Showing posts with label character. Show all posts
Showing posts with label character. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Microstory 2442: Recursiverse Immersive Experience

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That’s a mouthful, isn’t it? If you don’t know, Recursiverse is one of the most popular franchises in history, spanning several books, dozens of TV series, and hundreds of movies (depending on your definition). It follows thousands of characters living fantastical lives in two parallel universes. In the modern age, the fantastical elements that they explore in the stories can be recreated using real technologies, but back when they were first being written and distributed, they were exciting to a huge audience. There’s still some soft scifi in there that we can’t do for real in this dome network. That’s right, it’s not just one dome. You couldn’t fit all this in the area covered by a single dome, so it has to spread out. I don’t even know how many domes there are, because you don’t always know when you’ve moved. You can travel to other planets with vastly different geographies, and you do this using faster-than-light technology that doesn’t allow you to see exactly how you’re moving in realspace. I think you’re sometimes moving along the z-axis, onto upper levels hidden behind the holographic sky on the ceiling of the layer below, which isn’t as high as it looks. I’m not going to go into any specifics, because it won’t mean anything to you if you’re unfamiliar with the canon. But there are alien races, and they’re perfectly recreated by the androids. You can also choose your own substrate, and it doesn’t have to look like you, or even human at all. Other domes do that, but this was once protected intellectual property. The creator gradually began to release his rights to the public, so others could explore the stories and themes that he conceived. The law didn’t require that he do that. He’s still alive today. By current laws, he could still retain the rights. That’s assuming he continued to make new contributions, or he would have lost them eventually. Some of them would be under the public domain regardless, though, as he shared his rights to them with a corporation, such as a movie studio. They never retain their power for long, especially not since all those financial-based companies are now dead. I know it sounds like I’m getting off topic, but it explains why this is such a big franchise on this planet. By the time the creator published a single word of his work, Recursiverse was a well defined universe—or biverse, as it were—full of a solid foundation of rules, conventions, and histories, and even contingencies. The creator could have made every decision, but he chose to let them be free, first by collaborating directly with others, then by deliberately relinquishing his control. If you want to enjoy this dome network in full, you’re gonna wanna catch up with what has come before, but I promise that it’s worth it. I don’t ever want to leave.

Saturday, June 21, 2025

The Seventh Stage: Rocking the Boat (Part IV)

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Clavia is taking a break to meditate. It’s not just for her mental health in the abstract sense. In her case, it’s non-negotiable. She has to do it or parts of her will overwhelm the others; usually the not-so-great part. One of her constituent personalities was told a story once. It’s not so much a story as a brief metaphorical anecdote. Well, it can be boiled down to that anyway. The gist of it is that everyone supposedly has two wolves inside of them. One of them is good, and the other is evil. The one who wins is the one you feed. It’s not so simple with Clavia, though. She actually has six wolves inside of her. Debra, a.k.a. The First Explorer is definitely the alpha. She’s the strongest, and the one who had initial total control over this body. When Echo Cloudberry regressed her back to youth, and tried to erase her memories, the balance of power shifted. Clavia became more of an amalgamation of all six identities. Yet those six original people are still technically in here, and in order to maintain the balance, she has to sort of commune with them every once in a while. She has to assure them that the choices she’s making are righteous, and that she won’t let Debra take over again. It brings a whole new meaning to being greater than the sum of one’s parts. Because if “Clavia” can talk to the seven people that she’s composed of, who even is Clavia at all? Is she a seventh person, or what?
“I would like to call this Meeting of the Seven Stages to order,” Clavia says from her perch on the topmost stage. She could have created a mind palace that looked like anything, but this seemed fitting. The stage area is in the shape of a hexagon, with the six lower stages surrounding the central stage. Curtains divide the six audiences from each other, and can be pulled further up so that each audience can only witness what’s happening on their particular stage. As it is situated much higher, however, the seventh stage is always visible to all audiences. Of course, there is no audience; it’s only a metaphor, but it works for their needs. Right now, the curtains are all pulled back, so everyone can see each other, including the one underneath the seventh stage, allowing the others to see each other. Clavia herself stands in the middle. Around, in clockwise order, we have Ingrid Alvarado, whose body Clavia is occupying; Ingrid’s love interest, Onyx Wembley of The Garden Dimension; Ingrid’s rival before the Reconvergence, when they lived in the Fifth Division parallel reality, Killjlir Pike; Ayata Seegers of the Third Rail; the dangerous one, Debra Lovelace; and finally, Andrei Orlov of The Fourth Quadrant.
The play that they would be performing this year—if any of this were real—is about a prisoner transport ship on the high seas of a planet called Earth. Clavia is obviously the captain, with Debra as their one prisoner. Andrei and Ayata are her guards. Ingrid, Onyx, and Killjlir serve as helmsman, navigator and quartermaster, and boatswain respectively. Again, the acting troupe is just the premise of the scenario, but Clavia felt that it was necessary to come up with some sort of fictional background to stimulate their minds. Their old lives are over, and there is no going back. They don’t even have bodies anymore, so it’s best to have something new to look forward to every day. They didn’t have to pretend to be stage actors—it could have been anything—but the name of their pocket universe made the concept essentially inevitable. They rehearse a new play every year. This one is called Rocking the Boat. These meetings allow Clavia to regain the memories that Echo took away from her, but before that happened, she had the mind of a child, so you can’t expect anything too complex or cerebral, even now that she’s older. Though, this one is indeed a little bit more mature. It still has that classic Clavia tinge of humor as Debra is playing the notorious evil pirate, Karen the Unappeasable.
“Can I get out of these chains?” Debra requests.
“I didn’t put you in those today,” Clavia answers.
“We did a dress rehearsal without you,” Ayata explains. She steps onto Debra’s stage, and unlocks her manacles.
Clavia tears up. “Without me?”
“Wait, look over here,” Ingrid requests. She goes on when her double turns to face her, “you did it. You cried on command.”
“I’ve been practicing in the real world,” Clavia explains proudly.
“I hope that doesn’t mean you’re using it to manipulate people,” Onyx warns.
“No people, just stars,” Clavia responds. “They are unmoved by my tears.”
“So the project is going well?” Killjlir assumes.
“Quite,” Clavia confirms. “We’re ahead of schedule. We’re more powerful than even we realized.”
“I knew your parents were keeping you restrained,” Debra says with disgust. “You had to get away from them to reach your potential.”
“We don’t know that they were doing anything,” Onyx reasons. “She’s older now—it’s natural for her to come into her own. Maybe it’s like a stage of puberty.”
“I chose them as my surrogate parents as a reason,” Clavia speaks up for herself. “I love them both. Echo and I are doing this in honor of them, not in spite of them.”
“Whatever,” Debra says.
“Aww, is someone a sad panda because I took away her solo?” Clavia asks.
Don’t get her started. “The story is about how we’re all feeling about our place on the boat, and how we’re dealing with those emotions without telling anyone about it. I have to sing, or my story’s not getting told.”
“No, the story is about how prisoners are silenced, and how the general public doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. That’s the whole point. The way your character keeps being interrupted and dismissed should be shocking and annoying to the audience. Karen lives in the subtext, and the negative space.”
“That’s another thing, I don’t like her name,” Debra says. “It’s what people actually used to call me.”
“Well, I admit, that one came from a place of pettiness,” Clavia tells her. “I kind of like it now, though. I can’t imagine calling her anything else.”
“I won’t say another word about it if I can play the hero in the next one.” Debra pitches this every year, and she has been denied every time except for the third year. In it, she did portray the protagonist, and she absolutely sucked at it. She’s the main character in her own story. Everyone feels that way, but she really feels it, and that came out in her performance. The rest of the cast may as well have not even been there the way she was chewing up scenery. If an audience really had seen it, they would have closed down on opening night.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Clavia says. She’s switching between smiling and frowning, because she doesn’t know whether she should even bring this up. They contemplated doing it a long time ago, but the technology is too unreliable and messy. Consciousness transference is very good about moving a digital mind from one substrate to another. It works by scanning an entire brain all at once. It doesn’t understand the concept of an amalgamated mind. Why would it? That doesn’t exist in nature. If two people are occupying the same body, they’ve probably been allocated entire independent partitions in the brain. The Seven Stagers are too entangled with each other. When they’re on these platforms, it’s very easy to distinguish them, but the mind uploader can’t enter this memory palace. It has no way of recognizing them as multiple units, which should be uploaded separately. The other concern is Clavia herself. They still don’t know how much she relies on the six of them to even be her own person. Perhaps she only thinks that she’s her own entity. Perhaps if they were to leave, she would cease to exist.
“Did you decide what the next play is going to be about?” Ayata asks.
“It’s not about the play at all,” Clavia begins to clarify. “There may not be one. There may not need to be one.”
The others look at each other across their stages. “Did you figure out how to transfer us out of your avatar?” Killjlir guesses.
“I think I did.”
“Technology doesn’t advance that fast,” Onyx decides. “Not even the Parallelers can do it.”
“To be fair,” she didn’t talk to any of them,” Ayata says to him. “She couldn’t, or it would give us away. Maybe she found someone to trust who has a new idea.”
“I already have someone to trust,” Clavia explains before anyone can come up with their own theories on what’s going on. She takes a breath before continuing, though. “I think that Echo can do it.”
Everyone has their own way of reacting to this, but some common threads are groans, throwing up their hands, and shaking their heads. It’s not that they don’t like Echo. They love him. They just don’t think that he can do this. He’s conjured little critters out of nothing before, but that was back when he wasn’t consciously aware that he was doing anything, or had any power. He’s proven himself to be too in his head since he wiped his own mind, full of self doubt and fear. As far as they know, unlike Clavia, he never got his old memories back, and he may never have been strong enough to create human bodies.
“Now, why do you think he can’t do it? We’re starscaping out there. We’re building an entire universe out of dark matter and elementary particles. You think he can’t build a few puny human bodies for you? With his help, I could guide each of you out of my brain, and into your new ones. That’s what the conventional technology is missing. It was designed to dump everything in all at once, but Echo will have the context and intuition that it lacks.”
“You’re missing something too,” Onyx begins to use his experience and expertise from the Garden Dimension. “Stars are somewhat uniform balls of plasma, composed of hydrogen, helium, and metals. You can just toss in all the ingredients, and the laws of physics will take over, particularly gravity. I’m not saying what you and Echo are doing isn’t incredibly impressive, but the complexity will come out of the imagination you have for how your new universe is arranged, not by the inherent nature of the individual celestial bodies. Human bodies, on the other hand, are extremely precise entities, with complexities on a smaller scale. But just because it’s smaller, doesn’t mean it’s easier. Sure, it requires vastly fewer resources, but one tiny mistake could lead to catastrophe. You’re talking about creating something that took billions of years to evolve naturally, and unlike stars, it only happened once.”
“Wait,” Killjlir interrupts. “He doesn’t need to conjure the bodies. Those can be bioengineered using the normal techniques. We would just need a way to transfer us into them from Clavia’s head.”
“He wouldn’t be transferring them,” Clavia contends. “He doesn’t have the power to upload digitized minds. These would be true organic bodies, imbued with your respective consciousnesses through interdimensional pathways.”
“I don’t understand,” Ayata confesses.
“When you bioengineer a human body,” Onyx begins again, “there are only two ways to do it. Either it’s an empty substrate waiting for a mind to be uploaded into it, or it’s a regular person. An empty substrate is inherently digital in regards to consciousness transference. Even if it’s organic, it’s encoded with neural formatting compatibility. It can read a mind from another digitized brain, or a computer server. A normal body can’t do that. Back in the old days in the main sequence and the Parallel, they had to first figure out how to convert people’s brains into the right format since they didn’t evolve that ability.”
“So let’s do it like that,” Killjlir offers.
“We can’t,” Ingrid counters. “Like he was saying, that would be a regular person. It would have its own mind already, right?”
“Right,” Clavia agrees. “However smart or dumb that person is, or how competent they are to learn new things, the body would be ocupado, just like someone born from a mommy and a daddy. You would be stealing their body. Only Echo can make something both undigitized and empty.”
“Then why can’t we just use the digitized kind?” Ayata questions.
“Because you’re not digitized,” Clavia answers. “Our minds came together through completely different means, using a rare if not unique metaphysical process, catalyzed by the magnolia tree fruit that Ingrid ate just as you were all about to die. And digitizing us can’t be done as an aftermarket retrofit, because like we’ve been struggling with, the computer can’t differentiate between our seven discrete consciousnesses.”
Ayata nods, getting it, then looks over at her love. “Andrei, you’ve been quiet this whole time. Thoughts?”
Andrei takes a long time to respond, but by his body language, it’s clear that he’s going to, so no one else speaks instead. “I don’t wanna leave. It’s too risky. We would likely only get one shot at trying something like that, and if it fails, our minds could become totally decorporealized, or we might just die. I think we should revisit the idea of rotating control of the Clavia body.” He looks up at her. “I wanna stand on the seventh stage.”
“Same,” Debra concurs.
She obviously just wants all her power back, but does Andrei have the same aspirations?

Saturday, June 14, 2025

The Seventh Stage: Rock and a Hard Place (Part III)

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Ezqava ‘Effigy’ Eodurus has had a storied past. Much of it, she prefers to forget. She was young and stupid at the time, and very vulnerable. She placed her trust in someone who turned out to be so much better than her, she never wants to feel that judged again. She truly doesn’t understand her own mind. She’s mischievous and unpredictable, and even sometimes violent. That’s why they locked her up on Earth, and now on this random remote penal colony. Colony isn’t the right word for it, though, since she lives here alone. It’s not too bad. She has a nice home with a pool. The weather is always tame, but she can see storms range in the distance, which is interesting. They’ve provided her with countless hours of entertainment, but no means of communication. She can see what’s going on all over the universe, but can have no effect on it. Unless someone comes to talk to her. Which they do, all the time, though less so in recent days. When she was trapped in her cage on Earth, no one visited her. Most people didn’t even know that she existed. Here, she’s so popular. Here, they value her knowledge. Sadly, they don’t value her as a person. It’s her fault, and she knows it, but it’s still been difficult.
It won’t always be like this. Effigy doesn’t have the power to see the future, but with all the data that she’s collected, she’s pretty confident in her predictions. Hers is not the only transcendent power in these lands. There are two others, and based on the trajectory of their dealings, it won’t be long before they meet. The only question then is whether she can convince them to join forces with her. In the past, she would attempt to gain allies through trickery and subterfuge. Her ability to shapeshift into any human form has always been too tempting to ignore, and too easy to abuse. Her usual methods won’t fly with Clavia and Echo. Not only will they see right through it, but they actually have the power to turn on her. The reason she was in a cage for centuries was because none of her combatants knew how to kill her. The Cloudbearer twins do not suffer the same shortcomings. They have more power than her, and it’s hard to tell how they’ll use it. They’re good...for now—if there even is such a thing as a good person. That doesn’t mean they won’t fight her. If she wants them to trust her, she has to be honest, good, and honestly good. That’s why she has spent the last several years helping leaders of this pocket universe. She’s been asking for favors in return, but only because that’s what they expect. If she did it for nothing, they would be suspicious of her.
Effigy has been trying to get better, but without an unbiased third party to assess her progress, she can’t know if it’s worked. Her self-improvement was driven by her desire to regain the power and freedom that she once had. Is this a paradox? Is it impossible to be worthy of the power that one seeks if they seek it? Is ambition inherently evil? More importantly, how will the god twins see it? Earlier, she planted the seed of her answer when an old friend came for a visit. Either she’s about to get a third visitor in one day, or her friend is back.
She watches as the personal pod streaks across the sky, and lands somewhere on the other side of the wall that keeps Effigy from seeing the ocean. She’s tried asking for a tower to have a better view of this world, but she’s never given anyone enough intel to warrant such a gift. She’s going to play it differently this time, not like she did before with Bariq. She’s going to be cool and composed, but genuine and professional. The door opens. Two women walk through. One is the friend, but the other is a stranger. “You have returned,” Effigy begins, “sooner than I expected.”
“The term sequence that you provided was right,” Tekla replies. “It took me to an evidently unused Nexus, which allowed me to travel to Origin, where I met an apparent god, who connected me with this one here.” She gestured towards the other woman.
“Hi, Francis Deering,” she says, offering her hand.
Effigy reaches out for it, then pulls back in horror. She forgot to shapeshift into the form of a human. She looks like her true self still...a white monster. “I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t mean for you to see me like this. I didn’t realize.” She takes a breath, and transforms herself into a woman she once knew by the name of Slipstream.
“It’s okay,” Francis assures her. “You don’t scare me.” Her skin begins to vibrate and ripple. Within seconds, she looks like a masculine version of herself, perhaps a twin brother, or something. She—or he—seems as surprised as Effigy and Tekla do. “Wow, that was much faster than it is where I’m from. Your world is interesting.”
Effigy smiles. “May I ask, what are your pronouns?”
“She/her when I’m in my female form, and he/him when I’m like this.  If you’re talking about me in a more general sense, and you’ve encountered me in both forms about evenly, you can use they/them.”
“Can you turn into anyone, or just this one guy?” Tekla asks him.
“I’m not turning into a different person,” Francis explains. “I’m both people. Nothing about who I am as a person changes when I’m in one form or the other. They call me a dimorph; both male and female. I can only have one reproductive system at a time, but my mind and personality maintain continuity.”
They nod.
“I can shift back, if you’re more comfortable...” Francis offers.
“No, it’s whatever you want,” Effigy assures him. “Is that why you chose him?” she asks Tekla. “Because he’s a shifter.”
“I explained the situation to the god, Senona Riggur, who suggested a therapist would be of some use to you. This is who they chose.”
“So, you’re from another universe?” Effigy asks Francis.
“Am I?” Francis volleys. “No clue. I just go where they tell me.”
“Well, I really appreciate you coming here, and I would appreciate more of your time. You see, I’ve traditionally not been so great of a person. As you saw, I’m not a person at all. I think that I’ve learned the error of my ways, but self-assessment can only get you so far.”
“You say you’re not a person. What do you mean by that?”
“Well, you saw. I’m not human.”
“Just because you’re not human doesn’t mean you’re not a person.”
“Do you know a lot of non-humans where you’re from? I mean, more intelligent beings than just dogs and cats.”
Francis smirks. “I know a few.” She takes a beat. “Let’s get into this. Is there somewhere we can talk?”
“Yeah. Tekla, do you need to get back to Judy before she gets suspicious?” Effigy asks, worried. Maybe she is better, worrying about others.
Tekla laughs. “You think I took the Nexus to a hostile unknown location without getting my boss’ permission first? She went with me. She was granted her own wish alongside mine. Don’t ask what it was, though.”
“I see. Tell her thank you. She’s always been more supportive and understanding with me than other people.”
“I will pass along the message. Until then...” Tekla starts to say, “I’ve never skinny-dipped before, but I hear that’s how it’s done in this pool.”
Now Effigy is the one to laugh. “You can if you want. I also have suits in the cabana. We’ll be in the solarium, if you don’t mind a little sun, Mr. Deering. The windows are rated high for UV shielding.”
“That sounds lovely,” Francis replies.
The two of them head to the other side of the house to discuss Effigy’s issues, and her self-doubts. In the spirit of my agreement with Dr. Hammer to stay out of the therapy sessions that she has with her own patients, I cannot relay what Francis and Effigy discussed in private. While Dr. Hammer did not technically ask me to maintain the privacy of all of my characters, I believe that she would prefer me to respect therapist-patient confidentiality across the board except for conversations which are integral to the plot. Suffice it to say, Francis’ wisdom was very helpful in Effigy’s quest to not only become a better person, but to understand what that truly means, and how to measure her own progress, as well as recognize her successes for what they are.
Effigy looks up to the sky again. “You’re in my head.”
Is she talking to me?
“Yes, Superintendent, I am talking to you. You are writing this story from an omniscient third-person perspective. You know everything that I’m thinking. The fact that you chose not to watch my therapy session is meaningless. You still know exactly what happened. You could always just pull it straight out of my thoughts.”
“Who are you talking to?” Francis asks. They’re currently strolling around—
“No, no, no,” Effigy interrupts me. “You’re not going to ignore my question by droning on and on about the minutiae of our current behavior, just to reach some arbitrary word count goal on this installment. There’s vivid imagery, and then there’s pointless and trivial details. We’re walking back to the other side of the house. There. Done. That’s all you need to say.”
I wasn’t ignoring your question. You didn’t ask one.
Effigy stops to think for a moment. As she does so, a beetle-like insectoid crawls along the leaf of a plant hanging from a pole on the side of the building. A spider-like creature is on the underside of this leaf, and the question is whether one will notice the other, both each other, or neither. No one is looking at these organisms, but it’s still happening. Things like this are happening all the time, all around you. If Effigy weren’t blinded by her frustration with me, she might have the capacity to take a moment to admire the beauty. She’s standing next to it right now, stewing. She’s choosing not to look over at the insectoids, knowing all too well that if I wanted her to look at them, she would goddamn look at them. For as powerful as she thinks she may be, she is nothing compared to the might of the author. I could erase her from the story with a few taps on my keyboard. She would never connect with Clavia and Echo. She would never realize her full potential. She would never really know if she became a better person, or if the leopard simply can’t change its spots. I already spent years not mentioning Effigy and her exploits at all, and I can do it again. I could do it forever if I like. Her past as the final boss in the Springfield Nine franchise may never have happened. I could erase that too if I wanted. And maybe I will.
I just did. Effigy who?

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Microstory 2367: Vacuus, August 28, 2179

Generated by Google ImageFX text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 3
Dear Condor,

I’m not feeling all that well today. I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I think I caught a stomach bug. The doctor has me self-quarantining, which is funny because that’s just how I typically live my daily life anyway. I wanted to respond to you, though, because I received your open letter. I attached the new document with my markups, but you can take them or leave them. If you just sent it to the base how you originally wrote it, it would be fine. I’m not surprised, your letters to me are always very well-written. Overall, I think it looks good. You didn’t say too little, or be too cryptic, but you didn’t overshare either. I would say go for it, if you’re comfortable, but you still have the option of declining the request. It’s not a big deal either way. Though, I do think you should change what you said about people asking questions. I’m willing to take on that role as intermediary. My suggestions are very minor, so it’s up to you whether to accept them. That also goes for whether to even send it or not. I won’t cloud your decision any further. It’s not like people will be mad at me if you decline. Both worlds will keep turning. I feel like I’m repeating myself, and should probably go back to bed. I’m going to be a little bit late with my thoughts on this latest Winfield Files book, but did you notice that we got a few spoilers from the last season of the show? It looks like they jumped a little ahead in the story, which I guess is what happens. The books are only told from the main character’s perspective, but the adaptation has the freedom to explore other people’s perspectives more directly, which has sometimes given us a bit of a sneak peek into what’s to come, before Winfield finds out about it in his own time. I don’t think it’s going to ruin anything, or that we should change our strategy. I just thought I would point it out.

Okay, goodnight,

PS: Are we gonna keep doing PS?

Wednesday, September 18, 2024

Microstory 2238: Stress Will Kill

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 3, and by Pixlr AI image editor
I made a decision this morning to be a more positive person. It doesn’t make much sense that I’ve had to be such a downer lately. I beat death! That’s a good thing, even though it doesn’t change the fact that everyone else is going to die eventually. So will I, even if some other Westfaller opens a new door, because they can’t keep it open forever. Believe me, if I knew how to help you, I would. In my stories, I had trouble being able to kill characters off, because I built a world where there were so many ways around it. Even when I did come up with a way, I rather quickly undid it, and placed all the dead people in an afterlife simulation that was essentially heaven—even for the not-so-great people (because at least they still existed)—but digital. There was even a way to get out of the simulation, and return to true life. I hate death more than the average person, which I know is saying a lot, because most people don’t like it a-tall [sic]. I could tell you about all of the technology that those people used, and which others did in other universes, but I would never be able to develop them for you. It’s a lot easier to conjure a genius character than to be as smart as them. It’s nothing that you guys have not already contemplated, I’m sure, like longevity treatments, telomere restoration therapy, cybernetics, mind-uploading, etc. Anyway, I don’t wanna get hung up on this, because that’s negative, man, and I don’t wanna be negative anymore, man. Let’s all just be chill, and only move around when we need to relax. Sound good? In the end, stress will kill you faster than anything. So, what does this all mean for the future? I’m not sure yet, but I’m going to try to remain calm, and not worry about things too much. I’m sure everything will be all right, one way or another. I’ve never had that kind of attitude before, so I’m not sure if it will work, but I may as well try.

Friday, December 10, 2021

Microstory 1775: Shield Ring

I think the first hint I had that the stories I was writing were real came in 2010 when an object from my stories fell into my lap. Three years prior, I started working on a story about a group of people with special abilities. My computer contracted a virus at college, and was completely nonfunctional for at least a week, so I had a lot of time on my hands to work on the story manually. Coming up with the characters was the easiest thing to do in this manner, because it didn’t require much research, and it was mostly just a list. I ended up with one character who wasn’t born with abilities, but used found technology to complete her missions. In particular, she wore a ring that protected her from physical attack. It wasn’t something that other people could take from her, and use for themselves. It demanded constant charging from another dimension, so she had to keep injecting herself with something called indigo therapy, which kept her connected to this other dimension. Maybe about a year before my maternal grandfather died, we were at his house, looking through some of his possessions. I found a few things of his that I liked, including a basketball necklace, an Eagle Scout ring, and the shield ring that my character wore. It looked exactly as I described it, and it’s just so unlikely that I had ever seen this thing before. His mother reportedly gave it to him as a gift when he graduated from high school, but it didn’t fit his fingers anymore, so I would have never seen him actually wear it. Still, I figured that it must be a normal ring, and a coincidence, because what else would I think? I started to wear it, and it pretty soon became a part of me. It felt wrong whenever I took it off, so I never did. Remember that this thing was useless on its own, so I was fully capable of jamming my toe, and suffering a paper cut with no intervention. Otherwise, I would have realized what I had long ago. It wasn’t until 2016 that evidence really came to light, and to say the least, it was a shocking revelation. I would have died if not for this little ring. What might have killed me is actually what gave the ring the power it needed to work, and prevent the incident from killing me.

January 18, perhaps the coldest day of the year. I’m up by 6:00, and decide to go for a walk, because I guess I’m insane. I was working as a sorter for a package courier, and while I didn’t work Monday mornings, I was used to being awake that early. I also had a habit of going on urban hikes alone, because I didn’t have my dog yet. I decided to go in a different direction, and essentially let myself get lost. I could always pull up the GPS on my phone if I really needed to find my way back. I ended up at this sort of pond that looked more like a puddle. To my surprise, it wasn’t frozen over. I sat myself on a rock to rest, and enjoy the quiet. And it really was quiet. I couldn’t hear trains in the distance, or cars driving by. The only reason I could tell I was still on Earth was because of the power lines that hung overhead. There was no precipitation, so I still don’t know what happened, but one of those lines snapped, and started flailing about like it was trying to sell me a used car. I leaned back, hoping to avoid getting hit by it, and slipped. I slid and rolled right into the puddle pond. I remember it not feeling cold at all, I imagine because of all the adrenaline flowing through my veins. Hypothermia likely would have gotten me in the end, but I incurred a huge boost in temperature when that powerline decided to land itself in the water, right in front of me. The electricity burst out of it, and tried to wrap itself around my body. I didn’t have time to fear for my life. All that energy found itself channeled to a single point. My ring. My shield ring was absorbing it all for me, stopping it from stopping my heart. The amount of power the ring needed to shield me was exactly as much as it was getting from the powerline. Not knowing whether this would last, however, I didn’t just sit there in awe. I stood up, and got myself out of the water. Then I ran. I ran back to my house the long way around, because the water and the shock damaged my phone beyond repair. I never told anyone what happened to me, and to this day, I cannot find that pond, or the power lines above it.

Sunday, April 11, 2021

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, August 10, 2156

Obviously the Mateo standing here was not the one who reached out to Olimpia, and told her to join this team. It could have been a future version of him, or an alternate version, or just someone masquerading as him. Either way, she seemed like good people, so they decided to keep her around, and assume that everything was totally cool. They put her through a little orientation, explaining what The Parallel was all about, how it was created, and why the team existed. She accepted all information without judgment, and no questions. She assumed everything they told her was everything they needed to tell her. They would expect this kind of relaxed behavior from someone who knew and trusted them, but a stranger should have been more cautious. Presumably, until now not being able to communicate with anyone without giving away her temporal condition just made her feel lucky to be around people who understood her. They ate, they went to bed, and they woke up three years later.
Mateo, said Amber while they were in the middle of breakfast.
“Back so soon?” Mateo asked out loud.
“I’m sorry?” Leona questioned.
“I’m on the phone,” he said, a little rudely. He didn’t need to talk to carry on a psychic conversation, but a side effect of being carefree was that Mateo was sometimes careless. “How long has it been for you, Amber?”
I’m here to serve as a psychic booster, Amber said, bypassing his question. Someone wants to talk to you, and while she’s capable of communicating across the bulkverse, I can help maintain the signal, since you and I are already bonded. She wants the whole group to hear what she has to say, so please make physical contact with your people. You can release once she’s made contact.
Mateo nodded, and held his hands out.
“You know we can’t hear whatever she’s saying to you, right?” Angela reminded him.
“Take my hands,” and unfazed Mateo clarified.
An image appeared before them, maybe a hologram, of a young woman. “My name is Thack Natalie Collins, and I live in a brane called Voldisilaverse. To give you a little background, there are three types of people with abilities. These are mutants, witches, and spirits. Mutants are the kinds you generally see on TV. Their bodies are genetically dissimilar to regular people, and this gives them some way of manipulating energies, matter, and other forces. People like you are witches in that you tap into the physical properties of the universe. It has less to do with your bodies, and is more about your minds, though there is a definite substrate component that sometimes prevents you from maintaining your abilities upon consciousness transference. I am a spirit. I possess a less defined connection to the world around me, and its peoples. My power comes from my soul. There is some chance for overlap. For instance—due to an interesting bloodline—Amber is a mutant witch spirit. But these are the three classifications, and understanding this is important in regards to what I am about to tell you.
“The Superintendent is another spirit. The reason the people in yours and my universes have free will is because, while he enjoys a great deal of influence over our worlds, he does not control them. To do that, he would need to be a witch. He also has almost zero control over his own life, for he is not a mutant. He is weak, and it is this weakness that forces him to exert as much control over the worlds he creates as possible. He is only a spirit, and he wields this power to manipulate the events across a number of branes. That number, from his perspective, is about to grow. And the more it grows, the more power he gains, and the more at risk people like you are. You’ll still have free will, but there will be some question as to how you encounter your circumstances, which determine the cards you’re dealt.
“To explain, the Superintendent did not rip you from reality so that no one you loved could remember that you existed. He altered your universe itself, making it so that you can’t exist within it during that time period. And you only returned at his behest, after Leona and her friends suffered through a series of arbitrary obstacles that he believes made for an interesting story.”
“I think I know where this is going,” Leona interjected politely. “This corrupted universe is destined to exist two years from now. Our next jump will take us seven years into it.”
“That’s right,” Thack confirmed. “Mateo, you can’t exist during that time period, and this team will move on, completely unawares. They’ll do this just as they did before, but this time, you may not come back.”
“Why wouldn’t he?” Jeremy questioned, almost upset with the messenger, but knowing that it wasn’t her fault. “Why won’t he come when we jump to...”
“Twenty-two nineteen,” Leona finished his sentence for him. “That’s after the end of the corruption.”
“Why would he?” Thack posed. “That’s not his pattern. He’s not designed to jump sixty-three years into the future. He wasn’t born that way, and those cuffs don’t make him that way. He will disappear when the clock strikes midnight, and you will forget him, and this time, you won’t have twin babies to provide the spiritual connection you’ll need to fight for his return. Because like I said, the Superintendent can’t bring him back. That, Leona, is something you did on your own, and it wasn’t his intention. He planned on removing Mateo entirely, and essentially starting a new story that focused on you. Your babies, and your freewill moved the circumstances beyond his control. You went against him, and that won’t work a second time.”
“So, what do we do?” Angela asked. “We understand the problem, now what’s the solution?”
Thack sighed, and they waited patiently for her response. “Have you ever heard of Westfall?”
“Someone mentioned that once,” Mateo said. “She didn’t say what it was. Uh...Emma.”
“I don’t want to get into the details, but there’s this theory floating around that practically every television series exists in the same universe. Due to one character crossing over to another, and then a character from that appearing in a third, and this huge complex web of crossovers and mentions, and whathaveyou, people believe they’re all connected. Well, they’re not, and Westfall explains why they’re not. Sometimes a character is just randomly dropped from one universe to another, and it’s due to a malfunction in The Crossover. The individual is transmitted, has an adventure, and goes back without ever knowing they weren’t on their same world that whole time. While the Superintendent actually has a little bit of access to Westfall—meaning he knows when it’s happened, not that he can make it happen—he doesn’t have any control over most of the universes that it’s interfered with. He’s not a writer on any of the Law and Order shows, so he can’t do anything with those characters, or those worlds.
“Mateo could survive in one of these universes, and then he could slip back. But there’s an issue. Like I said, the Superintendent can’t move him over there, or it would defeat the purpose. Plus, Westfall isn’t a consciousness, or at least it’s not in the same way you, or even I, define it. It’s probably not random, but it certainly seems that way. If Mateo wants to crossover...someone has to invite him. This someone would have to be unconnected to Mateo, or any of his universes.”
“Why would they do that?” Jeremy asked. “You’re saying a writer on a TV show has to conjure a character named Mateo, and say that he’s the Mateo from this universe?”
“It doesn’t have to be a TV show, and they don’t have to explicitly say where he’s from. They just have to strongly suggest it. And again, the Superintendent can’t write that story. There are lots of people who can cross universes, like The Prototype crew, and Meliora Rutherford, but those people can’t help here. It must be someone else.”
“Bottom line,” Leona began, “what do we do? How do we make this happen?”
Thack waited another moment. “I can reach out to other branes, like I’m doing right now. There are other storytellers who...let’s say, treat their characters as a little more real than others do. They surrender to the direction of the story, and don’t try to decide everything that happens. The character can make a suggestion to the storyteller that Mateo should show up. Keep in mind that we’re still dealing with time travel, and universes whose respective timelines are independent from each other, so nothing has to happen right away from anyone’s perspective but yours. Mateo has to disappear at the end of the day, but Westfall can drop him off wherever and whenever it wants.”
“Are you asking us for something?” Leona asked. “It seems you don’t need us to make this happen.”
“I’m a spirit,” Thack tried to explain with a smile. “I need consent. That’s what sets us apart. Mateo can choose to step aside, and let the story continue without him. I can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to. I reached out to give you the facts, but you have to ask me for help.”
“We want your help,” Leona said clearly.
Thack chuckled. “I meant that Mateo has to ask me for help.”
They looked at him with a certain assumption. The obvious response was to let her do it, but it wasn’t necessarily the wisest choice. He wanted to survive, and to exist, and to be remembered, but there was a chance the sentiment was only a gut reaction. If there was anything that the last few weeks had taught him, it was that a rush to any decision was never better than a thoughtful reflection, and as long of a discussion as necessary. “I need to speak with my counselor.”
Leona opened her mouth to argue.
“Please...” he stopped her before she could say a word, “respect my wishes.”
Mateo went off to another level to consult Amber in private. A grumpy Leona sat at the table impatiently. She asked Thack what her husband and the soul psychic were talking about, but Thack reiterated the part about consent, and refused to eavesdrop. She didn’t say whether she could eavesdrop anyway. Mateo had his decision ready ten minutes later, but spoke only to Thack, and never revealed it to Leona, or his team. They would either find out in sixty-three years...or never worry about it again.

Wednesday, August 5, 2020

Microstory 1423: The First Mage Games

Later Mage Selection Games would come with better organization, and a better understanding of how to measure a competitor’s potential to become a great town mage. That didn’t mean, however, that the first one went terribly. Well, at least it could have been worse. There were some bumps, and some mistakes they wish they could take back, but in the end, it got the job done, and all the winners went on to prove to be good choices. The source mages were careful to plan it out, so things wouldn’t just fall apart. They spent a great deal of time working on coming up with appropriate challenges, because they were going to have less help with it than they did for other aspects of the new government. While the Mage Protectorate was definitely going to be a democracy, that didn’t mean everyone had to be able to express their opinion about everything. They chose not to ask the people how they wanted to handle this competition. They didn’t even consult their experts all that much. If they alone couldn’t figure out what made someone worthy of being a mage, then they were not worthy of being mages either. Besides, letting a regular person design a challenge could put the entire process in danger. If the fastest runner on the high school cross country team, for instance, suggested every town mage had to be able to run a mile in five minutes, well, that person was obviously just setting themselves up to win. The source mages were the only ones entirely ineligible to compete, so they were the only ones capable of engineering it.

The contest would last the whole day, and be composed of a series of challenges, each testing various aspects of character. They didn’t come up with a list of character traits, though, and try to match each challenge with one trait. A given challenge could allow a competitor to exhibit multiple traits, and in different ways from each other. Some of them were physical in nature, while others were academic, and some were psychological or emotional. The scoring system proved to be, by far, the most difficult component to specify. Was athleticism more important than intelligence? Maybe, maybe not. They needed experience to understand which influenced time power aptitude the most, or if neither of them mattered. They didn’t have very many examples to go on, and they didn’t want a bunch of test subjects running around with powers, who had never gone through the competition. So, without this data, their best guess seemed to be their only option. They kind of had to surrender to the fact that the second time they tried this, in twenty years, was going to be better than the first. The town had to understand this as well, that nothing was going to be perfect. Even ignoring these issues, they didn’t know if they ought to only award points to the winner, or winners, or if losers simply received fewer points. The answer was obvious to most of the mages; just because a competitor wasn’t the best, didn’t mean they weren’t good at all. Few should be so bad at something that they received zero points for their effort. Still, how many points was a challenge worth, and how would they determine the increments of scale, and how they would rate a competitor’s performance with very little in the way of comparison? Standards. How would they set a standard, and how exactly would they know when someone reached, or surpassed it, and if someone surpassed it too greatly, did that just mean they needed to reexamine the standard? All of these questions took months to answer, and even then, as previously mentioned, the system proved to be less than ideal, and more importantly, not entirely fair. So the first Mage Games actually took place over the course of two days, which were separated by a month of repreperation time. They should have known that the best way to see how well the competition would go was to do a dry-run ahead of time. Even though history would remember the Mage Protectorate as having held four games total before it fell, there were technically five, but most agreed that the first one didn’t count.