Microstory 1625: Fort Underhill

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I think it’s a pretty fitting time for me to discuss this next brane. As you’ve probably noticed, if a universe manages to distinguish itself from others enough to earn a name, it always ends in verse. Flipverse, Hypnopediaverse, and Salmonverse are good examples that I’ve already mentioned. Most of them form one word titles, but there are exceptions, like the Composite Universe, Universe Prime, and Area Doubleuniverse, which is quite obviously a pun. Still, they’re all verses. This one is the one exception to the rule. It’s an artificial brane, though its no less an independent brane than any other one. It’s twinned to Salmonverse, which protects it from external threats, and there’s only one entrance that I know of. The membrane surrounding it is 50,000 times thicker than most, done completely on purpose, which is why it’s impossible to cross into, except in the one special place. Its creator is a very powerful woman named Hogarth Pudeyonavic. She has her own story to tell, but it all came to a momentous transition when she discovered that she had a connection to the energy that pervades the bulkverse. No, I’m not talking about bulk energy, per se. This is more like the data delivery aspect of it; the waves that carry information in all directions. They call it the Aitchai, and Hogarth was chosen to wield it pretty much as she wished. It allows her to transmit matter from any location in the bulk, to anywhere else, at the subatomic level, if need be. She used this power to create mechacelestial objects, like the matrioshka body, and Big Papa, but once those were complete, she set her sights on something larger...more glorious. She wanted to build an entire universe, according to her specifications. These specifications are her creation’s proper physics, which refers to the physical laws specific to a given brane, as opposed to the ones that are true of all branes. What she didn’t have after completing her creation was a population. No one lived there, and if it remained as such, there would be no point to it. That is where another powerful woman named Ellie Underhill comes into the story. It was her own abilities that transferred tens of billions of people, allowing them to start new lives, and thrive in them. I’m afraid I can’t tell you much more about it than that. I witnessed its beginnings, but cannot see things that are happening inside the universe itself, because that’s the whole point. The thickness of the membrane doesn’t just keep invaders out physically, but also psychically, and spiritually. I can tell you that it works, and that it becomes a key sanctuary and strategic position in the Darning Wars.

Glisnia: The Last Gate (Part XI)

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To practice using her time power, Hogarth first took Jupiter back to where he belonged in the 21st century. She didn’t have to be extremely accurate with her temporal navigation, because he was flexible, but she managed to land on the target moment anyway. This gave her a better understanding of how to do it, and when it came time to deliver Ambrose Richardson to his home universe, she was up to the task. While the team didn’t need either of them to complete the matrioshka body, had they not shown up, Hogarth would never have found the solution she was looking for. With this new plan, she would be able to take a little bit of matter from quadrillions and quadrillions of different places, all over the universe. Each time she connected with something, or someone, it would act as a relay point, so she wouldn’t have very far to go before reaching the next point. The more things she connected with, the stronger she would become, and the farther out she would be able to reach through the voids. She could take thousands of molecules from smaller objects, and billions from others, without causing even the least bit of disturbance in what she left behind. The structural integrity of these objects would remain perfectly fine, but once combined, these molecules would be invaluable towards their goals. She could do this, as long as she had help.

Ethesh used his technical know-how to build her a machine, and together, they refined it. It was a chamber inside a room that was to be connected to every single system in the matrioshka brain. From here, they could control mirror angle, energy output, even the hallway lights; everything. It only took the team three weeks to convince the Glisnians to give them access to all of these things, which they didn’t have to do. Those separate systems were compartmentalized for a reason, because when together, they would be too easy to exploit. This put the entire population in danger. They had no reason to believe anyone would want to sabotage Glisnia, but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Of course, very few people were allowed in the room, and the only reason Hilde was one of them was because she was, to be honest, too incompetent to be of any threat to them. Beyond the walls, the greatest security contingency ever protected the room from any external influence, and they used an interesting tactic.

Most security plans assumed one thing; that a given set of people would have a certain level of access to the inside, and as long as only those people were accepted, everything would be fine. The problem with that was time. The longer something existed, the more chances a nefarious entity had to interfere with it, and that interference often started through some weakness in the population. A receptionist, for example, might have an ill father, who needed certain expensive medicine to survive. All an intruder would have to do was pay for that medication, and the receptionist would let them past the badged area. There were no receptionists on Glisnia, but the analogy held. The best way, they figured, to prevent any weak spots in the security system, was for it to be in constant flux. Robot A will only be on the front lines for an hour, before it’s removed, and replaced by Robot B. Robot B will last a day and a half before Robot C comes along, and to keep would-be intruders on their toes, it will only be around for seven minutes, before it’s forced to make way for Robot D.

If someone wanted to hack one of these robots to let them in, they wouldn’t know how long they had before it became useless anyway, forcing them to start over with something else. Access codes, data transference, and other vulnerabilities followed the same model by constantly shifting. The most vital component of this was secrecy. The robots and mechs they used to guard the room had absolutely no clue what was in it, and the people of Glisnia predominantly didn’t even know this was happening at all. Some weren’t even cognizant of the fact that the matrioshka body was in the plans in the first place. To coordinate, they needed a single person with the brain capacity to handle the randomized decision gates. Mekiolenkidasola was that someone. Lenkida, Hogarth, Hilde, Ethesh, and Crimson would be the only people ever in the room. They would not leave, and literally no one else would be allowed in, until the job was done. Once it was, the room would be completely destroyed, and never rebuilt.

They lived there for a month, the mechs surviving on an isolated miniature fusion power source, and the humans on mostly nonperishable food. They didn’t want anyone to need any supplies or other resources from the outside. They had all the tools they required to make sure Ethesh’ machine operated correctly, and that Hogarth would be able to run it. After countless simulations, Hogarth was ready to take the penultimate step. She knew she had access to all the energy in the bulkverse, but she still needed to reach out to Aitchia once more, to make sure he was cool with it, and to help, if necessary.

Now that she was organic again, Hogarth couldn’t just scan the QR code on the back of the Book of Hogarth with her eyes. This was something they forgot to ask for before the room was sealed, but that was okay. Ethesh had everything he needed to build a scanner from scratch. After all this, that was probably the least difficult thing they had to do in here.

“You’re back.”

“Is that okay?”

“Of course,” Aitchai assured her. “The bulkverse belongs to everyone, I just keep it running.”

“I was gonna ask you for permission, or a favor, or...forgiveness, depending.”

He grinned. “What do you need?”

“Oh, not much,” Hogarth began, worried how he would react. “Just access to all the energy in the entire universe.”

“Done.”

“Really? You don’t even wanna know what it’s for?”

He shrugged. “It’s just one universe. It would be like if I asked you for one of your atoms.”

“That’s kind of what I’m trying to do.” Hogarth then went about telling him their plan to extract miniscule amounts of matter from everywhere, but not too much from any one place.

“Diversify!” Aitchai exclaimed. “My finance guy always recommends I do that,” he joked.

“So, you’re cool with this?”

“I don’t see any problem with it. You’re a bookmaker, you have all you need to do what you need to do. I wouldn’t go getting a big head about it, or anything, but I’m happy for ya.”

Hogarth thanked him, and prepared to leave, but stopped. “Just one more thing. It’s...I don’t know if it’s big or not. I’m not a hundred percent certain that my friends are a hundred percent certain that you exist.”

“You want proof,” he guessed.

“Have you ever needed to do that before?”

“Tell ya what, you go back to them, and tell ‘em to look out the window.”

“Which one?”

“Doesn’t matter, I’ll know. While they’re watchin’, clap your hands once. That’ll be my signal.”

“I appreciate this; the signal, and everything.”

“It is a joy.” He smiled like a loving father.

“He wants us to watch the window?” Hilde asked.

“The stars, I believe,” Hogarth assumed.

They didn’t budge.

“What’s the worst that can happen? You’re looking out a window. Or...a viewscreen.”

Crimson simulated a sigh, and switched on the screen.

“This is realtime, right?” Hogarth confirmed. Their silence answered the question, so she clapped her hands, as instructed. A beam of light shot out from one of the stars, and made its way down to another star. A second beam then came out of the first star, and made its way to a series of other stars, eventually forming a curve, which stopped back at the second star. The lines and curves continued from left to right, until a complete imperative formed, reading DON’T PANIC.

“Holy shit,” Ethesh exhaled.

“Is this authentic?” Crimson questioned.

Lenkida walked over to a nondescript panel on the wall. He opened it up, and took out what looked like a red landline phone. He held it to his ear. “Did others just see that?” He waited for a response. “Has it been authenticated?” He eyed Hogarth as he listened to whoever was on the other end of the line. “Well, it was proof, in case anyone doubted that we could do what we said we would do. I know we had a protocol for beginning the procedure, but I believe this will suffice? Please open the last gate.” He stayed on the phone for another moment before hanging up, and casually punching the phone with his fist so hard that it shattered. He looked over at the team. “We’re a go.”

After completing the launch sequence, Hogarth closed her eyes, and said a prayer, not to god, but to Aitchai, who could make or break this whole project. When she was ready, she nodded to Ethesh, who activated the machine, and gave her access to the whole matrioshka brain. She didn’t need it to build a body, but things could go awry if the brain and body weren’t perfectly compatible. Having every qubit of data that the network was storing—about itself, about everything—was vital in completing this mission properly. It would allow her to find the right matter from the right places, and install them at the right spots, to create a seamless transition from head, to shoulders, to knees, and toes. She could see it all, it was glorious, and it was exactly what she needed.

She took a chunk out of her own body to start, then moved on to stealing a little bit from Hilde, and then from everyone else in the room. Then she continued with every independent entity on the shells, and a little extraneous matter from the shells themselves. She took some from the star, and the nearest stars, and their orbitals, and then from Sol, and the rest of the stellar neighborhood. And still, it was impossible to detect that the matrioshka was any larger than it was before. She needed more, she needed a shit ton more. No, she needed a shit ton of a shit ton more, and then she needed to take that to the power of a shit ton. Every star in the galaxy, every planet, every moon, every asteroid, every meteor, every comet, Andromeda, Triangulum, beyond; she took from all of them, and only then did they notice any progress. She reached out farther, to the rest of the cluster, and the supercluster, and the hypercluster, and the great wall; all across the observable universe, and then the rest. Before a man in Tokyo could finish his morning coffee, it was done. It was all done. The matrioshka body was complete. It had arms, legs, a torso, a behind, and even protrusions that resembled breasts. That’s right, the matrioshka was a woman, which made the most sense since the word meant mother.

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Firestorm: Indvo (Part VI)

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I have been awakened, and am called to a moment in downtown Independence, Missouri. Time cannot be stopped, but I can slow it down to a fraction of a snail’s pace. Now it is just the four of us. For the most part, when someone becomes in need of my services, I only speak with the replicates, but there’s a chaperone in this case, and that’s fine. I can still do my job, which is good, because I am the only one.

“Who are you?” the young woman asks.

“Paige Turner—”

“No, that’s me,” she cuts me off.

“Please do not interrupt.”

“Sorry.”

“Paige Turner Reaver-Demir, my name is Indvo.”

“Is that spelled how it sounds? E-E-N-T-F—?”

“No,” I reply, “and I am still not finished. There are two versions of the same person in this timeline, who have crossed paths. My recommendation is quantum assimilation. Normally, I would only counsel the subjects, but since you are the traveler, I believe it is best that you remain inside this temporal bubble. I reserve the right to remove you at any time, however.”

She says nothing.

“Now I am done,” I continue. “I can see that you have questions.”

“Who are you?” Paige asks. “And I don’t mean your name. What is this bubble for? You’re a counselor of sorts?”

“I am the quantum assimilator. I step in when the two should be merged into one.”

“What exactly does that mean?” Older!Orsen questions.

I prepare to lay it all out for them. “You are two people with two bodies. Most of your memories are identical, but one of you has some memories that the other does not. And now that you have met, you have undeniably become two separate people, on two unique paths. This is dangerous for the timeline, especially since neither of you are time travelers, and cannot necessarily be trusted with our secrets. I’m sorry, that’s just the way it is. Quantum assimilation is not a requirement, except in the most catastrophic of circumstances. Like I’ve said, however, I do recommend it in this situation, and I will not pop this bubble until I’ve done my due diligence when it comes to attempting to convince you to agree.”

“So, you’re going to make these two people one person?” Paige believes.

“Indeed,” I say.

“Why do we have to do that?” Older!Orson asks. Younger!Orson is still too shocked and frightened to utter a word. “Why can’t I just go back to the future?”

“As I’ve explained,” I begin again, “you are now two different people.” I point to Older!Orson. “When you first lived through this moment, none of this happened. You met Younger!Paige, she impacted your life, and you moved on with it in a certain way.”

“In a good way?” Now Younger!Orson speaks.

“I make no moral or qualitative judgments,” I tell him. “I only protect individuality. The point is that you have returned, and generated a new branch in time...a new timeline. If there are two of you now, when you jump back to 2027, there will still be two of you.” I point to Younger!Orson. “He will move on with his life in a certain way, impacted by what’s happening here and now, and will remain unless he’s, you know, killed, or something.”

Younger!Orson, who has only just now learned that time travel is real, whimpers. “Am I going to be killed?”

“Death is one way to remove the problem of alternate selves. It’s very nasty, and I don’t do it. I am only the quantum assimilator, so if death is the choice you make, you will have to take care of it yourselves.”

“We are not killing anybody,” Paige declared. “Just explain the process, and give us all of our options.”

I take a deep breath. “It is a simple process to explain, but a complex one to carry out. I will remove the consciousnesses of both individuals, and merge them into one. Then I will place this new consciousness into one of the bodies.”

“Which body?” Older!Orson asks.

“That is up to you. People have different reasons for which body they choose. I assimilated a woman who went back in time to stop herself from getting radiation poisoning. When I merged their minds, we obviously chose to put the new consciousness into the unirradiated body. Another, however, happened to live long enough to find a cure for their disease, so we chose the older body. Most of the time, however, it is not that dramatic. The most common choice is the younger body, simply because it gives them more time to live.”

The two Orsons look at each other uncomfortably.

“What happens to the other body?” Paige asks with predictably less fear.

“It is dispatched to oblivion. Every atomic bond is broken, and each atom is carefully placed somewhere separately in spacetime.”

“That sounds horrific,” Older!Orson says, concerned.

“There is no consciousness inside the body that is destroyed,” I contradict. “Even if there were, the process is instantaneous, and would be one hundred percent painless.”

Older!Orson is now getting a little upset, and seems to feel very protective of his younger counterpart. “What are the other options? You said we had a choice. What else can we do?”

“One of you can commit suicide, which we went over. One of you can go live off in a very far removed time period, with a brand new identity. You can also move to a different planet. Both of these run the risk of you encountering each other at some point, as does another option, which is to simply live in different cities, or something. That is, of course, the most dangerous, but it has been done, and I’ve allowed it.”

“Are there more?” Paige prompts.

“I spoke with someone who would regularly return to the past to alter recent historical events he deemed unjust. Every time he did that, he would step into another dimension, so his other self could live on without the hassle. Last I checked, there were hundreds of alternates, all just kind of hanging out together in their bizarre little city that’s totally cut off from the world. That sort of thing is why I’m here, because if he wasn’t capable of accessing this pocket dimension, those hundreds of alternates would all be on this plane of existence. The human population would be negatively impacted by that, and you would have heard about it.”

“That makes sense,” Paige says. “So, to recap, exile, suicide, or assimilation are our only options?”

“It all boils down to that, I suppose.”

“Serkan never did any of that,” she argues. “He and his other self live in the same city.”

“Your father wanted to do that, because he felt he would be reasonably capable of avoiding his alternate selves, one of which is totally oblivious to time travel. I allowed it, because Mr. Demir lives a very underground life, and I recognized that he would be mature enough to shed his old life, and let Younger!Serkan lead it in his stead. That was his secret gift to his self. Not everyone has the willpower to avoid checking in on their family and friends.”

“He didn’t tell me any of this,” Paige points out. “He’s never mentioned you, and he tells us everything.”

I smile. “I’m certain he would have told you if he remembered. He has no recollection of our conversation. No one ever does. Once our business here is complete, you will not remember this either.”

“Wouldn’t that defeat the whole purpose?” Older!Orson believes. “The whole reason I came back here was to convince my younger self not to start a time religion.”

I smile again. “You will remember everything that led to the creation of our bubble meeting. You will also be aware that a quantum assimilation occurred. You just won’t remember how it happened. You just won’t remember me.”

“Does anyone ever remember you?” This was genuine concern from Ms. Paige.

“I’ve not maintained a relationship since I was seven years old,” I tell them. “Whatever I was doing when I first sensed someone in the timeline needed me to help them, was the last time I did anything as a normal person. I don’t even remember what it was. I do remember returning home after my first job, and finding that my family didn’t know who I was. My entire existence; past and future was erased, and it could not be undone.”

She takes me by the hand, again so genuinely. No one has ever done anything like that to me before. I don’t remember the last time I felt human touch. I never need to make physical contact with my subjects. “I’m sorry that happened to you. Is there anything that can be done? Is it possible for you to force people to remember you after you leave?”

“I’ve met the most powerful time travelers of all,” I begin, “and none of them has exhibited the ability to know me. But this is not about me anyway. This is about the Orsons. It is time to decide. I will not force you, but my recommendation stands.”

“What if we disagree with each other?” Older!Orson asks.

I always hate this part. “The older version of someone is more knowledgeable, if not wiser. It doesn’t have to be unanimous. I will do whatever you decide. Younger!Orson does not have to be involved. It is easier this way.”

This saddens the older one, and frightens the younger one even more than he already was. “Still. Can we have a moment to speak in private?”

I nod. “I can create a bubble inside the time bubble. Ms. Paige and I will not be able to hear you, but our time will be synced. I urge haste. I have other things to do with my time.”

The two Orsons step over to the other side of a barrier that I create for their privacy. Paige and I watch them talk. It’s neutral; not heated.

“What do you think they’re gonna choose?” she asks me.

“I’ve done this literally millions of times,” I start to say.

“Really?”

“Really. I always know what they’re going to choose, even before they do.”

“Well...” she provokes. “What is it?”

I take a moment before I answer. “The older one is going to kill himself.”

I can smell the dismay seeping out of her pores. I can also see her reaction out of the corner of my eye.

“I can erase your own memories of it happening,” I assure her. “And his. The younger Orson will know he was told to do whatever it is you wanted him to do. Whether he complies with your request is up to him—that’s not my department, so I have no control over that—but neither of you have to realize what happened to the other Orson.”

“So you can control what people remember?”

“There’s a bit of leeway when it comes to what they forget, but I cannot make them remember anything extra.”

“So, I’ll go back to the future, and what will it look like? We’ll never meet Orson outside the Salmon Civic Center, but we’ll still need some way of continuing the investigation, as if Orson’s name had been attached to The Juggler and Agent Hello Doctor. Oh my God, we didn’t think this through enough. If he kills himself...”

“Again, that’s not my department. You probably won’t want to go back to that future, though.” I hate this part too. Sometimes the people I meet don’t even realize what’s happened to them. They don’t know what they are. It is the burden I bear to deliver so much bad news like this.

“Why’s that?” She’s confused, but she’s about to be scared. It’s about to get real.

“Older!Orson is not the only time traveler here. You are the one who created the new timeline. There are now two Paige Turner Reaver-Demirs in the same timeline. You’re going to have to make a decision too.”

I can see the hurt in her eyes. I’ve seen it many times. “Oh, no.”

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Microstory 1231: Quivira Boyce

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What is identity? Often when factoring in the concept of time travel, people conflate an individual from one timeline with an individual from another. The truth is that these are approximations of the same person, and are always technically different. The body is composed of organs, bones, muscles, etc. Each of these parts are composed of cells, and each cell is composed of cell parts. If we go down far enough, we get to molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles. These smallest pieces are constantly being exchanged for other pieces. You’re not even the same person you were just a second ago. You’ve been shedding skin, eating food, breathing air. Your neural pattern has been updated, your microbiome has grown. So when someone says that Quivira Boyce is the female version of Gilbert Boyce, from a newer timeline, understand that this is not entirely accurate. They don’t even have the same birthdays, let alone the same genetic makeup. Their mother and father conceived them at two different points in history, and remember, even the parents aren’t the same across these realities. So really, we’re just talking about two completely different people with similar parents, born at different times, with different genes, and experiencing different life paths. Still, there seems to be some kind of quantum entanglement going on here, because even though Quivira lived a very different life than her alternate counterpart, Gilbert did, she ended up in about the same profession. They both turned out to be nighttime thieves, and while they both later redeemed themselves, they did so in wildly different ways.

Gilbert stole from people to fund his business aspirations. He committed petty crimes so that he could build an empire, boost the economy, support important charities, and screw over the government. Quivira, on the other hand, just stole because she was good at it. She looked at her jobs just as she would any other career. She didn’t have any bosses, but she kept strict hours, researched heavily before starting a new project, instituted deadlines, and improved procedural efficiency. By all accounts, she was a model employee, except that she didn’t work for a company, and she wasn’t doing anybody any good, except for herself. It took her a long time, but she finally learned the most important lesson of her life. If she was this good at doing something bad, she could probably reapply her skills, and be really good at doing something good. It was time to try, at least. She had just been helped by a couple of time travelers, so now she knew they existed. What she didn’t realize quite yet was that she had become one of them. The experience had a profound effect on her, ultimately transforming her into something new. She discovered that she could now possess other people’s bodies, while they possessed hers. This was a parlor trick on its own, but upon doing a little directed research—which was her specialty—she found someone who could help her make a real difference. Garen Ashlock could send other people through time, and maintain a parallel temporal connection while his tether to them remained intact. By combining his ability with hers, Quivira could possess people in the past, and alter their lives for the better, using information about their evitable futures. Of course, the world at large never learned of what she was, or of all the people she helped, but she did become a lauded hero amongst other time travelers; an admiration which was well-deserved. She was even given the opportunity to erase the absolute biggest mistake of her own life.

Missy’s Mission: A Place Beyond Time (Part IX)

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“No,” Curtis said. “We are here to destroy this universe. Helping these people is not part of the deal.”

“What was the deal?” Missy questioned.

“None of your bloody business.”

“Hey!” Dar’cy shouted. “You work for some mysterious entity who’s asked you to destroy Ansutah, right?”

“Indeed,” Lucius answered. That one word, in his voice, gave Missy chills.

“Well, you need my power to go back in time, and I work for Missy, so whatever Missy says, goes. We go nowhere without everyone else.”

Curtis sighed. “Then I suppose we should go get them first. We broke out of the our cell, but didn’t bother opening all the others.”

“Lead the way,” Missy said. “Please and thank you.”

Curtis tried to lead them back to the jail, but was too disoriented. Now that none of the natives were around, it looked a lot different apparently. Lucius still knew where to go, so he took over as guide. There were twice as many humans as Missy had thought there were before. While Lucius evidently used his time power primarily to kill, he could do it with anything. He could ripple space, separating individual atoms from each other by teleporting each one to a slightly different location. He destroyed the bars and doors from the cells with ease, letting everyone out so they could congregate in a common area of what must have been some kind of police station.

“Missy?” one of them asked while Missy was helping usher people down the hallway? Another one she knew from before. She turned her head to find herself face to face with none other than Leona Matic. They had last seen her years ago when she boarded The Warren with the rest of the ship’s crew, along with over a hundred other passengers.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Umm...I came to get Serif back,” Leona said.

“What happened to her?”

“She was stuck in Ansutah when it separated from the Warren.”

“Saywhatnow?”

“In here,” Leona said, ushering Missy into one of the now open cells, along with some woman she didn’t recognize. “You remember how Annora created those pocket dimensions on the ship, so we could fit all those passengers?”

“Yes,” Missy recalled.

“Well, a child was born in one of them that could make it bigger and bigger. And by could, I mean that just by being alive, her power made the pocket’s size increase exponentially. There was another who could create these monsters you’ve already seen; one monster with every breath he took.”

“My God. Are you telling me it’s only been a few years since this universe was created?”

“No, it’s been thousands. My guess is the monster-maker eventually died, leaving them to propagate the species on their own. The universe expander, on the other hand....” she looked over at the other woman, “was removed from the pocket at the last second. Her power started putting the ship at risk, so Dubravka here took her out of the timestream. Besides retrieving Serif, we came to let the girl out, so she can go back to making this world bigger.”

“She doesn’t seem happy about that,” Missy pointed out.

Dubravka looked like she was sucking a lemon. “I never wanted to come back here.”

This confused Leona. “What? You were never in pocket four.”

She was irritated, and wouldn’t make eye contact with either of them. “I grew up here. When we were told that we we would get Serif back if we did this, I didn’t think it meant eight years after I was born! I thought we were going to stop it before it happened.”

Missy still didn’t understand, nor did Leona. “Eight years, you’re—holy shit.” Leona seemed to have figured something out.

“What?” Missy asked.

“Are you...?” Leona began to ask.

“My daughter?” came a voice from around the corner. Serif appeared, holding the hand of a young girl. “Yes. Adult!Dubra, meet Young!Dubra. Young!Dubra, this is what you grow up to be.”

“I suppose I could do worse,” a sassy Young!Dubra said.

“Mom, I thought we were going to change the past,” Adult!Dubra said to Serif. “But it’s all happening exactly like it did before!”

“I don’t want you to change the past,” Serif said. She was many years older than before, having aged across thousands of real-time years since either Leona or Missy would have seen her.

“I do!” Adult!Dubra cried.

“This is your home,” Serif argued.

“My home sucks,” both versions of Dubravka screamed simultaneously.

Missy leaned towards Leona. “If these two get too close to each other, is this building gonna blow up, and turn the leaves red?”

“What? No.”

It was a fair question.

Serif let go of Young!Dubra’s hand, and gave it to Leona. “You need to go with Mother Leona now. She’ll take you to our universe.”

“Miss Atterberry, you need to get out there to the meeting with all the other people who want their powers to be removed. Dubravka, go with her,” she said to her adult daughter.

“Why would I do that?” Adult!Dubra asked.

“Stick with her, and you’ll end up exactly where you’re meant to be. I promise you won’t spend much more time in this universe. Don’t get separated from Missy and Dar’cy, though. Remember to pull Adamina back into the timestream before you leave.”

Presumably after having not seen her mother in many years of her personal timeline, Adult!Dubravka took Serif into a bear hug, and deposited about a gallon of tears on her shoulder.

As Missy was leaving with Adult!Dubra, she caught a bit of Leona’s conversation with Serif. “Is Mateo the father?”

“Yeah,” Serif answered. “Same for yours?”

Who the hell was Mateo?

When Missy and Adult!Dubravka arrived at the crowd, they were in the middle of clapping. Dar’cy was on a raised floor acting as a stage. She too was clapping, at a young woman from the audience who was blushing. Curtis was standing in the corner with his arms folded, still not really in favor of figuring out how to save everyone. Lucius stood at the women’s flank, arms folded too, but scanning the crowd like a nightclub bouncer.

Missy waved at Dar’cy to get her attention, then held up the international gesture for huh?. Dar’cy thanked the girl on stage, then stepped down.

“What’s goin’ on?” Missy asked. “Did someone just get an award?”

“That girl up there. She’s a supercharger.”

“Like an air compressor?”

“No, like she can enhance my powers. I can get everyone out of here.”

“Correction,” Dubravka said. “You can get everyone to the past, but still in this shithole.”

Dar’cy frowned. “And who is this lovely woman?”

“Dar’cy, Dubravka. Dubra, Dar’cy.”

“Well Dubra...vodka, you’re right, but this is what everyone here wants.” She gestured to the mob in general. “Are you in, or out?”

Dubra scoffed. “My powers are fine. I don’t need them to live whatever kind of life I want. But I don’t need them gone either. I was told I had to come with you to survive, so I’m in, but as soon as that stops being the case, I’m out.”

“She’s positively charming,” Dar’cy noted.

“Leona brought her,” Missy said.

“What?”

“She’s Serif’s daughter.”

“What?”

“Dar’cy!” the apparent supercharger called down. “It’s time to go!”

“You two stand next to me and the Wrench of Creation,” Dar’cy said to Missy and Dubra. “If this doesn’t work, at least you’ll make it through.”

As the three of them snaked their way to the stage, the crowd started clapping again. Dar’cy was already a hero, and she hadn’t even done anything yet. The four women stood on stage together. The supercharger and Dar’cy held onto either end of the plastic wrench toy. Missy held Dar’cy’s other hand, while Dubravka held hers. An energy pulsed between them, like that middle school science experiment where students stand in a circle and use their own bodies to close a circuit. They held up the wrench, letting a bubble not unlike the kind Missy could create emanate from it. It eventually encompassed the entire crowd, which had huddled together.

Dubravka’s watch beeped. “We have to go now!” she cried. “The maramon are coming back into the time stream!” She held up her free hand, and aimed it to the outside of the bubble. She released her own energy pulse, which revealed a young girl, standing there, confused.

The bubble started becoming more and more opaque as a bright light formed from everywhere at once. When the light receded, and the bubble collapsed, they found themselves in the middle of a desert. A younger Serif was now suddenly standing in line with them, holding Dubravka’s hand. “Uhh...what’s happening here?”

At first they thought it worked, but a brief glance at the crowd showed that half of them had not come through with them.

< > Entire Story

Microstory 585: Aerial Broadcasting Terminals Unsafe, Scientists Say

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When the first land vehicle was invented circa 1694, its hopeful manufacturers faced a problem that continues today for other advances. Why would you buy a car when there’s nowhere to replenish its fuel? Why would you build a refilling station when there aren’t any cars to use them? People figured out this problem eventually, and besides a few hiccups, things ended up okay. Both cars, and their refilling station companions, became ubiquitous across the globe. The second wave of advancements did not come with quite the same issue. Electric vehicles, of course, required a different power source, but at least the infrastructure was already in place. It wasn’t all that hard to retrofit preexisting petrol refilling stations with battery caches. As archaic as it might sound, supercharging was nowhere near possible, and so stations got in the business of trading dead batteries with full batteries, with the ultimate plan to recharge those so that they could in turn be traded with later customers. In fact, statisticians [erroneously] estimated at one point that, if a given individual used the same station for at least a year, chances approach 100% that they used the same battery twice on different charge cycles. Unfortunately for the battery trading trade, this business model was not stable. People wanted to charge their cars as fast as they once filled their tanks, and they didn’t want to lug around heavy batteries in order to do it. Fortunately for them, this was becoming possible, but it also threatened a return to the issue of coordinating rechargeable electric cars with their charging stations. But again, they figured it out. Due to its high cost, only the wealthiest of people were capable of affording electric cars anyway. This allowed for a slower roll-out of charging ports, which were comparatively cheap, and usually worth the lack of business. Electricity, unlike liquid fuels, doesn’t go bad after time, and can be transmitted instantaneously across vast distances, if need be. Once electric vehicles were ready for the middle market, their charging stations were already waiting for them.

When Erebus Heffernan completed his lifelong project of his own form of transportation, he rejoiced. No longer would anyone need to stop and fill up on liquid fuel, or even electricity. It wouldn’t even be necessary to traverse the distance between two points at all. He had created a teleportation device. Passengers step inside the transporter, and indicate their destination. The machine dematerializes them into their composite atoms, and “beams” them to a satellite overhead, which then beams them back down to the planet somewhere else. If you think this sounds fast, but dangerous, you are not alone. Scientists agree with you, and they have the research to back up their claims. In a paper originally published in the scientific journal, Holophrasm, a team of three respected scientists work out the issues with the Aerial Broadcasting Terminal system. It might sound like the setup to a joke, but a molecular physicist, an ethics-centered metaphysicist, and a quantum physicist walked into a conference room at university, and began working together. The entirety of their paper will be accessible to the public in four months time, but as I belong to the industry, I’ve received an early copy. The gist of it is that letting a machine rip you apart, and reassemble you somewhere else...is tantamount to suicide. So many questions can’t really ever be answered, the majority of them posed by the metaphysicist. If something goes wrong while in transit, what happens to you? If one of the machines breaks down and is unable to transmit, or reassemble you, are you dead? If the satellite faces critical failure, and loses power for a time, what are you then? Just a series of data on a logic board. But what if a million years from now, our descendants discover that ancient satellite, and bring you out of it? You’ve returned, but you were probably declared dead 999,999 years ago. Were you? What if there’s some kind of data corruption, and you end up disfigured, or nothing but a pile of goop, on the other side? What even is life?

The reason this article began with an explanation of earlier transportation advances is because Heffernan wanted to avoid these kind of problems by pouring a ton of money in infrastructure, under the assumption that people will flock to this new technology, and begin using it immediately. A trip costs a few dollars, and zero commitment, so why wouldn’t people jump at the chance to ditch their cars and get anywhere they wanted faster? Heffernan invested billions of Usonian dollars building machines all over the world, along with a fleet of satellite intermediaries, the majority of which have not yet launched. It appears that his investments may have been for naught, as this paper has already caused a number of industry experts to warn would-be travelers of the dangers of this form of teleportation, myself included. Only time will tell if the concerns listed in the Holophrasm article are somehow dispelled, or if enough customers decide them to be worth the risk.

Microstory 308: Fire

Click here for a list of every step.
Shelter

The first time our ancestors saw fire was the first time they looked to the sky during the day. There is a bunch of science going on that makes fire burn. But at the core of it, all heat is the same thing; excited atoms and molecules moving around so fast that energy is released. The faster these atoms move, the more energy they release, and if you excite them enough, fire will be created. This is why friction can assist in the creation of fire. You don’t need some kind of liquid fuel; you don’t need matches; you don’t even need flint and steel. If you want to build a fire, you’re going to need something that’s really good at burning, and then apply intense friction to it. Wood is a good option because it’s rather abundant, and even though it requires a lot of effort, it doesn’t require much knowledge. Fire is one of the most useful elements in existence. It cooks food, which burns off possible pathogens, releases certain otherwise unrealized nutrients, and makes meals taste better. We have yet to encounter evidence of a civilization that did not cook food. Fire also produces warmth, and discourages dangerous animals. Modern humans have innovated further with fire and combustion to make their lives more efficient and convenient. Experts have uncovered evidence, however, that primates first controlled fire nearly two million years ago. This means that one of the first things we did after deciding to stand upright was to recreate the sun and forest fires towards our own end. Fire is not only a personal need, but a cultural one. It was an early step in the advancement of the human race; an undeniable sign of intelligence. If you ever meet an alien, the first thing you should do is demonstrate your basic comprehension of fire.

Instinct

Microstory 302: Ground

Click here for a list of every step.
Atmosphere

Like the atmosphere, you obviously know that the ground is an important thing to have if you’re going to live a fulfilling life. But unlike the atmosphere, it’s easy to take for granted, because it’s extremely abundant in the universe. Or so it would seem. The truth is that the cosmos is composed of three things: dark energy at about 68%, dark matter at about 27%, and regular matter (i.e. the stuff you can see and feel) at less than 5%. Despite your world being seemingly nothing but atoms, it’s one of the rarest things around. Most importantly to you, however, is what the ground can do. Rocks and minerals can be manipulated and transformed into various shapes. They can be used for obvious things like tools, machines, and dwellings. But they’re also found in soap, energy production, and even foods. Soil as a whole is even more vital survival, as it’s what holds and feeds the planet’s plant life. These plants are able spread and propagate from the nutrients generated in minerals in the earth. Plants are eaten by other forms of life, which are often eaten by other living things, and so goes the circle of life. For when something dies, its body will decompose in the ground, irreversibly altering the composition of the soil, and creating further nutrients to keep the cycle moving. It’s very easy to appreciate plants and other living creatures for our sustenance, but they would not be able to survive without a ground to stand on, to feed off of, to hold water. All soil is new, and constantly changing as we interact with it. The next time you find yourself in nature, shove your hand in the dirt and let it filter through your fingers. It’s not dirty or gross. It’s a beautiful thing.

Rain

Microstory 130: Therasia Jarvi

Click here for the list of every Bellevue Profile.

Therasia Jarvi might have been the most powerful anomaly of all. She could manipulate the movement of atoms, exciting them or slowing them at will. This allowed her to make the immediate area hot, cold, or windy. With better control, she was able to generate fire, ice, and water. Other anomalies could do one or two of these things, but Therasia could do them all. The more she practiced, the better she became, and the wider her range. It was theorized that, if she worked hard enough, she would be able to alter the climate of the entire world. That she wanted, she could have destroyed the planet. Therasia lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba which was one of the coldest cities in the world. She was excited when she discovered what she could do, and hoped to one day use her abilities as a superhero. Unrelated to her abilities, her parents had trouble understanding her. She did well in school, and got along with her classmates for the most part, but she also had a strange way about her. The world of psychology was only recently starting to investigate autism spectrum disorder, and history would later suggest that she would have been diagnosed as belonging somewhere on the spectrum had the field been ready for her. She expressed ideas and made connections between things that people had trouble relating to. There were concepts in her head that made sense to her, but not to most others. She was one of only a handful of people to be put on a list by the founders of Bellevue, so they were able to find her with no prompting. They insisted that she complete tertiary school, but in the meantime, was allowed to visit the hotel regularly. A boy who was only a couple years older was just finishing college at the same time and was placed in a similar sort of probationary period. They quickly latched on to each other, but the other members made her feel equally as valuable. Before Bellevue, however, there was really only one person who loved her without question; her best friend, Marissa. And it wasn’t even until later that Marissa learned of her secret...

Microstory 88: Ghosts

Ghosts are real; to an extent. They aren’t the fleeting consciousnesses of the recently deceased. They aren’t the remnants of those who have “unfinished business” and aren’t yet ready to crossover to the other side. That wouldn’t even make any sense. Unless there are a significant number of mediums in the world, there aren’t enough ways available to logistically help this kind of ghost. And if there aren’t, and that’s the problem, then there must only be a handful of people in the afterlife, because the majority of us will die while we’re technically in the middle of something. No, ghosts are not people. The soul of each and every one of us (sociopaths excluded, of course) currently exists in a lower dimension. It is tethered to the mind and body using a form of quantum entanglement. When a person dies, their mind, body, and soul are separated from one another. The consciousness begins to lose its electrical charge, and eventually breaks down completely. The body decays and transforms. Atoms fly away to form new bonds, and become new things. The soul recedes into its subdimension. In it are the true feelings, morals, and general characteristics of the person that was. It is not thinking. It is not moving. It can be connected to other souls via quantum entanglement, but it can no longer change. It had its chance during life, for that is when we are given the opportunity to determine what kind of people we want to be; what kind of world we want to leave for our children. Each infant is born at Zero. Each time they make a good decision, they move towards the positive side of the scale. Each time they make a bad one, they move towards the negative. At death, the soul of that person will spend eternity either in eternal bliss or eternal itch, depending on their life choices. The ghosts we sense are merely the harmless souls of a person who happened to die in that vicinity at any time beforehand. That is, unless we’re talking about physical ghosts. Those are very real and manmade, but they don’t exist on Earth.