Microstory 2410: Mildome

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This dome is for flowers. It’s a self-sustaining ecosystem, and it’s growing. Here’s the thing, at the moment, it’s mostly just grass in the center of a vast desert. There are pockets of flower gardens here and there, but they are going to spread over the course of the next several decades. This was done intentionally, not because the builders were lazy, or something. It’s all about the pollinators. You got your bees, you got your butterflies and moths, you got your flies. Not houseflies, that’s not what we’re talking about, nor blackflies. Those are gross and annoying. Don’t ask me the exact species of any of these things, I’m not that big of an expert. I just really like flowers. Continuing on, you got your hummingbirds, you got your honeyeaters and sunbirds, you got your bats. I looked it up, there are other animals that are good at pollinating on Earth, but they either don’t have them on this planet, or it’s taking time to engineer them. I doubt that they transported live specimens clear across the interstellar void. I don’t think you can do that legally, unless they qualify as a pet. You know what I learned while I was here? Humans are pollinators too. I don’t just mean that we plant plants. Obviously we do that, but we also have a history of lifting pollen, and carrying it to other places. Isn’t that cool? Well, you can do that under Mildome, if it strikes your fancy. The creators want this space to be the culmination of the hard work of millions of living organisms, including people like you can me. One day, the whole surface will be one giant garden, like a little microcosm of the world. I will be coming back regularly to see how it progresses, but I can’t wait for the “end” result. Of course, it won’t be finished at that point. The pollinators will continue to do what they do best, and this dome will thrive. Without any negative environmental factors, like climate breakdown, there’s nothing standing in its way. That’s something you have to see if you’re here on the planet anyway. Plus, there’s tons of honey, because of the bees. In addition to taking care of them, and learning about them, you can also eat however much honey that you want. If that doesn’t convince you, I suppose nothing will.

Microstory 2355: Earth, June 23, 2179

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Dear Corinthia,

Yeah, it sounds like Nature Wars is pretty much out of the question. I don’t want to put you out of commission for that long, and I did a little more research. It doesn’t sound like something I would be very interested in, especially not all the way across 2,352 episodes! The premise of being in the pure air isn’t what bothers me, though, lol. I mean, I suppose if all they talk about is how clean the atmosphere is, it would get annoying, but I’m guessing that would have been true a hundred years ago when it was last on. I do think that I have a different idea, though, which could work depending on how familiar you are with the franchise. The best part about it is that it would feed two birds with one worm. If you’re lookin’ for a story about a regular person who has to beat the odds despite having no clue what he’s doing, then you’ll probably like The Winfield Files. It’s a series of twelve books, and there’s even a TV adaptation with twelve seasons. It’s about a guy who works in a small town grocery store with a girl who turns out to be part of a witness relocation program. One of her new friends posts a photo of her online against her wishes, which leads the bad guys to finding her location. He happens to be in the background of the photo, and gets embroiled in the intrigue and adventure. So I was thinking that maybe we could read each book, talk about it, then watch the season of the show that’s based on it, and talk about that too. Or we could read a chapter, or watch an episode, at a time, if you would rather break it up more. I’ve never read them myself, because I’m more into the classics, but it sounds like a great place to meet in the middle. Let me know what you think. It would be nice to have something to talk about that we’ve both actually experienced. The “joint” parties were great, but they were still separate parties. But people have remote book clubs all the time, and it seems to work out for them. The delay is still there—but it always will be, so we may as well work within its boundaries since that’s our only choice.

Looking for two birds to feed,

Condor

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 1, 2484

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Mateo instinctively opened up to hug his daughter, Dubravka, but quickly took a half-step back. Like Romana and Kivi, he never got the chance to raise her. Perhaps it would be inappropriate. It was certainly presumptuous. Unfortunately, he failed to think of this beforehand, leading to an awkward moment for all. Even so, she took it in stride, and stepped up to initiate the hug herself. He was still her father, and she knew that it was neither his intention nor choice to miss so much of her life.

“Gang’s all here.” It was Kivi. She managed to appear out of nowhere just at the right time, as she was known to do.

“Kivi,” Leona said, surprised. “Which one are you?”

“The all-of-me one. I remember everything. I held a gun on an uninhabitable planet once.”

Mateo hugged his eldest as well, then followed up with one for Romana. He looked around, wondering if his children from an old timeline would show up as well, but it didn’t look like it was in the cards. “Argh. Argh!” He suddenly felt a hot sensation on his hip. Something appeared to be possibly literally burning a hole in his pocket. He hopped around, and struggled to reach in to pull it out. It was his silver rendezvous card. It was even more difficult to hold it between his fingers, but after letting go, he realized that this might activate it, so he reached out with both hands, nearly catching it several times before finally failing, and ending up on Snake Island.

Dr. Hammer was waiting for him in the vestibule. “We need your help.”

“Me?”

“Not necessarily you, per se, but you’re the one I had access to. You were talking about how you have illusion powers now, but yours weren’t as good as the others, so...”

“What do you need illusioned?” he asked.

“This whole place.” She indicated the building, and then pointed behind Mateo. “Look through the telescope. Don’t touch it, it’s already pointed in the right direction.”

Mateo approached the coin-operated binocular telescope, and peered into the eyepieces, careful not to move it in the slightest. He saw a wooden boat, but had no idea how far out it was.

As if reading his mind, Dr. Hammer answered his question, “I looked up the flag they’re flying. They’re Carthaginians, and they’re currently six kilometers out, but drawing nearer. Much closer, and they may be able to see us.”

“You don’t have active camouflage for this facility?”

“Never thought we would need it. No one should be on this side of the island in this time period.”

“Woof,” Mateo said. “You’re right, I’m not good enough at illusions to protect you. We’ll need someone else. Olimpia is best at invisibility, but Angela can make holograms that last even when she walks away.”

“We’re both here,” either Angela or Marie said over comms, but probably the former.

“So are we,” Romana added.

“I’m sending down Angela to see if she can work a job that big,” Leona interrupted before anyone else could join the conversation. “Ambassador out.”

Angela appeared in the vestibule, and started to look around, but she didn’t have much to see. “I really need to get a better view. I’m going outside.”

“I cannot allow that,” Dr. Hammer said apologetically.

Angela scoffed. “I’m wearing a spacesuit. The snakes can’t get me.”

Dr. Hammer shook her head. “There are no doors. I did that for a reason.”

“I’ll be fine. We do this sort of thing all the time.” Angela took a small device from her chest compartment, and tossed it to the doctor. “This is tapped into our comms, but only has global range. We’ll need it back.” She took Mateo’s hand, and teleported them both out of there.

They stood on the beach, letting the waves crash in, and kiss their knees, though they could not feel it. Angela examined the building. It was up against the mountain, and painted natural colors, like green and brown, but it definitely stood out as an artificial structure. She would have to smooth out the right angles, and hide all the windows. She could use the mountain itself as a sort of mental template to know what it should look like. She tilted her head, and electric slid down a little to see what she was working with from slightly different perspectives. She even made a rectangle with her index fingers and thumbs, and looked through it like a movie director. “Okay, yeah.”

“Yeah, you can do it?” Mateo asked. He was some ways away now, wandering around out of boredom.

“Oh, sorry, you weren’t there for our brief discussion on the ship after Leona cut off comms. No, I mean, yeah, it’s impossible.”

“Are you sure? You’ve not even tried to do anything.”

“It’s too big,” Angela contended. “I’m good, but I’m not that good.”

“Is there anything you can do?” Dr. Hammer asked through comms. “Can you...combine your powers, or something?”

“No,” Ramses said, “but I have another idea. If you’ll allow me to meet you on the ground...”

“Please,” Dr. Hammer asked.

Mateo was about to jump back there when he looked down at himself. “There’s a snake wrapped around my leg.”

“Is it venomous?” Dr. Hammer questioned.

“How am I meant to know? It’s yellow, and menacing, though.”

“Okay, that’s probably the Golden Lancehead. Put your helmet on.”

“I got this,” Leona declared. She appeared before Mateo, but she wasn’t alone for long. Dozens of birds materialized on the ground around her, pecking at the sand, and hopping around, presumably looking for worms. They were mostly a bold red, with black wings, and black tails. Their beaks were black on top, and white on bottom.

Mateo couldn’t help but notice how badass the birds were, and whatever they were called, would probably make a great inspiration for a superhero persona. The snake had a very different impression of them. It immediately unwrapped itself from Mateo’s leg, and went for the flock of holograms. It was probably pretty upset that none of them seemed to be real, but no one stuck around to see its full reaction. All three of them were gone in seconds.

“...that’s for you to decide. I think it should be close, but you know these lands better than me.” Ramses was in the middle of explaining something to Dr. Hammer. He had come down with Romana.

“What are we talking about?” Leona asked.

Dr. Hammer crossed her arms. “He wants to teleport that whole Carthaginian boat away from here.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” Leona determined.

“No, it’s not. You’ll disrupt the continuum,” Dr. Hammer argued.

“Oh.” Leona dismissed it by waving her hand in the general direction of the boat. “Those people believe in gods, and crap like that. They’ll just think that Poseidon was messing with them. Or saving them.”

“Uh, Neptune,” Angela corrected.

“I’ve heard it both ways,” Leona said, again dismissively.

“It’s neither,” Dr. Hammer asserted.

Leona checked her watch. “Look, Angela can’t hide your building today. Perhaps she can work through it, and cover you up in time, but not before that boat gets close enough to see it. This is our best option. We can jump the Ambassador to just underneath the boat in secret. Then we’ll make a very short jump, say, a few hundred klicks, and leave them somewhere safe. We’ll find an island of comparable characteristics, and I’m sure they’ll attribute any changes to topography to whatever god they do think would have the power to move them, or tricks of the light. Do they have a sun god?”

Dr. Hammer was shaking her head. “It’s too risky. How can you get right under them without tearing their boat apart?”

Defghij the Robot came out of the building. “Pardon the interruption, Doctor, but I’m receiving a radio message.”

“From the Vellani Ambassador?” Leona questioned.

“No,” he answered.

“Uh. Put it through,” Dr. Hammer ordered.

“Certainly.” Defghij dropped his jaw, and let the sound come out. “Hello? Hello? Can anyone here me? This is Tertius Valerius. I’m on the boat. I can see your building. I know there are time travelers here. Please respond.”

“Tertius, this is Leona Matic of the Castlebourne Sanctuary Ship Vellani Ambassador. We read you, five by five.”

“Oh, Leona, great. I’m sure you’ll understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Let’s talk in person,” he clarified. “Could someone please come pick me up?”

“Depends,” Leona went on. “How much influence do you have over that boat you’re on.”

“Total control,” Tertius replied.

“Tell ‘em to turn around. This island is full of deadly snakes.”

“Give me a minute.” They waited for about four minutes before he got back on the radio. “Okay, they’re turning.”

“Okay,” Leona began, preparing to execute the new, new plan. “If you can...jump into the water without any of the locals seeing you, and tread for about five minutes. Someone will come get you in secret.”

Tertius didn’t reply, but then they heard a splash. Dude was nothing if not reliable.

Mateo dropped his visor, and didn’t bother to wait the full five minutes. He let his HUD connect to the VA in orbit, which was serving as a temporary satellite. This piggy-backed on the signal that Tertius was sending, and told Mateo exactly where his target was. He teleported to the location—a couple meters under the surface—grabbed Tertius by the legs, and transported him out of there.

“Whoo!” Tertius cried, exhilarated. “Again!”

“Go get a towel,” Dr. Hammer ordered her robot before looking back at Tertius. “How did you get here?”

“Well, it should come as no surprise that I’ve made an enemy or two in the future. For the most part, what do I care? I can just erase anyone’s memory of their hatred of me. But occasionally, that doesn’t work. Some people are just resistant. This one guy, I won’t even bother to tell you his name, got on my bad side, as I got on his. I refused to work for him, and erase his enemies’ memories.” Tertius looked away. “Hm. That sounds like a band name. Enemies’ Memories,” he repeated. “Oh, thank you,” he said to Defghij for the towel. “Anyway, just as punishment, he banished me. He said that he was zoicizing me, which is totally not the right word to use in this context, because he was actually trying to send me back to my own time period. But he even screwed that up, and threw me over two hundred years off course! I anticipated this sort of thing happening at one time or another, so I hid this temporal phone in a cave near my home in Carthage.” He took it out of his pocket, and shook some of the water droplets off of it. “Sadly, by now, it’s out of power, but I knew that you built this Center all the way out here, so I talked my way onto a boat, and convinced them to come way, way south. At best, you could get me back to civilized times, when people used toilet paper. At worst, I could maybe charge this thing in an outlet? You use temporal energy, right?”

“How did you have power for a radio, but not the phone?” Romana asked.

“This uses lions,” Tertius explained, dropping the now redundant walkie-talkie on the ground. The temporal phone uses a small temporal battery, and lions are incompatible with it. I don’t know why it ran out when it was off the whole time.”

“It was probably leaking,” Ramses diagnosed.

“That was my thought,” Tertius agreed.

Mateo cleared his throat, cupped his hands together, and leaned in. “Did this man happen to be named...I dunno...Buddha?”

“That was it!” Tertius cried. “You’ve heard of him.”

“Unfortunately.”

Dr. Hammer took a breath. “Well, I’m glad it all worked out. Team Matic, if you could remain here for the day to make sure the boat does indeed head in a different direction—”

“They will,” Tertius insisted. “I literally made them think that it was their choice.”

“Just the same, I would like to take precautions. And in case it ever happens again, I would ask Angela to see if she can indeed eventually make this whole building permanently invisible for us.”

“I would be happy to,” Angela said with a polite nod.

“Uh, under one condition,” Leona said quickly before anyone tried to sign on any dotted line.

“And what might that be?” Dr. Hammer asked.

Leona stepped over, and took Romana by the shoulders, gently nudging her forward until she was front and center. “Help my stepdaughter. She’s fallen off of our pattern, and we don’t know what other consequences that’s having for her, besides the emotional distress.”

Dr. Hammer gave the girl a cursory examination. “Consider it done.”

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Microstory 2175: Belly in the Saucer

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A few weeks ago, I had a bird problem. House sparrows were nesting above my balcony, and a few of the baby birds almost died, so I first had to save them so they could grow up and fledge away. Once they were gone, I sealed up the gap underneath the next ceiling to prevent them from nesting there again. Today, an adolescent sparrow perched on the railing of my balcony. It sat there for a pretty long time, jerking its little neck around, looking for either food or danger. There’s no way to know this, but I felt like it was one of the nestlings that I stuck back up with their brothers and sisters, come home to see the old place. I know that birds can’t feel nostalgic. At least, I think I know that, I don’t know for sure. Do they? In all likelihood, it was a completely unrelated bird who just wanted to be there in that moment. But perhaps not. Perhaps it could remember my scent (even though I wore gloves) and knew that I was not a threat to it. I opened the door to see how close I could get, pretty confident that just the sound of the latch would be enough to scare it off, but I was wrong. It stuck around, and just watched me. I shut the door, once again sure that it would be too startled by the noise, but when I turned back around, it was still there. It might have hopped over a few centimeters, but other than that, it was totally chill. I sat down at my little table, and took out my phone to catch up on the headlines. That’s pretty much all I do, just skim the news stories without reading any of the stories in depth. If it’s a good headline, it tells you all you need to know, and if it’s not, the full story probably isn’t worth reading anyway. If it’s a topic that I’m particularly interested in, then I will tap on it, though. The bird, meanwhile, stayed there. At one point, I reached behind myself to the corner where I keep one of my plants, and removed the drip saucer from underneath. It was totally dry, which probably means that I should water the plant, even though it looked fine. I set the saucer on the table, and scooted it away from me, closer to the bird. I don’t know what it’s like to be a bird, but their legs and feet are so tiny. I would think that they would get tired of standing on them, and even more tired of perching. I thought maybe it could rest on its belly in the saucer. It was a stupid idea. It didn’t understand that that’s what I intended, so it didn’t get in, but that would have made for a cooler story, wouldn’t it have? There’s really no point to anything I’m saying. I thought that it was just a nice little innocuous anecdote to tell you while I’m on my mini-vacation. If you didn’t like it, maybe my next post will be more interesting. Oh, and speaking of which, I now have a million subscribers to my blog, so there’s that too. Okay, talk later!

Microstory 2144: Thursday

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Oh, Thursday. Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday. What more can I say about Thursday, and how many times am I going to say Thursday? A Thursday by any other name would smell just like crap, because I think roses smell like crap, and Thursdays don’t smell like anything at all, but perhaps that’s only because I have an underdeveloped olfactory system. What was I talking about again? That’s right, Thursdays. Again? Yes. I don’t remember you talking much about Thursdays before. I mentioned it once in the post I posted three weeks and three days ago, called Called it Hustling, but it wasn’t on a Thursday when I said it. How do you remember that? By the power of Thursday, and Thur’s hammer. Okay. I also mentioned Tuesday. Now are you gonna go on and on about Tuesday? I would only do that if it were Saturday. Wat?! Here’s the thing. I finished all of my work for the day, which I can’t tell you about, because it’s all still confidential, and I can’t tell you about really anything else. The smoll borbs don’t care if I talk about them, but there’s nothing going on with them. My therapist had to skip our session yesterday for personal reasons, so I can’t get real candid about my mental health either. Or maybe I can, and I am, because I keep talking about Thursdays. Why am I doing that? Why am I spiraling? Because I learned something interesting today...at least interesting by your world’s standards.

Where I’m from, we have seven days of the week, and most of them are named after gods. Monday is named after the moon, and obviously Sunday the sun. I won’t get into details, because I don’t remember it well enough, but I do remember Thursdays, because it’s named after Thor, and Thor is not only a Norse god, but also characters from two of my favorite franchises. These aren’t coincidences either, they too are named after the original mythological figure. Why is this important? Well, because in order to tell you about any of these characters, I would indeed have to recite them from memory, because they do not exist in your world. Your history did not have a Norse religion, and never came up with Thor Odinson. So let me ask you this...why the hell did you name this day Thursday!? Huh?!? HUH!?! Why do you call it Thursday!?!?!?!/1 Where exactly do you think that word comes from? I tried to research it, but I can’t get an answer. All of the days of your week match mine, but with absolutely none of the historical value. I went deeper down this rabbit hole too, and it only got worse. January is named after Janus, March after Mars. July and August are named after famous historical figures who were never born here either. What about the planets? Samesies, young Padawan. The people who devised these systems were polytheistic, so that’s what was important to them. Language isn’t something that some dude just randomly came up with one day. It’s a constant evolution of phonemes, graphemes, and morphemes; smashed together and mixed up after coming into contact with other languages, and being updated with slang, or altered by ignorance or illiteracy. If you never had a Thor, how come you gave him a day? Thursday, Thursday, THURSDAY, THURSDAY, TTHHUURRSSDDAAYY!! I can’t explain it, not if I know my bulkverse rules, which I do. You see, there are different kinds of universes. Some are stable, some are unstable. Some are small, some are big. They’re all real, but they are not equal, and you, my good friends...are not built to last. I need to get out of here if I want to survive. It could happen any day now.

Microstory 2141: Smol Birb Friends

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I don’t want to talk about my last weekend in jail. It was relatively uneventful. Most everyone in there has read at least a little of my blog by now, and that’s making things a little awkward, but I’m getting through it. It does feel like it’s painting a target on my back, but as I’ve been saying, this is not prison, so it was never going to be as intense and dramatic as you see it depicted on TV. It ain’t no picnic neither, but I’ll be fine. No, what I need to talk to you about today are my new smol birb friends. If you follow me on social media, you already know that I found a nest above my balcony. One of the babies fell out the other day, and died, but then two more babies fell out the next day, and I was able to scoop them up, and carefully place them back in the nest. They were pretty noisy, which the internet says is a good thing, because obviously, it means they’re still alive. It was really stressful being away for 48 hours, though, because even though I could check on the camera feed I had up there once a day, it’s not like there was anything I could do about it. Welp, that turned out to not be so true. My landlord also just so happens to be a reader, so she took it upon herself to unlock my door, and go out onto the balcony while I was away. She returned the precious chick to its rightful place in the nest. Happy ending, right? Not so fast, nothing’s actually ended yet. According to those internet people I’m always going on about, this species of borb propagates like crazy. If you want to take the nest down, which I’m required to eventually, you have to do it in between laying cycles. But that’s a very difficult time to measure.

You see, I don’t know how far along they were in their development when I noticed the nest in the first place, so I didn’t know when they were going to fledge. Once they do, I pretty much have to immediately take the nesting down, and install bird deterrents, or they’ll be right back. Why do I have to do this? Well, it’s a legal thing. I’m not allowed to foster wildlife in or around a building like this, and since house sparrows are considered a nuisance, I’m actually encouraged to just kill them. If I don’t, someone will. Of course, I never want to do that, so I knew I would have a really short window to clear them out to prevent them from coming back. The problem was, I was far too early in this venture. They stopped chirping. I even climbed up there on a chair, and started gently poking on the nest, and nothing. They never chirped at all. You would think that they would have said something, if only leave us alone, we’re babies! But nothing at all. I assumed that they were further along in their learning, and had flown off already, so I began to take the nesting down. Suddenly, two tiny borbs fell out, and landed on the balcony. I was horrified. I thought about trying to stick them back up there, but it was kind of deep in the crevice, and I didn’t know what shape it took in there, or how they moved around. Putting the chicks back was one thing, but trying to recreate everything their mama had done to build their home seemed like an impossible task. I’m sure the internet will be mad at me, but what was I supposed to think? I would not have done that if I thought that they were still in there, and alive. I still can’t figure out why they weren’t chirping anymore. But it was too late, I had to act fast, so I went back inside, and grabbed a plastic bowl. I could save them. I just had to give it time, so that’s what I’m doing. I moved the camera again to just above the bowl, so we’ll see whether mama comes back to take care of them again. I’ll update you tomorrow, probably only on social, though.

Microstory 2139: It Was the Crystals

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Oh my God, it’s finally over. My fungal infection is clear, and I’m cleared to go back into jail tomorrow. A part of me thinks that the real therapy session I had is what fixed me, like it was my own hang-ups that were preventing me from recovering completely. It may seem stupid, and I would have agreed with you back in the day, but I’ve seen a lot of things across the bulkverse, so the ability for my brain to alter my physiological condition actually doesn’t seem so weird anymore. Now, I’m not saying that it is definitely the explanation. New agey people do that all the time. They take antibiotics, and also pray to crystals, and when they get better, they decide to believe that it was the crystals, instead of the real medicine. But it’s not impossible either. To be sure, in this universe, where my immortality is gone, I’m disinclined to believe in anything but provable science, but I remain open to other possibilities. Maybe special abilities are perfectly acceptable in your world, and there’s some other reason why I’ve lost it. Anyway, I still think it’s best to not leave my apartment just yet. I would rather sleep on it one more night to make sure that it’s all been flushed from my system. It’s not like I have anywhere to go. I’m still working hard at work. I’m almost to the point where I can do my job effectively without having to reach out to colleagues. I always get in my head about that. It’s like this little game I play, where I try to go as long as I can without having to send someone an instant message. It’s always a relief when someone else messages me first, as long as they’re not pointing out an error that I made, of course. I would like to get to the point where I don’t have to say nothin’ except to ask them how they’re doing. I think that’s pretty much it today. Nothing else is going on in my life right now. You can follow me on social to hear about the baby birds living above my balcony. Besides that, peace and namaste, or whatever.

Microstory 1782: Tukana Is All

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We live our lives by the Tukana. It is an ancient text, which lays out the ways of the Tukan. It provides us with the guidance we need to make the best decisions, and be happy. Some go against the Tukana, but we fight them, and we always win. We will always win. For the Tukana is everything. The Tukana is all. I am known as the Dominant, which means that I am in charge of this entire tropicas. I did not simply fall into my position, and I was not selected. I had to fight my way to the top. Literally. The main social activity, according to the Tukana, is fencing. The practice is even more ancient than the prooftext. Our ancestors once used it to determine who amongst them was the bravest and noblest. They did not become rulers, though. That is something the Tukana demands of us. I am obviously the best. Many have attempted to thwart me, but I put them down every time. Unfortunately, our laws dictate that fighting for dominance is not the same as sparring. The better must kill the lesser in order to become the winner of the challenge. Until then, nothing is settled, and it would throw our world into chaos if I let them live. This has threatened our population before, and I can’t let it happen again, so I outright reject any challenge that comes my way when there is no hope that I’ll lose. It would not be fair to the challenger, and it only places us in greater danger to our enemies, the Buseros. They follow a similar path to enlightenment, but it is corrupted. Their inferior prooftext, the Buseron was plagiarized from our own; the one true book of salvation. The writer paraphrased nearly every sentence in his work, and passed it off as original so he could make money. The Tukana is not about making money. The Tukana teaches us to embrace the fruits of our destinies.

We are fruitarians. That is our number one rule, and as far as I know, no Tukan has ever broken it. We are aware that our ancestors once killed for their food, as the Buseros still do. That is perhaps our main difference. We do not destroy what we eat, but spread it around, and make more of it. We pollinate what’s left of our beautiful and precious Earth, and we do not take anything for granted. I may need to break our rule, though. I have been held captive by the Buseros for the last two weeks, and I’m starving. They have deliberately locked me up with a garden of plants, and small furry creatures. They want me to fall apart, and become more like them. It would be the greatest victory they’ve ever seen...dare I say the only victory. I’ve tried to hold on this whole time, but the pain inside me grows by the minute. The guards have left me alone for the next half hour, or so, as they do every day. They will notice if I eat one of these plants, or of course, an animal. We’ve become friends, I certainly don’t want to harm the latter. The former deserve to live out their lives as well, even though they do not have faces. The insects. They can’t possibly know how many insects are in here with me. They crawl and hop in and out at will. They’re still alive, so I don’t want to kill them, but I suppose if it’s me or them, it has to be me. I look around to make sure I’m not being watched, and then I snatch one off of the ground. It doesn’t taste good, and it’s not much, but I keep doing it, and I eventually start feeling energized again. I can’t eat much before the guards return, but I keep doing it every day. The Buseros are so impressed after I show them I’ve survived for four whole months, and they have no choice but to let me go. I return home to tell my people of the tasty insect, and its many rewards.

Microstory 1759: Snake Handler

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When I was back home from college one summer, I had the most profound experience of my life. I was out in the jungle, just trying to get a little exercise, when I came across a sea serpent. Like she was at least somewhat intelligent, she followed me back to the ocean, where she was able to swim freely and safely. As if that wasn’t enough, I slept there that night, and woke up hungry. On my way back to civilization, I found another snake. He was apparently fit for freshwater, and this time, he led me to where I needed to go, which was a diner out in the middle of nowhere. Until this point, I was studying environmental chemistry, but that all changed. I quickly dropped all of the courses I was planning to take that next semester, and switched tracks to herpetology. I wanted to study amphibians and reptiles, particularly snakes, and I got pretty lucky. I was surprised to find that my university offered a herpetology degree, which is rather unusual for it to be so specific. It was hard to change focus, and I did have to stay there for a whole extra year to complete all my courses, but I don’t regret it. Did you know that birds and mammals are technically reptiles? Well, it’s a lot more complicated than it sounds, but it just shows that classifying our world is constantly evolving, and we don’t have everything figured out. I don’t even know all there is to know about snakes, and I know quite a bit. What I’ve realized is that I can commune with them on a level no one else has ever seen. They don’t talk, like they do in those fantasy books, but I can form a bond with them, and gain their trust. I can handle any of the planet’s deadliest snakes, and they will not harm me, because they know that I won’t harm them. I don’t know if I was born with this gift, or developed it later, but it has made me extremely valuable and sought after in my field. My colleagues affectionately call me the snake handler.

Snake venom has the potential to treat numerous diseases, which could save thousands—or maybe even millions—of lives. I’m not the person who comes up with these treatments and cures. The first step in such research is procuring the venom in the first place, and that’s where I come in. Not only can I handle the snake in the lab, but I can find who I’m looking for in their natural habitat with ease. Over time, I’ve honed my hunting skills, which are just as supernatural as my communal bonds. You need a blue Malayan coral snake? I got you covered. What about a South American bushmaster? You know I got you. Anything, anywhere, anytime, I’m your girl. You can’t call it dangerous when I’m around. I have not met a snake that I cannot handle. I travel all over the world, collecting specimens that my clients requested, and delivering them to the labs. I don’t do business with unethical organizations, and I don’t wipe my hands clean after I’m done. I return periodically to check on my snakes, and again, they can’t talk, but I know if they’ve been mistreated. It’s happened a handful of times. I take the snake back, charge them a mishandling fee, and blacklist them in the industry. Most of the time, one or two researchers have been the problem, but I have been known to shut down entire companies for not adhering to my strict rules. If I say they’re bad news, they lose funding. Right now I’m in the Star Mountains, on the trail of a Papuan taipan, when I sense something I’ve never felt before. It’s forcing me on a detour, where I quickly come face to face with a purple snake that I’ve never seen, even in pictures. I think I just discovered a new species. The problem is...I can’t seem to form a bond with it.

Microstory 1736: River

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For years, Po believed himself to be the only one of his kind in the entire world. He didn’t so much believe as it didn’t occur to him to question why that might be. He wandered the lands, enjoying the wilderness around him, and living in harmony with the other animals. He especially liked to live next to a particularly beautiful river. One day, he came across two tiny ground creatures. They were crouched next to each other, munching on the seeds all over the ground. This wasn’t the first time he had encountered these animals, or even the first time he saw two of them at once. For whatever reason, this time gave him pause. He knew that there was more than one tiny ground creature, and that there was more than one other kind of tiny ground creature. There were different flying creatures, and swimming creatures. Many of them looked alike. There seemed to only be one Po. How could that be? Why did everyone else have at least one other companion, but he had only himself? This was the first time he felt sadness, and loneliness. He didn’t care for it. He kept moving, and came across a pack of the large brownish ground creatures. No, not those large brownish ground creatures, but the other ones. There must have been a better way to distinguish them. Po had a name, why did none of the others? They probably did, but he didn’t know how to communicate with them, so there was no way to know who they really were. These...antelope, he thought he would call them, were about the same size as him. They weren’t exactly the same, but they were certainly closer than the medium-sized tree creatures, right? He wasn’t an antelope, but maybe he could start pretending that he was. He got down on all fours, and started trying to live with them. Never before had a creature been afraid of Po, but they showed fear now. They ran away. Or maybe they were just irritated by him, because they could easily tell that he was a faker.

Po continued on, hoping to find a pack of his own. He communed with the big gray floppy-eared creatures. He stood with the pink water-loving sky creatures. He always failed. Some of the animals moved away from him when he approached, while others just ignored him, but they all knew he didn’t belong. His sadness not only stayed with him, but grew larger in his heart. He eventually realized that he had to give up the pursuit. There were no other Pos, or whatever he was meant to be called. It was a name he made up for himself. His first memory was of a creature flying overhead, whose call sounded like that. He never did meet the flyer again, so it seemed fitting that he should steal it. Seeing now that his entire life was meaningless, including his name, Po returned to his favorite spot in the whole world. He stood at the bank of the river, watching the glimmering water race past him. He knelt down to it, hoping to catch one more glimpse of the gorgeous orange swimmer with the big mouth. He saw other pretty swimmers, but not that one. Burdened by his terrible despair, Po stuck his face in the water. He loved feeling it brush up against his cheek. He liked to press his nose against the rocks on the bottom. He normally removed his head when his chest began to hurt, but this time he chose not to. He stayed there, and let the tightness claim his body. With the last bit of his strength, he opened his mouth, letting all of the water in. If there could only be one Po, there might as well be no Pos at all. The river took him away. A moment later, Eridana came by, looking to find a pack of Eridanas like her, but she found no one.

Microstory 1731: The Cygness

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We don’t know where it came from, but the disturbing rumor is that someone in our town once lay with a swan. They’re calling it the cygness as a pun. It starts out with a white skin rash. According to reports, scratching it will cause it to grow worse, so family members have bound the arms of their loved ones, hoping to stop the process, but they always fail. It can be slowed, but it can’t be stopped. All succumb to the transformation sooner or later. Once the victim’s skin is completely white, bumps will begin to rise. Out of that, chutes will appear, like seedlings bursting from the ground. These chutes will spread out, and form something that the researchers call powder down. Over time, as this down fills in, the feathers will mature, and eventually become just as beautiful and full as a swan’s real feathers. The victim will not grow wings, nor a beak, nor flat feet, but their shoulders will lock their elbows behind them, limiting movement, their face will blacken, and their toes will become webbed. Lastly, and we still don’t understand how this works—well, we don’t understand any of it, but especially not this—the patient will lose their ability to produce vocal sound. Something about their vocal cords will change, preventing them from not only creating speech, but other sounds as well, like hums or whistles. They’ll still be able to breathe and cough, but that’s just about it. From start to finish, the transformation takes weeks. At times it’s painful, at times it’s uncomfortable. Once it’s complete, however, patients report feeling better than they ever have in their entire lives. Some wish it to never end, but it does. The last stage is death, and it follows the patient’s returned voice. If someone with the cygness begins to talk again, you know that their life is nearly over. I have been fairly lucky thus far, but the condition has recently fallen upon me, so I know that I need to make arrangements.

I experience the same symptoms as anyone else, in the same order, and according to the same timeframe. They place me with all the others who are in the same stage as me, I suppose so we can all die together. As our conditions worsen, I notice something strange about the others. They’re flapping their lips, and moving their laryngeal prominences up and down. It takes a moment for me to realize that they are all trying to speak. Evidently, even though they know that they have become physiologically mute, they cannot help themselves. They don’t even just forget their limitation every once in a while. They appear to be constantly attempting to communicate with each other, hoping that with enough hard work, it will suddenly start working again. I know better. I know that that is not how it works. I sit quietly, and mind my own business. No one else seems to notice that I’m unlike then. I guess I’ve had more practice being quiet, since I wasn’t one to talk much when I was a regular human. One by one, they fall. They make one last call to our people, and then their eyes shut for good. Finally, I’m the only one left. I stay in isolation for a few more weeks, knowing that people are watching me, trying to figure out what makes me different. I can feel that I have my voice back, but I dare not use it, for I remember what happens next. The researchers come in, and demand that I use my voice. They need more data, so they can come up with a treatment, and they don’t care if it kills me. I refuse, but they threaten the lives of my family, so I give in. I speak. Then I sing. And then I survive. I am the human swan.

Microstory 1703: Apus

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I’m going to tell you my story once, and then never mention it again. Every time I look down at my legs, I relive the most traumatic experience I’ve ever had in my life, and I don’t need to keep rehashing that on purpose. Three years ago, I had just pulled into my garage after working late, and was trying to close the door behind me when I heard a grating screeching sound. At the time, the door was very old, because I had just moved in to a quiet town where the regulations were lax, and I hadn’t had time to modernize it. So it had a remote, but the door itself didn’t have any sensors that would automatically lift it back up if it encountered an obstacle. I took my hand off the keys, and looked in my passenger side view mirror to see a figure dressed in all black, holding onto the bottom of that door, preventing it from going down. The strain from this eventually damaged the system, and I guess the motor gave up. I look back on this day often, and wish I had just reversed the car into him. I could have escaped, and none of this would have happened. Of course, I’m not a violent woman. I didn’t know what the masked stranger was going to do to me, but I knew what I was going to do to him, which was nothing. I could only hope that he didn’t hurt me. As you can see, he did. He climbed into my car, smoothly, like he did this sort of thing every day. I slowly tried to reach over to my key again, hoping to push the alarm button, but he reached over just as slowly, and held my hand back. He shook his head, but didn’t speak. He tilted his head down a little, and pointed behind us with his left thumb, indicating that I should back out.

As I was complying with his demand, I scraped the side of my car against the frame of the garage, hoping to alert my neighbors. Choked up, I apologized, and claimed that I was nervous, which he believed, because it was not a lie. I overcompensated, and ran right into my metal trash cans on the other side of the driveway, making even more noise. Still, he believed I was doing my best, and he did not become angry. In the fastest I had ever seen him move, he quickly waved his index finger towards me, which I took to mean that he wanted me to start driving that direction down my street. As I was doing so, he casually reached over, and punched a set of GPS coordinates in my satnav. He didn’t have to search for a place, or even use an address; he knew the numbers by heart. We went far past the edge of town, and onto a gravel road in the woods. We didn’t speak a single word on the way. As far as I could tell, he was mute. We arrived exactly where you would expect someone like him to live; in a dilapidated and unpainted cabin. He pointed to my door, as he was stepping out of the car himself. He never touched me, though. He knew that I knew that I was in deeply unfamiliar territory, and there was nothing I could do to escape. He followed me into the cabin, and pointed to the chair where I was meant to sit, which I found to be bolted to the floor. He had me bind my stomach with rope, as well as a zip tie for my left wrist, before handling my other wrist for me. He dragged a bucket of burning hot coals out of the fire, and towards me. When it got to close, I lifted my legs, but he forced them back down, keeping them there while the coals seared my skin. When they were good and burned, he carried me to the trunk of my own car, and drove me back home. So that is why every wall in my apartment is filled with paintings of birds-of-paradise. Their Latin nickname is Apus, because people once believed that, like me, these magnificent creatures did not have feet.

Microstory 1610: Hypnopedia

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All universes are strange in their own way from most people’s perspective, and that’s just a product of only living in one universe for a long time before you encounter others, if you even ever do. I’m a little different, because I grew up with them, so even the stranger ones aren’t all that strange to me. Hypnopediaverse is pretty strange, though. It’s one of the few places where the bulkverse is common knowledge, and where they use the knowledge of it to their advantage. As one might assume, most universes are independent, alone, isolated. If you want to travel from one to another, you’re first going to need something powerful enough to tear a hole in the membrane that keeps it all together, and then you’re going to need some way to navigate. The first step is hard. The second step is just this side of utterly and hopelessly impossible. Very few people have the means to navigate the bulkverse. I can only do it mentally, and even then, I get lost a lot. It is simply not meant to be traveled. There are small exceptions to this rule, and it has to do with multidimensional proximity. Some universes are very close to a counterpart, like a binary star system. They refer to these as twinverses, and while I suspect they’re rare, I haven’t mapped the bulkverse, so I don’t have the data to back up my claim. After all, multi-star systems are more common than single stars, if you can believe it. It’s part of what makes Earth so special, and probably has a lot to do with its habitability. Getting back to the real story, however, when you’re talking about twinverses, you’re talking about two branes that are perpetually linked to one another, and follow the same temporal vector. The inhabitants may not be using the same calendar, but if you leave one, go to the other, and spend X amount of time there, X amount of time will have passed for those you left behind once you return.

I’m not sure how twinverses come into being, and there could be multiple reasons for this, but the thing about them is that this phenomenon has always been discovered. The residents have always eventually learned about the other side, and this is no truer than it is for Hypnopediaverse, which is a little different, because only one of the universes has a native population. The second brane that the one is attached to only contains plantlife. Whenever someone dreamfalls into it, the only people they encounter are from the main universe. This is how dreaming works, by the way. Everyone travels to other universes when they dream. It’s just that these branes are unstable, and usually only last as long as the dream does. In this case, though, the attached brane is stable, self-sustaining, and affords the dreamers a level of lucidity generally only reserved for the lucky few. Now, they could use this world to reach out and enjoy each other’s company while they’re still asleep. They actually do this sometimes; set up dates and other meetings to maximize their time. This population has decided, however, that the main purpose should be education. And not just regular school, but special skills they didn’t before know existed. The most common of these is flying like a bird, but it’s not that easy. They can fly in the dreamworld, but the skill will not transfer over to the main world. To make that happen, they have to enter yet another universe that’s only attached to the second one. That’s right, hypnopediaverse is actually a trinary system, and as far as I know, the only one of its kind. The third operates on a different temporal vector, however, which adds a level of complexity that the residents have to account for every time they dreamfall into it.

Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida: Cloned (Part II)

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I can’t travel through time on my own. I can send messages through the timestream, but I can’t actually travel to these places unless I have help. Fortunately, my ability gives me access to people who can give me that help. Throughout my travels, I’ve learned to endear myself to others, so they do what I need them to without question, or compensation. I’m not evil, so I’m not trying to manipulate people, or anything. I just want people to be nicer to each other, and the best way I know to teach them that lesson is to make it personal. I’ve kept a lot from them, though. You see, one thing I learned about my abilities is that they’re a lot more complicated than I knew at first. Yes, I can teleport sound, and yes it also allows me to carry on conversations across time. That’s not all, though. I can also teleport my entire consciousness. Theoretically, I would be able to do this to take over someone else’s mind, but that’s always been very distasteful for me. So I only do it to myself.

I periodically send my mind back to my younger body. I don’t do this to make myself youthful again, since I drank a couple bottles of water once to stay young anyway. No, I just don’t want people to know how old I am, and what I’ve been through. When I go back in time, I prevent myself from doing all the things I did. So I can recall those experiences, but they never happened to anyone else in this timeline, so they don’t know that. I’ve given people my age every once in a while, and it’s always a lie. I’ve kept really good track of how long I’ve truly been around. At the moment, it’s been 24,425 years, across an ungodly number of timelines. Most of the timelines have been about the same. It’s not like I go back and make a bunch of changes to history. I just wanna see it all, and I need time to do that.

Anyway, I’ve just stepped into a time chamber in 2300, and ended up back in 2256, because not everyone has the luxury of reversing their timelines. I have to save a very important man’s life, and I’m going to do it in a different way than anyone knows. I’m standing at the bottom of the cliff, back pressed against it. Mateo Matic is dying a couple meters from me, but I can’t help him quite yet. His murderer is still watching him, not to make sure Mateo dies, but because he isn’t a natural-born killer, and he’s freaking out about what he just did. I’ve seen this moment a few times, so I know exactly what happens. Four, three, two, now.

I dive down to Mateo. I don’t have long before he expires, and it’s too late. Briar killed him while wearing a special temporal object called the hundemarke, which means that this moment absolutely cannot be changed. If I don’t do this right, I won’t be able to go back and try again. This is it. I place my hands on his head, and concentrate. He coughs blood onto me. Man, I really wish I had more time. I have never tried this before, but I know I can do it. If I can do it to myself, I can do it to someone else. I close my eyes, and breathe deeply. I’m almost there. He’s in a vulnerable position, which is actually good, because it makes it easier for me to enter his mind. Just a few more seconds. There. I grab his consciousness from his brain, compress it, and teleport it all into my own brain.

Before anyone can come down to retrieve Mateo’s now completely dead body, I activate the recoil protocol, and jump back into the future. Trinity and Abigail are standing there, waiting for me, but they both look older. They look much older. I grit my teeth, and stare at them. “How long has it been?”

“Eleven years.”

I tap on my tablet, trying to figure out what went wrong. I should have only been gone a few seconds, just like Trinity when she went back in time to reyoungify herself. “Are you joking with me, err...?”

“No, you have been gone eleven years.”

“Why are you in this room right now?” I ask them. “How did you know I would finally return today?”

“A little bird told us,” Abigail answered.

I watch her a moment. “Do you mean that literally...?”

“Yes,” Abigail began, “a flying creature came to us, and told us to come back here on this date, because you would be returning. They flew off before we could find out who they were, or how they knew it. We chose to take their advice, and it looks like they were right.”

I look back at my tablet. “I don’t understand what happened.”

“It could be sabotage,” Trinity offered, “or a malfunction. The point is you’re here, and I assume you have the crown.”

I growl, and take the device out of my bag. It’s little more than a paperweight with pretty lights around it. I claimed that it can absorb someone’s consciousness, and store it, and that it’s what I’m using to save Mateo. Again, I don’t know for sure why I lie about my powers; it just makes sense to me. “I do. I was successful, but...”

Trinity peers at me. “But what?”

“The clone body is in its fifties now. That’s way too old. When he goes back to his friends in 2258, they will see that he’s aged, and our lie won’t work. We’re supposed to make them think someone rescued him with an extraction mirror.”

“I don’t understand that,” Abigail said. “Why didn’t you just use an extraction mirror? It sounds easier.”

“Mateo’s death cannot be undone. An extraction mirror would allow us to take him out of the moment he died, nurse him back to health, then put him back into his old life. He would one day have to go back through the mirror, and experience his death, which we don’t want him to have to do. But that’s not the biggest problem.”

“His body cannot be saved,” Trinity answered before Abigail could press it. “Your father performed the autopsy, and I got a second and third opinion. Once Briar pushed him off that cliff, it was over. Not even the extraction mirror could save him from that. We tried to use it before he was pushed, but the hundemarke blocked us. The clone body is our only hope.”

“Except it’s not anymore,” I complain. “We let it grow too long. I’m too late.”

“How long will the crown house his consciousness?”

“What?” I question.

“How long?” Trinity presses.

“Forever, I guess, until the parts degrade.”

“So, twenty-nine years should be a piece of cake.”

“You’re growing another clone?” Now who’s keeping secrets?

“The bird came to us the day you left,” Abigail explains. She walks over and presents me with a second tank, right next to the other one. “We started Plan B immediately.”

I smile. “I’m glad you two are here to sweep my mistakes away.”

“It might have been necessary,” Trinity says to me. “Tamerlane examined the first clone for us. I don’t think it would have worked.

“Why not?”

“He thinks he screwed up the sequence,” Abigail answers instead. “The first clone wouldn’t be on Mateo’s original pattern. It would have just been a normal guy.” Mateo Matic is a salmon time traveler. He only lives one day every year. At the end of that day, he jumps forward in time, and this aspect of him is critical to our plan.

I nod. “Someone from the future is pulling strings. That’s who the bird was.”

“Yeah,” Trinity says. “It’s possible. I’ve seen it done, just not with birds.”

“No one else is supposed to know we’re doing this,” I preach to the choir, “or how we’re doing it.”

“I know,” Trinity agrees. “Perhaps that’s being a little too optimistic, though. I want you to check that crown, and make sure he’s in there. Keep checking it for the next three decades, until we can finally finish this mission. We’ll need time to work out the kinks in the time chamber anyway.”

That’s a long time to keep a second consciousness dormant in my head, but I think I can swing it.

Twenty-nine years later, it’s finally time to complete this mission. The second Clone!Mateo has aged in his growing tank enough to return to his time period, and make everyone think it was due to an extraction mirror. We could have increased the speed of development using any number of techniques, including time travel itself, but that’s problematic for the endgame. In order to force this clone to experience time in the same way the original Mateo did, it was best to let it grow at a normal rate beforehand. Of course, when it comes to time travel, it doesn’t really matter anyway. When I insert his consciousness into the new body, and send him back in time, it will be the same 2258 as it would have been had we tried it twenty-nine years ago.

Speaking of Mateo’s consciousness, I can still feel it rattling around in my brain. It’s not awake, and he will hopefully never know he was ever in there, but as far as I can tell, he’s completely intact, and ready for his new life. Mateo 2.0. I’ll have to call upon my acting skills to convince him of the lie, so he can convince everyone else without having to lie himself. There’s a chance it’s pointless. If the truth ever, ever comes out, everyone will always have known. Because time travel.

I tell the others that it’s best if I do this alone. When he wakes up, Mateo is going to have to interact with someone, but there’s no need for him to know too much about the future, or who else is involved. They have plenty of things to do on their own, so they don’t argue with me about it. I place the clone body on the bed, and inject a sedative, so he doesn’t wake up while I’m still in the room. Right now, the body doesn’t have a consciousness, but it still possesses its autonomic functions, like breathing, and pumping blood. As for the brain, it only has one thought. I implanted a memory in there, which will remain even after I teleport Mateo’s mind into it. Like I said, I have to make him think that he was rescued with the extraction mirror. So he should have a vague recollection of that happening. He’s going to remember time slowing down as he was dying, and being dragged from his place of death, and pulled through the mirror. The memory doesn’t have to be perfect, or detailed. After all, when you’re dying, your ability to make accurate observations about the world is limited.

After I’m finished reversing the consciousness teleportation process from forty years ago, I check his vitals, and wrap him in bandages, to make him think he simply received medical treatment, even though his body is fine. We talked about giving him a pain inducer, so the idea that he has to recover from his injuries is believable, but decide against it. He’s going to think a man named Dr. Baxter Sarka treated him, and being from even deeper into the future, Sarka has access to untold resources. Mateo’s going to be perfectly accepting of the idea that it’s possible to remove someone’s pain without leaving them with side effects usually experienced from narcotics.

He awakens a few hours later, and falls out of bed. I’m right. “Baxter!” he calls. “Are you still here?”

I calmly but quickly walk back into the room. “Hey Thistle. Set the lights to twenty-four percent, please.” The lights turn up, but not too brightly.

“Report,” Mateo says after he’s certain that he recognizes me.

“I’m sorry to tell you that you died,” I answer professionally. “We used an extraction mirror to bring you back to life, if only temporarily.”

“Do you know how I died?” he asks.

“Yes. Do you?”

“I remember everything. I’m just worried about saying something that messes up the timeline. Where’s Briar?”

“He died long ago.” This was either a lie, or true. I don’t actually know what happened to him. A few of our friends took a ship to some unknown location, and Briar went with them as a prisoner. We’ve not heard from any of them since. Briar ages strangely, so he could still be alive, but it’s not guaranteed, and I don’t want Mateo thinking he has any hope of going after him. I don’t want any more violence.

“What year is it?”

“That I cannot tell you.”

He understands. “What can you tell me?”

“Only that we’re returning you back to your life. It’ll be 2258, after your memorial.”

“I appreciate it. I think it would be weird to attend my own funeral.” He switches gears. “Is Sarka still here?”

“He had to go to another appointment.”

“Thank him for me, if you get the chance.”

“Will do.” I pause a moment. He lies back down to work off the sedative. “Are you okay, emotionally speaking? I can’t imagine what it’s like to survive your own death.”

“I’m all right. I’m grateful to you, and him, and anyone else involved, who I presume I shouldn’t know about, at least not right now.”

“Do you want a hug?”

“Please.”

After the hug, I remove a syringe from my bag, and place it on his nightstand. “You’ll need thirty more minutes to recover, so don’t take this yet. Once you do, it’ll give you enough energy to stay awake for about twelve Earthan hours. Take it just before you leave, so you can reunite with your friends without falling asleep on them.  When it wears off, though, you will fall asleep, and you’ll stay that way for almost a whole day. Just go to bed, and let it happen.”

“Got it. What can I tell them? More to the point, what can I say to the younger version of you?”

“Tell them someone extracted you, but you don’t know who. You don’t have to worry about telling Past!Me anything. I never saw you back then. You must sneak past me, or I erase my own memories, I don’t know.”

An hour later, Mateo injects himself with the stimulant, and just hangs out in his recovery room until the crash. He doesn’t explain why he does this, but when he reawakens, I usher him down the hallway, and into the time chamber, so he can go back to where he belongs. It’s true that the past version of me never saw him alive after his death. I think he slips into their spaceship while I’m not looking, and doesn’t come out before it leaves for a new destination. At some point later, he’ll actually go back in time, to a very distant planet called Dardius, so he can attend his own real memorial service in person. Thousands of people are, were, and will be there with him, including me, Trinity, and Abby, while billions more watch on television. Then it’s time for us to go back to work.

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