Expelled: Explicated (Part II)

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At first, the three of them did nothing. They stopped working, and froze, not sure whether someone really was outside of the tent, or if they were hallucinating. This planet was uninhabitable to humans, but that might not be true of any native species. No, that shouldn’t matter. It wasn’t just that the composition of the air was incompatible to human lungs. The very thin atmosphere was almost exclusively composed of carbon dioxide. It wasn’t completely impossible for life to evolve on such a world, though it wasn’t probable. There was another knock. Even if aliens did evolve, there was something very human about the practice of knocking on a door to gain someone’s attention, which might not translate very well to an alien race. An evolved alien on a carbon dioxide world was even less likely at any rate.

The tent began to bulge inward. “Hello,” came a voice through the fabric. He sounded very curious, as if he wasn’t sure whether anyone was in here.

“How is he talking?” Airlock Karen questioned, more fearful than the others. Rita was a trained professional, and Elder knew who was out there.

“Conduction,” Elder explained vaguely. “Can you hear us?” he cried out.

“Oh, yes.” The blackmailer was still being creepily cheerful as if all this was very reasonable and to be expected.

“You got what you wanted...” Elder said, pausing for a moment. “We’re here. What do you want?”

“I want you,” the blackmailer replied.

“You want me for what?”

“Haha, sorry. I lifted my helmet from the tent, forgetting that you can’t hear me without it. I want you...to do whatever you must to survive. I’ll be doing the same a few hundred meters away. Once you adapt well enough to travel from your tent, come find me. We won’t speak again until then.”

“This is a game to you?” Rita figured.

“More like a test, Lieutenant. I need to know what you’re made of. How many of you will last? Which ones? I’m building something here. Well not here, and not now, but I will, or rather, I will have. You just have to decide how badly you want to be a part of that. Come talk to me when you know, and when you can.”

“What are the odds?” Elder asked him. “What are the odds that we pass your test, and make it all the way to your settlement?”

He laughed again, and waited to respond. “A hundred percent.” They could see the bulge from his helmet disappear as he began to walk away.

“Who the hell was that?” Karen asked.

“I still don’t know, but I intend to find out.” Elder looked at the ladies. “But not right now. Our priorities haven’t changed. Food and water. If you’ve ever cared about anything else in your life, pretend that they don’t exist. From now on, the only things that matter are the four majors: air, shelter, water, and food, in that order.”

They went on with their business. Airlock Karen—who requested to be called Debra instead—even pitched in, helping to assemble the dayfruit growers to double their productivity. Meanwhile, Elder programmed the genetic makeup of the fruit, optimizing for geoponics rather than hydroponics. The kit that he had curated wouldn’t have enough water for all three of them if they had to use too much of it for food production. There was another option that he was considering. The blackmailer obviously had his own plan for survival, and was probably sitting pretty in another dimension, or something. He knew that this was all going to happen, and wanted it to, so he was fully prepared. There was enough juice for Elder to teleport to the blackmailer’s location, but he needed to know exactly where that was, and what he was getting into. If there was any form of teleportation resistance technology, it could spell Elder’s death. So maybe there was a fifth priority in addition to the major four: information.

There would be a month’s worth of meal bars for one person, but even if there was enough for everyone, they wanted to save them for an emergency. A worse emergency, that was. They planned on rationing over the course of the next several days, but stop after that to focus on the dayfruit. They would only return to the bars if something went wrong, and they had no choice. They had to be so careful with every move they made. One little mistake could lead to their doom, and they wouldn’t even necessarily see it coming. Spilling a cup of water could be devastating, so everything sensitive like that would be going in the collapsible sink to protect it from their shuffling around. It may sound like a small gesture, but carelessness was a consequence of hunger, thirst, and isolation. They had to be extra afraid of mistakes.

Once the four majors were set or in motion, Elder was able to focus on that fifth priority. He had recorded the conversation with his blackmailer, and commanded his tablet to find a match from the Extremus manifest. Since the comparative sample was muffled through the tent, the AI came up with a couple dozen possible matches. But Elder had heard the man’s voice during their first and only face-to-face meeting in his lab. He would recognize it if he concentrated. He stuck the earbuds in, and prepared to narrow down the list when he noticed Debra saying something. He couldn’t hear a single thing with these things in, so he had to take them out again right away. “Sorry, what?”

“Do we get to listen to your music too, or not?” she repeated.

“It’s not music,” Elder explained.

“What is it?” Rita asked.

He didn’t want to tell them. “It’s an essay from an Earthan science journal about chromatin remodeling and epigenomic reprogramming for enhanced nutritional yield in solanum mirabilis with an emphasis on the optimization of the upregulation of nutrient preservation for extended unrefrigerated life terms in suboptimal conditions, vis-à-vis our current conditions in a hostile environment with little to no consumable resource replenishment options. Are you interested?”

They stared at him until Rita said, “oh. I already read that. It’s pretty good, albeit a bit rudimentary,” she joked.

Elder smirked, and took out his handheld device. He swiped it over to guest mode, and tossed it to them. “All the best music is on there, but only from the late 21st century, and earlier. I prefer the classics.” The masses appeased, he put his buds back in, and started to focus on the voice samples. He was a bit distracted when he noticed that the girls chose to watch something instead of listening, projecting the film on the wall. It was The Martian, of all movies. Their eyes did not betray an acknowledgement of the irony. Or maybe they were just studying it for good ideas.

Fifteen minutes later, Matt Damon was in the middle of recording his first message while stranded alone on Mars. Elder was pretty sure that he found the right voice from the eleventh sample, but he needed to listen to the others to eliminate them. “Bronach Oaksent,” he couldn’t help but say out loud after listening to the sample for the fourth time, as well as one more listen of the very similar eighteenth sample.”

“Is that a band, errr...?” Debra asked him.

The cat was out of the bag now, Elder had to come clean. “That’s who did this to us. That’s who’s outside the tent.”

“You’re telling me that’s the name of a human being?” Debra pressed.

“Apparently, so.” Elder was still chilled from the voice sample itself, the words of which reiterated his belief that he had found the right suspect. I don’t care what happens to this ship in the end. Your definition of extreme is limited to space, when you should be more motivated by time. That’s where all the real power lies. Bronach wanted Elder to build that time machine, so he could go back and do something nefarious with it. Elder’s initial thought was to kill himself to prevent that from being possible, but in many years, he had come across multiple chances to sacrifice himself for the greater good, and he had never made that choice before. That was one reason he was in this mess in the first place.

“Who is he?” Rita asked. “I don’t recognize the name.”

Elder looked back down at the profile he had pulled up. “He’s no one. No family, no community ties, no job, low contribution score.”

“Maybe he altered his own records,” Debra offered. “He’s smart enough.”

“How would you know how smart he is?” Rita asked her.

“Well, he pulled this off, didn’t he?”

Elder regarded her with mild disgust, split evenly between Debra herself, and Bronach. “No higher education. He was homeschooled.”

Rita flinched. “Oh.”

“Oh? Oh, what?”

Now she was the one with a secret that she wanted to keep. But there were four people in the entire world. If she couldn’t tell them, she couldn’t tell anyone. “His records were probably erased, but not by him. The homeschool label is an old spycraft tactic. It’s to prevent anyone from looking deeper into someone’s past. When you’re homeschooled, there are no records, so snoopers won’t be surprised when they don’t find anything.”

“He’s a spy?” Debra asked.

“Not necessarily,” Rita answered. “Some people actually are indeed homeschooled. But given our present circumstances, it’s a safe bet that he’s been highly trained in espionage and manipulation techniques.”

“He talks in probabilities,” Elder revealed. “This suggests that he’s highly calculating.”

“So, I’m right,” Debra figured. “He’s smart.”

“You were right,” Elder admitted, not upset about validating her, but worried about what she was right about. What was Bronach planning, and what did these two have to do with it? A time machine on its own wasn’t too terribly dangerous all the way out here. They were over a thousand light years from the stellar neighborhood, which would limit his ability to alter the past. He would need other technologies, like a reframe engine, or maybe just stasis. If he wanted to change history, coming all the way out here was a hard way to go about it. There was a reason that he got on Extremus, and a reason that he got off when he did. None of this was random, and they couldn’t trust their intuitions. This profile didn’t give them enough information about who they were dealing with. Maybe Elder really should kill himself. But where would that leave Rita and Debra?

Rita shut the movie off, seemingly no longer in the mood. She tapped on the device until some classical music started to play for them all to hear. She carefully lowered the volume. “The carbon scrubber is functioning optimally, right?

“It is,” Elder replied.

“Air, check. The tent is sealed up properly, no leaks?”

“No leaks.”

“Shelter,” Debra jumped in.

“The toilet’s ready to go,” Rita went on.

“Yes. Water. Gross water.”

“Lastly, the dayfruit seeds are growing.”

“Slowly, yes,” Elder confirmed.

“Food,” they chanted roughly simultaneously.

“We’ve had a hard day. Turn your screen off. Let’s just go to sleep.”

“We’ve not even talked about that,” Elder said, realizing now that the lower priority issues were still issues. “The sleeping bag only fits one person. I mean, I guess two people could fit if they were willing to snuggle...”

Rita smiled. “I’m a Lieutenant, remember? I can sleep anywhere, anyhow. You too share the bag; sleep back to back, I would recommend. I’ll be fine.”

“I sleep in the buff,” Debra divulged. “I just don’t feel comfortable any other way.”

“Then use the clothes that you’re not wearing as a pillow,” Elder suggested. We’ll use the actual pillow as a barrier between us.”

“Okay.” She was a difficult person, but not without the capacity for humility. Even Karens had people who loved them, and those people weren’t insane.

“We should be conserving power anyway, so sleep is a good idea, and it’s healthier to do it when it’s cooler.” He reached over to the microfusion reactor to cycle down the isofeed. A reactor shouldn’t ever be turned off completely, but he could limit the amount of output, including the waste heat, which was their main source of warmth here. The lights dimmed, and Rita turned off the music. “No, as long as you two are fine with it, keep the music on. It’s good for you, and don’t worry about the power.”

“I’m fine with it,” Debra said.

They continued to listen to Clair de Lune as they quietly got ready for bed. Elder removed most of his clothes too, but not everything. He just needed his own shirt and pants for a pillow. Rita crawled over to the other side of the tent to curl up into the fetal position. Debra squirmed a lot, probably because she was used to having all the space of a full-sized bed, but she didn’t complain, so that was nice. He had extra melatonin sleep masks, but he didn’t want to offer her one, and have her be offended. It was time that they started to learn how to live together, because they were going to be stuck with each other for a long time. He made a mental note to offer one to the both of them tomorrow, framing it as if he were remembering that he should have worn one himself. Yeah, that should work. For now, they would all just have to figure it out on their own.

Over the course of the next week, they developed a routine. They had nothing better to do besides continue to survive, so they shared stories from their pasts. Elder didn’t tell them why he was on the run, but he did discuss his life on Earth centuries ago. They were receptive and nonjudgmental. But they were still going a little crazy. They needed to find a way to spend some time apart. The bathroom situation was uncomfortable at best.

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Expelled: Explanted (Part I)

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Elder Caverness was being blackmailed. He didn’t know how, but this stranger knew everything about his past. They knew where he had been. They knew what he had done. He was a war criminal, on the run from an authority who may not even exist. The Extremus was the best place for him to hide, because it was so random and inconsequential. That was the whole purpose of the mission, to travel so far from civilization that it no longer interacted with anyone else. He would die on this ship, safe from his past. But the stranger could ruin that. He wasn’t afraid of being found out by someone on this ship per se, but if the truth came out, it could get back to someone who really could get him in trouble. The blackmailer wanted him to do something that he shouldn’t. The Captain asked him to create a device that could transport any passenger back to the launch point, on the day of launch. There were those here who wished they had never come aboard, and this was their chance to undo that mistake. Unfortunately, that wasn’t what this device would do. It would instead banish them to the nearest sufficiently massive terrestrial planet. It didn’t even need to have an atmosphere. The blackmailer just wanted Captain Yenant to be on it. They must have had plans for him, though, because if they just wanted the Captain dead, it would be much easier to program the device to teleport him to interstellar space. Why did it have to be a planet?

There was a knock on the door. Elder didn’t use any cameras, or anything. He was the smartest engineer on the whole vessel, but he still liked to do some things the old school ways. He opened it to find a stranger. Whether it was the same person who was coercing him to do all this was still in question. They never met face to face.

“I’m your blackmailer.” Well, that answered that question. “Did you do what I asked? The Captain will be getting impatient. I calculated an 83% chance that he reaches his breaking point with you today, and that could result in him giving up on this project entirely. That cannot happen.”

Elder slipped his gloves back on, and showed the stranger what he had created. He couldn’t touch it with his bare hands, or he would become one of its victims. Pulling the string, and pressing the button activated it, but anyone who ever came into contact with it would succumb to it. “No, don’t,” he cried when the stranger reached for it.

“Oh, did you think that I wasn’t going on the trip?” He smirked, and took the transporter from Elder. “That’s the whole point, my friend.” He twirled it in his hands, and then handed it back. I calculate a 97% chance that he will use this between forty and fifty-five minutes after receiving it. Please message me when he takes it.”

“What if I can’t get him to touch it?” Elder asked.

“Do whatever you can.” That was odd. Getting rid of Halan Yenant seemed to be this man’s entire motivation. If that wasn’t actually the case, what was he really after?

Shortly after the blackmailer left the room, the Captain did come to check on his progress, and he did retrieve what he believed to be the recall device, but he did not touch it personally. He instead ordered his lieutenant, Rita Suárez to take hold of it. They were suspicious of him right away. Elder should have been cooler about it. He was a pretty good actor. This was absolutely not the first time he had gone undercover. It used to be his entire job. But maybe that was okay, because again, the man who made him do this didn’t seem to care one way or the other anymore. He appeared to be obsessed with probability, so maybe he knew that Halan would touch it eventually, or maybe he wanted Rita to be transported all along, and the best way to make that happen was to pretend that Halan was his target. Elder was pretty smart, but he had no illusions about whether it was possible for someone to outthink or outshine him. He was too old for that, though perhaps not as old as everyone believed. They all called him Old Man because he wanted them to; because it was easier to hide this way.

Rita wasn’t the only one who touched the device, though. Due to their suspicion, they forced Elder himself to place hands upon it as well. He had to find a way to take himself out of the queue. After the Captain and Lieutenant were gone, he got back to work. He ran over to the sink, and started scrubbing his hands vigorously with soap and water. There was a coating on the device, which left a residue on any holder’s skin. Elder had created it, but using a formula that the blackmailer provided. Surely it would come off if you knew that it was there, and worked hard to get rid of it. Right? Maybe not. He kept scrubbing and scrubbing, but his autodermatologist kept detecting a foreign substance. It was still there. He kept scrubbing, but it was just wasting time. The transporter was going to spirit—or maybe it wouldn’t. He threw his watch around his wrist, and activated the regular teleporter. He kept jumping all over the room. Maybe flooding his skin with temporal energy would get rid of the residue. After all, this energy didn’t usually just stay on you forever. It would dissipate, and in this case, hopefully remove anything related from his hands. No, the autoderma still read positive. Shit. There really was no hope. He only had one choice left.

He grabbed his emergency evacuation bag. It was called a Harsh Environment Survival Kit, and they were standardized in this time period in Earth’s stellar neighborhood. Once people started traveling to the stars, researchers came up with something called SCR&M, which stood for Safety, Compartmentalization, Redundancy, & Modularization. Bags like this one were designed to protect against any eventuality, such as having to abandon ship. Older time periods referred to it as a go-bag. Obviously, it could be tailored to one’s specific needs, but there were some strong recommendations, like shelter, air, water, and food. The one that Elder built for himself was unique, and filled with technology that not everyone in the universe even knew existed, like this teleporter gun, which...didn’t have much charge left, but it would do. And most Heskits had collapsible toilets, but this one here led to a pocket dimension, which was of vital importance to Elder’s sanity. He quickly checked inventory, and then disappeared.

His personal teleporter wasn’t able to send him directly into the Hock section, but he was able to get close, and then break in using more traditional means. They were just in an interrogation room, so it wasn’t like he had to make it deep into the belly of the beast. The problem was, he didn’t really know how much time he had left. He reached the door, and could see them through the little window. It was Captain Yenant, Lieutenant Suárez, a fellow genius named Omega Parker, and an awful woman who everyone hated so much, they just called her Airlock Karen. There was no telling how many of them had touched the device. The entire crew could have played a sports game with it by now. Elder would not be able to save the lives of all those people, but he might be able to protect this small group here. That was assuming he couldn’t just stop them from activating it in the first place, which was the ultimate goal. He started banging on the glass. “Stop! I couldn’t wash my hands! It’s not good enough! Don’t push the button, button is bad!”

The group noticed him, but didn’t get up to open the door for more information.

“Don’t push that button!” he urged desperately.

While Halan and Rita were talking, probably trying to decide how to react to this development, Airlock Karen snatched the device from the table, and gave herself some room. Before anyone could stop her, she pulled the string, and pressed the button.

Elder had thought about putting on his suit and helmet, but there was no time. Luckily, the vacuum tent was designed to open and reseal quite quickly. He could have saved himself with little issue, but he wasn’t the only one in danger here. Of course, Airlock Karen came with him, as did Rita. No one else did, though, so Halan had never touched it, and neither had Omega. It was just the three of them. He pointed his teleporter gun at the both of them, calibrated it for the mass of two bodies, and summoned them to his position. He tugged on the string to expel the tent, which enveloped them like a Venus flytrap, wrapping them up completely. The valve on the emergency air tank opened on its own as well, and began to fill the space with a breathable atmosphere. They weren’t out of the woods yet, though. The ladies had passed out already, because they did not expect any of this to happen, but Elder was about to suffer from the same fate. He retrieved the dermal wand from the pack, and flashed it against his neck. He felt immediate relief, but his body still needed time to absorb the nanococktail. He gave Rita and Airlock Karen their own flashes, then let himself pass out next to them.

He awoke later to someone shaking him at the shoulders. He blinked, coughed, and checked his watch. It hadn’t been that long, so the tank had plenty left in it to keep them alive until he could get the carbon scrubber working. “Report,” Rita demanded.

“I screwed up,” Elder answered.

“Ya think?” Karen asked sarcastically.

“I’ll explain everything. Right now, we need to solve our immediate issue, which is air.” He reached into his bag to take out the scrubber, and the tablet. He handed Rita the latter. “Here, interface with the tent. Make sure there are no leaks or vulnerabilities.”

“Wait, where are we?” she pressed. When Elder just gave her a harsh look, she sighed, and did as she was told, because it was the only logical next step. They could talk and work at the same time.

“I don’t know where we are. We’re wherever the Extremus was when she pushed that blasted button.”

“Oh this is my fault?”

“Partially, yeah. I literally told you to not do it. Did you think that maybe there was some reason for that, and that I wasn’t just high and confused?”

“I don’t know who you are, or what power you yield. Maybe you were the admiral, who could have stopped Halan from letting me go home.”

“Vice Admiral Perran Thatch isn’t Halan’s boss. He’s an advisor.”

“Well, whatever.”

“Old Man,” Rita began, “why are we here?”

“Someone made me do this. I thought he was trying to remove Yenant from the equation, but now I’m thinking that he wanted all three of us to be here instead. He’s smart. He’s real smart. He knew things that he shouldn’t have known. About me.”

“Halan was always suspicious of you. No one knows where you come from, or who gave you the job that you had.”

“I gave it to myself. I’m good with computers.”

“How do we get back to the ship?” Rita asked him.

“We’ll worry about that later,” Elder insisted.

“Later is too late,” Karen argued. “The ship will be out of range by then.”

“Extremus travels two light years every day,” Elder volleyed. “It’s well out of range already. I didn’t want to put the horse before the cart by explaining the long-term goal so soon, but our only hope of returning is to go back in time, which will...take time.”

“I never understood that,” Rita said, almost getting comfortable here, but still checking for leaks. “Why does it seem like it’s easier to go back in time than to go faster than light? The reframe engine has a maximum speed, but couldn’t someone build something that surpasses it? Aren’t they basically the same thing?”

“The difference is that the power required to travel through time scales linearly with mass, and distance from egress to ingress. Faster-than-light travel, on the other hand, scales exponentially from a high starting value. All current theoretical designs demand types of power generation that we do not yet have. A hypothetical ship with true FTL would probably have to be gigantic from the onset, and the more you want to pack on it, the more powerful the power source has to be. It suffers from similar downsides as the rocket equation. You want more payload, you need more fuel. To add more fuel, you need a bigger ship. You got a bigger ship, you need more fuel. It’s a vicious cycle that a time machine would have no trouble with. That’s not to say that building one will be easy. Back on Extremus, I had resources. Here, we’re tied to what I was able to carry in my bag, and whatever is here on this world.”

“I don’t suppose there’s enough for all three of us,” Rita reasoned.

He looked between the two of them. “The pack is made with one survivor in mind, but we can stretch it out if we’re careful.” He finished engaging the carbon scrubber, so he hung it up near the ceiling, and took the tablet back to interface with it too. “We’ll have to ration food, and really be careful about how we recycle our waste, but we should be okay. Water is our main concern as it’s the most difficult to insulate from leakage. We will be drinking our own urine for a while.”

“We do that anyway,” Airlock Karen said dismissively.

“Not like this,” Elder said with a heavy sigh. “The miniature filters we’re limited to don’t do much for the taste. But I think I can program the dayfruit seeds to produce extra sugar to mask the taste a little.” Dayfruit was a genetically engineered food that someone came up with centuries ago. It weighed about five pounds, and could provide a single person’s entire nutritional needs for one day. Under ideal circumstances, one took about a week to grow, but to conserve water, they would have to lengthen the growing period intentionally.

Rita sighed and looked around at their new prison. A lone survivor could go a bit crazy in the limited space, so the three of them should be total maniacs within only a few weeks. “I need an inventory of everything that we have on hand. After that, you’ll need to come up with a survival plan with extension contingencies. Once you’re done with those, start working on the escape plan. I’m not going to give you a time limit for when we need to be back on Extremus, but I will tell you that the answer is not never. Debra, I see you. It’s not his job to get you home. Gatewood is far too far away to worry about right now. So while he’s working on his assignments, and I’m setting up the dayfruit grower hourglasses, it will be your job to shut up. Do you think you can handle that?”

There was a knock on the tent.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 24, 2398

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Different countries have different laws and conventions, but the most common number to use is fourteen. Though not yet an adult in these jurisdictions, this is the age when an individual is considered legally free to choose their own religion. It’s difficult for the state to regulate what a given religion can do to and with their children, but certain morally universal laws have been passed to prevent abuse or any infringing on those children’s rights. Basically, yeah, you’re free to express your own religious practices, but if you indoctrinate children into believing the same without providing them with the proper education regarding alternatives, then you’re being a hypocrite...and that’s illegal. They have the right to figure that out themselves, and once they’ve been alive for fourteen years, society expects them to declare their beliefs. Of course, they convert to something else later, but people generally believe that—assuming all anti-indoctrination laws have been followed—they can make a well-informed decision at this point. Carlin McIver is at this age now. Today is his birthday.

There is nothing the team can do to solve the Meredarchos-Erlendr problem. Sure, Leona is a highly trained agent, and Mateo technically works for the same covert governmental organization, but that organization has many other well-qualified agents, operatives, and analysts. Everyone on the team is at the Lofts now, which currently excludes the late Cheyenne, her friend Bridgette, Heath, Vearden, and Arcadia. So there aren’t all that many people at the party, but the ones that are here are committed to making Carlin feel special, safe, happy, and ready to make his choice. They’re all sitting together in the common area on the second floor, eating his favorite foods, and trying to keep the mood light. It’s not working. Alyssa is being strong for her younger brothers, but they’re still struggling. Carlin is particularly upset, as he felt it was his duty to protect Trina from harm. He’s not angry at the team for letting her go. He’s angry at himself for letting them let her go. Again, he’s not an adult yet...but there is a loophole.

“Tamerism,” Carlin says quietly.

Not everyone heard. They’re still smiling from their respective conversations. “What did you say?” Alyssa asks him.

“I choose...Tamerism,” he elaborates slightly.

“Very funny,” Alyssa says.

“I’m being serious. I’m fourteen now, I get to choose, and I choose...Tamerism!” He’s raised his voice, but isn’t yelling yet.

Alyssa scowls. “You are not going to be a Tamerist!”

The visitors to this reality look over at Marie, who shrugs. She hasn’t heard of every single sect of every single faith.

“I have to protect my family, and this is how I do it!” Now he’s yelling.

“That is not how you do it, because we are a nonviolent family!”

“You said that all these people are our family now,” Carlin reasons, indicating the team.

“They are, and they’re working very hard to protect us,” Alyssa volleys. “And I know what you’re going to say; they’re using violence. Yes, to a degree, but that’s not what you’re going to do.”

“Forgive me for interjecting, but what’s happening here?” Leona asks.

“This country has maturity milestones. You can work at thirteen. You can choose your religion at fourteen. You can drive at fifteen. You can vote at sixteen. You can marry at seventeen.” She takes a beat. “You can fight at eighteen.”

“Okay...he’s not eighteen.”

“You can fight at fourteen,” Alyssa goes on, “if your chosen religion says that you can, and Tamerism is the only major one that says that. And it has to be one of the majors, because they’re the ones who get resources from the government. The problem is that Tamerism is fucking insane! The things that they believe, the things that they fight for...”

“I can fight for whatever I want!” Carlin claims.

“Once you reach a certain level,” Alyssa argues, “which takes, like, a year. Until then, you go where they tell you to go, and you kill who they tell you to kill.”

“Some people accelerate in the program.” Carlin crosses his arms in a huff.

“You are not going to join Tamerism.”

“You’re not allowed to say that to me!” Carlin cries.

“Seven witnesses will assure the authorities that I never actually said that.” She’s confident that everyone here will lie for her, except maybe Moray, who may be a little too young to understand the consequences. When the state says that you can choose your religion, they mean that no one can stop you, not even a legal guardian.

Carlin tightens his arms around himself.

“You want to join the mission to find those evil men, don’t you?” Alyssa guesses.

Carlin nods his head.

She nods back. It’s time for some tough love. “That’s not practical. By the time you level out of obligatory service, they’ll be found and dealt with. Don’t throw your life away. Tamerism is one of the hardest faiths to convert out of. They get dirt on you, they blackmail you. You don’t genuinely believe what they believe. They’ll know that, and they won’t let it slide. They’ll act like they do, but then they’ll slowly brainwash you.”

“Hold on a minute.” Ramses jumps up. There’s a little whiteboard on the refrigerator. He wipes the party shopping list away.  “How do you spell that, Tamerism?”

“T-A-M-E-R-I-S-M,” Alyssa answers.

He writes it up in black marker. “Marie, how do you spell the one that your husband is in, or was in, or whatever?”

“Daltomism. D-A-L-T-O-M-I-S-M.”

Ramses writes that one up there two. He breaks each word in half using a red marker, and adds different letters to the ends. Tamerlane. Dalton.

“Tamerlane Pryce and Dalton Hawke?” Leona asks. “Two of the biggest religions in the world were founded, or perhaps inspired, by two people that we know personally? How did I not notice this before? Why did I not research the religions for clues?”

Mateo stands up, and regards the whiteboard. “I wonder if my cousin, Danica has one too.”

“Oh.” Marie approaches the whiteboard. She writes the word Anicari in black marker, and then adds a D to the front with the red marker.

Mateo nods as he’s staring at the names. “We need to make a list of every religion in the world. Something fishy is going on here. There may be more time travelers that we weren’t expecting to be involved.”

Leona retrieves her tablet from her bag.

Microstory 805: Psychic Killer

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No one was quite sure how it was that Dezi Bavoss became the nation’s Prime Chancellor of Grade Schools, but it happened, and everyone had to deal with it. She clearly had no idea what she was doing, leading detractors to suspect she herself had not even once set foot in a school. As it turned out, this might not have been too far off the mark. I was put in charge of investigating a series of murders, with the only thing connecting the victims was that they were all proven psychics. Once I learned this truth, I knew that the best way to stop the assailant from continuing their rampage was to compile a comprehensive list of psychics in the entire country. This took several months to put together, especially since people tend to prefer their privacy, even while promoting their gifts as legitimate services. I was surprised to find out from one of these psychics, who was interested in helping develop the list further, that Dezi Bavoss belonged on that list, and was in danger of being killed. Now it all made sense. The more I dug, the more I discovered just how unqualified this woman was for her job. She had never thought for herself, obviously having cheated her way through nearly every obstacle in her life by reading the minds of those around her. When my superiors found this out, though, they could do nothing about it. There were no laws regulating the use of psychic powers for personal gain, possibly because it’s easy for a psychic to blackmail a policymaker using personal secrets against them. Since Bavoss was a public figure, I was removed from the main investigation, and placed at the head of her special security detail. She adamantly opposed this added security...unreasonably so, and this made me even more suspicious. I agreed to keep her new detail at a safe distance from her, so she could maintain her privacy, but I personally tailed her closely. After only two days of this, I found the truth. She was the so-called Psychic Killer, going around assassinating her competition so she could hold onto her power. Even when I confronted her with this knowledge, she seemed unperturbed, and unashamed. She thought she was untouchable. What she didn’t count on—and could not have known—was the fact that I’m the most powerful psychic of all.