Extremus: Year 84

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Tinaya Leithe was reportedly on an away mission for eleven years before she finally returned home, which is not exactly a lie; it’s just not the whole truth. The passengers of Extremus are aware that there are some excursions away from the ship, and that it always involves some form of time travel. They’re aware that someone managed to go rogue decades ago, and found a civilization millennia in the past. They don’t know who this person was, or how many of his acolytes have infiltrated Extremus, but they know that these people exist. They do know about Verdemus, but they don’t know that the crew maintained a persistent connection to it for years. They also don’t know that a permanent connection has finally been established in the form of two new Nexa that Omega and Valencia built on either end. Given enough time, everyone presently on board could theoretically go there. They could travel back and forth, or abandon the grand mission altogether. Publicizing the events surrounding the colony has been proposed as a viable option, though some are taking it more seriously than others.

Tinaya stands at the bottom of the steps. Everyone currently in-the-know is sitting on them, patiently awaiting the beginning of her presentation. Culture on the Extremus is a hodge podge from all sorts of different originating cultures. They come from Earth, Durus, Ansutah, Gatewood, and Extremus itself. Each time their ancestors moved—or had been moved—to a different place, they adopted new traditions and practices. One of the customs that they picked up from their time in the Gatewood Collective is the concept of a Devil’s Advocate debate. In a stalemate, or a state of ethical dilemma, two opposing forces will settle their differences by arguing each other’s positions. Tinaya believes that they should reveal the truth about the planet to the passengers. They should lay it all out on the table, and let the chips fall where they may. She will thusly be arguing against that. She takes a deep breath as if she’s about to start talking, but she doesn’t.

“Have you not prepared?” Lataran asks in a faux English accent. “She believes in maintaining the secrecy of Verdemus, and their integration into the Nexus network. Not only does it allow them to travel back and forth freely, but it gives them a lifeline to anywhere else in the galaxy that has one of their own machines. People could just go live on Earth, or Teagarden. To her, letting anyone go would set a dangerous precedent. They could lose everything. What they’ve built here could fall apart, and turn the whole mission into a joke...a footnote. Thusly, when it’s her turn to speak, she’ll be arguing in favor of transparency.

“Point of order,” Councilman Modlin argues. He’s serving as the mediator in this debate, because he remains undecided. “The Devil will not speak until the Angel is finished.” It is the Devil’s job to advocate for some sort of change in the status quo, or at least a greater change. In D.A. proceedings, there is no back and forth. Only the mediator and audience members may ask questions, or make comments.

Lataran opens her mouth to apologize, but the rules are clear, and strict. She’s not even allowed to do that. So she just nods, and turns back to face her opponent.

Tinaya is grateful for the delay. She is prepared, but she’s afraid of winning. That’s the fascinating reason for the practice. The better you are, the more likely you are to win, which actually means that you lose. More often than not, it manages to poke holes in everyone’s argument, and the result ends up being the proverbial Door Number Three. It shows people the compromise that they were unwilling to recognize before, because they’re too far on one side of the spectrum. They can’t see it until someone forces them as far to the opposite side as possible. But in this last second, she has changed her mind. “I’m ready.” She clears her throat, and pulls up a list on the smartboard. It contains all the bad things that have happened on the ship since it launched that have been known to be caused by the Exins. “This is what the Exin Empire has done to us. These are attacks and sabotages carried out by agents of the enemy.” She clicks the remote. Sub-bullets appear between the items. “These are the consequences of those actions, rippling out from the attacks in ways that could not have been predicted.”

She gives the group time to read through them. She did not only create this for illustrative purposes. Some people in the audience may need to be reminded of the specific events, and a few, like Aristotle and Niobe, weren’t around to see it, nor study it in school. She clicks again. “This is what time looks like.” On the screen is the name Jeremy Bearimy in cursive. It’s a reference to a popular TV show on Earth, which claimed this to be the shape that time makes in the afterlife, as opposed to the traditional linear model. It’s a joke, really, but still canonical. There actually is a real man named Jeremy Bearimy who was given this name by a fan of the show who found him as an infant, unwittingly playing into what would become the boy’s unusual temporal pattern. Time doesn’t really so perfectly look like this in the real world, but it’s a closer approximation than a straight line. Tinaya points to the r in the surname. “If the Exins find out about Verdemus at this point. All they’ll have to do is wait until time gets back to here to wipe us all out. She traces the loops and curves forward before pulling all the way back to the beginning of the name, and starting over. All she’s really saying is that it doesn’t matter when the Exins find out that Verdemus wasn’t destroyed. They would be able to use this information to change the past.

“So, you’re saying that we have to keep it a secret forever,” Belahkay figures.

“Yes,” Tinaya confirms. “When time travel is involved, there’s no getting past it. Your past might be waiting for you in the future.” She clears her throat again, and sets her pointer down.

“That’s it?” Councilman Modlin questions.

“That is the breadth of Lataran’s position. The only reason to keep it secret from the passengers is that some of them may be spies, if only unknowingly.”

Lataran perks up, and tries to argue, but she can’t. Not only is it still not her turn, but she’s not responsible for her own position. She has to stay on the opposite side until the debate is over. She has to pretend to be against herself.

Spirit decides to help her out. “I think that what the Captain wishes she could say is that it’s more nuanced than that. There’s a lot that you’re leaving out.”

“Madam Leithe, you are failing to understand the assignment. You’re expected to rigorously argue your opponent’s position as if it were your own. You’re expected to act in the spirit of healthy debate, not lose on purpose to win in the real world.”

“I’m not,” Tinaya contends. “I agree with her now.” She looks over her shoulder at the Bearimy model. “This is all that matters. The Exins are the greatest existential threat that we face. And they look just like us. There is no way to know who among us would help them, and hurt us. They didn’t infiltrate Extremus, they didn’t even infiltrate Gatewood. They infiltrated Durus. They covertly landed on the rogue world centuries ago, bred a secret society, the descendants of which would later travel through The Abyss, and into Ansutah. Their descendants maintained this secret society over the course of two thousand years before humans escaped that universe, and came back here. Their descendants then boarded Extremus, and now, their descendants are here. Over a hundred generations apart, and they still act against us. That’s commitment. And there is no competing with it. Honestly, I don’t know if we can trust the people in this room.”

“I must say,” Arqut jumped in, “that we don’t know for sure that that’s how the Exins ever infiltrated us. We’ve just not been able to pinpoint the origin of the spies that we’ve discovered. That doesn’t mean they go all the way back to the Durus days. There are and were billions of people in Gatewood. It would not be that hard to sneak someone aboard one of the cylinders, even only days before Extremus launched.”

“The fact is,” Tinaya stresses, “that they were here, and could still be here, and we’ve never been able to catch them until they’ve done something bad. No one can know about Verdemus,” she says firmly. “We can’t even just not tell anyone about it. We have to destroy the Nexa. And before we do...” She trails off, at first to pause for dramatic effect, but she becomes so comfortable in the silence that she finds it hard to get out.

“Before we do...?” Niobe encourages.

“Before we do,” Tinaya repeats, “everyone here has to go back to the other side, and stay there until death.”

They all scoff or shake their heads. “What?” Spirit asks.

Tinaya shakes right back. “We’re too dangerous. What if, say, Aristotle meets someone special, and mumbles something about it in his sleep? What if Lilac gets drunk, and spills the beans to a random fellow patron at the speakeasy?” She doesn’t actually know whether there is a speakeasy. She just assumes that drinking alcohol is around here somewhere. “We can’t. Trust. Anyone.” She emphasizes. “There are people already on that planet. I didn’t put them there, I didn’t authorize them, but it can’t be undone.” Actually, it could be if they wanted it bad enough. “We’re not just protecting the Extremus mission. We’re protecting them too.” The number of people who are a threat to the safety and security of the planet is exactly the same as the number of people who would be a risk if someone leaked any information. Then again, that has always been the case. They are under constant threat.

“If we don’t trust the people on the ship to not be spies, what the hell are we doing here? What’s the point?” Lataran blurts out.

“The Devil will wait her turn,” Councilman Modlin declares.

“No, it doesn’t matter. I switched sides too. “Tinaya, these people need to know that there’s a choice now. None of us was around when Extremus was first being conceived.” We didn’t choose to go on the mission, but we have a choice now. I’m going to stay as this is my home, but we can’t speak for everyone else. There is a movement,” she admits. “It’s small, but growing. Some people do want to leave. They want to live on a planet. They’re angry that we left Verdemus in our rearview mirror. Some even think that we should turn around. Now that we have a way to go back without turning the whole ship around, don’t we have an obligation to present it as an option? Don’t we owe those people that much?”

“Where does it end?” Tinaya asks. “Do we place a cap on the number of emigrants? What if everyone chooses to leave? What if they change their minds?”

“I’ve thought of that. Everyone will have maybe a week to make their decision, and submit their application for resettlement. After that, there are no take-backs, and no late additions. You go, and you stay gone, and you can only travel to Verdemus. We’ll lock the computers out of all other destinations.”

“Wait, let me get this straight,” Tinaya begins, realizing that this Devil’s Advocate debate has officially gone off the rails. “You want to tell them the truth about Verdemus, but lie about the Nexa’s true limitations?”

“They’re apparently called Mark III Nexa.” Lantern uses airquotes. “Yes, we could argue that they can’t be on the full network; that they can only go to each other. That way, everyone stays out of the Goldilocks Corridor, and even the stellar neighborhood. I’m advocating for transparency, not one hundred percent transparency. There is a line, I believe in lines.”

Tinaya sighs, and steps over to the wall. There aren’t very many viewports on this vessel. Most of them are viewscreens, and even then, there’s usually nothing to see that isn’t fake. Their ancestors could look out a window to see Gatewood, and their descendants will hopefully one day look out to see the Extremus planet. But for now, it’s nothing but the doppler glow, and that’s blinding unless the glass is heavily tinted. That’s what this viewport does; show what it really looks like outside the ship as it’s traveling at the highest fraction of lightspeed at an extreme dimness. She turns the tint down just a little bit to make it a little bit brighter.

Lataran stands up, and approaches—not her opponent—but her friend. She places a hand on Tinaya’s back. “Word will get out. We may both be dead by then, but people will learn what we did. Do you want them to think that we didn’t trust them, or that we believed in them? Would you rather force everyone to stay on a mission that no one cares about anymore than let everyone leave, and just accept that as our fate? Our parents’ parents wanted us to get to the other side of the galaxy. That was their dream. And it’s still mine, even though I won’t be alive to see it. It’s not necessarily anyone else’s though. And I want them to be happy too.”

“I think we both well know that you can be alive to see it if you so wish.”

Lataran nods. “Yes. But it’s still up to us to keep this thing moving, and when we’re gone, regardless of how we answer The Question, we’ll have to hope that our children will keep it going for even longer. But if they don’t—” She reaches up to turn Tinaya’s chin away from the window. “If they don’t, Tinaya...then that will be okay too. It will not be a dishonor to our ancestors. It’s up to us to choose our own fate, and if our grandparents loved and love us as much as they should, they’ll understand.” She looks through the viewport now. “We don’t even know where we’re going. Maybe we were always on our way to Verdemus.”

Tinaya smiles softly at her best friend. “They were right to choose you as Captain. You were made for this job. You remind me of Halan Yenant.”

“I should be so lucky,” Lataran replies. She looks over at the crowd, who all suddenly start to pretend that they’re not watching them. Omega probably has an implant that allows him to hear their whispers. “Don’t be so quick to count yourself out as a good Captain too. You’re not dead yet.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Lataran gives her a hug, then releases. “Come on. This debate is over, but we need to come to a consensus. It’s not just about convincing each other. Everyone has a say. I’m sure Vaska will have a lot to say when she comes back from the planet.”

They return to the group, and keep talking it through. They eventually come to decide on partial transparency, but determining exactly what that entails warrants much more discussion. And some outside help.

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Microstory 1878: Devoted to Self

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I dedicated my life to the attainment of absolute goodness and purity. I believe in evil. I believe in the Devil. And of course, I believe in God. I was born into a family of hedonistic atheists, who cared for nothing but earthly pursuits. They did not study the bible, and they had no faith. For the ones who died before me, I know that they are now in hell. They have to be, for they did not heed the word of our Lord and Savior. I heed it, and it’s all thanks to an amazing little girl I met on the school bus. She went real dark for our first discussion, talking about God’s wrath, and the punishment man has faced due to his sins. I was so scared, I went straight to church immediately after school, and had to walk all the way back home afterwards. My parents were so upset and worried, but they should have been worried for themselves. For I had just begun the long walk on a road of righteousness, and they were filled to the brim with sin. It was not easy, learning everything I needed to be a good Christian, but I never gave up, and I never compromised. Here’s what I believe. I believe that a woman has the right to choose what to do with her own body...unless that choice affects the life of another. I can’t understand how it could be any other way. Yes, you have personal autonomy, but so does the child. You cannot take that away from it. I mean, it’s not okay to kill people after they’re born, is it? I mean, I guess you have to if you’re in a war. And I suppose some criminals need to be dealt with to a level of irreversibility. This world must be cleansed from sin, and sometimes death is the only way to achieve that goal. But that baby is not evil, is it? I mean, I guess it is, because of original sin. But still, leave it alone!

The point is that there is only one path to Heaven, and I’ve finally reached the end of it, so my reward is near. All those people, dedicating their time to worthless endeavors, like the accumulation of wealth. I earned my money the right way, by raising and slaughtering cattle to nourish the world by my man’s side. I do not value material possessions. I constructed a large house to shelter my family, because God says to be fruitful and multiply. I own a nice car, so I don’t have to buy a new one every year. I make it last at least five years, or it gets too old, it’s not worth it anymore. I shop at boutique shops, because they always have the best stuff. And of course, I eat gourmet food, because that is the healthiest kind. But other than that, my entire self is devoted to God, and his teachings. Everything I do is to serve him, and his will. I haven’t even counted the number of people that I’ve converted to the side of light using The Good Word. Though I’m sure they number in the thousands; maybe even tens of thousands. But you don’t hear me bragging about that, because pride is a deadly sin. I am a sinful woman, just like anyone, but I make up for it, unlike all those other people who insist on spitting in the face of truth. I can’t wait to see what the eternal paradise looks like. Oh, it will be so grand. Every need will be provided for me, and I shall sit under the throne of our Creator. This is it; it’s everything that I’ve been working for. All those backbreaking hours at the charity galas and church bake sales will finally be worth it. I hope they serve rosé. Oh, tee-hee-hee, I’m just kidding, but really, I’m not. Because I deserve it. I’m a good person. No, I’m a great person. Nay, I’m the best. Feel free to take me now, Jesus. I’m ready.

Microstory 919: Decline in Child Mortality

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Wow, this is a depressing topic, isn’t it? Any attempt at being positive will be overshadowed by how dark the subject is. Before I started this entry, I was doing research, and what I learned was something I’ve already intuited, about a number of other concepts. It may not seem like any, or much, progress is being made, because people lack the historical references to understand what has changed. You’ve only been alive yourself for so long, and you can only understand so much about what things were like before you. I often hear arguments for going back to the way things were that involve claims that we did things that way for so long, and our ancestors did fine. Well, no, that’s not true. Before the nineteenth century, the child mortality rate was roughly fifty percent. This means that, for every one child that was born, and lived past five years old, one child did not. Medical science was severely lacking, as you would expect; utilizing treatment techniques that would be laughable today, if not outright horrifying. Sanitization was difficult to come by, if not virtually nonexistent. And people simply did not know how to care for children as well. Part of this was not their fault, but part of it was. Things were once so bad, that offspring were seen as a means of continuing one’s legacy, rather than family to be cherished. The Abrahamistic God, in his infinite cruelty, one killed a man’s entire family, just to prove the man would continue to love him. He and Satan teamed up for a wacky adventure where they destroyed this man’s life, taking everything from him, in an attempt to win an argument between each other. Of course, being the Bible, God won the bet. He used his power to not just restore Job to his former state, but make his life better than it was. He didn’t do this by undoing his own actions, but simply by replacing his wife and children with a whole new set. That’s right, people were living in such wretchedness, that a human could be replaced by another, and no one would bat an eye. We don’t know what the child mortality rate was back then, but I’m guessing it wasn’t great. I’ll never understand this need to trust in a higher power that would ever kill a human being for some “grand design”. How despicable an entity you would have to be to ever do that, much less to a child. I have big plans for the future, and none of them includes killing any children, and I hope yours don’t either. Things are getting better, but like any progress I’ve mentioned on this site, or not mentioned, there is always room for improvement. We must seek a state of zero child mortality, and the only way for us to do that is to embrace advancement, reject counterproductive nostalgia, and abandon religious superstition.

Microstory 884: Sap-Tinted Glasses

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A few years ago, I was wandering the Maze Market, which is this monthly event some organization puts up in the middle of Freelake Park. It looks just like a marketplace you might find in Egypt, or some other Middle Eastern country. It’s hard to navigate, and it’s always packed for the whole day. I spot this booth where no one else was buying anything. The woman working there is watching people go about their business, not attempting to draw any customers, but also not completely over it, and reading a book. She looked like she was just content with the view, and was good either way. She had very few things to sell; a few hats, some jewelry, and this pair of glasses that really caught my eye. They kind of looked like the kind Ringo was known for wearing, but they were also unique. I just had to have them. As the clerk was completing the transaction, she didn’t even look at me, and I realized that she was waiting for someone else. I almost felt bad about giving her a measly five dollars, like maybe she was so distracted, she didn’t realize what I was buying. But after I started walking away, she said one thing; that the glasses would show me the truth. I turned around to ask for clarification, but she was gone, as was her booth. I was so freaked out that I never put on those glasses; not even once. But then my friend noticed them hanging on my bedroom mirror earlier today, and suggested I bring them with us to a new club called Pandemonium tonight. By now, all of my reservations had been vanquished, so I shrugged, and agreed.

We walk up to the club, and she reminds me that I need to stand out if I want to get past the bouncer, which explains why she has a long scarf tied around both of her thighs. Apparently you don’t get into this place by being pretty or rich, but by being interesting, and memorable. I playfully scoff at how silly this all his, but put the glasses on, just the same. It’s the only noteworthy thing about me, except maybe that my top is a little tight, and it seems to work. The bouncer totally digs it, and opens the door for us. I’m horrified when I walk in. The entire place is covered in, like, this green fungal sap. Some people have maggots crawling all over their faces, but that’s nothing compared to what I see front and center. A monster twice as tall, and three times as wide as any man is standing in the DJ Booth. His eyes are on his neck, and there are several rows of teeth in his mouth, which never seems to close. He doesn’t have horns, per se, but his head turns up on the sides. My God is he ugly. He’s got headphones on, but only one ear is covered, like you would expect from any normal DJ. He’s hyping up the crowd, and promoting his radio station, 66.6 The Pit. How is everyone okay with this, I think, but then I remember the glasses. I tip them down with my finger, and look above the lenses. Everything appears perfectly normal. The monster is gone, replaced by just a regular douche, and the walls look clean. I look through the glasses once more, and then without them, and then with them again. The woman must not have been lying; these things show me the truth. They do something else to me, though. The more I stare at the monster DJ, the more I have the urge to commit great violence against him. My rage doesn’t subside, even when I take the glasses off completely, and I know that the only way to satiate my need is to just get it over with. After an hour, he leaves his booth for a break, and is followed by two bouncers, which look like miniature versions of him when I’m wearing the truth glasses. I realize that the glasses also give me this strength the more I wear them, so I have to keep them on. Killing all three of them is the most effortless thing I’ve done in my whole life. I can’t believe how quickly they go down, and it’s exhilarating. Once it’s over, though, the shame and guilt set in. And the fear. I take the glasses off, and see that the monster disappears, just as before. He still looks entirely human to everyone else. No one would believe me if I claimed that he was the Devil, and these were his two demon assistants. I’ve heard of people like that, and they always end up between four padded walls. I drag the bodies into the janitor’s closet, and try to sneak back out of the bathroom. The club owner suddenly walks up to me and says, “where have you been? You get two minutes for the bathroom, like we agreed. Hey, where’re your goons? Whatever, just get back up there. The people want those beats!” Now I’m the monster.

Missy’s Mission: Metas, Worlds, and Pieces (Part X)

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Both Dar’cy and the supercharger looked around in a panic. “Are you sure?” Dar’cy asked. “We didn’t do a headcount, maybe it just looks like there are fewer people here because we have more space.”

“Cassius!” a woman began to cry out, along with several other people, looking for their respective loved ones.

“Pretty sure,” Missy said.

“Oh my God,” Dar’cy said, dropping her head.

“What have we done?” the supercharger asked rhetorically.

“We have to go back,” Dar’cy declared.

Suddenly a teenager teleported in between the main players, and the crowd. He was wearing a funny hat, and darting his head back and forth. “Who are you people? What are you doi—” He stopped when his eyes met with that of supercharger’s. “Umm...it’s not safe here,” he stammered. “For, uh, humans.”

“Where is it safe?” Missy asked him.

He scoffed. “Eden Island.”

“Great. Take us there.”

“It’s on the other side of the planet,” he clarified.

“You can teleport.”

He flicked the bill of his cap. “This is what lets me teleport. I can’t take everyone with me.”

Supercharger took hat guy’s hand in hers, reminding Missy that she needed to be better at learning people’s names. “Together, we can.” The energy pulsated between the two of them, causing a new temporal bubble to form around the crowd. Before the people who were missing family members could protest, they had made the jump to a beach.

Curtis stepped forward, doing his best as a leader. “Okay, everyone who’s missing someone, come with me. Everyone who’s fine with staying here...go collect firewood, or something.”

Dar’cy felt responsible, so she went with them, but that all had nothing to do with Missy, so she stuck around. The hormonal teens were still holding onto each other’s hands, even though it was no longer necessary.

Missy cleared her throat. “Did The Weaver make that for you?” she asked the boy, referring to a chooser on Earth with the power to imbue objects with metatemporal properties.

“Oh this?” The boy pulled off the hat, and tossed it over to her. He couldn’t take his eyes off the girl. “It’s made from a teleporter’s hair, as a gift to the primary gods, so they could always escape danger. I stole it, because I need it more than Esen does.”

“This is human hair?” Missy was generally pretty open-minded, but there was a line, and body parts were on the other side of it. She let it fall to the ground.

The boy ignored her. “I’m Avidan. My mom called me Avi. My mama called me Dan.”

The girl was as enthralled with him as he with her. “Savitri. Just...Savitri.” She giggled.

They still had not let go. “I feel something when we touch,” Avidan said.

“Me too,” she agreed.

“I bet,” Missy sassed.

“No, it’s not that. I mean, it’s definitely still that. You are...” he stopped talking, but his face was saying wow. “I can diagnose people’s time powers, but when I touch you, I don’t just see you. I see what we can do together. What we will do. There’s a future for us.”

“I can’t see that, Savitri admitted, to his sadness. “But I...I can see it. In the figurative sense. What does our future look like?”

Avidan broke his gaze for the first time in a million years. “Why are these people here?”

“We all want to get rid of our time powers, and our journeys have led us here,” Missy answered. “Well, I guess not all of us. My friend just came with me to help.”

“I’m not here for that either,” Savitri explained. “I accidentally tore open a microscopic tear in spacetime, and ended up here.”

“Wait, you didn’t walk through the haze on Durus?” Missy questioned.

She was still watching Avidan. “What’s a Durus?”

It had been a long time since Missy had encountered anyone who didn’t know what Durus was. “What year do you think it is?”

“Uh, we estimated it was, like, 2004? There was no sun on Blightworld.”

“I think you were on Durus,” Missy postulated. “I think you were there before it had a name.”

“Oh,” she said, unperturbed. “Okay.”

They were silent for a beat before Missy broke it again, “Avidan, what do you see in the future?”

“I can’t literally see the future. I can feel love. Between the two us. And I can...” he trailed off.

“Go on,” Savitri encouraged.

“I can feel the product of that love,” he went on.

“You mean, like, a child?” Savitri asked. She was intrigued when she should have been creeped out.

Avidan took Missy’s arm in his free hand. “And I feel the end of your quest.”

“A supercharger and a diagnostician,” Missy started to work out in her head. Both of you are metachoosers.”

“What’s a metachooser?”

“It’s someone whose power has something to do with other people’s powers. If the rest of us didn’t exist, your powers wouldn’t either.” She started mostly talking to herself. “For the most part, time powers aren’t hereditary. They’re not even always genetic. But it has been known to happen. Daria Matic was a Savior, and her brother The Kingmaker. They both jump in and save people’s lives; they just do it at different times, and in different ways.”

“What does this have to do with us?” Avidan asked.

“What if this is it? What if we’re all here because your child can take away people’s powers? Everything has been leading us to this.”

“We just met,” Savitri pointed out.

“And I’m not ready for that,” Avidan said, embarrassed, though he needn’t be.

“We all ended up right here, right now. That doesn’t mean we get what we’re looking for immediately. Savitri, you came here with us, so we were always going to have to wait for time to catch up with us. There is no pressure to speed up this relationship, if there even will be one. I have zero intention of telling anyone what we’re thinking, not even my partner.”

Speaking of Missy’s partner, Dar’cy suddenly screamed, “no!” from the meeting. It was accompanied by an uproar from everyone else.

As Missy and the lovebirds were rushing up to see what was the matter, they could see Lucius stepping away from the angry mob. “Back up! Stay back! he demanded. “I can do the same to you—all of you, all at once—and I don’t even need Savitri’s help!”

Missy slid onto her knees in front of Dar’cy, who was hovering over a pile of what looked like ash. “Oh my God, who was that?”

Dar’cy shook her head, and sniffled. “It was no one. It was the wrench.” She looked up at Lucius, clingy tears trembling on her eye sockets. “He destroyed it.”

Missy stood up and confronted Lucius straight on, unmoved by his stature. “Why would you do that?”

“No one’s going back to the future. I won’t allow it,” he replied.

“Don’t you understand that you just created a new timeline? Everyone standing here potentially has a duplicate of themselves, running around the timeline.”

“Exactly,” Lucius agreed. “They’re alive.”

“What? You did that on purpose?”

“If the wrench no longer exists in the future, Dar’cy and Savitri can’t thread it back to this moment. If they don’t do that, everyone there survives. They are not the duplicates...we are.”

“And what happens to this new timeline’s versions of us? They’ll still come to this world, but they’ll have no escape.”

“I gave them a fighting chance,” Lucius argued, “if that ends up happening, which I’m not sure it does. I suspect we all heard of this magical place that can take away time powers because we ended up going back in time, and started spreading the news. Now that won’t happen.”

“You can be sure of nothing,” Missy reminded him.

“Can anyone ever?” With that, he turned and disappeared past the treeline.

Dar’cy reached down and tried to gather the pieces of the wrench, which had gotten all mixed up with the sand.

“What are you doing, love?”

She wiped the snot from her face. “Maybe someone can put it back together. Maybe someone has the opposite power that Lucius does. Or did, rather, since I’m gonna kill him for this.”

Missy knelt back down. “Darce. This is not your fault.”

“It’s mine,” Dubravka confessed.

“How’s that?”

“I broke through the bubble to put Adamina back into the timestream,” Dubra said. “The half that didn’t come through were standing on that side of the room.”

Missy stood back up yet again. “We don’t know that you had anything to do with anything.” She stepped back, and raised her voice to address the crowd. “Take note of that, everybody! We don’t know anything! Time is a mysterious bitch, and I think we’ve all figured that out, or we wouldn’t be here, trying to get our powers removed. No one is to blame for this, not even Lucius! We don’t know if your loved ones are even still in the future. Maybe they went further into the future, or to a different moment in the past, or another planet, or even another universe! Hell, they could have landed five months ago, and we just haven’t found them yet!”

“Uh, that’s not possible,” Avidan piped up. “I showed up because I sensed your arrival. I would have sensed them too.”

“Shut up, Danny,” Missy spat. “Does everyone understand, or are you trying to figure out how to build torches and pitchforks from scratch?”

No one answered, but they didn’t act ready to riot.

Missy took a breath for the first time since they got here. “Now, the end of our quests might still be here, because again, we don’t know the nature of the thing! I suggest we start helping the others make camp!” She looked over to Savitri and Avidan while she said one final thing, “remember...patience is a virtue!”

Everyone spread out, evidently taking her advice to heart. There was no shortage of food to eat here on what may very well have been the inspiration for the fictional representation of Eden in Abrahamistic proof texts. A few people came up to her and thanked her for her words. It was comforting to realize that, though they all had amazing temporal powers, they were still just as clueless as everyone else. There were just some things that were impossible to understand, and life went a lot easier if you assumed the best. Optimists lived longer. But there was one man who was not working. Instead he just stared at Missy eerily from a distance.

She slowly approached the man, who remained steadfast. “Can I help you?”

“The wrench will be fine,” he said, almost as if he was trying to reassure her.

“You can see the future?” she asked, not surprised to be meeting a seer. It might have been the most common time power.

“I see everything. For now...”

“What do you mean, everything?”

“I see all of time and space. Everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen, across the entire universe.”

“I’ve never heard of that.”

“I’m one of a kind,” he explained.

“And you’re trying to get rid of your powers because all that information hurts?”

He looked over her shoulder, right at the happy new couple.

“Do you know what happens to them?” she asked.

“Yes, very sad.”

“What’s your name?”

He shook her hand. “Lincoln Isaac Rutherford.”

She laughed. “I know Lincoln Rutherford. Though I don’t think anyone told me his power. And I know you’re not him. I mean, ya...kinda look like him. But I would recognize him.”

The man who claimed to be Lincoln pulled at an invisible mask on his face. It wouldn’t come off entirely, but stretched away from his skin, like a smudge of ink from a marker not given enough time to dry. The mask shuddered, like a dying lightbulb. A second face peeked out from underneath the top layer in this unbelievably disquieting sight. She still couldn’t recognize Lincoln, but the face she was seeing was definitely not the real one.

“What in the actual ass is that?” she asked. “And why do I keep saying that?”

“It’s a motif, don’t worry about it,” he said as he was returning his face to normal. I’m kind of, uhh...famous in this universe.”

“Famous how?”

He tilted his head back and forth. “Famous in the way that a red guy with horns and a pitchfork is famous in our universe.”

“They think you’re the devil?”

“A little bit?”

“Why would they think that?”

“I might have gotten drunk one time, and predicted a bunch of bad things that did happen. Anyway, The Superintendent sent me to a guy who could give me an illusory face, but I cannot get it off. So I’m stuck looking like this until I get my powers stripped, and they let me go back home.”

“They?”

“They! Them!” he yelled, but was acting like it was but a joke. “Anyway, I was just trying to tell you that I know how this ends. The wrench is not dead. You were right about those two kids, and the part about us needing to be patient.”

“If you end up losing your powers, how can you see anything beyond you losing your powers?” she prodded.

“Because I have my powers now. I don’t see the future. They’re memories, and those memories won’t go away until they’re deleted, and when they are, I don’t know what I’m gonna be left with.”

“It sounds like you don’t wanna do this.”

He sighed. “I don’t. I was forced here.”

“By who?”

“An actual god.” He paused for a moment. “I better go help. You’re a good leader, Melissa Atterberry,” he said as he was walking away backwards. “Maybe you should explore that.”

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