Castlebourne Capital Community: The Man Who Finally Died (Part VII)

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It was done. They proposed a new referendum, which was basically just like the old one, but tweaked enough to be considered original. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Dreychan Glarieda, Yunil Tereth, and all of their friends, including even Vip, they were able to sway people’s votes. Slain kind of became a pariah on Castlebourne. He was so well-liked, but they eviscerated him in the media, so to speak, and he was not happy about it. He didn’t speak out in public, though. He aired his grievances to Dreychan and Yunil in private, but he didn’t poke his head out of his hole. He was too embarrassed. He shouldn’t have been. People had short-term memories. Many were glad to be done with the political decisions for a while.

When the refugees first came to this world, they were super hesitant to enjoy themselves, because there weren’t as many opportunities to do so in the Corridor. They had pretty much gotten over that, though and loved their recreation now. To them, the government was there to do their job, and stay out of their hair. No more voting, no more referendums, just do whatever you need. So they were all out of the spotlight by the time the sun actually started moving across the galaxy. None of them was allowed to know any details about it, or how it was being done. The sun-mover evidently wanted to maintain their anonymity, and that was fine. Perhaps Dreychan and Yunil could do the same, and finally rest. Or maybe not.

Someone yanked the dark hood off of Dreychan’s head, and pulled the bandana out of his mouth. He looked to his right to find Vip and Amazine. Yunil was to his left. They were all on their knees, with their wrists tied behind their backs, and still gagged. Amazine was scared, but the other two weren’t. He realized why. Like him, she was undigitized. If she died here today, that would be it. Yunil and Vip would be fine, so why were they here? What were these assholes trying to prove? He looked up, and didn’t recognize the scowling thugs, but he did know the smirking thug boss sauntering over behind them. “Slain. You do understand that that’s a dumb name, right? It means that you’ve died, not that you kill. Perhaps you meant to call yourself Slayer?”

“My name is my name,” Slain contended. It really wasn’t. After discovering that Slain was also from Ex-777, Dreychan did a little research. Like Dreychan, he was born with a regular name, instead of a number, but it certainly wasn’t Slain. So he made it up too. He must have thought it sounded cool.”

Slain crouched down so he was at eye-level with Dreychan. “Do you know why you’re here?”

“Judging by the design and decor, I’m guessing you’re putting us on trial?”

“A tribunal, actually.” Dreychan didn’t know the difference. Slain probably didn’t either, it just sounded cooler. He stood up, and started pacing around with his own hands behind his back, mocking them, but also giving off the impression of levity and ease. “Do you recognize where you are? We’re not in the Capital anymore.” Dreychan didn’t, but wouldn’t have had the chance to answer anyway. “Of course not. This is the three-dimensional Winner’s Hall of 2.5Dome. It’s where you would have gone had you played your game fairly, and won without cheating.”

Dreychan didn’t say anything. Even claiming to not care about that would imply that he actually did have some strong feelings on the matter, when in reality, he was totally over that, and absolutely never cared about the inherent value of winning. He had just been trying to survive.

Dreychan’s indifference angered Slain, so he had to work hard to keep it together. He pointed to one of the camera operators who was presently at rest. “The tribunal will be broadcast, but if you think that means someone’s gonna come rescue you, you got another thing coming.”

“Another think coming,” Dreychan corrected.

“Huh?”

“Don’t worry about it, little dum-dum.”

Slain was fuming. “You will show me respect. By the end of these proceedings, you will be begging me for your life, I guarantee you that!”

Dreychan was silent again. He just made himself look calm and disinterested.

Slain didn’t want to point it out, so he just moved on. “You are here to answer for your crimes against the Castlebourners. I’m not talking about the visitors, by the way, I couldn’t give a flailing fuck about those people. I’m talking ‘bout us; the real Castlebourners. You manipulated the people, and you rigged the referendum, and I have the proof. You will answer to the people of this great new nation, and more importantly, you will answer to me!”

One of his thugs batted an eye at his last claim. Perfect. This wasn’t one big happy family. There was a way to exploit that, he just needed that thing out of Yunil’s mouth, so she could use her silvertongue to do that. He gave her a look, and she winked back, still unfazed.

Slain notices this. “Oh. Oh, I see. You think you’re safe? I assure you, you’re not. No one knows where we are. The cameras won’t show any distinguishing characteristics, the signal will be bounced around different quantum servers, or scrubbed of its metadata, or whatever my expert did to hide us. When it’s your turn to speak, you can see 2.5Dome all you want, but my other expert will be censoring all that shit during the built-in delay, so it’ll just make it look like you’re cussing a lot on one of those old Earthan TV shows where they weren’t allowed to say certain words to the public.” He gestured at the walls in a general sense. “Even if they do find us, they’re not getting in. No teleporting in or out. You see, that’s why you don’t get. We are from all over. One of us worked on the teleportation field research labs. One of us is a carpenter. One a computer scientist. You just sat around and played games all day. My people know how to work.”

“I must have been misinformed. I thought you were also from Ex-777.”

Slain shook his head. “Not everyone who lived there was wealthy like you. Some of us worked for people like you.”

Dreychan scoffed. “Not true, they were bots. Our planet was specifically designed to keep all human workers out, so they weren’t even close to the luxury.” He looked around at the people with guns. “If he told you he was a workin’ man, he lied. They simply didn’t exist.”

Slain bolted back over, and backhanded Dreychan across the chin, causing his head to fall into Vip’s lap. “I told you to show me respect!”

“You gotta earn that,” Dreychan replied. “But I don’t like your chances. I don’t have much respect for the dirt on the bottom of my shoe, or even my own fingernail clippings.”

Yunil giggled.

Slain turned his head to her. “You think that’s funny? You’re only so calm because you think your safe. But my carpenter, teleportation expert, and signal technician aren’t the only geniuses I have on my side. We can also suppress quantum consciousness transference. Your last backup stream was just before you crossed the threshold into this dome. Even if you’re not one of those people who philosophically rely on continuity of thought, your backup substrate is in no safe place either. While we’re talking, my people are out there, destroying any extra bodies you got lying around.” He leaned in closer to her. “We’re tuned in, sweetheart. We didn’t do this on a whim.” He forced a kiss upon her lips, and then booped her in the nose. “Boop!”

“You should not have done that,” Yunil said firmly. “Sexual assault is no joke.”

Slain led into a laugh from a scoff. “Relax. We’re all friends here, aren’t we? Or aren’t we?” he posed, as if that was some justification for this kangaroo court.

Slain wasn’t worried. He straightened his knees out, and went back to pacing around menacingly. “Now. Before you get all up in arms about me being judge, jury, and executioner, let it be known that I am only the first one. The panel of your peers will be composed of people who know firsthand what it’s like to be slighted by the great Dreychan Glarieda of Ex-777. Come on in, folks!”

And they did. Dreychan recognized every single one of them. They were former members of the Old Council of Old Worlds. Teemo, Rezurah, Maaseiah, and Yunil’s sister, Lubiti were all there, as well as everyone else who had gone to jail for the conspiracy to kill Dreychan. They didn’t look happy, though. They weren’t smirking, or even smiling. They look kind of perturbed. Which was weird. They had all somehow been freed from prison, yet they could not be more annoyed. “This is why we’re here?” Lubiti questioned. “You want us to judge this man?”

“I figured you would want to take your shot at some justice, since you’ve been waiting for it for a year now.”

“We have not been waiting for that,” Maaseiah argued. “We have been doing our time. We have been repenting for our sins.”

“What are you talking about?” Slain was so utterly baffled. “He’s right there! The guy who put you all away—the man who you hate with such profound disgust—this is your chance to exact revenge. Take it!”

“So this was never going to be fair?” Yunil asked. “You weren’t even gonna pretend to be impartial?”

“I said it’s a tribunal, not a trial!” Slain argued. He looked back over at the councilors. “Come on! What’s your problem? He ruined your lives!”

“No, we did that ourselves,” Rezurah said. “We tried to kill him, and regardless of our reasons, that was wrong, and we all recognize that now. We have said this on the record. We have done interviews. Did you not watch them?”

“I thought you were playing for the camera,” Slain explained. “I don’t understand, you forgave him for real?”

“There is nothing to forgive,” Lubiti reasoned. “He didn’t do anything to us. He didn’t even call the authorities. They conducted their investigation without his knowledge. Like Rezurah was just saying, we are the architects of our own demise.”

Slain shook his head. He could not wrap his mind around this. He expected to win today, and he was losing steam by the minute. His thugs weren’t outwardly going against him, but they didn’t seem ready to start a firefight either. It was looking like no one was going to get hurt today. Enraged, he let out a primal scream. “Argh! You dumbasses aren’t going to take this from me!” He pulled out a knife as he was coming around to the other side of Dreychan. He held it against his neck, letting it dig in enough to make it bleed.

“Now, hold on,” Lubiti said, trying to keep him calm. “This isn’t going to get you anything. Right now, it looks like you’ll be done for kidnapping, trespassing, and maybe some hacking, or whatever. That’s not great, but it’s not murder. You can still get out of this. The laws are rigid, but the punishments are fluid. There’s not much crime anymore. No one really knows how to handle it all the way out here. You might just get exiled. They may send you to Outcast Island. You would probably prefer it there anyway. Dreychan’s a good guy, I’m sure he would advocate for you. Right, Drey?”

“Yeah, I don’t care,” Dreychan confirmed. “I don’t hold grudges, and I’m not the vengeful type.”

“You know who else isn’t the vengeful type?” Slain asked. “Dead people!” He tensed up, and cut into Dreychan’s neck deeper. Okay, this was really starting to hurt.

“Don’t. Do it,” Maaseiah urged. “I regret my actions here last year. Don’t make the same mistake we did.”

“It’s not the same,” Slain argued. “You failed. I’ll succeed.”

Lubiti breathed deliberately, presumably hoping to get him to mirror her subconsciously. “The fact that you’ve not done it yet tells me that you don’t want to. If you go through with it, no one here is gonna hurt you. So if you’re not on the fence, what have you been waiting for?”

“Good point.” And with that,” Slain dug into Dreychan’s neck deeper. He didn’t just pull it clean across his throat. He sawed at it like a cellist. It was bloody, and messy, and gruesome. He didn’t just want to kill Dreychan. He wanted to make it hurt, and it wanted to put on a show. His fun didn’t last forever, though. When he could no longer bear Dreychan’s weight. He dropped him to the floor, and let his victim succumb to the black.

Dreychan broke through his chrysalis and emerged anew. It felt weird. He didn’t know what was happening, or where he was. He just had the urge to escape. He had the impulse to move upwards. So he jumped up, and started to fly. He didn’t know how he was flying, but he certainly wasn’t very good at it. He was bumping into all sorts of things. The walls were soft and mushy, so it wasn’t really painful, only disorienting. It was pitch black except for a pinprick of light, which Dreyhan thought might have been an illusion. Still, he went towards it. He focused his thoughts on flying towards it. He kept scraping against the gooey walls, but never stopped. The pinprick grew larger and larger until he finally reached the exit. The light was blinding, so he started flying more erratically now. He was so confused and lost, but he didn’t know whether there was anywhere safe to land, so he didn’t.

He tried to blink, but he didn’t seem capable of it. So weird, having wings, but no eyelids. Was this heaven, or just a simulation? Whatever the answer was, the real question, was why? His vision adjusted, and he was finally able to see where he was. As it turned out, he hadn’t moved. This was still the kangaroo court. Everyone was staring at him, equally confused, but there was something else different. Oh right, they were giants. They watched as he fluttered about, small enough to fit in one of their hands. There was Yunil, standing up now and rubbing her wrists, no longer bound. She was smiling at him, not in shock, but in triumph. She did this. She turned him into a flutterby. But still, why...and also how? He was growing a little tired, so he landed on her shoulder.

Yunil gently petted Dreychan’s wings and giggled. She turned to face Slain, whose arms were now being held behind his back by two of his own people. They never wanted any of this. No one was on Slain’s side anymore. “I didn’t know that you were going to suppress consciousness transference, but still, this is a handy backup plan. It’s not always prudent to transfer your mind across vast distances. Some people just store their own backup, sometimes in the form of a fairy, and sometimes, a flutterby like this. I’m told holly blue is the most popular model. He’s quite pretty now, don’t you think?”

Dreychan wanted to say something to her, but he couldn’t speak. Insects didn’t have vocal cords. So he sat there patiently on her shoulder, more in love with her now than ever, even though he had always been afraid of transhumanistic upgrades.

She peered at her new little pet. “I’m sorry I did this to you without your consent. I just couldn’t bear to lose you. For the record, I fed you a sort of seed, which grew into this in the lining of your stomach. It didn’t require any surgery, or anything.”

Dreychan still couldn’t say anything to her, so he launched, and playfully fluttered around her. He then flew over, and started fluttering around the former council members. They seemed to get the idea, because they were smiling, and reaching up with the palms down, hoping that he would land on their fingers. He chose to land on Lubiti, who let him flitter back and forth between her hands. It wasn’t for another few days when they were able to have a real conversation again. That was when she and the others apologized to him directly.

Slain was taken right to jail for murder. The prosecutor wasn’t going after him for reckless substrate destruction, or consciousness back-up endangerment, but full-on murder. He had no idea that Dreychan was backed up by any method, and in fact, had strong reason to believe that the destruction of the substrate equated to true death. Time would tell what became of him. The same could be said for the former councilors. As it turned out, Slain’s movement had run deep enough to reach the prison. He had them released under the guise of a legitimate criminal forgiveness program. He kept them isolated from each other until the day of the tribunal that never was. They willingly went back to their cells immediately. The terms of their respective parole schedules were currently being revised to account for their swift voluntary return, evidence of their remorse and self-improvement, and overall good behavior. Meanwhile, the new government was holding strong. Vip and Amazine continued in their positions, and the representatives under them were representing their people admirably.

And Dreychan and Yunil? They finally got their break. The former was provided with a new human body, but he didn’t always use it. He let her teach him to switch as appropriate, when he needed something different for a certain dome, or just on a whim. The superintendent protocol was suspended since it was no longer needed. The two of them left the Capital, but could come back later, if their services were ever required again, or they could pass their power onto someone else. Meanwhile, the host star and all of its celestial bodies were on their way to a new region of the Milky Way. As for the war...well, Castlebourne wasn’t out of the woods yet.

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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.

Fluence: Elder (Part VIII)

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They were time travelers, so there was probably no need to hurry away, but there might be. It was unclear how connected they were to their shifted selves. Perhaps every second they spent at one point in spacetime had an impact on the events in another that they couldn’t understand, or determined precisely when they could return to a given place. They watched the butterflies for a few more minutes, but had to focus on the task at hand, which was what exactly? They didn’t know yet. They were just going to go back to Po, and see what was going on there. The four of them came together as twilight was falling, and reached for each other’s hands, but then Goswin stopped, and massaged his chin while he looked upon Briar. In response to this, Briar flinched and leaned back. “Is there something wrong with me?”

“You know what...” Goswin began cryptically, pausing to everyone’s discomfort. “I don’t think that there is. You grew up under extraordinary circumstances, and you’ve improved in a very short amount of time. Do you regret killing Mateo?”

“Of course I do,” Briar said. “What does that mean? Why do you ask now, when we’re about to leave?”

“It means that I think we’ve officially become a real crew—all four of us together—even though I couldn’t point to a moment when it happened. We’ve been worried about shifting to competing realities apart from each other, but I don’t think that’s been happening. Eight Point Seven, you are our Eight Point Seven, just in a new body. Weaver, thank you for letting us into your home. And Briar? I think you’re gonna be okay. You’re one of us now, and I’m going to rely on you just as much as them to help us solve whatever problem we’re barreling towards. Whatever happens, we stick together, okay? Our powers operate on a psychic level. I’m not worried about the abstract concept of identity tomorrow. If we wanna stay together, we will. We can call ourselves The Primes.”

“Others shifted versions of us are probably coming to the same decision,” Weaver!“Prime” pointed out.

“Yes, but it will be true of none of them but us,” Goswin said, knowing that it didn’t make a lot of temporal logical sense.

“I hope you’re right, Captain,” Weaver said.

Eight Point Seven only nodded.

“Thank you,” Briar said to him graciously.

“What was that thing you said to Leona Matic that one time?” Goswin asked Eight Point Seven rhetorically. “You better make like a jock and strap in. Shit’s about to get real.”

They shifted themselves back to The Nucleus, which for all intents and purposes, was the center of the universe. They were not the only ones there; not by a long shot. The place was chock full of their shifted alternates, some running around, others wandering, and some just standing there, some in fear, and some in determination. There were several other people scattered about who weren’t the same as the core four, including Ellie Underhill, as well as her friend, Trinity Turner. They saw a few instances of Cassidy Long, her mother Étude Einarsson, and her mother, Saga Einarsson. They were all about the same age. At least one version of Leona was here, and she was either teleporting around, or different versions were popping in and out of existence like virtual particles. She was stopping only long enough to whisper something to someone, and hear a response before moving on. They didn’t recognize everyone, though. The place was utter mayhem. No one knew what they were really doing, and no one was in charge. Or maybe that wasn’t true.

A catwalk extended from a balcony two stories above the crowd. Four people walked along as it grew longer and longer. They were not alternates of the core four, but entirely different people, and they did appear to be in charge. They didn’t appear evil, but they didn’t seem particularly friendly either. One of them was Tamerlane Pryce, but none of the other three looked familiar. A cursory glance around the room gave the impression that they did not have any shifted selves here, but were each one of a kind. It wasn’t totally out of left field that Pryce should be here. He was present on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida when the crew of the X González departed. He was there for a reason, but there must be a reality out there where he finished his work on the planet early, or was perhaps fired for sometimes being an insufferable tool. Where did these other three come from, though?

Pryce held up both of his arms, and slowly lowered them to quiet the rabbling crowd. They did not comply. He jerked his arms back up, and tried again, but still it didn’t work. He looked to one of the women to his flank, and held out his hand. She gave him an object that resembled a bullhorn, and that was exactly what it was, but not a regular one. The Time Shriek was a mysterious scream that randomly echoed across the lands at various points in space time. There was no predicting its appearance, nor anything to do about it. If it interrupted you while you were in the middle of something, you just had to stand there and wait until it was over. This device was evidently capable of summoning the Shriek at will, and even amplifying it. It scattered across the hall, pounding into everyone’s eardrums, causing them to grasp at their heads in pain, and forcing some down to their knees. “Thank you! It’s so kind of you to give me your attention with no incentive.”

“Why can’t we leave?” a version of Briar demanded to know from the floor.

“That’s a good question, random citizen,” Pryce replied, pointing down to him. “It’s because of my good friend here.” He placed a hand on the shoulder of the woman who didn’t give him the Time Shriek Horn. Iolanta Koval is a very powerful metachooser. None of you is in control anymore.”

Iolanta glared at the audience. She reached into her fanny pack, and pulled out some kind of fruit, which she bit right into, rind and all.

“Ha! She’s got an affinity for citrus. It’s a time traveler thing. You all get it. I’m sure you know me,” he went on, “but just in case one of you shifty mother fuckers is from a reality where I don’t exist, my name is Tamerlane Pryce, but to distinguish me from my Afterlife Simulation and Third Rail selves, please just call me The Elder.”

“There’s already a guy named Elder!” one of the Weavers called up to him.

“There are hundreds of people that share your name too, jackass!” Pryce snapped back.” He huffed. “Anyway, as I was saying, this here is Airlock Karen. That’s obviously not her real name, but everyone she thought she could trust on her ship started calling her that, so she’s decided to own it. Similarly, A.F. here adopted his name from his enemies, who never bothered to learn his real name either. He hopes to vanquish them one day, but for my part, I hope he fails, ‘cause they’re good people, but I’m not gonna get in his way. We’re a team, just like the four of you...and you...and you, and you.” He pointed at random groups. Was everyone here always in a group of four exactly, even when they weren’t the core defaults?

“What are we doing here?” a Goswin questioned.

Pryce looked down at him. “I want to join forces.”

“Yes? Go on,” the same Goswin urged.

“Yesterday, I moved a mountain,” Pryce said bizarrely. “I mean that literally. The four of us stood before it, and we made it disappear, only to make it reappear by the end of the episode—I mean, a few hours later. But we didn’t put it back where it belonged. It’s now two meters farther north. It wasn’t easy, but we got it done. Different crews have developed their powers differently, and some of you may have done something similar, or even more impressive. We can alter time and space on a level that no one in histories has ever enjoyed, and I believe that together, we can do even more. We can remake the future to our desires. Notice that I didn’t say whims. They’re not going to be pointless and silly. The mountain was just practice. There is a war brewing in the Sixth Key, I’m sure you’ve all at least heard about it. They call it the Reality Wars because five parallel realities have been forced together into one. Their respective habitats remain intact, but the stars have been consolidated, cutting their available resources by 80%. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine a friend sending you an uncompressed video on your phone, which suddenly dropped your charge from full to 20%? You’d be pissed. Everyone is pissed, and they don’t have a true culprit to blame, so they’re blaming each other. We can help them.” He paused for effect. “We can move them.”

Leona appeared next to Goswin!Prime. “Are you the ones who took Angela?” she whispered to him.

“Who?”

“That’s a no.” She was about to teleport away again.

“Wait. What does she look like?” Goswin asked.

Leona held up her palm. A small holographic photo appeared of a woman that he had never seen before. “A core crew was on our ship, and when they left, she disappeared along with them. She’s not here, so they left her somewhere else in spacetime, but if you don’t recognize her, then it wasn’t you.”

Goswin looked to the other three Primes. “Let’s find her. Just like Misha.”

They nodded. And just like that, Angela was standing next to them. “Oh, thank God,” she exclaimed, taking Leona into an embrace.

“Excuse me!” Tamerlane asked from his balcony. “What’s going on down there?”

“Sorry, sir!” Goswin!Prime answered. “She was just looking for a friend!”

Pryce looked over at Iolanta, and snapped his fingers at the primes. She peeked over the edge at them, and a second later, the whole crew was standing on the platform with the Elder, and the other self-proclaimed leaders. “You just summoned someone here, even with the Time Lid shut?”

“The what?” Briar asked.

“Is that a band, errr...?” Weaver asked sarcastically.

Pryce looked at Iolanta again. “Why are they able to do that?”

She took another bite of her citrus. “They shouldn’t be able to. Not here. Not now.” She shrugged, and tried to take another bite.

Pryce slapped the fruit out of her hand. “That’s your only job!” He pointed at the primes. “Focus on them. Stop them specifically from using their powers!” He faced the primes. “Bring me...a dancing monkey in a hat.”

“No,” Goswin decided.

“Okay, that’s fair,” Pryce admitted. “There’s ethical concern with that. Instead, just bring me a birthday cake.”

“No,” Goswin repeated.

“All right, you don’t want to steal from a kid, I get it. Just summon anything that isn’t already in this asteroid. Dealer’s choice.” He looked back at Iolanta. “Are you blocking them?” he reiterated.

“Absolutely. I can feel it,” she assured him.

Goswin sighed. He hovered his hand over the floor, and summoned Portrait of a Young Man, which was famously stolen by Nazis during the war, and never recovered. He held onto the frame to keep it from tipping over.

Pryce noticeably gasped. “How did you do that? You four didn’t even talk about it? That is the biggest issue within the crews. No one can agree on anything.”

“We’re in sync, I guess,” Goswin figured.

Pryce took the painting, and held it up for all to see. “Witness power! These four have accomplished the impossible: true neural synchronization! This painting has been missing for four hundred and fifty years, and now here it is. They barely gave it a thought. It was probably destroyed in the original timeline.” He gazed upon the Primes. “These versions will be our foundation. They—not I—will lead us into the future, and the past. They’ll stop the Reality Wars, and save all of mankind in the Sixth Key.” He figured that this choice would endear everyone to him.

“How ‘bout no, Scott..okay?” Goswin!Prime snapped back.

“What?”

“You seem to like references,” Goswin continued, “so no. Scotty, don’t.”

“I don’t think I saw that one,” Pryce admitted.

Goswin rolled his eyes, and looked back at his crew. “Don’t tell Scotty, Scotty doesn’t know.”

“Enough,” Pryce declared. “I know that I’ve been cracking a few jokes of my own, but I’m being serious. “We need you. Your powers may be limitless. And you don’t really have a choice.”

“I actually think we do,” Goswin suggested. “I believe that that is exactly what you’re trying to tell us, wouldn’t you say, kids?”

“Yeah, I agree,” Weaver!Prime said.

“That’s what it sounds like,” Eight Point Seven!Prime concurred.

Briar!Prime nodded. “Yep.”

Goswin stepped up to the railing, and looked out over the audience. “Do you all wanna be here? Raise your hand if you do?”

A few people raised their hands.

“Then be free.” Goswin!Prime swept his hands forward from his chest, and all but the ones with their hands raised disappeared. Goswin turned, and swept only one hand this time, causing the famous painting to disappear. “It belongs in a museum.”

“We’ll get them back,” Pryce promised.

“No. You won’t.” Goswin held his hand up again to facilitate his own departure, along with the other Primes, but this A.F. guy took it as a threat. He reached over with a huge compensation knife, and jammed it into Goswin’s stomach.

“What the hell did you just do?” Pryce questioned. “Iolanta, stop blocking powers. We need to get a medic here stat!”

< > Entire Story

Fluence: Monarch (Part VII)

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Generated by Google Gemini text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2

Weaver stepped towards Misha Collins, who looked at her with some level of familiarity, suggesting that he had been here before, or had at least seen her somewhere. He wasn’t shocked or scared, but more annoyed. She reached out to shake his hand, but pulled it away before he could reach back. “Sorry. First. Do you know who we are?”

“You’re Holly Blue, Goswin Montagne, Eight Point Seven Point Two, and Briar. I never learned his last name.”

“Have you been to this location before?” Weaver pressed.

Misha looked around. “Yes. About a month ago.”

“I wish I knew which kind of month we’re talking about,” Weaver muttered to herself. That is, had it also been three months in the Ediacaran period? Understanding whether the disparate time periods were somehow linked to one another could help prevent this from happening again. She reached her hand out once more, but pulled back yet again at the last second. “Sorry, do you like...salmon?”

“I suppose I do, as much as anyone,” Misha said, confused.

“I didn’t say salmon,” Weaver tried to clarify, “I said salmon.” This was a test of sorts. When a time traveler encountered someone whose understanding of time was in question, pointedly asking them whether they liked salmon should indicate at least a baseline. If they thought that they were only talking about the actual fish, they probably didn’t know anything, or perhaps just not very much.

“I’m sorry, I don’t hear the difference,” Misha admitted. He was a human, and while this obviously wasn’t his first time around the block, other shifted selves of this group had so far kept him pretty well in the dark about the details.

“Holly Blue,” she echoed, finally shaking his hand, “but you can call me Weaver.”

“You can call me Castiel, if you want. A lot of people prefer it.”

“We need to get you home, Mister Collins,” Goswin said, also stepping forward. “If you’ve met others like us, and returned home, then they must have figured out how to do it.”

“They just surrounded me in a circle, closed their eyes, and then I was home.”

“That’s all it was?” Eight Point Seven asked.

“Oh.” Misha pointed to Weaver. “You tapped something on this refrigerator, and said something about a bubble.”

“I don’t know how he got through the bubble in the first place,” Weaver began, “but we’ll probably have to drop it to send him back. It would be the only safe way to do it. But we should be quick. We never know when other shifted selves will show up. We could have just missed the group that came before us. Measuring time is difficult. I don’t even keep a clock in here, except for my special watch. I may have left it somewhere...”

“Do what you gotta do,” Goswin requested. “Let’s make this quick. We’ll try to send him back where he belongs, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll just go with him.”

“Wait, there was one more thing,” Misha remembered. “You gave me this.” He knelt down and pulled something off of his shoelace aglet, handing it to Weaver.

She inspected it. “This is a temporal tracker. She probably used it to make sure that you were returned to where you belonged, instead of Belgium, or something. You weren’t meant to keep it; that’s why you were able to break through the bubble.”

“I must have missed that part,” Misha said. “I was looking at the sea cucumber.”

Weaver looked over at the glass. “That’s not a cucumber. What was the date?”

“The first time it happened was January 11, 2011,” Misha answered. “This time, it was February 25.”

She handed him the tracker back. “All right. Wait thirty minutes, and then step on it. I mean exactly thirty minutes. Set your watch to it.”

“I understand,” Misha promised.

“Okay.” Weaver went over to the refrigerator, and started tapping on the screen. Blast doors dropped down over the glass, to block the view of the water, and its sea creatures. She kept tapping on it, causing the space around them to shimmer, implying that the temporal bubble was now down. They all felt a small lurch in their stomachs as a result. Still, Weaver kept tapping on the fridge. They started to hear a persistent beep from down the hallway, the exact source of which was not clear.

“I think your smoke detector needs a new battery,” Misha guessed.

“It’s fine, we like fire,” Weaver said oddly. “You heard the man. Let’s put him in a circle.” They all came together, and held hands, even Briar, who wanted to fix this just as much as the rest of them.

Goswin was the captain here, and even though Weaver knew a lot more about this stuff, he needed to step on up. “We’re trying to get our new friend here back to February 25, 2011. February 25 in...”

“Vancouver. You don’t need to know my exact address; anywhere there is fine.”

“Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada,” Goswin said. “Everyone think about that, and nothing else.”

They shut their eyes instinctually, and focused on the goal. None of them wanted to open their eyes for fear of breaking concentration, but success was fairly obvious when they felt a short burst of wind, and heard the flap of wings. They each peeked with one eye, and found there to only be three others in the room. Weaver checked the tracker output on the fridge. “He’s home.”

“What’s to stop it from happening again?” Goswin asked. “It happened once before, it could happen a third time, and more, and nothing can stop it.”

“You hear that beeping noise?” Weaver posed.

“Yeah?” Briar answered in the form of a question.

Weaver sucked her teeth a little. “We should go. Oh, there’s my watch.”

They climbed out of the bunker, and back onto the surface. One set of their shifted selves was standing out there already, with their version of Weaver trying to unlock the door using the secret boulder switch. “Weaver!One,” she acknowledged with a nod of her head.

“Weaver!Two,” the first Weaver replied.

“Self-destruct?”

“Had to be done.”

“How long?”

Weaver!One looked back at the steps as the hatch was closing up. “It’s soon enough. We should all go.”

“We came here for a reason,” the other Briar pointed out.

“The cons outweigh the pros,” Weaver!One tried to explain. “Now hustle off. Don’t let us get mixed up with each other.”

When Weaver!One tried to walk away, Weaver!Two took her by the arm. “Don’t go back to the Nucleus.” Her eyes darted over to the first Goswin. “One of them has taken his job a little too seriously. We barely escaped.”

“One of the Goswins?” Weaver!One asked.

“Just don’t go to the Nucleus,” she reiterated. “At least one group ended up on Dardius, where they were forced to watch some bizarre propaganda films. They’re taking the Reality Wars very seriously, they think we should join, and they have a way of keeping us from shifting away.” She didn’t say anything more about it.

The two groups separated from each other, and disappeared. At least that was what presumably happened. The first version of the crew leapt away first, leaving the newcomers’ fates in question. Perhaps they would go down into the bunker, halt the self-destruct sequence, and start the whole cycle over again. Misha Collins could spend the rest of his life being shifted back and forth to the Ediacaran period, altering future events irrevocably. It was possible that every other Weaver or Holly Blue who took her copy of the crew to that place inevitably made the same choice to destroy it, only for her plan to be unknowingly thwarted by the next copy. Time and reality were now defined by chaos. That was only meant to be the expected end state of the universe, not the beginning of it, nor the middle.

“This is where you grew up?” Eight Point Seven asked. They were standing by a pond in the middle of a small field, with a forest all around them.

“Monarch, Belgium,” Goswin confirmed. “Population: zero.”

“Your family was the only one here?” Eight Point Seven continued the interview.

“There were others...until the very end. In the late 21st century, when they started erecting all the arcological megastructures, of course most people eventually moved to them, or they wouldn’t have been successful. It was the rewilding effort that did it. As antienvironmentalists started to be turned over to death, it became easier and easier to convince people that giving the land back to nature was the only ethical choice given our technological ability to accomplish it. They left their homes, and made new ones. The cities disappeared, both in name, and in infrastructure. I believe they used to call this Ghent. Ghent didn’t get an arcology. The nearest one is closer to where Antwerp was.”

“Yet some people didn’t do that?”

“The megatowers are more environmentally friendly for sustaining the massive population of the whole planet, but it’s okay if a few choose other methods. North America had their circles, and we had our villages. We lived in arcologies too, just not gigantic ones. We lived on the land, but we didn’t live off of it, instead importing produce from vertical farms. That was my job for a time, pulling the cart of food by bicycle. That’s all I did; just pedaled back and forth from the village to the arc.” He stared at the pond. “Over and over and over and over and over again.” He paused for a few moments. “I got tired of the monotony, so I left. I had studied both history and futurology, so I knew that the villages would die out too. It was only a matter of time before kids like me decided that there were more social options in the towers. I won’t get into how I moved up to become the Futurology Administrator of the whole world, but...I’ll never forget where I came from. This is where my mother died. She wasn’t transhuman, so she only lived for 74 years. My dad underwent some treatments, but he stopped them for her. Unfortunately, I guess, it was too little too late. He still outlived her by 21 years. But not here. After the second to last person left Monarch, he left too, and moved into my cluster in the arc.”

Goswin looked up as if just remembering that he was talking to other people. “For those of you who don’t know, the arcologies are modular. Each unit is the same size, and comes with a baseline configuration, which includes a bathroom. It can be turned into a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, a bedroom, or even a simulacrum of an outdoor space, among other variations. And they can be moved around, so he didn’t move into my cluster of units so much as they literally picked up my one unit, and flew it down to another slot; one that had empty units next to it, which we began to occupy together.”

“Where are we in the timeline?” Eight Point Seven asked him. “Are you still on Earth? Is your father?”

Goswin took a deep breath, and twisted Weaver’s wrist, which sported a watch that always told her the time, even when she traveled through it in the wrong direction, or at the wrong speed. “We were very precise with this jump. My younger self left with my dad fifteen minutes ago. We just had my mother’s burial ceremony.”

“Where’s her grave?” Briar asked.

Goswin actually smiled. “Over here.” He led them down the path a ways.

“Monarch butterflies,” Eight Point Seven pointed out as a few of them began to land on her arms and head.

“Our namesake,” Goswin explained. “Like I was saying, they gave all this back to nature, but they didn’t just let it grow on its own. They planted things on purpose according to a very well thought out ecology algorithm, generated by an entity such as yourself. They decided that Belgium would do well with milkweed, and with milkweed comes Monarch butterflies.” He continued through the trees until coming to another clearing. A gravestone marked the spot where his mother was laid to rest, but it wasn’t altogether necessary. A swarm of monarchs were keeping watch over it.

“It’s beautiful,” Briar couldn’t help but say. He was starting to relax into himself.

“We can’t stay,” Weaver said with a sigh. “We have to go back to the Nucleus.”

Goswin nodded gently, though no one was looking at him; they were still watching the monarchs flutter about. “I know,” he whispered.

“You heard?”

“I may look like a regular human, but I have excellent hearing.”

“Are you prepared to meet your possibly evil self?”

He took a beat, but then answered confidently with, “yes.”

< > Entire Story

Microstory 1248: Bhulan Cargill

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Bhulan Cargill was born in 2069 to a world that she didn’t like, but thanks to her, it no longer exists. She spent years there, though, trying to collect all the data she could, to figure out what went wrong. She realized that a number of people in her family were either part of what caused history to turn out as it did, or would be in a position to help fix it, if only they were given a little nudge. Once she was finished gathering this information, she went back in time, and executed her plan. She visited her family, and other key people, throughout time. She helped them out of tough situations, sometimes without them even knowing, and directed the timeline where she wanted it to go. This was her temporal power. Sure, she could jump through time, but lots of other people could too. Her real gift was a keen insight into the way events unfolded, and the necessary skills to account for the plethora of variables. Something called the butterfly effect made it so that, for most people, history alteration is predominantly a one time deal. Once a traveler goes back in time, and starts making changes, everything they knew about the future becomes irrelevant. The more changes they make, they less their knowledge of what happened in the other timeline can help them make further decisions. Bhulan’s power was limited as well, but her ability to predict what kind of unintended consequences her temporal revisions would have far exceeded the average traveler. This allowed her to make multiple jumps; first all the way back to the earliest important moment in time, and work her way forwards. After all this, things were so much different than they were in the alternate reality she came from, that the world was unrecognizable. In fact, her actions had the effect of preventing her from ever even existing. It was unclear to her, or anyone else privy to the truth, whether she wanted to erase herself from history, or not. No matter what she did now, this version of her already existed, so it was probably better that she didn’t have some other self, running around the timeline.

The mission was finally over. Things could obviously be better, but with the butterfly effect in play, the variables would have been impossible to calculate. So now the question was, what was she going to do with her life in this new timeline? Other travelers have experienced this conundrum. They spent so much time focused on their goals that they didn’t consider what would happen when they succeeded. There were several options, a couple of which were not possible. There was no way for her to assimilate her consciousness with that of an alternate, since she was the only Bhulan here. That also meant she couldn’t destroy or exile her alternate, and take her place. Free from these ethical dilemmas, she could have integrated herself into society, and do whatever she would have done if the mission hadn’t been her sole focus, but she didn’t want that. She had interfered in the timeline enough, and she also wasn’t interested in going far enough into the future to avoid undermining her own prior actions. She could just go off and hide out somewhere, perhaps on an undiscovered planet, or so far in the past that she didn’t run into anyone else, though that didn’t sound enticing either, so there was only one last option. Time travelers who kill themselves generally do this so the timeline’s native version of themselves can be the one to live out their lives in peace, which again, wasn’t necessary in Bhulan’s case. Still, every time she thought about it, this was the idea she kept coming back to. She felt it prudent to remove herself from the equation, now that both sides were proverbially balanced out. She definitely succeeded in removing herself from the equation, but what she didn’t intend, was to simply move over to a different equation.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 15, 2192

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As instructed, they didn’t approach any of the people giving each other butterfly signals in 2191. First of all, they didn’t know what it meant. It seemed shady, but it could also be some strange new form of greeting that they weren’t privy to since they only existed one day out of the year. They couldn’t even be sure if the people were trying to say butterfly at all. To communicate the word in sign language, one was meant to wave their hands, as the flapping of wings, which none of them was doing. Vitalie, of course, was entirely convinced that this was some underground resistance movement, presently working against the Arianrhod occupation. They should have done better at keeping themselves informed about the events they missed during their interim years, on the arc, and elsewhere. If any rebels attempted to fight back sometime in the past, they definitely lost, and Ulinthra would have buried it. Now they had too little intelligence to go on. That night, they got together to discuss how they were going to proceed, ultimately deciding to wait until the next year, so they could have a fresh start.

“All right,” Leona began near the end of their latest breakfast meetings. “Brooke, you’re sure these heart trackers aren’t also listening devices.”

“I’m certain,” Brooke answered with a formal nod.

“Then on to Vitalie.”

“On to me?”

“I know your power doesn’t work with Ulinthra, and we think she has some time power blocker, but we’ve not until now had reason to use it elsewhere.”

“We should have tested it at some point,” Ecrin said.

“I’ve tested it,” Vitalie said, as if it were obvious. “I can go anywhere on Earth. It’s not easy, because I think that blocker she uses has minimal effect on me no matter what, but like you said, there was nothing to see.”

“In that case, you think you could stomach a trip to one of the common areas, like a shopping mall, or restaurant?” Leona asked.

“I could,” Vitalie said.

“Do you think you could take one of us with you?”

“I could take both,” Vitalie answered. She looked at Brooke with guilt. “Sorry, I don’t think I could take you.”

“I’m used to it,” Brooke said, not feeling left out.

“Then let’s go back,” Leona said, “and find someone giving what we think is a butterfly sign—”

They were suddenly in the marketplace.

“I didn’t mean right away,” Leona said.

Vitalie shrugged. “No use in waiting.” She took off her shirt, and started swinging it around like a lasso. “We’re invisible, by the way!” she shouted.

“Are our bodies just slumped in our chairs, back at the unit?” Ecrin questioned.

Vitalie pointed at her. “Uh, you fell to the floor. Don’t worry, you’re not hurt, and Brooke is carrying you to the couch.”

“Do you maintain a presence in both locations simultaneously?” Leona asked out of scientific curiosity.

“It’s like I’m wearing bifocals. I just adjust my focus to one or the other. It takes less than a second, and I can always kind of see both at the same time. I don’t think you can do that, though.”

Leona nodded understandingly. “Let’s walk around while we’re invisible. Keep your shirts on, though.”

“They’re not real shirts, Leona,” Vitalie needlessly reminded her.

“Look for a butterfly,” Leona continued. “Call out when you see it.”

It was a half hour before Ecrin saw two people give each other the secret sign. They seemed to be doing it a lot less than they did yesterday. A lot can happen in a year, and there was no way of knowing what these people had been through. Vitalie allowed the man and woman to see them, but no one else, so they could have a secret conversation.

“What does it mean when you do that?” Leona asked of them, trying to be careful about broaching the subject.

“When I do what?” the man asked.

Leona mimicked the movement. “When you interlock your thumbs like that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He tried to leave, but Vitalie teleported Ecrin’s image right in front of them. “How did you do that?”

“You first,” Ecrin said.

He looked around in paranoia. “Not here.”

Ecrin swept her hand downwards, like a model at a game show. “Lead the way.”

“What are you?” the man asked after leading them to an empty storage room.

“We can’t be here physically,” Vitalie explained. “Ulinthra planted tracking devices on our hearts, so we have astrally project to have this conversation.”

Someone in the early 21st century would have needed that term explained to them, but enough science fiction had become science fact since then. While astral projection was not something other people could do, it was a concept that audiences these days would find easier to grasp. “Who is Ulinthra?”

“That’s Arianrhod’s real name,” Leona said.

His and the woman’s eyes widened as they looked at each other. “How do you know this? Do you use your...ghost powers to spy on her?”

“We go way back,” Leona replied. She looked to the other two, hesitating. But the cat was out of the bag, and they needed allies. “We’re time travelers, and so is she. If you’ve ever tried to do something against her, there’s a reason she always wins. She’s already been through it.”

He lifted his chin to think this over, not sure if he believed it, but wanting to entertain the possibility. “Then we have to be unpredictable.”

Vitalie shook her head. “She’s already lived through this day. Every time you try to be unpredictable, you could just be making the same unpredictable choice you did in the first timeline.” She surrounded the word in airquotes.

“I assume you don’t use real names,” Ecrin said, briefly changing the subject, and recalling her time in the IAC, where everyone had a callsign. “What are your designations?”

“I’m Gatekeeper,” the man said.

“Holly Blue,” the woman finally spoke.

“Are those butterflies?” Vitalie asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“We always suspected Arianrhod to be a fake name,” the woman now said enough for it to be clear she had an Irish accent. “It’s the name of a Celtic goddess, and means silver wheel. Who breaks the butterfly upon the wheel?”

“No one,” Leona understood. “Not if the butterflies fight back.”

“Assuming we believe you about the time travel thing,” Gatekeeper tried to begin, but was stopped when Vitalie walked right through the wall, and soon thereafter appeared through the other wall. “Okay, that’s pretty convincing, unless we’re having the same delusion.” He looked to Holly Blue, who indicated that she had seen it too. “You mean to tell me Arianrhod can go back in time, but only one day?”

“It’s not that she can do it,” Leona explained. “It’s that she has to. She experiences every day twice. And only twice. She can’t control it.”

“Well, what hope would we have?”

Vitalie then started in on the explanation of what they were doing with the penny; how their only hope of changing the timeline was by using Ulinthra.

The two revolutionaries understood the logic, and recognized the flaws. “What did you flip today?” they asked.

“We didn’t flip today,” Leona replied. “Our biggest problem now is that we don’t know what we can do against her. And we’re afraid of what she’ll do in retaliation. Whatever move we make, it has to be a final blow, because the consequences last time were too great.”

“But you said that was reversed?”

“They’re not gonna reverse the next one,” Ecrin said.

“We may be able to get something done,” Vitalie started, “if we work together. Now that we know about you, we stand a chance. How many are there in your group?”

Holly Blue and Gatekeeper looked at each other again. “Three,” he finally said.

The two of us, and one other,” Holly Blue added.

“How is that possible?” Leona asked. “Only three of you signed up?”

“Lots signed up,” Gatekeeper said. “They’re all dead now.”

“You act like you already know each other. Why the hand signal?”

“It’s not just to prove we’re rebels. We also use it to indicate that we need to talk, and that the coast is clear to do so.”

“Where’s the last one right now?”

“Monarch is our designated survivor,” Gatekeeper explained. “No one knows who they are. He or she stays out of sight until something goes wrong. If we all die, it’s up to them to start it back up again, which they’ll probably soon have to do. You seem like lovely people, but you’re still just three recruits.

“Barely recruits,” Holly Blue noted.

“Isn’t there something else you can do?” Gatekeeper asked. “Someone you can talk to? You said there are other time travelers. Can they help? Can you contact them?”

Leona knew a few people with potential. Unfortunately, Ulinthra never let her touch land, so she couldn’t dig a grave for Mr. Halifax. The Forger might be willing to help? Ecrin probably knew many choosers, so this was a good question for her to answer. She looked at her inquisitively, completely forgetting that Ecrin hadn’t been involved in her own personal thought process.

“What?” Ecrin asked.

“Do you know someone? Maybe you know someone that we don’t? Maybe someone that Ulinthra doesn’t know?”

“Ulinthra has the memory of countless versions of herself, from indefinite timelines. I don’t know who she knows. There may be someone, though. You’re not gonna like it, but he may be our best chance. There’s one thing we’ve not yet discussed, but I think we all know it needs to be on the table.”

“You’re talking about killing her,” Vitalie realized.

“I’m not killing anyone,” Leona said. “Not again.”

“That’s what I’m saying. You wouldn’t have to. When I was working for the coalition, there was a team we came across. They were deadly travelers, and we spent a lot of resources trying to catch them. I stepped into the field myself to work on it, even though I was mostly in administration.”

“Who is it?” Vitalie was intrigued.

“The leader is called The Maverick; his team, The Mavericks. Not very original.”

Leona nodded her head solemnly. “I met one of them once. Darrell, or something. He helped Gilbert go back into the extraction mirror, for his death.”

“Darrow,” Ecrin corrected. “We would probably want to deal with him only, since he can be reasoned with. The other two can be rather..insufferable. But we all have to agree to it, including Viceroy.”

“Viceroy?” Leona didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Yeah, the other one in our group...since we’re using butterfly codenames?”

She meant Brooke. “Right. Viceroy, yes. We’ll ask her, but I don’t see her taking issue with it. I suppose I always knew it would have to end like this. If the powers that be don’t step in, we may have no way of getting her to Beaver Haven.”

Vitalie was totally on board, as were Holly Blue and Gatekeeper, who assumed that was what everyone was going for anyway. After going over some secret protocols with their two new allies, the three of them jumped back into their own bodies. They needed a couple of things to reach the Maverick, though, so Ecrin went out in physical form to shop. She came back with a cloak, and a dagger. She hung the cloak up on the door, and used the dagger to cut a symbol into it twice. They looked like bird tracks. Once she was finished, she jabbed the dagger into the cloak, sticking it into the door.

Within seconds, the cloak started billowing out, until the figure of a man appeared inside of it. He reached behind him and pulled the dagger from his back before turning around. He smiled and shook his head when he saw it was Ecrin. “I bet you just loooved doing that.”

“I don’t love that you’re here,” Ecrin said. “But we need your help. We just don’t know when.”

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