Microstory 2454: Elizabeth Victoria

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If you’re looking for something anachronistic and weird, you’ve come to the right place. The Elizabethan Era ran from 1558 to 1603, during Queen Elizabeth’s reign. The Victorian Era started in 1837 and ended in 1901. They are both iconic periods in Great Britain’s history, but vastly different as they were separated by more than 200 years. The technology here is hard to get a grasp of. Not only are we dealing with stuff that they were using nearly a millennium ago, but they’re juxtaposed by each other. When you walk into a building, you never know if it’s going to be lit by gas lamps, or incandescent bulbs. It could be both! Which, I mean, it’s not like they destroyed all the gas lamps when they invented electricity, did they, innit? People walk around in all sorts of different clothes. They all looked alien to me, but I could tell that some of them were really old, and some were really, really old. The architecture is a mix, of course, with wooden cottages and natural stone buildings right next to giant even-stoned factories. Again, I’m sure a lot of the old stuff still existed in the new era, but the way they have it organized so randomly, it seems very forced and intentional. I’m not sure if I was supposed to learn something here, but it was fun to spend an afternoon getting a look around. I don’t think I would want to spend a lot of time there, though. I don’t much care either way, but I went with a historian friend, and they didn’t like it. They would prefer a historical dome to be accurate. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like they were shocked and appalled. The design was very clear in the prospectus, and you know they read that whole damn thing, because I waited for them to finish it while we were sitting in the vactrain station. They told us that it was intentionally incongruent, and in that goal, they delivered. That’s all you can ask sometimes, innit? (Hey, am I using that word right? I don’t even know.)

PS: Please read my friend’s review. They actually know all the historical and cultural stuff that kind of flew over my head anyway.

Microstory 1695: A Whole New Meaning to Omega Male

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Most of the time, The Omega Gyroscope makes big changes to reality. It causes the global population to go back in time, or alters their perception of it. Or it instantly switches everything to a new timeline. Some of the time, however, it makes small changes, and it all has to do with the person wielding it. The Gyroscope is basically a wish fulfillment device, which reads its user’s mind, and makes changes to the universe in whatever way it’s capable of, getting as close to the user’s desires as possible. It’s not really trying to do that. It’s not really trying to do anything. Some people are just better at forming a psychic connection with it, and it accepts this input like a computer. That’s all it is, a very fancy and advanced computer with no buttons or monitor. The results of a user’s desires are often not what they truly wanted, but not because of a be careful what you wish for aphorism. It’s more that the Gyroscope has its limitations, and can’t just do whatever you want. Before the little powerful device ended up in the museum, where it would later be used by a number of people, it was discovered in an attic by three adult children who were cleaning out their father’s house after he passed. Since the Omega Gyroscope is so small and seemingly innocuous, the three of them thought little of it. They just threw it in a shoebox, and focused on the rest of his effects. It was only later when one of them, bored at the estate sale, idly spun it. At the time, she was thinking about her father, and how she wished he had never died. Apparently, the Gyroscope interpreted that to also mean that he wouldn’t ever die, even in the future.

The daughter stayed in her seat for the next hour or so before realizing that something had changed. The sale was still on, and she was still in charge of handling the money, but it was no longer an estate sale. It was just a regular garage sale. Evidently, in this new reality, the four of them decided to clean out the father’s house anyway, and sell what they could before donating the rest. He was still very much alive, and just as she was noticing that the sign by the street was different, he was returning from having helped transport his kayak to its new owner. Only she seemed to remember that he had died in the other reality, but by then, there was no way for her to make the connection that the Gyroscope had had anything to do with it. She didn’t even consider it as a possibility. She also didn’t try to explain what she could remember to the others. She kept her mouth shut, and decided to be grateful for the gift, no matter what had actually caused it, be it her magical powers, or simply a welcome relief to a bad dream. Since she didn’t know that the Omega Gyroscope was responsible for the gift, she let the thing be donated to an antique store, where it would one day be found by the curator of a museum. For the next ten years, the daughter watched her and her siblings continue to age while their father stayed the same. No one could explain it, and it was eventually decided it was best that they keep him a secret. Other people would start asking questions. What would happen in the next ten years, or the next hundred? They didn’t know if there was a limit to it, so they all moved, and started a new semi-anonymous life in a new city. Their intention was to move again, and start referring to him as their brother. Before this was necessary, the Omega Gyroscope precipitated a major global phenomenon, which saw the entire human population sent back in time to their younger bodies, and father and daughter would find themselves at the center of the action.

Microstory 1645: Omegaverse

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The Omegaverse Earth was totally normal and boring in the beginning. It didn’t even have its own name until a particular object from another universe randomly appeared, and started making changes. It’s called the Omega Gyroscope, and it has the power to do just about anything. It can’t alter multiversal physics, but it can change the proper physics of whatever universe it happens to be in at the time, but only while using the original proper physics as a foundation. Needless to say, it’s incredibly dangerous, and probably best left unused. A not so great person was in pursuit of the Omega Gyroscope, and in order to protect it, this person’s opponent threw it into a portal, hoping to pass it off to someone he knew he could trust. Unfortunately, the portal closed just as the gyroscope was crossing the threshold, which trapped it in the outer bulkverse. It floated around aimlessly for an infinite amount of time, before making its way to the brane that would come to be named for it. Of course, you wouldn’t know how powerful or dangerous the thing was if you looked at it. It’s just this dinky little thing that was never designed to do what it does. It was a regular toy that became imbued with its power afterwards. So it’s not like a cabal of scientists had to get together to study the thing once it was discovered. A random underemployed man on an urban hike after his four hour shift stumbled upon it, and sold it at a pawn shop for a few bucks. It changed hands several times over the years; other pawn shops, attics, storage compartments, an antiques store, and finally a museum. The curator still didn’t know that it had magical powers, but she felt compelled to put it on display, and make up a story about its history. The museum was struggling, you see, and she just needed to get people back in the doors for the real artifacts.

Her plan did not work for the majority of the population, but the Omega Gyroscope has a passive power that only certain people can detect. Some people are just more in tune with their universe. They are not full witches, and probably never will be, but they do have a greater sense of the interconnectedness of reality. When they encounter something as profound as the Omega Gyroscope, they know it. They don’t necessarily know why they feel what they feel, or what it means, but it will most likely leave them with the urge to take ownership over it. The curator’s lie was so good that the gyroscope was heavily secured in its display case, so they couldn’t just steal it, and run away. They conscripted a would-be cop to steal it for them. He had a reputation for doing anything short of murder for the right price, for not asking questions, and for getting the job done quickly and efficiently. This job went south when his former best friend, and current rival, went after him, and foiled the plot. He didn’t get the chance to haul the criminal off to jail, though. The Omega Gyroscope—after all this time—finally reactivated. It turned back time, and changed everything about how the world would develop from there. What followed was a series of adventures, precipitated by persistent use of the gyroscope. Different people kept getting their hands on it, figuring out how it worked, and rewriting reality to their whims, if only subconsciously. One of these alterations resulted in the worst damage to a planet in any local group universe. This forced the Ochivari to forgo the sterility virus, and engage in total warfare. These humans had to die, and in the most violent way possible. But they underestimated their enemy.