Microstory 2378: Earth, October 21, 2179

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Dear Velia,

I know what it’s like to feel a connection to a place or event that I’ve never actually been a part of. That’s what happens when I’m reading a good book. Corinthia and I have been reading The Winfield Files, and watching the corresponding seasons of the adaptation. Even though the stories are very personal and intimate for the characters that we’re following, the writer manages to do a great job of going into great detail with everything that’s happening around them. It’s set in a fictional universe, but it almost plays like historical fiction, because the background is so rich and intricate. It might as well be a version of Earth that really does exist somewhere out there. I sometimes feel more attached to it than my own world, probably because of all the darkness and sadness that has defined our past down here. I also know what it’s like to have a job that makes sense for you, but isn’t necessarily something you would have chosen if you had had every option. My dad was good at what he did, and it was more practical for us to stick together, which meant me finding my own way to contribute by becoming a sort of flight attendant. I don’t know what I would have done if I lived in the kind of world that I read about in some of the classics. The tales are fascinating, but they take place in mundane settings. If you were privileged, you got an education, and pursued your dreams. Not everyone was able to do what they wished, of course, but it was at least there in front of them. We lost so many options when society fell apart. I think maybe, if I were one of the lucky ones, I might have become a scholar. I could have dedicated my life to learning, and possibly become a teacher. I appreciate the characters who wear nice but not overly fancy clothing, and spend their days indoors, reading books of their own, and searching for answers. In the real world, it’s always been about survival, but in a more perfect world, we would mostly have everything that we needed, and could focus on things that aren’t absolutely vital. What would you do if you were born on Earth, and the poisonous gases never befell the lands? Do you think you would have gone into fashion anyway, or is there anything else you find yourself daydreaming about. I must say, you’re not bad at what you do, if the outfit you’re wearing in your photo is any indication. In my opinion, it’s not too much cleavage, though I admit to being a bit biased. I hope it’s not too forward to say that you’ve a very beautiful woman.

Warmly,

Condor

Microstory 2325: Earth, November 10, 2178

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Dear Corinthia,

I had a dream last night, instead of responding to your letter in a reasonable amount of time. All that happened in this dream was that I sat on my computer to write a message to my father. It’s been frustrating, anticipating his return. You may be okay with waiting for answers, or even never getting them, but I don’t think I can do that. I appreciate your plea to not leave the dome, and I promise that I won’t go try to intercept him. I suppose my brain was trying to reconcile that, so it came up with a fantasy scenario where I got to tell him off anyway, and express how I really feel about what he may or may have done to us. I don’t normally write or read in dreams, but now that you and I are connecting almost every week, my mind is getting used to the concept on a subconscious level. The dream felt so real, and even does now that I’m awake. If I had been flying over the oceans, or fighting off giant monsters, my waking self would acknowledge that that couldn’t have happened, and been able to move on. But this, the way that it was so mundane, and something that I actually could have done, I can’t let it go. What’s even more annoying is that I can’t even remember what was in the letter! I keep sitting down to rewrite it in the real world, but nothing comes out. I will never get it back, which is a shame, because it was so perfect. That’s how it seemed anyway. I know that it wasn’t real, but it feels like I spent a lot of time crafting a perfect speech, and now, not only is it gone, but it probably wasn’t all that relevant. It was most likely total nonsense. And I still need to come up with something good. I need to write him something for real, whether it’s as amazingly pointed as the fake original or not. On top of this whole ordeal, I didn’t get very much sleep. Or rather I didn’t wake up well-rested. So maybe I should wait to write it either way. Maybe I should delete what I’ve written to you here, and start over with your letter too. What do you think? Give me your thoughts on this message right away, so I can write you a new one tomorrow if I need to. Lol, I’m joking, but I really should get some sleep, because it almost feels like breaking the laws of physics makes sense as an idea.

Your catfish,

Condor

Microstory 2114: Dream to Fiction

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Let’s set aside for the moment the fact that I’m a traveler from another universe, and that all of the characters that I’ve written about are real people, living somewhere out there in the bulk. Let’s suggest that I’m just a normal creative storyteller whose stories come out of his mindbrain, just as they would for anyone else. Let’s talk about how this process began and developed over the course of more than two decades, and let’s pretend that I never left my world of origin. I was thirteen years old when I officially became a writer. My local radio personality would say that I shouldn’t be allowed to call myself that because I’ve not published any books. But that’s not the definition of a writer. That’s the definition of an author, numbnuts. I was struggling in eighth grade science class, specifically the chemistry portion, which was particularly disheartening, because I wanted to grow up to be a biochemist. Seeing that letter F on my report card told me that I would never realize my dream. It was unrealistic, and I would have wasted a lot of time, energy, and money on the fruitless pursuit. Fortunately, I had this other idea of telling stories, so I started really leaning into that. About two years later, I started work on my canon. I didn’t understand that I was doing that, but the story I came up with in the summer of 2002 has survived today, so I ended up retroactively marking this period in my life as the beginning of my franchise. It was about a boy who was on a boating trip with his fellow scouts. He gets separated from them after the tragic deaths of all of the parents on board, as well as the crew, and ends up on an island full of mythical beings, like elves, dwarves, and mermen. It was quite derivative in the beginning. I’ve rewritten the majority of this book at least four times, and revised it any number of times in between. It’s taken as long as it has to finish because I have never stopped growing as a writer, and perfecting my skills, technique, and personal voice.

As I was saying, I wasn’t familiar with the concept of a canon in the early years of my work, but I did have this compulsion to tell stories that exist within some kind of established continuity. They might be thousands of years apart, or even in different dimensions, but the potential for crossover had to be there, whether it ever actually happened at all or not. I came up with the premise for dozens of stories over the course of the next several years, nearly none of which remain today. The ones that have survived have transformed so much that they would be unrecognizable to anyone who happened to hack into my computer to read the originals. I never published a word, of course. In 2004 or 2005, I came up with a book and its television follow-up that I don’t even want to talk about, because they were rooted in my anger and violent tendencies. I wouldn’t even mention it, but I feel that I have to, because that was my first TV show, even though I wish it wasn’t. My second show, which I conceived of in 2007, was about a group of people with special powers, and from there, the universe expanded. By then, I had already decided that the dimensions from my original concept would be temporal, instead of spatial. That is, they just happened at different points in the long history of a single world. I came up with several other shows that fit within the timeline on the one planet, and then I came up with several more which took place on nearby star systems, and in other galaxies. It was 2012 when I came up with The Verge Saga, which took place billions of years ago in another galaxy. The number of TV shows that I had created effectively doubled overnight to around 60.

For a couple of years in my adult life, I had a recurring dream. Well, maybe that’s not the right word to use. Continuous would be a better choice, because I wasn’t just reliving the same thing every night. The story kept going. I could wake up, go about my day, and then go back to sleep to revisit the characters right where we last left off. I don’t know about you, but I’m only in about half of my dreams. A lot of the time, I’m observing other people’s lives, and this particular one felt very much like something that could be adapted to fiction for public consumption. I even had the perfect title for it, but the problem with it was that it inherently took place on Earth, where that established continuity I’ve been talking about bars such world-changing events from occurring. Basically, if I wanted it to take place on Earth, it had to be a different Earth. This was when my canon exploded. I suddenly had access to a dozen new universes, which could have their own independent histories that I didn’t have to worry about conflicting with each other. My list of TV shows approached 80, and I was unstoppable. That’s when Salmonverse was created, but that’s not when I thought of my first story for it.

On December 27, 2012, my first dog, Sophie Love was put to rest at a 24-hour animal hospital after a short but brutal and cruel battle with liver disease. Shortly thereafter, I had a dream (not again; this one came first). I woke up to find my dog alive downstairs, where she should have been all along, and then I realized that I had traveled through time to before her death. Of course, my dream turned into a nightmare when I jumped back in time again to not only before my dog was born, but also before we lived in that house. Someone else was living there, so I had to escape without disrupting their lives too much. Samuel Bellamy took over this role when I converted this dream to fiction, making him the first ever resident of Salmonverse, but like I said, I didn’t come up with that until 2015. Everything I wrote until I built my website just sat there in my files, never to be seen by anyone but me. That’s why these things have weird temporal values, because I regularly come up with a story, or only a premise, or even just one character, without having any place for it yet. I guess normal writers conceive an idea, and then just with it until it’s done. I often develop all aspects of a new story all at once before I so much as write the first word of the actual text. This process might inspire sequels, prequels, multimedia follow-ups, and crossovers that I will also work on without necessarily having written anything substantial. I dunno, maybe I’m doing it wrong, which is why I’m over here with a personal website that no one reads, and George R.R. Martin is a millionaire. He too has taken forever to write his latest book, but people are actually waiting for it. Hopefully I’ll finish the new edition soon, but I’m pretty busy. Unlike how it is for Martin, this isn’t my only job, and as aforesaid, I don’t make a dime off of it.

Tomorrow, I’ll get more into the details of my website; how it got started, and how I prepare for upcoming stories. There’s a lot. It takes a lot to keep this thing running. Like, you don’t even know. Slipping back into character, I’m surely in jail now, awaiting trial, or whatever step comes next. I scheduled this to come out just so I don’t leave you with nothing, but I’ll eventually run out of these too.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 112,398

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Abigail Genifer Siskin Pryce. Daughter of Tamerlane Pryce and Genifer Siskin. In at least one timeline in the main sequence, Tamerlane found Genifer by some means—be it by people database, or somehow by happenstance—and procreated with her. Theirs was an unusual arrangement, the particulars of which are known only to them. She wanted a child. He wanted a child who he could nickname Abiogenesis. Genifer raised Abigail throughout most of her childhood, but was forced to leave her one day to protect the universe from Tamerlane’s megalomania. She abandoned her. She sacrificed her. It was for the greater good, and at least one version of Abigail turned out all right, but it was no less tragic.

Abigail has a destiny beyond the boundaries of this universe, so it’s unclear where in the timeline this one originates. Bhulan didn’t want to ask for fear of disrupting the proper order of events, so she helps Abigail out of the time machine, provides her with clothing, and shows her where she can sleep. Bhulan wakes up Asier so she’s not the only well-adjusted and vetted resident of the Constant. Danica and Mateo still have not returned. Tamerlane is wary of Abigail, for she is not his daughter, and she is smart enough to understand that. This is not helping his recovery from his mental breakdown, though, as he sees her as the representation of yet another mistake that his alternate self made. After two weeks, Abigail agrees to go into stasis herself, so that her once-father can pull himself together. He manages to do so, and after a few months, they all end up back in their own separate pods. Bhulan, Tamerlane, and Asier come out every once in a while, but they leave Abigail in for ten thousand years, under a similar arrangement to the one they had with Mateo.

Now it has been 50,000 years since Danica disappeared, which marks the end of the waiting period. When Team Triple Threat—as Tamerlane liked to call them—were first starting out over a 100,000 years ago, they divvied up responsibilities, and agreed upon a hierarchy. Danica was at the top, with Bhulan as her number two. Anyone who came after Tamerlane would be ordered according to how trustworthy they seemed to the originals. So far, they’ve shown up in a reasonable order, making Danica’s father, Asier number four, and her cousin, Mateo number five. But none of them is allowed control over the most important object in the Constant, which is the Omega Gyroscope.

Danica placed a timer on it, like a dead man’s switch. If she ever lost contact with it for a duration of 50,000 years, possession over it would automatically switch to the next in the line, which is currently Bhulan. The responsibility falls to her now, to protect it, and curate the timeline. This should not be a problem; they all agreed to the parameters a very long time ago, and they were incredibly detailed, so she is not worried about making any bad decisions. She’s worried about what happens if she ever disappears for too long, because she’s not sure if she can trust Tamerlane anymore, and she’s honestly unclear as to what happens if something should happen to him. She doesn’t know if Asier was ever formally placed into the line of succession.

“No,” Asier answers, having evidently already discussed this with his daughter. “If Dani ever disappeared, and you disappeared, and Tamerlane disappeared, the Gyroscope would go on autopilot until the true number four showed up, which could be soon thereafter, or in billions of years.”

“Who is it?”

“That I can’t answer. I believe, now that the Gyroscope belongs to you, that you can find out who it is destined to be.”

Bhulan sighs, and looks at the thing. Then she looks at her watch. “If it’s been programmed to make the switch down to the minute, then we have about a minute to go, based on when Danica disappeared through the time machine.”

Asier nods. “Are you ready? Is something going to happen, or do you know?”

“Danica felt a power when she laid in the initial psychic instructions, and she believed I would feel the same, though to be fair, she didn’t think this would ever happen. I mean, 50,000 freaking years. Who would have thought that any of us would be gone for that long? It’s unsafe to be in stasis all that time, and there’s nowhere else to go in the universe! Plus, she’s immortal...” Bhulan shuddered as she felt a chill crawling all over her body. The Omega Gyroscope always glows, but now it’s especially bright. “Oh my God.” It feels like the glow is inside of her. Power is an understatement.

Asier grimaces. He and Bhulan aren’t related, but they’ve known each other for thousands of years, this certainly seems wrong, and makes him uncomfortable. It looks too pleasurable. “Should I leave.”

“No, no, it’s okay. It’s over. Now I’m back to being myself, except it’s like I have this extra body part. I can feel it, always there. Not pressure, nor pain, but a weight. It hangs from my whole body, like an extra layer of skin.”

“Is it...talking to you?”

“No, it’s not conscious. It’s my new skin, and I’m its new brain. I have to tell it what to do.”

“Surely there’s information encoded in it,” Asier figures.

“Yeah, I think I can interface with it.”

“Maybe you should lie down first.”

“Yeah, okay, thanks.”

He helps her onto the couch, and then steps back, ready to break her out of her trance, or mop up a psychic nosebleed, or help with whatever is about to go down.

Bhulan closes her eyes, and focuses on the Gyroscope; on listening to what it has to say, if anything. After around twenty seconds, she feels herself slipping off of the couch, and into a pool of water. She floats around a little before landing at the bottom. Only now does she open her eyes. Glowing curved beams are flying over her head, and underneath the transparent floor. They look familiar until she realizes that, d’uh, she’s in a giant gyroscope, and those moving curves are the gimbals. A silhouette forms before her, out of the glow. It’s not long before she recognizes the figure as Danica, but it’s not really her, it’s just a 3D recording, but not even that, because all of this is just in Bhulan’s head.

“Yay, Bhulan!” Danica cries, hanging onto the spin axis like it’s a stripper pole. Okay, so she may be more of an uploaded consciousness, and less of a recording.

“Are you real?”

“I’m as close as you’re gonna get, because if you’re here, the real me is probably dead. Ask me anything.”

“What is the airspeed velocity of the unladen swallow?”

“That’s an easy one. Eleven meters per second. What do you really wanna know?”

“Who is fourth in line for succession of the Omega Gyroscope, after Pryce?”

“That’s even easier,” Ghost!Danica says with a wide smile. “It’s Leona Matic.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 102,398

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Bhulan steps out of her stasis pod, and then out of the joint stasis chamber. She stands in the hallway for a moment, rubbing her eyes. She was actually sleeping in there, instead of only standing and waiting for the time to pass. She yawns, and smacks her lips together in a cartoonish way. “Constance, have Danica and Mateo returned yet?”

“Not yet, sir. I would have alerted you if they had.”

“You would not have if she had told you not to.”

“If she had told me not to, I would probably be lying right now.”

“Are you lying?”

Constance pauses for effect. “No.”

“Where are Tamerlane and Asier?”

“Asier is still in stasis. Tamerlane is in his simulation room.”

Bhulan rolls her eyes, and heads that way. She finds him busy at his desk, scribbling notes on paper, instead of typing them out with a keyboard, or dictating them directly. The floor is covered in crumpled up paper from his now defunct ideas, and other mistakes. He’s not looking well. “How are we feeling today?”

He darts his head up, apparently having just realized that she’s in the room. “Bhu, I think I have it figured out. Instead of having all the different levels in the same world, we put them on completely separate worlds. You can’t want what you don’t know exists. I’m still working out the levels, but this system allows a lot more of them than the old one. If you’re allowed to build new worlds, then you do that on a separate server from the people who are stuck in prison. And they’re separate from just the regular folks. Right? I mean this makes sense, right? It makes sense to me. Heaven.”

“So, in your version of the afterlife simulation, no one can ever improve their afterlives. Whatever they did in their real lives decides their eternity, and that never changes.”

He starts nodding at her with an earnest forced smile. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, umm...shit. You’re right, this doesn’t work.” He stares at the corner of the room while he grabs some of the paper, crumples it up, and tosses it away. He then looks back down at his desk. “Wait, I threw away the wrong thing.”

“Tam.” She can see where this is going.

“Where did that end up on the floor? Do you see it? I think it was yellow.” He gets on his knees, and shuffles around in search of it.

“Tam, get up.”

“No, I have to find it. I was calculating the power requirements earlier. See, I think my real problem was relying too much on the Matrioshka Body as hosts. I need to be in control of the hardware, as well as the software, or I won’t be able to protect the residents.”

Bhulan crouches down, and tries to comfort him with her hands on his shoulders. “Tam, that wasn’t you. It was an alternate version of you.”

He stares into her eyes like she just kicked his puppy. “I know that, you think I don’t know that? You know what I mean. I’m trying to do better than he did. If I can figure this out, I can rewrite the entire program, and dismantle his version of the simulation entirely. You know how much heartbreak I can prevent?”

“Tam, he didn’t...he didn’t come up with it. He took ideas from others. And those people aren’t here either. This is not your problem to solve.” This isn’t the first time he’s become singularly focused on trying to fix the supposed mistakes of his counterpart in the main sequence who created an entire computer simulation that houses the uploaded consciousness of everyone who died across a span of tens of thousands of years. She has to be patient with him when he’s in this state. He spends the most amount of time out of stasis—to no one’s fault but his own—and he spends a lot of that in here, dealing with his issues. None of them is qualified to bring him back to reality. Still, they have to try every time, because they don’t think his fixation is healthy.

“People know what he did. They know who he is, and I look exactly like him. How do I stop looking like him?” He blinks slowly, and falls back to sit against the wall. “I had the dream again.” Time moves differently in dreams, and this is true of everyone, but the phenomenon is especially potent in people who are in stasis while they’re doing it. They can experience many lifetimes—or even longer—in great detail in a short amount of pod time if their brain becomes acutely aware of the passage of realtime. Some are more susceptible to this bug than others, Tamerlane Pryce being one of them. It starts to become a real problem after the first few thousand years in stasis, which is why most people wouldn’t even know what you’re talking about if you bring it up. This is one reason why the four of them always come out every once in a while, to stretch their legs, and to reset their internal clocks. Again, he has to do it more often to avoid suffering from psychotic breaks, but sometimes, not even that is enough.

“Come on,” she says, helping him back to his feet. “I know you’re afraid to go back to sleep, but once you surrender, you always feel better. You’re not in stasis right now, and I promise you that no one is going to force you back into it. Why don’t you just stay out here for a year or two? Someone will be with you at all times, starting with me.”

“Are Dani and Matt not back yet?”

“No, but if you agree to go to sleep, I’ll run diagnostics on the machine again.”

“Okay, thank you.”

Bhulan helps him back to his room, and even into his bed, as if a mother mothering her child. He conks out pretty quickly, so she leaves. She’s about to just go watch some Future!TV when she decides to not make herself a liar. She goes up to the time machine room, which they’re not even supposed to enter, but Mateo did, and Danica went after him. They disappeared 40,000 years ago, and never returned. They plan to be here for billions of years, so there’s technically no rush, but it’s still worrisome. According to the literature, the machine is designed for recon, and should always bring the travelers back to the moment of departure, even if they’re dead, and even if the machine itself is broken, which it isn’t anymore. She stands there in the doorway for a few minutes after a good diagnostics check, knowing that there’s not much else she can do to help the situation. She turns around, like she always does, giving up on this being the day they come back. Suddenly, the machine powers up.

A naked body appears in the center of the chamber, its back to Bhulan. It doesn’t move for a minute, and she’s honestly kind of afraid to approach. She’s lived with Danica for thousands of years, so she knows it’s not her, but it could be anyone else with a feminine figure. She’s breathing, though, so that’s good. Finally, she turns over so Bhulan can see her face. “Who the hell are you?” Bhulan questions.

“Abigail. Abigail Genifer Siskin Pryce.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 9, 2398

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Marie badges herself in, and heads for Ramses’ area of the lab, which is farthest from the elevator. His hair is mussed up, and the table is full of chemicals, some of which may be drinkable, placing the whole operation—and his life—in danger. He doesn’t even notice her approach. “Rambo.”

He’s startled, but he doesn’t make eye contact. “What?”

“You haven’t been sleeping.”

“I can sleep when it’s over, Angela.”

“I’m Marie.”

“I’ve heard it both ways.”

“Have you made any progress?”

He laughs at the very idea. He’s run so many tests on the Insulator of Life, and the Livewire, trying to figure out how to get Trina back, or at least confirm where she is. He hasn’t worked on anything else since the incident, and he’s no closer to solving the problem. Cheyenne is going to need the Insulator back pretty soon, so either she’s going to have to come to them, or he’ll have to find another way to the answers. “Nothing. I have absolutely no idea how either one of these things works. No moving parts, no obvious unusual properties. If I didn’t know any better, I would call it magic.”

“Maybe that’s what it is,” she offers.

He scoffs.

“Why not? When I first found out that time travel was a thing, I immediately started questioning everything I thought I knew about the physical world. Ghosts, sorcerers, even God; perhaps they were real. I’ve not seen any evidence of such things so far, but maybe these two objects are evidence of something.”

He shakes his head. “It doesn’t work like that. Time travel is crazy, but it’s not magic. Magic inherently doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t have rules. If you need something done, there’s a way to do it, and any failure to accomplish it is based solely on your lack of imagination. Science has rules, whether we’re cognizant of all of them, or even any of them, or not.”

“Well, I’m not going to argue with you about it. I’m your elder, but you’re much smarter. I’m not here to convince you to stop trying, just to take a break.”

“I can’t do that. People are counting on me.”

“I’ve spoken with Bridgette and Cheyenne. They’re moving into the Lofts.”

Now he finally looks directly at her. “They are?”

“This floor is exclusive to travelers, which Cheyenne is. Angela is moving back in with Kivi, even though Kivi just moved out of Angela’s place.”

Ramses is happy for a moment before he realizes that this only solves one issue. “It doesn’t matter. The McIvers need me to find their sister. Yeah, it’s great that I can keep working with the Insulator, but I still can’t waste time sleeping. Trina needs me.”

“She needs you to be at the top of your game,” Marie corrects. “Sleepy Ramses is sloppy Ramses. Who knows, you might even come up with a new angle to tackle the problem when you let your brain rest a little.”

Ramses argues more, but Marie calls Leona to ask her to give him an order, so he reluctantly goes upstairs to sleep on it. She was right, a weird dream gives him an idea.

Microstory 1872: Losing Sleep

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I was a little monster as a baby. I sometimes kept my mama up all night and all day. The doctors could explain the crying—it wasn’t much more than a normal baby’s—but they couldn’t explain why I never went to sleep. Except I was crying more, because unlike most people, nothing could stop me. According to her stories, she hired a nanny to take shifts. She could have raised me on her own if not for my little peculiarity. As I grew up, I started figuring out how to express myself through other noises besides screaming, but I never did learn how to sleep. In my school, the younger children would take naps. The teacher ended up moving me over to the bookshelves, and gave me a little reading lamp, so I could keep myself busy. I wasn’t the only one who needed the extra accommodations. A boy in my class also didn’t need to nap, but in his case, it’s because he slept all the way through the night. I called him my opposite, but my mother noted that a true opposite would be in some kind of coma. There’s just something different about the way my brain works that makes it so I don’t need any sleep to function. Not only that, but I can’t sleep at all. I’ve never done it even once, which is sad, because the whole dreaming thing that people talk about sounds positively fascinating. I asked the boy to tell me his dreams, so I could live vicariously through him; which is a word we learned through a book that had no place in that classroom. He said he couldn’t remember his dreams, but the next day, he was able to regale me with his stories. He said just wanting to remember them made it so that he now could. Years later, he would admit to me that this had been a lie. He had come up with the stories on his own, because he didn’t want to disappoint me. That was so him, from start to finish.

College was difficult for me, because the schoolwork was so easy. Well, it wasn’t easy, but I had more time to study than the other students. Everybody hated me, but it’s not like I was an overachiever. I was just bored, and as much as they liked to party, at some point, they would have to go to bed, and I would still be up, so I had to do something to pass the time. I tried to have a roommate my first semester, but that didn’t work out, because I would disturb her sleep, and that wasn’t fair. Once the boy and I were married and living together, my situation saved us a little money. I was able to be productive for more hours of the day, and hell, he only needed a twin bed. Anyway, my coworkers were as jealous as my classmates. It’s just that I found it easier to do my paperwork in the dead of night when the hemisphere was asleep, and not work so hard during regular business hours. Then came the time for us to grow our family, and I was hesitant, because there was no way to know what kind of child would come out of me. Would they enjoy the same benefits? Would they have some kind of corrupted version of it that left them tired all the time? I didn’t think we could risk it, and my husband was okay with that. We chose to adopt instead, which was no problem, because there are so many other good reasons to adopt. We went to the agency to submit our application, and after some time, we were selected for a child who we were told required special needs. For reasons they couldn’t understand, this little girl never slept. Obviously, we knew we had to make her part of our family. I mean, who better than me to raise a woman like that? It was decades before science progressed enough for us to take a DNA test. Wouldn’t you know it, she was an exact match. I mean exact. I still don’t know how, but she is my twin.

Microstory 1859: Life Coach

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When you were a kid, did anyone ask you what you wanted to be when you grew up? I’m sure at least one person did, it’s such a common question. This world is so obsessed with placing value on people based on what they do for work, how hard they work at it, and how far they go because of it. I never put much stock into this, to use a relevant metaphor. If the idea behind it is to make the money you need to live a happy life, then I get it, but work itself has no value. And what should it matter what your actual job is, as long as it’s positive, and you’re generally satisfied with your life—because, or in spite of, it? I was first asked this question when I was pretty young. Most of the kids answered with the usual suspects; astronaut, rockstar, professional athlete. A few others wanted to own their own businesses, but even those were predictable, like an ice cream shop, or a dance studio. I guess that second one’s pretty cool, and if I recall correctly, he actually went on to do that. Me, I had trouble giving my answer. Back then, the phrase life coach wasn’t a thing, so even if I had come up with the term myself, my teacher wouldn’t have been able to understand. It was my dream to help others realize their own dreams, in whatever form that might take. Fortunately, this wasn’t a graded assignment, for if it had been, I surely would have failed, because I just could not explain the idea. Of course now, it’s really easy. You may not garner anyone’s respect if you tell them that’s what you do, but at least they’ll grasp the concept. I’ll tell you, though, that I’m not one of those new age, meditate into the universe, and it will return what you want kind of people. I require my clients to have realistic and clearly defined goals in mind. I can’t promise fame and fortune, but I guarantee reasonable results.

Starting out was really tough, and I relied on my parents’ help to survive while I was getting off the ground. They were more supportive of me than they should have been, but also not blindly accepting. They helped me make it a reality by setting clear expectations for myself. People sometimes say that I was the first life coach, but my mom would have to assume that title, because she coached me on how to coach others. As I said, people back then didn’t know what I was selling, so word of mouth was the only way it got going. My first few clients were women who were looking for a nice man to marry. I didn’t explicitly spurn the idea of just being a matchmaker, but I didn’t want to let that become my whole business. I wanted a diversity of clients. Then I met a guy who changed everything. All he wanted to do was be better at communicating with people. I imagine he would have been diagnosed with a social disorder had he been born later in the timeline. He found it quite difficult to socialize with other people, and to sit for job interviews. He needed to learn basic skills that other people take for granted, and that was perfect, because I had no trouble with those, and I knew I could teach him. He ended up being so good at these things—because he really just needed to slip out of his shell—that he created more and more business for me. I shed my potentially dangerous identity as a matchmaker, and started pulling in all sorts of clients. One of them wanted help finding a trustworthy math tutor for her son. Another needed to raise funds for a guitar, so he could learn to play. I did a lot with education. Back then, you couldn’t just search the internet for a teacher. There’s no end to this story; this is just what I did with my life, and I can go to the big sleep now, fulfilled and grateful to the world.

Microstory 1844: Extra

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People often ask me what made me want to be an actor, but I can’t point to anything. There wasn’t a moment when I was enthralled with a character on screen. There wasn’t an emotion I had never felt before. I don’t remember the first three years of my life, but it was that version of me who made the decision for the both of us. As far as I know, I have always been an actor, and I never could have been anything else. I begged my parents to move to Los Angeles, but they refused. I honestly believe they would have agreed to it if we had lived in, I dunno, Tennessee, or something. They were so supportive of my dreams, but we were in New York, so I guess they looked at it as a lateral move. “If you want to act, you can do it here,” my mom would tell me. I didn’t want to do stagework, though. I wanted to be on the screen. I wanted to shoot something once, and have anybody in the world be able to see it again forever and ever. As the years went by, I didn’t let my living situation get in my way. I went to auditions for things that were shooting in the area, and while I didn’t get any roles, I think I gained a lot of great experience. That’s how I saw it. Every failure was just a step towards success. Then I got the audition that changed my life. I can’t remember what the role was exactly. I think I was a little too old for it, but the casting director was handing out little flyers calling for extras. There were going to be huge crowds in the movie, so they were trying to fill out the streets. It was an alien invasion, so we had to run from spaceships flying down to kill us. I thought, all right, it’s just more experience, right? It was so great, being on set around all those people. We were all there for the same thing; to support the main cast, and we all understood our jobs.

I had to join a talent agency to get more parts like that, and I found myself preferring it. I suddenly realized that I no longer wanted to be an actor. Yeah, that’s how I got started, but I ended up enjoying staying in the background. I wasn’t getting noticed, but I met a lot of really cool people, including celebrities, and it was always fun. It was pretty steady work too. Film crews always needed people like me to make it look like their story took place in the real world, instead of a snowglobe, like Waiting For Godot. Then my career changed again. I was in a movie about a demon who could possess recently deceased bodies. In one scene, he was having a menacing conversation with the hero on the battlefield, so there were plenty of fresh bodies to possess. Several of the extras were elevated a little bit to actually say a few lines before crumpling to the ground, and making way for the next possession. Luck of the draw, mine was the last body used before the protagonist realized how to kill the demon permanently. So instead of just falling down like the others, I had to pretend to die. I was given no direction for this, I had to figure it out myself. Everyone on set was extremely pleased with my performance. We nailed that thing in one take, and the audience received it well. People were talking about it online, trying to figure out who I was, because I wasn’t credited for it. This was my big break, and I didn’t even see it coming. Talent agencies started reaching out to me, hoping to book me auditions for speaking parts, and I ended up choosing one out of L.A. By then, I had enough money to get out there on my own, and get back to what I originally wanted. I die today with 56 titles on my résumé, the last of which will have to be released posthumously. My agent says she’ll get me a dedication credit.

Microstory 1805: Field Work

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Like any young girl with parents who taught her to be independent and powerful, I dreamed of joining law enforcement. No, I know, that’s not a universal dream, but it sure felt like it back then. I couldn’t see myself doing anything else. As I grew up, my passion for the work only grew stronger. I wanted to be out there in the field, making the tough calls, and actually seeing the people I was helping. While I was still in college, my personality began to change. I still wanted to help others, but I no longer seemed interested in field work. Fortunately, I knew that there were plenty of jobs that didn’t require me to do anything like that. I won’t get into specifics about the path I took, but I ended up becoming a Threat Investigator for the government. It was my job to process calls from civilians who were reporting crimes and of course, threats. I occasionally had to go out and speak to people in person, but that only ever happened when the potential threat was nearby. Most of the time, I asked questions, and determined next steps, which generally involved contacting local authorities, or my branch’s local offices. It could be rewarding, but it was also stressful. It would be terrible if I downplayed a threat that turned out to be a really big deal, and it was almost as bad if I sounded the alarm about a threat that ended up being nothing; maybe even a hoax. Citizens from all over the country counted on me to accurately evaluate each situation, and decide the best course of action from the information I was given. I made mistakes, and I lived with regrets, but nothing was bad enough to warrant a disciplinary response...until it was. I made the wrong call, and people got hurt. No one died, but they very well could have. I should have taken it more seriously, even though the caller sounded unconvinced himself, and a background check made it look like he didn’t have much credibility. I wasn’t fired, but I couldn’t let anything like it happen again. Then I received my last call.

It was from a young man who lived in my city, or rather on the outskirts of it at the time. He was a member of a militia who was supposedly planning an attack on the capitol. The more I spoke with him, the more I realized that this guy actually joined the militia with the intention of taking them down from the inside. Apparently, his family was more into the anti-government stuff, and he had been forced to pretend to be like them so he could blend in, and stop his life from being so hard. Now he was in way over his head, and he needed my help to get him out of it. I went out into the field, and investigated the threat myself. Suddenly, I found myself in over my head. It wasn’t against protocol for me to go out there for a visit, but things snowballed so quickly, and I was captured and detained by the aggressors. Well, this proved that the threat was real, but there was nothing that I could do about it, at least not on my own. Fortunately, the self-appointed mole in the organization wasn’t found out himself, so I was able to sneak him a message, which he bravely took back to my superiors. They sent a strike team to raid the place, and I would like to tell you that they successfully prevented the attack, but I honestly don’t know one way or the other. It turned into a bloody mess just as the year was coming to a close. The bad guys realized immediately which among them ratted them out, and we were both executed in an attempt to show the agents that they meant business. Again, I can’t tell you what happened after that, but I can only hope that some good came out of our sacrifice, and they weren’t able to commit any further acts of violence.

Microstory 1688: Unstable Universes

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Perhaps now is a good time to talk about brane stability. Not all universes are created equal. Some are naturally occurring, while c-branes are created in someone’s dreams. Most dreams last for only minutes before they end, and unless something else steps in to maintain the dreamworld, the universe that was born out of it will collapse as well. Even if the dream is strong enough to survive, that doesn’t mean it will last forever. It is only as strong as the people who are responsible for it. What does this mean? Well, if the dreamer continues to deliberately explore the new world, it can last longer. If they create something semipermanent from it, like a written story, or even a painting, that can make it last even longer. If this art reaches some kind of audience, that can make it last indefinitely. The most popular stories make for the most stable universes. They have room to expand, and become more detailed, and most importantly, interesting. They might also be able to survive on their own merits, by the force of will of their inhabitants, but this is fairly rare. I was expecting to give you another story about the universe where zombies take over the world only briefly before dying out, but like Vacuumverse, there is nothing more I can say. The events that occurred here did not follow any level of logic, and the inhabitants weren’t strong enough to hold up their story on their own. History began the moment zombies were first created, and ended centuries later when civilization was all but rebuilt. Little happened in the meantime, and nothing happened afterwards. The whole universe collapsed under its own unstable insignificance, and that’s all you need to know.

Microstory 1660: Understanding the Trinary

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For the most part, the residents of the Hypnopediaverse trinary system don’t think too hard about how that system works. They travel to another world in their dreams, and then deeper into yet another world, where time moves faster. There, they can commune with each other, and learn new skills, which can be brought into the real world later. Exactly how it works, and why it works, and why it doesn’t work unless they slip into that third world, is not relevant to most of them. They accept it and move on. Some are not so satisfied with this nonexplanation. They want to understand the physics of it, and find new ways of utilizing the power, if that is even possible. A few like-minded individuals came together, and formed an organization dedicated to this research. They did not have malevolent intentions, but they recognized the possibility that the dreamworlds could be weaponized in some way, or otherwise abused. Knowing about these risks only fueled their motivations. People criticized them for potentially letting those possibilities fall into the wrong hands, and perhaps it was best to just leave it alone, but really, there is no telling. It could just as easily happen on its own, and the world would end up defenseless. I won’t bore you with the details of what they learned during their research. Their primary objectives were to figure out if they could travel to the other worlds physically, and not just in their dreams, and whether they could transport resources between them. They never did figure that out, because bulk travel is so rare, but they learned a lot about the fundamentals of this branch of physics. As far as the general public goes, it didn’t really do them any good. They didn’t need any more resources, and most weren’t interested in understanding it, but it was probably best that someone explored these options.

Microstory 1618: The Annual Coat Drive

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This is a nice little non-depressing story about a lovely version of Earth, which isn’t perfect, but is defined primarily by a wholesome and fun annual event that just about everyone loves. But first, you need some background. There are only a few people throughout the bulkverse who are able to travel across it. Even if you include the people who managed to get themselves on board one of the machines, like The Crossover or The Prototype, the number is strikingly low. The number goes up when you include The Transit Army, and the Westfall experiencers, but it’s still nothing compared to the number of people throughout all of existence. Only a handful of people can do it through other means. Joseph Jacobson is one of these people. He was born to a mutant time traveler named Jacob, and a mother whose nature may be more complicated than anyone can understand, though there’s proof of nothing. Jacob sired twelve sons, and one daughter, and all of them have abilities. They all possess some form of temporal manipulation, but Jacob was drawn to powerful women, so they all also have other abilities. None of them is as impressive as Joseph, though. Before any of this, one of those things capable of crossing the bulkverse suffered a major engine failure that could have resulted in tragedy were it not for the quick-thinking of its crew. Still, there were side effects, and one of these was a simple coat that someone happened to leave in engineering while they were working to stop the catastrophe. This coat was imbued with the ability to travel the bulkverse, but not for just anyone. The only people who could use it were those who had already done it at least once, and even then, they could only go to places they had been before. It’s an amazing piece of cloth, but it’s not all that useful to most. Joseph is different. With it, he can go anywhere he wants, and no one is sure what it is that makes him so special, because none of his siblings can do it, not even the one with whom he shares a mother. The two phoenixes in the family can technically travel as well, but they have to die first, and navigation is sketchy at best. Joseph is the one true bulk traveler, and it makes all of his brothers extremely jealous. For some, it makes them murtherous. That is a story for another time, though.

If these names and situations sound slightly familiar, that’s because you’ve probably heard the story. This family is important to the collective history of the bulkverse, so a lot of people are aware of it. Some see it as part of their religion, or someone else’s, while others know it as fiction. Either way, the story itself is powerful. If the right people produce the right interpretation of the story of Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, it will actually summon him to their location. From there, they can make requests to him. He’s not obliged to follow through, of course but you can always ask. Finding the right way to tell Joseph’s story is difficult, and requires clear intent. Lots of people have put on a show, and nothing has happened, continuing to allow them to believe that it’s all made up. If you know that it’s a possibility that Joseph will appear in the flesh, then you can try to make it happen. Again, it’s not guaranteed, but it’s kind of the only way to get a hold of him. One thing I never mentioned before is that hypnopediaverse has a history of people randomly finding themselves trapped there from elsewhere. I don’t know why, and it’s not that important. The point is that these people once came together, put on Joseph’s show, and were able to summon him to their location, so he could ferry them back to their respective homes. Two of these people told their own story when they returned, and surprisingly, people believed them. Not only that, but they wanted to recreate the magic. So they produced their own version of the musical, and found success. Joseph appeared, and regaled them with stories about his adventures across the bulkverse. Every year since then, the people of that universe have repeated the experiment, not just with one show, but with many. Multiple productions are shown simultaneously around the world, each one hoping to be the one that attracts Joseph Jacobson to them. Of course, once he does show up, Joseph allows his tales to be broadcast worldwide, but the cast and crew that won the contest that year will end up with bragging rights, global recognition, and other ancillary prizes. The true reward comes from the lessons that Joseph unwittingly teaches. Understanding what goes on in other universes has given this one the perspective it needed to make sure it didn’t make any of the same mistakes. They learned to better preserve their planet, and were justifiably ignored by the Ochivari, and the Darning Wars.

Microstory 1569: Killer Katz

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Prompt

Ever since all of the cats started deliberately killing the humans, I’ve been saving up for a boat, since cats hate water.

Botner

And I finally got one, so I’m very happy and I want to sail. I have a rule that if any other person should read this, they will have a legitimate claim for sole ownership of my blog; as I cannot control other people. The guest, however, claims that they found this post, and they were so amused and amused they decided to check to make sure the ID was legit. If so, I’d like to give a heartfelt thanks. A big red heart to go with it. It’s very warming. I’m amused. This post reminded me a lot of something that happened to my sisters and me when we were very young. We got a kitten when we were maybe two or three. We were out with our family for my grandmother’s birthday. This was before we could actually read, but we were very good at mimicry and my aunt, my dad’s sister, was babysitting us and brought the kitten into the living room for us to see. My sisters and I climbed onto her lap, and when we saw the kitten, we all said “Oh, kitty, kitty, kitty.” She understood what we were saying, and she said “Kitty is a boy cat,” which was very funny to us, since we had thought kitties were a girl cat. We didn't quite grasp that we were actually saying that kitties were also...

Conclusion

...a genderless species. We didn’t understand back then, about gender, and sex, and sexuality, and identity. We had to learn these things as we grew older, which takes time, and time is something we no longer have. I’ve sailed my boat into the middle of the ocean. I don’t want to find an island that’s too close to the mainland, because the cats could continue to evolve. They could develop opposable thumbs, and then they could sail as well. My family wanted me to fight, but I won’t do it. The cats are going to win, because they now literally have nine lives, and they’ve been watching us for thousands of years. We’ve been completely ignorant about their intelligence, and they’ve used that to their advantage. They weren’t just learning our behaviors and weaknesses either. They were around when we were punching in our safe codes, and hiding our keys under the planter. They’re gonna win, and I’m gonna be far from all the destruction. If they ever do find me, it won’t be for a very long time, and hopefully they won’t worry about what I’m doing, because they will have totally taken over the world by then. I anchor my boat, and paddle to the shore of the island. There’s no sign that this has ever been inhabited. It’s small, but it will have plenty to sustain me alone. I smile as I’m breathing in the fresh air. I didn’t abandon my family. They refused to come with. If anything, they abandoned me. I have no guilt about doing what I must to survive. I walk up the beach, and head for the treeline, but I stop when I see something out of the corner of my eye. It’s a panther, or something. We stare at each other for over a minute, and then I swear to God, it grins. More panthers, and other large cats, come out of the jungle.

Microstory 1568: By a Dog

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Prompt

Because of my horrible allergies, I have a poor sense of smell, but I can smell poop and popcorn, and I can’t tell the difference.

Botner

I thought there was popcorn in the seat of the grocery cart, but then I didn’t smell it. The smell was different, like rotten popcorn, but not quite. The smell disappeared about the same time as the smell of poop. He was leaning forward into the cart so he could see the screen and as soon as he heard me, he tried to hold his finger over his nose. I guess the dogs would be more sensitive to dog farts if they were in the cart with you. I’ve heard that border collies can smell out drugs but I wonder about different breeds. Does it depend on the breed? I was a black lab, lab retriever mix, but probably mixed with some other breed since we got her before we started breeding labs. My parents only got me when they already had three dogs, and I was somewhat self-sufficient. I had a job, but mostly I just kept to myself and did my own thing. I used to follow my parents around and go to their bed when they were asleep. I still do that sometimes, but they let me now. I went with them when they went to visit my granny and the park she lives near. I wanted to go home with them but they wouldn’t let me, so I waited for them at the house. I got my mom’s last bite of chicken. I...

Conclusion

...don’t normally get to eat human food, but they each sneak me some when the other isn’t looking. They don’t know that the other one does this, and think it’s just our little secret. That’s fine with me, I get more chicken this way. My friends around the neighborhood often ask me how my owners are, and what it’s like to be me. In fact, they ask me this question every single time that they see me, because they don’t have much in the way of memory. I don’t know why I’m different than the other dogs; why I’m so much smarter, but it is both a blessing, and a curse. My humans regularly walk around without any clothes on, which makes me uncomfortable. I don’t know why, I’m not wearing clothes either, but I guess my fur makes me feel less self-conscious about it if, at least it would if I were them. I sometimes catch myself dreaming of leaving the house, and going off on my own. I would be able to survive just about anything. It’s only my fingerless paws that would make things problematic. Though, I suppose I could teach the humans I meet to understand me, and help me out when I need it. Why would I do that, though? I love my humans. They give me food and water, a nice place to sleep (even if it’s my bed or cage, instead of theirs), and I don’t get as distracted by the crazy smells all over the yard as my friends do. No, I don’t think I would give up my life for anything, even if I do have a little more potential than the average pup.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Wednesday, July 26, 2141

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Nerakali decided that she was going to go off into the far reaches of time and space, looking for any information about dreamwalking, the dreamvoid, and the general concept of traveling to other universes. She was born into a family of spacetime masters, who knew just about everything about the brane, and how it operated. They knew the past, and the future, and everything in between. What they didn’t know much about was everything that existed beyond those boundaries. Until relatively recently, in fact, she didn’t even know the bulkverse was a thing. She found it odd and uncomfortable, but also felt this compulsion to ignore it. It was as if her creator knew enough about it himself that he implanted some kind of mental block, which was there to prevent her from looking into matters. Still, if this block existed, she was determined to break through it, so she went off for answers to help Mateo. In the meantime, the team was exempted from the July 26, 2141 transition. No one but him wanted to point out that, as a time traveler, Nerakali needn’t give them any sort of break, but everyone else just grumbled, and ignored him. They were afraid to do anything while he was in this condition. They were afraid of him.

Mateo couldn’t blame them for being wary of manipulating time and space when they still didn’t know for sure what set him off, and caused him to slip outside of their universe. He might have become emotional about how they were treating him like a leper, but his whole deal now was that nothing bothered him, so he just sat there and thought about nothing. He and Leona were presently sitting on their bed chairs. Each bunk was capable of being flipped over, and transformed into two seats during waking hours. She was staring at him, but he didn’t know why, because he no longer had any empathy. So he just guessed. “I’m sorry for doing this to you, and the team.”

She chuckled. “No, you’re not. That’s the problem.”

“I can’t read your facial expressions anymore. How upset are you?”

“Not upset at all,” she said. It might have been a lie, but there was no way to know one way or the other. “You didn’t do this to yourself. We can blame the Ochivari, or the Superintendent, or hell, even the powers that be, whose control over us seems to have dissipated, but you never know. We can’t blame you, though, and I want you to look at it logically. If you don’t have any emotions right now, what good would it do for me to be dishonest about my position? If I know it wouldn’t bother you to know the truth about my feelings, what would cause me to hold back? I’m telling you the truth, because I have no reason not to.”

“I guess that makes sense.” She could read him just as well as before, which was odd given that he was the one whose personality had changed, but he wasn’t going to question it. It was irrelevant. Communication only mattered when trying to accomplish something, which he wasn’t.

Nerakali teleported before them. It made an audible noise, which caused the rest of the team to come out of the woodwork. “Oh, good, everyone’s here,” she said, looking around. “You should all hear this.” She took one step towards Mateo. He stood up, remembering that was what his old self would have done for a polite conversation. “I have explored as many options as I can in this brane. In order to go further, you will have to travel beyond our borders.”

“You’re only looking at him,” Leona said, standing up herself. “But we’re going too.”

Nerakali shook her head. “You can’t. There’s only space for one in the machine. Besides, I need you and Jeremy to stay here, to continue the pattern.”

“Screw the pattern!”

“He won’t be completely alone,” Nerakali promised. “I’m sending Imzadi with him.”

“Where will I be going?” Mateo questioned. “Exactly?”

She took a long time to respond, like a doctor whose first time it was telling a family member there was nothing more she could do. “I don’t know. I asked the Parallel natives to build me the machine. It adapts to your needs. Your subconscious will control it, and I don’t know your subconscious. Best I can tell, Meliora Rutherford can jump to other universes. She’s not talking, because she and I...it’s complicated.”

“Is this going to work?” Leona questioned.

“I don’t know that either.” Nerakali reached over, and removed Mateo’s cuff. “You can’t wear this where you’re going. It’s like a brick, tethering you to this universe, and your people. You can’t find what your mind is looking for with us holding you back. I am sending you with this, though.” She took something out of her pocket, and opened her hand to reveal a rock.

“A homestone?” Leona asked. “Will that even work?”

“Across universes?” Nerakali guessed. “That’s one thing I was able to get out of Meliora. We actually don’t know where homestones come from, which means...”

“They could originate from another universe,” Leona hypothesized.

“It’ll get him back home, or at least close to it, should he need it at all. Someone will be there to pick him up if necessary.” Nerakali looked into Mateo’s eyes again. “Only use it if you need to, though. Come back directly, if you can.”

Mateo didn’t care enough to take the stone himself, so Leona ripped it out of Nerakali’s hands, and forced it into him. “If this does work, he will need the homestone; not the other way around.” She wrapped her hands around his, and held them tightly, like someone who loved him. “Can you do this? Can you care enough to try? Or will you give up, and just become a lumberjack in Oregon, or something?”

Mateo couldn’t answer.

“I will keep him moving,” Imzadi assured her.

“She can take control of his body,” Nerakali added. “She won’t, if she doesn’t have to, but if he ever just stands there, she can...help.”

Leona should have been bothered by this, but if it was the only way to get him back, even if only still in this state, then it was better than losing him forever. “I need to inspect this machine he’ll be using.” She used airquotes.

“No,” Nerakali said in no uncertain terms. She lifted one hand like He-man, and cried “I have the power!” Electricity actually did come out of the Imzadi, and zoom into a little device she was holding. She took Mateo by the shoulder, and spirited him away.

Using the word machine made it sound like Mateo would be stepping into some kind of transportation pod, where he could move around, or maybe just at least stand up and stretch. It wasn’t like that at all. It was more like a supersuit out of a scifi or superhero movie. “Let me give you a rundown of what all this is,” Nerakali said as she was installing the Imzadi program into the memory console. “Watertight, airtight, radiation proof. You can lift up to eleven tons, and of course, you can fly. Like I said before, it will adapt to your own abilities, and your mind. Perhaps the most important aspect of this thing is that it’s attached to a pocket dimension, which contains plantlife capable of replacing your air indefinitely, as well as a mini-fusion generator, which will last for centuries before you have to scoop up more hydrogen. Imzadi will keep track of, and maintain, all of that. She should also be able to coach you back into your catatonic state. Any questions?”

Obviously not.

“Okay,” Nerakali continued. “Put on this liner first. It’s a vacuum suit in its own right, just in case the machine is damaged. Once you’re clothed, step inside, and go with God.”

“Okay.” With nothing better to do, Mateo stuck one leg into the suit, and then the other, before inserting his arms. The back of the suit closed up behind him.

Nerakali stepped around, so he could see her through the viewport. “A normal person would have asked how they’re supposed to pee in this thing. Welp, I guess you’ll have to figure it out.” She reached up, and pressed a button on the chest of the exoskeleton. “Let’s clear out all those pesky distractions.”

The suit transported Mateo and Imzadi to a Nexus, where technicians were apparently waiting for him. They activated their transporter, and sent him off to the middle of space. He couldn’t see any stars or planets around him. He could make out the slight wisp of distant galaxies, but he was terribly far from them. This wasn’t the dreamvoid, not yet, but it was still a void.

“Are you ready?” Imzadi asked. She generated a holographic representation of herself, and simulated her body floating in the space in front of him. He probably would have recognized her as some famous actress, or similar to, but he didn’t have enough memories to recall, so she just looked like a stranger.

Mateo took about twenty seconds to yawn. “Whatever.”

“Yeah, we’re gonna fix you right up!” Imzadi’s hologram smiled. “Breathe. Breathe like me.”

Oh, they were going to meditate. He had tried it several times over the years, upon advice from his parents, therapists, and this girl he once dated. It was the most boring thing he had ever done, which meant every painstaking moment was seared into his brain as some of the most important moments in his life, dethroning whatever interesting moments he once had, but could no longer remember. This was going to be easy. Well, it was going to be easy to start, but not necessarily easy enough to complete the mission. What was the mission again? Who cares?

“Mateo! Focus. Stop asking questions. Just...remember the boring times.”

“Ugh, whatever.”

“Don’t say it. Think it.”

Whatever.

“There!”

What little light he could see disappeared, and he was back in the dreamvoid, where there was nothing. He couldn’t even see the Imzadi hologram anymore. Whether that was because she shut it down, or the void hid it from him, he didn’t know, or care.

“Okay, you don’t have to do that anymore,” Imzadi told him. “We’re here. We just need to figure out how to get out, and go somewhere else. I imagine it’s the opposite now. Try to think of something fun.”

Like Leona’s boobs? “What’s that?” Mateo asked. He could see a dot in front of him, but he couldn’t tell if it was small, or just far away.

“It’s a single point of light,” she told him. “Mateo, I’ll only say this to you in this situation...go towards the light. Reach for the light.”

“Is that wise?”

“The fact that you’re questioning that means it’s already helping. Go!”

He sighed. He didn’t feel like he was improving, but he didn’t know what that—

“Just swim towards the light, would ya? Jesus Christ!”

Mateo did as he w—

“No more commentary,” Imzadi demanded. “Just do it.”

“That wasn’t me,” Mateo explained. “It was The Superintendent.”

“Oh. Forgive me, sire.”

Whatever.

Mateo kept swimming forward. The light grew larger, until he no longer needed to put out any effort himself. It quickly overwhelmed him, and just before it transported him to another universe, he swore he could see something shaped like a knife. His feet landed hard on the ground, but he didn’t feel a thing, thanks to the suit. A group of people were running towards him. No, they were charging. They stopped when they noticed him, though. Mateo’s heads-up-display revealed information to him that was buried somewhere in his own mind, suggesting he knew some of these people. There were about a dozen in total, and his secret memories recognized half.

“Release your helmet,” Imzadi recommended. “Show them you are no threat.”

“You do it. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m teaching you to care again. Figure it out.”

Mateo sighed, and reached up to his neck, where he found a button that caused his helmet to recede.

“Uncle Mateo?” one of the women asked. It was Dar...Dar..Dar-something.

“Dad?” another asked. Dubravka.

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