the table.

A half hour later, Dr. Hammer comes out alone. “I’m sending samples to the time lab. I can’t expedite the testing, because there may be a temporal component to the drug itself, which could be distorted if it’s not measured in linear time. I’m fairly certain I know what it is, though. It resembles something I encountered a few hundred years from now. I think it came from another planet. The person who did this is serious business. Once I help your friends with a broad spectrum counteragent, you should all stay away from her.”

“They can’t do that,” Kolby says, having completely warmed up to them.

I look at him, then back to Dr. Hammer. “The mission is too important.”

“Well, I can insulate you from the effects of the memory loss, but the formula also requires realtime, so it wouldn’t be ready for about a week.”

“That’s okay,” Hilde says. “We don’t think it’s her main weapon, or a weapon at all. We think our friends were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Thank you for everything,” I say graciously. “All of you.”

“We’ll get your people fixed up, and on their way,” Ashlock says, standing up. “Ecrin will take you back home the long way ‘round, so you know where we are. Come for avocado toast whenever you want.”

“Thanks again,” I say. Then I add, “The Action.”

He smiles.

« < » > Entire Story

Microstory 784: Mullet

< > Table of Contents

Mullets. What is a mullet? Well, it’s a species of fish; a few different species, actually. It’s a kind of haircut, known as business in the front, and party in the back. But that’s not what we’re talking about. In this case, mullet refers to a kind of time traveler very similar to a salmon. While other time traveler varieties are quantum biologically different than the others, a mullet is really just a special kind salmon that plays by their own rules. First of all, let’s codify the varieties, so you’ll understand how a mullet comes to be. The tippy top are the powers that be, and the choosing ones. Members of the latter have the ability to use their time powers as they please, while the latter have no power of their own, but can control salmon. Chosen ones, which are incredibly rare, are equivalent to salmon, but can be controlled by their respective chooser instead, though it’s unclear to what degree. Lastly, spawn are humans transformed into temporal manipulators by either a salmon, or a chosen one. They’re even rarer, and more mysterious. When Saga Einarsson and Vearden Haywood were first puppeted by the powers that be, they were deemed The Freelancers. This meant, actually that they displayed traits of salmon, but also chosen ones, which allowed them to sort of be passed around on an as-needed basis. But then an incident infused them with powers they were never meant to have. And though most of this power eventually drained from them, they maintained an unexpected level of independence, rendering them the first in a sixth type. Though they could still be called upon to act on the wishes of the powers that be, they could also refuse this request, which no salmon should be able to do. No one knows whether it’s possible to transform oneself from a salmon, to a mullet, and then to a full-fledged choosing one, to be completely free of the whims of the powers that be. But inspired by Saga and Vearden’s marginal success, salmon sure as hell started trying.

Microstory 772: Sergeant

< > Table of Contents

Adolphe Sargent was born in 1854, in a region of France called Lorraine. Though many of his compatriots felt culturally German, because of its historical connection to the German Empire, Sargent felt French, through and through. He was only sixteen years old when Prussian forces invaded France’s borders, and he decided to fight against them in the French army. It was on the battlefield that he met a musketeer named Anatol Klugman, who was as passionately Prussian as he was French. They battled against each other for several minutes, before Anatol struck a heavy enough blow to keep Sargent from standing back up. Just before Klugman could deliver death, one of Sargent’s fellow soldiers came to his rescue, coming this close to ending Klugman’s life. Sadly for the French soldier, a magical sword appeared on the ground just in time for Klugman to turn the tables once more. And he kept that sword for decades, possibly centuries, using it to travel through time, ultimately coming to be known simply as The Warrior. But what people may not realize was that Sargent’s story did not end here. Seeing him go up against one of the most formidable fighters in history impressed a lot of very powerful people, and they decided to start using him for their own means. They pulled him out of his time, and set him up to be part of a special battalion. These soldiers, known as the salmon battalion, were tasked with traveling through time together, assuming new identities, and blending in with the locals. Consisting of a couple hundred men from all over history, the salmon battalion cycled through its roster on an as-needed basis. But Adolphe Sargent was always there. Due to what must be assumed to be a clerical error, Sargent was never relieved of his duties, no matter how many temporal attempts, in how many battles, in how many wars, the battalion went through. Though Klugman went on as the infamous Warrior, earning a reputation as the most dangerous man in all of time and space, Sargent was the hardest-working fighter ever, which was something few people knew.

Seeing is Becoming: Freelancers (Part VII)

« < » > Entire Story

The man’s office turned out to be the remains of Stonehenge. He called himself the Delegator and claimed that it was his job to help salmon figure out what they were supposed to do with their new lives. Yalshi was allowed to witness the meeting, as long as she kept quiet. “They’re going to be doing something different with you two,” the Delegator announced to them.

“Different how?”

“Most salmon aren’t given a conscious choice. They’re dropped wherever and whenever the powers want them, and they’re expected to do whatever they’re told. And for the most part, you’ll do the same. However, after each completed mission, you’ll be given a few options for your next assignment. These options may send you to Earth, to another planet, to the past, or the present. You’ll be given a bit of information, and from there you can make a decision. Isn’t that great?”

“You force us into these decisions, but since most people have no illusion of free will, you expect us to be grateful that you’re letting us decide where to risk our lives?”

“I expect nothing. I’m middle management,” the Delegator explained. “But I am getting the feeling that something has changed. You’re not the first salmon to have been granted a weird exception. Though, to be honest, that hasn’t technically happened yet since we’re in the past.” He shook the tangent out of his brain. “It is my guess that the powers have recruited someone new. Don’t quote me on that, but I think he’s interested in changing the program. It would certainly explain why you and only a handful of others are being treated differently. Again, I’m not sure that that is how it works. I have more information about this than you do, but I don’t have all of it.”

“Ya know,” Vearden began, “there’s one thing I’ve already decided. I don’t really care. I don’t care who the powers that be are. I don’t care why they’re doing this, and I don’t even care about figuring out how to stop it. I can stop it. You can drop me wherever you want, but if I don’t want to do something, I just won’t.”

“Speaking from experience, bad things happen when you don’t do what you’re told,” the Delegator said. “I don’t mean that I’ve seen it happen; I mean that I’ve caused it. Yes, I’m different, but also very much like you. My job as Delegator is just another mission. I exercise very little control.”

“How about you exercise some of the control you do happen to have right now?” Saga asked, but it was more of a command.

“Pardon?”

“Let me chose my next mission. Forget the multiple choice. I want to go where I want to go.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“1743,” Saga answered.

The Delegator lifted his head, considering the proposition. “I cannot guarantee such a request.”

“Well, what can you do?” Vearden asked.

“I’ll tell you what.” The Delegator rubbed his eyes from exhaustion. “I need you to make a quick stop for me. It’ll only be a few hours. Afterwards, if the powers have accepted your motion, then you’ll find out. If not, it’s out of my hands. I’m not certain you’re quite understanding that I’m more of a messenger than anything.”

Vearden whispered to Saga. “Is there any point trying to reason with these people? Do we have any chance?”

“I think they can hear us even when you whisper,” Saga returned. “Which, to be honest, probably means that we don’t have a chance. But I don’t like the idea of being pushed around. That’s why I became a freelancer.”

“That’s your name!” the Delegator exclaimed. “The Freelancers.”

“I’m sorry?”

“We like to give each other nicknames. That’s yours.”

“We are not children,” Saga insisted.

“Fine.” The Delegator was noticeably hurt. “I’m still gonna call you that,” he muttered under his breath.

“Where are we supposed to go now?” Vearden asked.

“Would you like to have a final moment with your alien friend? You won’t ever see her again.”

Yalshi had been so good at keeping quiet, that Saga and Vearden had forgotten that she was even there. “This has given me an interesting bit of insight,” she told them.

“What are you going to do with it?”

She looked to the ground for answers. “Knowledge is power, right? I’m going to seize control from my father, and make a few changes to our cultural biases.”

“We will return in another few decades to check on your work,” Saga smiled.

“He just said you wouldn’t be able to.”

“We don’t follow the rules,” Vearden said. “We will see you again.”

Yalshi smiled back at them. “I better get going. Who knows how long I’ve been away?” She stepped back through the portal. It shuddered and faded away, slowly revealing a different view. A few graves could be seen by the moonlight.

“Is that for us?”

“Indeed,” the Delegator confirmed.

The two of them walked through the portal without another word. On the other side, they found humans driving land vehicles into the cemetery. They were talking and laughing joyfully, spreading throughout the graves to start their own conversations.

A stranger holding a beer approached them. “Hey, are you two here for the party?”

“Uh no,” Vearden said apologetically . “We just came to visit an old friend.”

“Ah, sorry for your loss. We can move to a different corner, if you’d like.”

“Is this some morbid goth party, or something?”

The stranger giggled. “It’s a birthday party. We used to hangout here as kids. We don’t get too rowdy, though. Mateo, the birthday boy finds cemeteries to be inexplicably comforting.

“Mateo you say?” Saga asked, giving Vearden a look.

“We knew him way back when. Could we say hi?”

“Yeah, sure. He’s over there.” The stranger nodded vaguely in one direction. “I’m Kyle, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Kyle,” Saga said, offering her hand.

“We’re The Freelancers,” Vearden said, much to the dismay of his friend.

They walked over and could soon clearly see the face of Mateo Matic, a man who appeared to be particularly special, even amongst other salmon. “Is that really him?” Saga asked of Vearden.

“It most certainly is,” he replied.

Saga lifted her hand again and shook Mateo’s. “We’ve heard it’s your birthday.”

“That’s what they tell me,” Mateo said.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight. Already feel like an old man.”

“Happy with your life?” Vearden asked.

It was a bit of a weird question, but Mateo seemed open to it. “Actually, I am. It hasn’t always been easy. I’ve experienced loss. But I’m in a pretty good place now. I couldn’t imagine it getting any better.”

“Oh,” Vearden said. “Well, be careful.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s just something my mother used to say before I left the house. It’s become my catchphrase.”

“I see.” He patted both of them on the shoulders. “Well, have a beer or two. I know we’re in a place of death, but tonight, we celebrate life.”

They spent the rest of the night getting to know other people at the party. Despite them being strangers, everyone accepted them and treated them like they belonged. Saga informed Vearden that it was presently the year 2014, which was more than a decade earlier than the time they originally left. They kept an eye on Mateo, mostly out of curiosity. The Delegator had wanted them to be there at that particular time, so it must have been meaningful. Exactly at midnight, they saw Mateo disappear. His beer exploded, sending a few remaining shards into Kyle’s skin. As they were running to help, Vearden noticed something wrong. “Saga.”

“What?”

“Tombs don’t usually just put a date on the front, right?”

“Of course not. They engrave the family name on it.” She looked up and saw the date January 3, 1743 marked over the door of the tomb. The lettering had a light but definite glow to it.

“I think this is our ride.”

“Come on, V.” Saga took Vearden’s hand and led him towards the tomb that was doubling as a portal. “There are a couple of people that I would like you to meet.”

The two friends opened the door and began a new time-traveling adventure together.

« < » > Entire Story