Microstory 2254: Not on Our Lawn

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Nick is back home, though he’s still on bedrest. The doctors had no strong feelings about him returning to work this quickly, but I do, so I’m going to do this one more post before I let him get back to it. We have another privacy breach. We didn’t tell anyone which facility that he used for his procedures, but someone leaked the information to the media. Fortunately, our security team caught it early, and hustled us out of there before things got crazy. They weren’t able to stop the leak, but they were still able to protect us from the issues. Of course, that’s not all that was in the leak. People have finally figured out exactly where we live too, which was inevitable. They sell maps in Hollywood to celebrity houses. It’s not hard to determine such things if you really wanna know. So they’re camped out on our lawn, each reporter believing that they’ll gain some sort of access to Nick and/or Dutch. They may start to give interviews at some point in the future, but Nick won’t be talking to anyone while he’s in recovery, and at any rate, it will be on their terms. We’ve taken note of everyone on our lawn right now, and will be deliberately excluding them from any interview potential. Congratulations! You just unknowingly disqualified yourself! Anyone who follows in their footsteps will experience the same barrier. But if you’re not on our lawn, and your superiors have not authorized you to do so at some point, fear not, there are other ways to become disqualified from consideration. You could call us incessantly. You could send an inordinate number of letters to our publicist. You could harass our families, or our friends. You could attempt to infiltrate our past employers, or other places that we have frequented. You could try to hack into our security firm. You could try to kill, or otherwise harm, one of us. You could commit any other crime in pursuit of information regarding our lives and situation. Any of these things will be met with swift justice, and an immediate spot on our growing blacklist. Please note that the above is not an exhaustive list of disqualifications, and we reserve the right to amend our requirements and limitations at any time. All three of us are happy to tell you our stories, but there are appropriate ways to ask for that, and inappropriate ways. It will be up to you to choose your path, but there are consequences to every action. You would do best to not forget that.

Microstory 2234: Apologies for the Interruption

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[Apologies for the interruption. This is Halya Perugia, current Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We are developing protocols which will allow Mister Fisherman and Miss Serna to continue contributing to their social media presence. This is an unprecedented situation here, but we feel that it is necessary for the public good that their website remains active. This is in no way an endorsement of their words or actions by the United States government, or the FBI. Their message is not our concern. It is our responsibility to keep them safe, and part of that mandate is allowing them to reassure the public that they are exactly where they need to be. Mister Fisherman and Miss Serna will make occasional—and highly secure—public appearances to reinforce the cooperative nature of our new professional partnership. We will not be simply hiding them away. The US government and this agency will take every threat to their safety, and the national security of this country, seriously, and will take any action necessary to ensure the domestic tranquility of this nation. We appreciate your patience while we work through our new protocols to allow the frequently visiting, and ever-growing, audience of Mister Fisherman’s website to continue to be part of a centuries-long global conversation that ensures governmental transparency, social justice, and public advancement. Thank you for your time.]

Microstory 2233: Some Semblance of a Normal Life

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People are crazed, and neither Nick nor Dutch is safe anymore. The word has gotten out about the miracle of Nick’s healing. While a ton of people around the world don’t think it’s real, that still leaves a ton who do, and they all want a piece of him. Some people believe that he can cure them of their own conditions, which is an honest mistake, I suppose. Others just want to be close to him, to varying degrees. There are even those who want to kill him, for every warped reason that you could imagine. Both of them have been taken into protective custody by the FBI. I obviously can’t tell you where they are. Since I was intimately involved in the whole situation, Nick has requested that I join them, which I will be doing soon. I truthfully didn’t think that I qualified, but the government would rather be safe than sorry. I can’t tell you if this website is going to survive all this. He’s more than any regular public figure now. Hopefully, the insanity dies down eventually, and he can have some semblance of a normal life, but we recognize that our lives will no longer be the same. I’m hoping that we can still stay connected with our mentally stable readers through some kind of technological firewall, or whatever, so no one can actually find us. We will just have to wait and see.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 15, 2399

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Imani didn’t say much more about her religious faith, and how much she thinks it does, or doesn’t, have to do with time travelers. By the sound of it, some of the Word of Dalton is drawn from real life, and some of it is ripped straight out of pop culture from the main sequence. For instance, he tells a story that Leona recalls from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as if it were real. Similarly, this reality never had a version of Adolf Hitler, so Dalton apparently felt totally comfortable using hitler as an adjective to describe someone evil, or literal daemons from the bad place. Yes, he stole IP from The Good Place too. They probably should have read over the prooftext months ago, since it could have clues. Leona would do that now, but she’s busy.

Imani wanted a tour of the Superscraper, but didn’t have enough time for it, and still doesn’t today, which is good, because Leona scheduled an unrelated meeting. If she wants to turn the building into a refugee sanctuary, then she needs to get help from people who already work with refugees, and actually know what the hell they’re doing. They seemed amenable to the possibility of collaborating on the phone, but it was audio only, and they could have just been being polite. Been being? She needs to make sure she doesn’t talk like that during the meeting. She’s entering their offices now. Game face, Leona. Wait, stop! She didn’t mean that literally, but her ability interpreted it that way. That’s not her game face. That is Chief’s tight end and four-time Super Bowl champion, Travis Kelce. Leona face, Leona. There we go. Okay, now open the door, and if anyone saw,  pretend that it was just an optical illusion.

“Hello. Welcome to Homes for Humankind. Do you have an appointment, or would you like to volunteer?”

“I have a meeting scheduled with Yulian Văduva.” She checks her watch. “I’m about ten minutes early.

The receptionist blinks. “Hold on, I know who you are.”

“Yes.” Leona ran into a celebrity once, and she’s not talking about Juan Ponce de Leon, or the time she was on a fake cooking show with James Van Der Beek. In the reality where she didn’t meet Mateo until later in life, she found herself in front of comedian and actor, Heidi Gardner in line at Richard and Allen’s restaurant in the Plaza. There was no one else there at the time, and that was before that version of her found out that it was a hangout spot for time travelers. Heidi shook her hand politely and said hello, but Leona didn’t ask for a selfie, or anything like that, and Heidi didn’t offer. She seemed to want to be left alone, and Leona respected that. She was very nice to Richard when he took her order, and ate quickly, surely because she had to return to her busy life. Leona didn’t think that she would ever have to deal with anything like that. She’s famous in certain circles, like the planet of Dardius, but she’s never felt every eye in the world on her; not when the people whose eyes they belong to don’t know about time travel. This is so surreal. She’s being bashful about it.

“And you’re meeting with the big kahuna. Lucky you. A word of advice, don’t say anything about the Daltomist who visited your country yesterday. He’s not a fan of organized religion.”

“Don’t worry,” Leona said. “Neither am I.”

He nods. “I’ll let him know that you’ve arrived. You can have a seat over there.”

Leona barely has time to sit down before Mr. Yulian comes down from on high. “Mrs. Matic? It’s nice to meet you. Right this way, we’re in the big conference room today.”

“Okay,” Leona said. She follows him to the room, which she expects to be entirely empty. She thought it had something to do with the other rooms being booked, but nope, it’s completely full of people. They all look up at her when she stops in the doorway, some having to spin their chairs around to see. “Hi. Forgive me, I wasn’t prepared for this. It seems that our wires were crossed. I was under the impression that it would just be us, and maybe one associate of yours.”

“Wires were crossed,” he echoes. “Heh, I like that. I’m gonna steal it from you. Why don’t you have a seat? Yeah, right there at the head. Go on. Are you thirsty? We have water or tea.”

“I’m fine, thanks.” She sits down awkwardly in the incredibly comfortable chair. A conference room chair has no business being this soft. This is a place of business.

Yulian walks to the other side of the room, and flips on the TV. “Before we get to the pitch, I would like to show you something.” He presses a button that reveals the feed from the front door security camera.

Leona’s heart sinks. She really needs to get a handle on her new illusion power.

“Before every meeting with a potential partner or donor, we like to have a little internal pre-meeting. We leave the feed up to play in the background so we know when someone shows up. We never expected to see this.” He prepares to press another button.

“You don’t have to show it. I know what you saw.”

“Okay,” Yulian says with a smile. “Then I’ll show you this archive footage instead.” He changes the screen to a different camera. It’s high up on the roof, and showing the New York City skyline. “Wait for it...wait for it...” The Superscraper appears out of nowhere. “I assume what you did at the front door has something to do with what made this thing suddenly spring into existence?”

“It’s...maybe.”

“So there are others who can do the same thing?”

“...maybe,” she repeats.

He widens his smile. “We’re prepared to defect to your nation, and maybe even expand its borders. Did you know that you could do that? The original owner once owned a modest apartment complex in that spot where he provided a different kind of sanctuary; one that was designed to protect the worst criminals the U.S. has ever seen. He bought more land so he could spread his bullshit message to the masses, and now that it’s yours, you could do it again. But you could do it for the right reasons.”

“I can’t build another building like that,” Leona says. “I didn’t build this one.” She paused, and bobbed her head indecisively. “Or I did.”

“What does that mean? Do you have memory issues?”

“Actually, I think I’ll take that water now.”

The woman next to her slides her own glass over. “It’s clean. I didn’t take a sip of it yet.”

Leona took the glass, and downed it.

“Are you okay now?”

She clears her throat. “I don’t have memory problems. I’m a time traveler, and it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Future!Me constructed that building.”

Microstory 1881: Eyes Out on Stalks

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Before all this social media, if you wanted to get to know a celebrity, your only hope was to catch them in an interview on TV, or maybe see them at an awards show. You could read an interview, yes, or some other kind of article, but they always put their best foot forward, so unless it was a takedown piece, the writer would show them in the best light. That was okay, in general, but it did once place me in danger. When I had a crush on a particular leading man from decades long past—and I certainly wasn’t the only one—it was based on very little information. He was so great in his movies. He didn’t appear in many projects, mind you; he was a choosy talent, but they were all amazing, and he was amazing in all of them. I was young and naive, and I thought I was in love. Of course, I never thought I would get the opportunity to meet the man, and looking back, if only one minor thing had changed about that fateful day, I never would have. I can’t even say his name, it hurts so much to think back on it. I guess you could call it my unfinished business, even though there is nothing I can do about it now, so here it is. My local radio station was offering a promotion. Be caller number 96, and win a date with the hunk himself. They couldn’t call it a date on the official rules as it suggested some sort of romantic slant, but the crude radio personalities sure had their fun with their guesses as to what would go down. I called in, and actually won, and I was so incredibly excited. This was it, I was finally going to meet the man of my dreams. Now, don’t get me wrong, I was under no illusions about the upcoming night. I did not think he would fall in love with me, and ask me to marry him right then and there. But I didn’t care, because I felt honored enough just to be in his presence. I was so wrong.

He didn’t get down on one knee and propose to me on the night of, but he did seem to like me a lot. My mother warned me that he would probably expect sex. That was all right, I was ready, so I sat through the talk so she could make sure I understood that I could always change my mind. I did change my mind and it wasn’t really due to anything specific about him. He had a bit of a weird smell that I imagine he would call his musk, but I could have looked past that. It was just that we didn’t have any chemistry, and I guess he always wore makeup on screen, so I wasn’t all that attracted to him, so after the meet and greet, I just wanted to leave. It was a nice time, and I don’t think I would have regretted it if it had all ended, but he was not interested in ending things. He appeared totally fine that I wasn’t into have sex, but it was all an act. He was determined to get me in bed, whether I wanted it or not. He didn’t just break into my house, and attack me, though. No, that would have been too obvious. It would have been scary too, but at least I could have called the authorities if he had done that. Instead, he was what everyone around me thought was oh so romantic. They never let me call it what it was, which was stalking. He would send me flowers, and show up at my work. I found him in my kitchen once, waiting for my mother to make him some breakfast, like he was her son-in-law. It was so creepy, and I kept having to reject his advances, but he wouldn’t have it. I think he only stopped coming by because he found some new girl to fixate on. I never summed any of this up before, because as bad as it was, his actions were not reportable. I just wish people had listened to me back then, because a couple of years ago, we learned that some other girls ended up being not so lucky.

Sic Transit...Ingenuitas (Part VIII)

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Saying that the penthouse was the best was apparently not saying much. Treasure hadn’t seen a lot of this world when she first arrived, but the word she used to describe it in her headcanon was dumpy. The people here weren’t just careless with the environment, but actively destructive of it. No one deserved to be wiped out by the Ochivari, but she had to pick one universe, she certainly couldn’t pick somewhere else over this one, right? That wouldn’t be fair. Still, the individuals she met were very kind and accommodating. They seemed to love and revere her quite a bit. She was a legend before her time. She wasn’t really excited to get to the part of her future where people knew her name, and she understood specifically why. Again, she was still so young, so she hadn’t thought much about her future. She only knew that she was born with this power, and it would be irresponsible not to use it, since as far as she knew, it wasn’t something she could bequest to someone else.

“Bequest isn’t a verb,” Quino instructed her. “I’ve been studying English. It’s a noun. Perhaps you mean bequeath.”

“Bequest is also a verb in my universe,” Treasure explained.

“Really?”

“My own personal universal bubble that I live in that’s only large enough to fit me and my tiara.”

“I can’t join you?” he asked. They had grown closer over the last few months. They weren’t actively pursuing a relationship with each other, but they also weren’t working very hard to prevent it. Though as he said, Quino was now completely fluent in English, their preferred shared language was Flirtish.

“Okay. I just need to absorb enough bulk energy to make it larger.”

He took an eighth of a step towards her. “Ya know, if I were to stand closer, you wouldn’t have to expend so much energy to make your universe big enough for the both of us.”

“That’s true,” she agreed as she was taking a quarter step. “How close were you thinking, though?”

Quino skipped the half-step, and just jumped right to a pretty wide full step. Their shoulders were touching each other, and maybe a few atoms could flow between the left side of his chest, and her breast. She could feel his breath on her forehead. “How much energy would it take to accommodate me now?”

She was surprised by this. They had never come this close before, and until this moment, the way they flirted could have always been dismissed as nothing more than innocent, or maybe even platonic. She was glad he was making the first move, though. It was so unlike him, which showed that he felt comfortable being relaxed around her. She felt the same, so she kept going. “Still too much.” She pulled him right up against her, and held him in place with her arms. “This I think I can handle.” She rested her head on his neck, and they just held each other tightly for the rest of time.

Without releasing completely, Quino reached into his back pocket, and showed her some little metal thing that she didn’t recognize. “Happy birthday.”

“Is it my birthday?” Treasure asked genuinely. “How can you tell?”

“You told me how long ago your sixteenth was before you decided to show your parents what you could do. Based on the amount of time we were in Hyperion, and all these other universes, I think I can reasonably surmise that today is the day you turn seventeen. I’ve been keeping track, because honestly, while seventeen Standard Vertean years does not equal seventeen Earthan years, it is pretty close, and it’s when my people consider someone to be an adult.”

Treasure smiled and nodded. “How clever of you. But I must say, I do not know what that thing is.”

“Me neither,” Quino admitted. “All I know is that it’s the last part that your special ship needs to be complete. Once they insert this doo-da-bob under the whatever-ma-thingy, we’ll be ready to go.”

“That’s sweet,” she said.

He pulled away a little more, and looked confused, as if someone else had said something that made him wonder what was going on. “Is it? I’m now realizing that my giving this to you is basically like giving you permission to do something you’re already entitled to do. I have no right to give this to you. It’s not mine. It’s always been yours.”

“Don’t overthink it,” Treasure said, taking the doo-da-bob from him. “Let’s go tell everyone else.”

“Everyone knows. They’re waiting for you to give a go-ahead on the manifest.”

“Why would I need to give the go-ahead?”

“Like I said, it’s yours. This is a gift. The engineers expect nothing in return. They were happy to be doing something. Apparently, being a robot is boring. Anyway, it’s your ship, so you get to decide who gets on it.”

“All the humans, I guess. I mean, if there’s room for any androids who want to go somewhere else, I’m happy to oblige them as well.”

“No androids want to come,” Quino said, “not even Kickstand and Apple. There is a complication, though. Word got out about you, specifically to the island of organics who chose not to upload their minds to mechanical bodies. There were thousands of them in the beginning, but the majority of them were old, and have since died out. Over two hundred of them are still around, though, and they would like to find a new home.”

“Aren’t they sick?” Treasure asked. When the Ochivari travel to a new universe, they destroy all intelligent life with a virus that sterilizes the entire population. It takes  decades to complete, but it can’t be stopped once it’s begun.

“Yes, they are presently in quarantine, to protect us, and the other refugees. The  virus is airborne, but it can only survive for an extended period of time in a living host, so this whole area is virus-free. That’s why we didn’t immediately contract it upon arrival. Bringing them onboard is risky, and there’s still no cure.”

“Then what’s the point? Where do they want me to take them?” Treasure asked. “We can’t let them try to integrate into some other civilization.”

“Yeah, but this world is polluted, even where they are. The atmosphere is becoming toxic, and will kill them all before old age can.”

Treasure sat a moment with this information. Her parents and Miss Collins, and pretty much every adult she ever met, taught her to help others. That was everything to them; helping people. It was their reason for being, and they instilled this value in her. Her instinct was to help, but that word was more complicated than it sounded. If you were to try to help someone in their quest to become president of a company, you might be hurting the person who already was the president. So the very idea of helping others was a lot more nuanced than just seeing someone in need, and providing them with that need. She had to think about whether helping them could cause harm to others, and the answer was yes. Yes, it would hurt others. If there were a cure to the sterility virus, or even if there was a way to stop them from being contagious, that would be a different story. They could live out their lives, happy and healthy, and not worry about infecting others. But that was not the bulkverse they were living in. In reality, taking these people to safety meant risking destroying all life, in every universe. Not even the Ochivari wanted that.

It was also prudent to consider the victims. As individuals, they may have all been lovely people, but they were living in a dead world, because their ancestors—and frankly, maybe even they—made it that way. They caused the pollution, and by all accounts, it was worse here than any planet Treasure studied in school. Perhaps they didn’t deserve to be sterilized. And once she was ready, Treasure planned to do everything she could to thwart the Ochivari’s plans. This was all true. The problem was that saying the locals deserved this would be an overstatement, but saying they didn’t deserve it didn’t sound right either. She could not justify rescuing these people at the expense of the truly innocent, which yeah, included herself. She breathed in deep, but didn’t say anything.

Quino understood. “I’ll take care of it, and I’ll leave you out of it.”

“No,” Treasure said. “Tell them it was my call. It’s what my mother would do. Well, actually, she would be brave enough to confront them herself.”

“That’s why you have me,” Quino assured her. “We’re a team now.” He started to walk backwards. “You, me, and Rosalinda. Hey, get your stuff together. We leave whenever you want.”

Unlike how it was in Hypnopediaverse, the bridge collapse refugees here were all from the same place. They were attending a concert in the park, and just so happened to be in the same vicinity as each other in the parking lot afterwards. That was going to make dropping them off that much easier. The engineers were brilliant. They included a cosmic frequency detector, which would allow her to navigate to any user’s universe of origin, or if calibrated correctly, back to a universe they had been to before. Navigating the bulkverse was difficult for anyone to do. Most of the technology the Transit employed was dedicated exclusively towards making these calculations. Treasure was supposed to be able to do it psychically, but given where they were now, she was obviously not so great at that. Fortunately, the cosmic frequency workaround was almost foolproof, and a fairly easy component to add. In the future, they would try to link this little lifeboat up to the Transit’s database, to gather the necessary coordinate data.

It was very easy to pilot the little ship. An AI did most of the heavy lifting for her. All Treasure had to do was tell it what she wanted, and it would figure it out. Once all the refugees were back where they belonged—having aged, but not having missed anything from their lives—Treasure navigated them to what Miss Collins referred to as an uncivilized universe. This may have sounded bad and dangerous, but all it really meant was that life evolved on planets with the right conditions, but did not progress enough to have any sort of sufficiently advanced intelligence. They were actually some of the safest worlds to be, because other travelers had no use for them, and there was no one around for the Ochivari to sterilize. Here, she stepped out of the ship, and prepared to return home on her own. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Where are you going?” Rosalinda asked.

“I have to go deal with my parents,” Treasure said. “I just need to explain to them what’s happened, and that my life is out here now. They won’t like it, but they’ll accept it, and they won’t be able to stop me.”

“Don’t do that,” Quino strongly suggested.

“Why not?” Treasure questioned.

“I want you to be back here soon, but from your perspective, it should be longer.”

“How much longer?”

He hesitated a bit. “Three years.”

“Three years!” she exclaimed. “Why do you want me gone that long?”

“In three years, you won’t be that much younger than me. That’s important, but there’s a reason age discrepancies are so frowned upon. You have not experienced enough of your life. You have not figured out who you are, and what you want to do. You’ve not explored your options. You need to finish basic higher education before you start doing all this.”

“This is easy for you to say,” Treasure argued. “It won’t be but seconds for you, no big deal. You expect me to wait years for you, just so I can get a degree that I don’t care about, and won’t use?”

“You’ll use the education you receive; you just probably won’t use it to get a job,” he reasoned.

“What if I meet someone new? What then? You know what you’re risking.”

“If you meet someone new, then you will belong with that person, and I will be happy for you. You still need to come back here to pilot The Strongbox, though. I don’t want to live in this universe forever.”

“The what-box?”

“The Strongbox,” Quino repeated. “That’s what this could be called, because it holds treasure?”

They kept arguing about it, but Treasure decided to agree in the end. Fighting wasn’t helping anything, and she could come back whenever she wanted, regardless of what he thought was prudent. She wouldn’t even have to tell him. So they said their goodbyes, and then she screamed her way back home. In those few seconds while she was waiting for the shatter portal to break open, she had an idea. If she navigated precisely to the moment she first left, her mother would never even know she had gone. She wasn’t in the room when it happened, so she didn’t actually see it happen. This was fate. She knew she had heard a different scream when she left. She thought it was some kind of echo, but no, it must have been Future!Her.

Her mom burst into the room. “What did you do?”

“See?” Treasure began, feigning innocence. She spoke with her real voice. “I can scream and not travel the bulkverse. I don’t need my collar anymore, I can control it. I can choose whether my scream is more than just a loud sound.”

Freya regarded her, unimpressed. “Treasure.”

“Yes, mom?” She was still trying to act like a good girl.

“You’re wearing different clothes, and there’s something on your head. Did you become the queen of another world, or something?”

“Uhhhhhhhh...quick-change trick. Mom, I want to become a magician.”

Freya sighed, obviously not believing the really bad lie. “Where did you go, and how long were you there?”

“Wait, I can explain. Just—” Before she could finish her thought, an obnoxious horn sounded outside. Treasure smiled gleefully. It was The Transit. Azura was here.

< > Entire Story

Sic Transit...Intima (Part VII)

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This was only the fourth time Treasure had traveled the bulk using her own powers directly, and only the second time that she could remember. She didn’t know where it had taken them, but she knew it was far. She had the highest reserves of bulk energy ever, having absorbed a great deal of it once the Transit was fully operational, and transconducting on its own. The way it was explained to her, she should have only been able to cross over into the nearest branes to where she was. Some branes were touching each other, and while she could probably connect to a chain, there were other universes that were just isolated, off in the bulk, not linked to any other. The three major machines were capable of reaching these places, because they could survive in the outer bulkverse. All signs pointed to the fact that she could not. She was just a human, not wearing a spacesuit, or anything. How could she survive something as dangerous as what scientists apparently decided to call an equilibrium, in order to distinguish it from its more commonly understood counterpart, the vacuum. However she did it, she did it. She survived, and so did her friends. They were floating through the bulk, watching time knives and swirling colors pass them by, protected by some kind of bubble, and hopelessly lost.

Treasure tried to direct them towards the nearest brane she could see, because the farther they got from where they were, the less likely they would be able to get back. She had no form of propulsion, though. She couldn’t control anything at this point. As best they could tell, they were following some kind of hyperdimensional current, and traveling in a fairly straight line. The only way they were going to be able to stop at this point was to manage to run into a brane by chance. It was difficult to keep track of time in the bubble. Their watches weren’t working, and obviously there weren’t any celestial movements. They just floated there, enjoying the show, but hoping it stopped soon. They could talk, but the sound was this weird echoey muffle. Their voices were louder, but hardly intelligible, and quite frankly, annoying. Plus, they didn’t know where they were getting all this air they were breathing, so it was best to keep silent, and conserve as much as possible. There they waited for at least a day, maybe more, until they came upon a time knife, and flew into its sharp edge.

The odds that they would land on a planet with good surface gravity, and a breathable atmosphere were negligible in this situation. There was just so much more nothingness than there was nitrogen and oxygen in the right ratio, but it happened anyway. Perhaps Treasure’s power would always take her to a place where she could breathe. It was all about survival instinct, and she couldn’t survive in space. Or maybe she could. Who knows now? The rules went out the window yesterday.

“Okay, so I couldn’t really say this before, but...I’m sorry.” It wasn’t very hospitable where they landed. It was a very dry desert, and the air felt a little toxic; not enough to kill them right away, but enough to decrease their lifespans in the long-run. They started walking forward, aimlessly.

Quiet Quino was as cool as ever, and might have even been relieved to be free of his superior officers. Rosalinda didn’t seem too terribly perturbed either. “Fascinating. The chance to study, and learn from, a society that rose up in a completely different universe.”

“We don’t know that yet,” Treasure pointed out. “This could be an uninhabited universe, or maybe just an uninhabited world in a vast universe. When you add it all up, life is unfathomably rare. Civilization is even rarer.”

“That looks pretty civilized to me,” Quino mused, pointing to the distance. They were standing near what kind of looked like an ice highway. It was definitely not ice, but it was smooth, metallic, and reflective like water. Coming down it was a hovercraft of some kind. It was just minding its own business as it passed by, but then struggled to stop, and backed up. The window rolled down, revealing two hard top androids, regarding them cautiously but curiously. “Humans,” the one closest to them presumed.

“Yes,” Treasure replied. She spoke with her tiara, though, and that seemed to confuse them more.

“How did you survive the transition?” He looked behind him, just in case there was some kind of human reservation around here. “Better yet, how do you survive the pollution?”

“We’re not from around here,” Treasure answered.

“Get in,” he offered. “It’s not safe out here for organics.”

They hesitated.

“We ain’t gonna hurt ya,” he claimed. “We’re just going to contact The Transit Army, so they can come pick you up.”

“You can’t do that,” Treasure contended. “It’s a, uhh...”

“Paradox?” the passenger suggested.

“Yes,” Treasure confirmed.

The driver smiled. “So that’s how you’ve survived, not here at all. Either way, we have to get you to a human sanctuary. They’re the only ones with clean oxygen.”

Having lost all her bulk energy reserves, and not knowing how to navigate the bulkverse anyway, Treasure agreed to get in the car, as did Quino and Rosalinda.

“Go slow,” the passenger warned her friend. “Vehicles don’t come with seatbelts anymore.”

He nodded, and went pretty fast.

“So,” Rosalinda asked while they were on their way. “Humans appear to be rare on your world. Tell me about that. What happened?”

“First,” Treasure interjected, “what are your names?”

“I’m Apple, this is Kickstand,” the passenger said. “In case you’re wondering, that’s my real name, but he won’t tell me his.”

“Original name’s dead, baby,” Kickstand said. “And to answer your question, it died when my organic self did. The Ochivari came and sterilized the whole population. They didn’t like that we were destroying our planet, so they decided to wipe us all out...slowly. Well, our fearless leaders didn’t like that, but it couldn’t be reversed, so they decided to just say, screw you guys, we’re gonna become robots. So that’s what we are, robots.”

“Robot means slave,” Apple reminded him. “We’re not slaves.”

“Aren’t we, though?” Kickstand put forth. “I didn’t ask for this. I wanted to have kids. My first wife embraced this new dynamic, but ya see, I actually care about the environment, and I always did. I only agreed to it, because the point of life is to leave a legacy. If I can’t have children, I can’t leave a legacy, so my only hope was to live forever.”

“I’m sorry this has happened to you,” Rosalinda said sincerely. “Is there hope now? Are you fixing the environment? I don’t mean you, personally...”

“Nah, we’re not doin’ that. This was the solution, and the easy way out. This is just how we’ll live; on a dying planet. Sure, the rich people can go off to colonize new worlds, and just fuck all, but the rest of us are stuck here in the shit. That’s why we’re headed South, lookin’ for work. Maybe we can save enough money to secure passage off this tombstone.”

“Easy, Kickstand,” Apple said, trying to calm him down. “I doubt these fine organics need a lecture from you. Their worlds are safe from the Ochivari, because their people made the right choices.”

“Actually, my galaxy is doomed,” Quino said.

“Wait, what?” Treasure questioned.

“Azura told me about it,” he explained. “The Ochivari invade a few years after we left. We’re not going back home, because it would be pointless. The rest of the crew intends to stay on board in a permanent fashion.”

“I...I didn’t realize.” Treasure was heartbroken. She looked over to Rosalinda, whose world could still have been destroyed as well. They still didn’t know how getting caught at Mizakh’s house impacted the timeline. “I ruin everything. I should have just stayed home. I shouldn’t have screamed.”

Kickstand slammed on the brakes, and came to a complete stop. “Wait, are you Treasure Hawthorne?”

She didn’t answer.

“You are. Oh my God, you’re a bona fide hero.”

“You can’t talk about this,” Quino said to him. “She’s not yet done anything that you already know about her.”

“I can’t believe The Treasure of Star Mountain is in my car. That must make you Quino Hawthorne, and...let’s see, if you’re not Azura...Rosalinda Schreier?”

“I’m not a Hawthorne,” Quino said.

Kickstand chuckled. “Oh, ho, ho, not yet, I guess.”

Quino turned red, and closed his eyes in embarrassment. Now things were really awkward. What little info Kickstand disclosed wasn’t proof, because time travel, but there was really good evidence now that he and Treasure were destined to end up together. It wasn’t the craziest idea. She had feelings for him that she never denied to her conscious self, and he obviously felt something too. When they were standing in a group, he always either positioned himself right next to her, or across from her, so she would be in his line-of-sight. If she had to go do something in another train car, he would come up with a—sometimes terrible—reason to need to go that direction as well. These were all things they didn’t ignore about each other, but they didn’t talk about them either. She was sixteen by the revolution of Earth, but equating that with Quino’s own interpretation of timekeeping was difficult. It wasn’t impossible, but trying to figure it out would require openly admitting why they wanted to know such a thing. Regardless, he was at least a little older than her, and some people weren’t jazzed about that sort of thing.

They drove into the garage, and entered the building. They weren’t the only humans there, but there weren’t many others. According to Kickstand’s continued rant—which Treasure only half-listened to, because she was stuck in her own head—almost the entire population transferred their minds to android bodies. Human survivors were living out the last of their days on an island somewhere, the farthest they could be from pollution, but they could all be dead by now too.

“Universe of origin,” the intake nurse prompted. It would seem bulk travel was a tiny bit more ubiquitous than Miss Collins led her students to believe.

“Universum Originalis,” Quino answered.

“Mine has no name that I know of,” Rosalinda said.

“Wait for me at that table over there, so we can run a cosmic frequency test.” The nurse looked to Treasure while Rosalinda was walking over. “And you?”

“Does origin mean birth, or where I grew up?”

“Where were you when you had your first poo? I don’t care about where you immigrated to.”

“I didn’t have my first—that wasn’t until I traveled to Voldisilaverse, but I was born in Salmonverse.”

Kickstand managed to walk over having been eavesdropping. “She’s the Treasure of Star Mountain.”

The nurse was as surprised by this as Kickstand was when he first found out. “Oh. Then why am I filling out refugee forms? You can just leave whenever you want.”

“We can’t leave until I absorb more bulk energy,” Treasure explained.

“How long will that take?” she questioned.

“You know, I don’t know,” she said. It would be a good idea to figure out how to gauge and predict all that. “I just have to wait until it feels like I have enough to transport three people.”

“It would be nice if we could wait until you can take a few more than that,” the nurse said. “The Transit hasn’t been responding to our calls. I think they’ve abandoned us.”

“The Transit is not responsible for human refugees,” Quino argued. “How did the humans get here anyway? Are they your people?”

“Two major bridge collapses happened on our planet,” the nurse explained.

Miss Collins taught the class about that. When Azura and her people were sent off to neutralize their enemies, they did it by hacking into a bridge that was only designed to connect Ansutah to Treasure’s mother’s brane, Salmonverse. This hack had terrible consequences for the whole local bulk group. Bridges started opening and closing at random, expelling objects and people from their homes, to foreign worlds. Some universes seemed to have more egresses, while others had more ingresses, like magnets. Flipverse, Hypnopediaverse, and apparently this universe were three examples known to receive a lot of people and things that didn’t belong there.

The nurse went on, “the Transit came for the first, and agreed to deliver the people back to their homes. Then another bridge dropped more people off, and they’ve not returned.”

“Where was the bridge?” Treasure asked.

“Which one?” the nurse asked.

“Closest one,” Treasure figured, but thought better of it. “No, not the closest one. Most recent one.”

The nurse found a map on her tablet, and projected a hologram. “The closest one is here.”

“That’s where we found you,” Kickstand pointed out.

“We came through a bridge without even knowing it,” Quino realized. “It wasn’t so random.”

“That’s why I need the most recent one,” Treasure said. “There aren’t any bridges in Voldisilaverse, so my teacher hasn’t been able to study them, but she has this theory that they’re all still there, even though they’ve collapsed. If you get me to the other one, it could have a higher concentration of bulk energy, which could plus up my reserves much faster. I don’t know how many human refugees you have, though, and I don’t know if I can transport that many people. I’ve only ever taken two others at the same time. It could be like diving in the ocean naked when what you really need is a boat. That’s why the Transit is as large as it is, and airtight.”

“I understand now,” the nurse declared. “The Transit isn’t responding to us, because they know the refugees have already been saved. You save them, using this concentration of bulk energy, and a vessel that our people are going to build for you. It won’t be as large as the Transit, but it will be large enough for everyone to fit. I know someone who will be quite excited to do this for you.”

Treasure was hesitant, and not because she didn’t want to put anyone out, or make them do a bunch of work for her, but because she wasn’t sure she even wanted it. Another machine? The Crossover, The Transit, and The Prototype. These were the three bulk traveling machines. This other thing has never been on that list, and when it comes to time travel, if something ever exists, then it has always existed. Then again, Azura once noted that Treasure herself wasn’t on the list either, and she had already proven herself capable of harnessing her power, even if she couldn’t quite control it. It was also entirely possible that, knowing what would become of Treasure, people intentionally kept her own story from her, in order to avoid any paradoxes. The nurse did say she knew someone who would want to do this, and if it could help a lot of people, then it wasn’t really Treasure’s right to put a stop to it. “Okay. If someone builds that ship, I will provide power to it.”

“Great. Until then, let’s get you set up in the penthouse of the refugee building. Someone like you deserves to have the best.”

“Hell yeah, you do,” Kickstand agreed.

< > Entire Story

Sic Transit...Res Historia (Part VI)

< > Entire Story

They pierced the membrane, and landed in the new universe. It already looked a lot different than the first one, but that could have just been more about where they happened to come through. There was no city before them, but trees and other wildlife. They were in the middle of a great field, and there was no sign of intelligent life. “The reason I didn’t pick this universe first,” Azura began, “was because of payment. The people of Whrweh will be a lot more welcoming, but they will expect something in return for their help. It’s interesting how their society developed. They never came up with a form of currency that was accepted by all. They understand the concept, but just chose not to do it. They relied heavily on a robust bartering system all the way into their pre-singularity era. Now that they live in post-scarcity, they have everything they need, but in order to deal with alien cultures—which do exist here, for reasons I won’t get into—they continue to exchange favors. If we want power systems, we’ll have to genetically engineer a dog with two heads, or teach some random group of people how to sing.

“These favors don’t mean anything to them, they just want us to have to work for it, because they don’t think it’s fair to give away something for free. The problem is that they accept no substitutes. The council will decide what they expect of us, and that could take up to a month. We can either take it or leave it, but we can’t offer them something else. Seriously don’t even try, that is incredibly rude in their eyes, as they consider it a form of negotiating. We just have to hope it’s something that we can give. I don’t know how to genetically engineer dogs, or teach people to sing, so cross your fingers.”

“How did they advance to a post-scarcity society without ever having money?” Treasure asked, using her tiara. This was just how she was gonna talk now. Her true voice would be reserved exclusively for travel.

“Very slowly,” Azura explained, “but steadily. They remained in small and somewhat isolated pockets. Each pocket developed on its own, for if they attempted to reach out to others too much, it would make things too complicated, and they probably would have needed to devise a banking system. One thing this did was pretty much prevent all war. I mean, there has been almost no violence in their history, because people lived where they could find the resources, and operated independently. They still shared information with each other, but they didn’t collaborate directly. Their impact on their environment has been incredibly low, impressing even the Ochivari, and insulating them from attacks. They don’t live on the surface anymore. They live on the orbital ring.”

Just then, a shuttle dropped down from the sky, and landed on the grass in front of them. Azura led the crew out. “Greetings, friends,” she said. “We come on a peaceful mission, seeking power systems to repair our vessel.”

The man stepped closer to them, and sized up The Transit. “Peaceful,” he echoed. “We know what you are, this is not a peaceful mission.” It was starting to look like what happened in the last universe would happen here, or something similar.

“We discovered this ship, and are only trying to use it to return home to Universum Originalis. While this is destined for war, we are not its warriors.” Azura wasn’t technically lying, as she wasn’t part of the war yet, but she had every intention of joining, so it wasn’t the whole truth either.

“We do not interfere with the Darning Wars,” the man said, “but do not mistake that for endorsement. We do not interfere...on either side.”

“Hmm,” Azura said, only loud enough for the crew to hear. “Our database is incomplete. Obviously they’re peaceful, but I believed they would help us.”

Treasure decided to speak up, “please take our request to the council. Let them decide our fate.”

Azura looked over at her approvingly. This was the right thing to say.

“I am obligated to relay your message,” he agreed. “Payment is never guaranteed, but...I do not look favorably upon your chances. Come. You will stay with us while you await your answer.”

“Stay with the Transit,” Azura ordered Siphon and Spectra, and was met with no protest. The rest of them stepped into the shuttle, and went up to see what this orbital ring thing was all about. Treasure had never heard of it before.

It was exactly what it sounded like, a massive ring suspended in space that went all around the planet. People did not go down to the surface very often, instead deciding to leave it to the plants and animals. They mostly lived in large structures that were hanging from the bottom, down towards the atmosphere, like gargantuan stalactites. How interesting. The Transit crew stayed there for about a week, learning about their culture and history in the museum, and enjoying some of their entertainment. People didn’t seem to know anything about other universes, it was really just the representative who came down to investigate. The locals just figured they were from some other planet, if they even asked where they were from at all. They blended right in quite easily, because they were just nine out of tens of billions of people. Once the council was ready with their decision, they summoned the crew to council chambers.

“Thank you for coming,” Council Leader Ignatius said. She sat up there with her own crew, high above the floor, forcing all who seek help from them to literally look up to them. “We understand that you would like some advanced power system to integrate with your...space train.”

“That’s right,” Azura answered. “We would be eternally grateful, and eagerly await your charges.”

Ignatius nodded. “In exchange for our technology, we ask that the first thing you do with it is to travel back to our past, and extract an important figure before his death.”

“What’s that now?” Azura questioned. It was okay to ask for clarification, just not to argue or propose conditions.

“Mizakh Bordalajner is one of the most influential leaders of our history. It was he who first predicted that we would one day live as we are living today. He came up with the idea of the orbital ring, and he fiercely argued in favor of ecological mindfulness, so our species would survive long enough to realize his dreams. He, of course, died long before singular immortality, and we would like to reward him for his efforts by bringing him up to our present, and saving him. Have no fear, time travel is impossible in this universe without the aid of a machine such as yours. We do not wish for you to alter the past. Simply remove him from his deathbed, and bring him back here, so our advanced science can keep him alive forever.”

Azura looked at the four people to her left, and the four people to her right, just to gauge their reception of the request. No one seemed to have any objections. It was fair, within their power, and unlikely to cause problems for this world, or come with unforeseen consequences. Even if it did have consequences, that wasn’t really the crew’s problem. “We accept. Provide us with the pertinent information, and we’ll go retrieve your man.”

“That will not be necessary,” Ignatius said. “One of our top historians will be accompanying you, to make sure the mission moves forward smoothly.”

Azura nodded deeply, and cordially.

The anti-negotiation stance was a two-way street. The council failed to request that their own people would be the ones to install the new power systems on the Transit. Once the council meeting closed, they could no longer amend the request any more than the Transit crew could have. It would have been unfair, and unjust. They were a consistent and thoughtful people. So the crew was able to insist that they be the ones to interface human technology with Maramon technology, and get the whole thing up and running. It took longer, but they didn’t want anyone else getting their hands on bulk travel knowledge. Causality was grateful for the limited number of parties capable of risking paradoxes for all of reality.

The historian was a woman in her late twenties named Rosalinda. Treasure’s first impression was that she was nice and talkative. She loved to tell anecdotes from history, and she probably taught them more than they could ever learn from the museums. She also knew everything there was to know about this Mizakh Bordalajner. He was exactly where he was meant to be, exactly when he was meant to be there. They even knew when he would be alone, so that no one would try to stop them from abducting their loved one. The mission was so boring that only Siphon and Spectra were sent into the field. They returned with no problems, Bordalajner was hooked up to life support, and the Transit went back to the future. The problem was that this was not the correct future. Whrweh was still there, and perfectly intact, but the Whrwehs were gone. They had died out centuries ago, and the only explanation was the absence of this one historical figure. Even though he died anyway, he must have had a significant impact on the outcome of events.

“All right,” Azura said, quickly getting over the shock. “This isn’t a problem. All we have to do is go put him back. The Transit can mask its signature from itself, our past selves won’t even know we were there. We’ll put him back in bed right after the Young!Siphon and Young!Spectra first took him. Everything will go back to normal. We’ll figure out an alternative payment later. Rosalinda here can vouch for us, and explain why it didn’t work.”

“I don’t know why it didn’t work,” Rosalinda revealed. “He died. In fact, and I didn’t want to say this before, but he went missing. This was all destined to happen. At least I thought it was. I thought we were just closing a timeloop.”

“We are,” Treasure said. “We’re closing it now. Quino and I will put him back in bed. It’s best not to run into your alternate selves.”

“I’ll go too,” Rosalinda insisted. “It’s my world.”

“Very well,” Azura decided. “Let’s go.”

They returned to the past, overlapping with their own timeline, and preparing to make the exchange. If everything went according to plan, not five minutes would pass from the time Siphon and Spectra first took him, and the time Treasure, Quino, and Rosalinda put him back. No one would ever know they were there, not even their Past!Selves. It did not go according to plan. They avoided being seen by the other two crew members just fine, and got him back to bed, no problem. It was getting out that messed things up. Mizakh’s husband came back in time to see them trying to sneak out of their house. He shouted for help, causing a number of neighbors to flood the streets. They were trapped. He was an important man even while still alive, so they were all very protective of him. They formed a circle, so that there was nowhere for the three of them to go. There was nowhere for them to go...except through another dimension. Seeing no other choice, Treasure took a deep breath, and then she screamed.

< > Entire Story

Microstory 1380: No Remorse (Part 4)

< > Table of Contents

Celebrity Interviewer: Thank you all for sitting down with me. My audience is very interested to understand the reasoning behind this arrangement. I’m very sorry the warden was not able to be with us today.

Producer: Yes, I just spoke with him, and he has some important business to take care of with the government, but he sends his regards.

Ex-Cop: A private prison owner’s job is never done.

Celebrity Interviewer: Quite. Now, let’s get into it. Whose idea was it to make a film about Ex-Cop?

Producer: That would be me.

Celebrity Interviewer: And who decided to cast Ex-Cop to play himself?

Producer: That would be me as well.

Celebrity Interviewer: That wasn’t Casting Director’s responsibility?

Casting Director: I was responsible for securing the casting, but it was an executive decision. I wasn’t even part of the project yet.

Producer: Yes, my vision started in my head, and I didn’t tell anyone about it until I had a really good idea of what I wanted to do.

Celebrity Interviewer: That makes sense. But, Casting Director, you had to convince the warden to go along with it, correct?

Casting Director: It was a team effort, but I was his primary point of contact.

Celebrity Interviewer: Tell me about the film. Where does it begin?

Producer: We start before the beginning, actually. The first five minutes follow Mr. Ex-Cop’s parents as their relationship evolves, from their first date at the zoo, to the day Ex-Cop was born. The next five minutes follow Ex-Cop’s upbringing. He has said that he knew he wanted to be a law enforcement officer because of a presentation an officer did at his middle school in eighth grade, so that’s where we stop moving so quickly through the narrative. We keep it linear, though. We don’t have any flashbacks.

Ex-Cop: That was my idea. Flashbacks, honestly, confuse me.

Celebrity Interviewer: I’m not surprised by that. Walk me through the reasoning behind not casting any other actors for the role. Are you using visual de-aging technology for Ex-Cop? How does that work? Can you really make a full-grown adult look like a child with CGI?

Ex-Cop: I’m not doing any CGI.

Celebrity Interviewer: So, you just haven’t cast the younger parts yet?

Casting Director: I can explain this. Ex-Cop is going to be playing himself throughout the entire film, and no digital editing will be employed to make him look younger. In fact, he’s not even going to be wearing makeup. This is a gritty, true-to-life experience. We want the audience to see him as the real world does, so they better understand what he’s gone through.

Ex-Cop: That was my idea too. I don’t wear no makeup. Do I look like I got titties?

Producer: Ex-Cop, we talked about this.

Ex-Cop: Whatever.

Celebrity Interviewer: No. I want to know what he has to say. I think you’re right that it’s important the audience sees him as he is, rather than some cartoon on the screen. And to that, I’m still confused. The world sees him as he is today, but when he was six years old, they saw a six-year-old. Sure, you could never find a single-digit child who looks exactly like he did when he was that young, but how exactly can you claim this to be an authentic portrayal when you have a fifty-year-old running around in diapers?

Ex-Cop: I’m not fifty!

Celebrity Interviewer: Assistant, please make note of the time. We’re going to want to put a fact-check up on the screen, making sure my audience knows Ex-Cop is indeed fifty years old.

Assistant: Yes, sir.

Ex-Cop: You go to hell, the both of you!

Celebrity Interviewer: Don’t talk to her like that.

Producer: He didn’t really mean it.

Celebrity Interviewer: No. I want him to apologize. He can say whatever he wants about me, but he will leave my assistant out of this, or he’s gonna wish the state had just sent him to some hole in the ground where I can’t find him.

Ex-Cop: Fine. I’m sorry.

Assistant: Thank you.

Producer: Let’s get back on track. I understand where you’re coming from, but Ex-Cop expressed to us that he’s always felt more like an adult, so we wanted to illustrate that by having him play his younger selves as well. It’s a creative choice, and I stand by it.

Casting Director: As do I.

Celebrity Interviewer: And do you stand by casting a convicted murderer in your film at all?

Casting Director: I’m sorry?

Celebrity Interviewer: You should be.

Producer: I would like to clarify this. We’ve obviously heard all of the criticisms. It’s not my job to judge whether Ex-Cop is racist, or if he’s guilty of his crime—

Celebrity Interviewer: He’s guilty. He was found guilty by all six peer arbiters, all four professional arbitrators, and a highly respected adjudicator. He’s considered guilty by the majority of the country’s population, and then some. The film that started this all—the one that shows Ex-Cop pounding his fist into the head of Innocent Victim until he dies—proves that what they said he did, he did.

Ex-Cop: You can’t talk about me like this!

Celebrity Interviewer: On the contrary, sir, I can. You gave up your rights when you abused your power, and murdered an innocent blackman on the streets of Hillside. This film is outrageous! This private prison is outrageous! And you, Ex-Cop are the most outrageous of all. Why, if I had—

Assistant: Celebrity Interviewer? Your boss is on the phone. He’s watching the closed stream.

Ex-Cop: You’re in trouble now, bitch.

Celebrity Interviewer: You fucking piece of shit. I’m gonna put you on the ground. Why you runnin’? Get back here, coward!

Producer: Stop.

Celebrity Interviewer: Get your hands off me. You’re as bad as him, because you validate his sentiments!

Assistant: You better take this call.