Microstory 2689: Full Circle

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Resi is back on the beach. He doesn’t know if he’s truly going to end up on Castlebourne at some point, or if his vision is pointing him to some other direction. The futures he sees can clearly be changed, or he wouldn’t be lounging here right now. This whole area would be covered in ash and lava. He just wants to relax and be happy. He hasn’t been able to do that for a very long time, and when you think about it, maybe not ever. When he exiled himself to the border, he was indeed lounging all day, but he was also always really tense. Now he doesn’t have to think about anything, or worry about what’s gonna happen. It’s just him, the sand, the sun, and the sea. This is a nude beach, making it all the more freeing. He feels a presence, so he opens his eyes.

The sun is at her back, so he can’t see who it is at first. “Back on Earth, when I was a kid, we called people like you slackers!” she yells, joking. He knew her voice. It was Brooke Prieto. She taught him how to see the future. That was a hundred years ago.

“I’ve earned a vacation,” he tells her, dropping the shades back over his eyes.

“I can’t disagree.” She sits down on the sand next to him. She looks ridiculous in her spaceman outfit. The opposite of a relaxed vibe, and it can’t be comfortable.

“A bit overdressed?” he muses.

“I can change,” she replies as they’re looking out over the water.

He hears a noise. When he looks back at her, she’s suddenly in a pink bikini. “Neat trick. Still overdressed, though.” He can be funny too.

She laughs.

“How has your life been?” he asks. “A hundred years is quite a long time.”

“Has it been that long?” Brooke questions. “Wow, the decades just fly by. You’ll see when you’re older. Speaking of which, are you considering getting all of your memories back? I don’t know if you’re worried about no longer being Resi anymore, but you shouldn’t be. You won’t stop being you. You’ll just be...more you.”

“I don’t know. I’m pretty happy with who I am right now. I finally feel like I am finally who I’m meant to be. Now, God forbid, if another volcano erupts, and I see it in my dreams, I won’t write it off or freak out. I’ll be more confident. I won’t necessarily know what to do right away, but I’ll manage to work through it. Hopefully it won’t kill me again.” He nudges her shoulder with his own.

She nods, but not understandingly, more just patiently. She continues to watch the waves crash onto the shore. “I had a friend a long time ago who you remind me of. Belahkay. Ludicrous name. He was easygoing at heart, but not a waste of space. His people were facing a dangerous task, and none of us could do it for him. It had to be a regular human, and he could have genuinely died from it. This was actually here on Bungula...very early days. The earliest.” She takes a breath. “It was when we were terraforming it. He was very brave, and he survived. He was the first true Bungulan, if you use the right definition. We went on some adventures together; ended up thrown clear across the galaxy, where we were forced to destroy a planet for some not-so-great people. He always wanted to do the right thing, though. I’ve not seen him in a long time. He had to volunteer for another mission, and he had to do it alone. And we let him, because we had other things to work on at the same time.

When we went back for him, he couldn’t remember us anymore. He had become someone else, and didn’t wanna leave. So we tried to move on. But. Then he called. Out of the blue. I mean, it wasn’t him, but word got back to me that he needed our help. He still couldn’t remember me, mind you, but he was still the same person, deep down. So I flew back to his planet, and helped him through some stuff. And wouldn’t you know it? I lost him again. He made the ultimate sacrifice. Again. I thought he was gone forever, but then I get another call, and I’m told that his consciousness was being stored on an off-site server that people just forgot about. The laws on this planet, they’re tricky. We weren’t allowed to just plug him back in. We figured it out, though. Unfortunately, he still couldn’t remember me, except for the short window where I helped him understand how to see the future. That was new. He couldn’t ever do that before. I think he was exposed to temporal energy, or something, and...it changed him.”

Resi is no idiot. He knows who she’s talking about, but now he can’t bring himself to look over at her. He just keeps watching the water.

She has one more thing to try. “You may not want him back. But I need him. Resi, I need my friend. It’s been centuries, and I don’t care how old we end up getting, that kind of time apart will always be excruciating.”

He breathes, and finally works up the courage to look over at her again. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

Microstory 2688: Go A-Viking

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Kala gave him some good advice. He hadn’t realized how tired he was, so he followed her directions to a suite they had set up for him. It was super nice and luxurious, reminding him of the hotel where he stayed on Anchor Island. He took a quick shower, and then crawled into bed.

He dreams of being on a boat, but it’s unlike anything he’s ever seen before. It’s wooden, like the canoes and fishing boats that the Tamborans would use, but it’s big, more like the kind the Bungulans had. He’s dressed in alien layered clothing on the deck, looking out over the ocean. He can’t see a single hint of land anywhere. Nothing really happens, but he’s not alone. He’s experiencing the voyage with others, most of whom he does not recognize. Caprice is there, though he is much younger than she was before. Either this is a memory of her past, or a vision of the future, and she has chosen to inhabit a younger version of herself. The second one actually makes the most sense.

He wakes up feeling refreshed, but confused, and trying to make sense of what he saw. Being on the sea obviously wasn’t too weird, but the clothes they were wearing, and the tone of the scene—people’s facial expressions—even the color of the sky...none of it looked right to him. He couldn’t even tell if they were happy to be there.

He finds Caprice eating dinner alone in the common area when he exits his room. They’re evidently sharing the space. She tried to be here for him in time for the eruption, but got caught up with something on the other side of the island. She appears as young as she did in the dream, and he’s never seen her this way before, which strongly suggests that it really is something from his future. The mountain is no longer a problem, so his mind has jumped to the next one. “What do you think?” he asks her. “Does that sound like something you would do, or even have done?”

“I think, since I’ve known you, I’ve learned to trust what you see, and what you say. If you think we’ll be on a big boat together, sailing on rough waters, I believe you. I have never been on a boat like that before, but I have heard of it. I have to say, I hope it doesn’t mean that we’ll be traveling through time.”

“Why would that even be a possibility?” Resi asks, puzzled.

“What you’re describing is a viking boat, and viking clothing. And the sky you saw? It sounds more like the one on Earth. The sky there isn’t quite as icy blue as it is on Bungula? I’ve seen pictures. Here, I can pull it up for you.” She reaches for her device.

“I believe you. I can’t imagine we would ever go to Earth, let alone the past.”

Caprice tilts her head in thought. “There’s another option.”

“What would that be?”

“Well, have you heard of Castlebourne? It’s tens of light years away.”

“Yeah, that’s the one where it’s just a bunch of amusement parks, right?”

“It’s a lot more than that. I think I might be able to pull up the prospectus from this. They give out all that information because they want visitors.” She taps on her device a little. “Yeah, I searched for vikings, and here it is; the Nordome Network. Live like a Northman in the first millennium. Sail the seas, take the lands, and try to keep them! In this highly immersive simulation, no electricity is allowed. It is not something you visit, but something you live. Are you ready to go a-viking? Tap here to begin your journey, and see what you’re made of. Hmm. It actually sounds like fun.”

It sounds like a nightmare.

Microstory 2683: Desperate Remedies

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It’s been seven days. The hike was grueling, especially for Resi, who is not doing very well. He’s run out of medicine. It was supposed to last him a few weeks, but he took a little more than the recommended dose each time, and now he can’t even synthesize more. But this is it. This is his moment. If we can predict exactly when this volcano erupts, it will be worth it. He can die if he has to. Chaya, Caprice, and even Kartica will walk back down, warn the Bungulan scientist when it’s going to happen, and then they can craft their magical technology into a solution. The problem is, so far, he’s not seen anything. They stopped a few more times than they absolutely had to so he could take a nap. He needed the rest and recovery period, but he was also always hoping to trigger a new vision. Nothing came to him. Not even a hint. Every once in a while, Chaya would do something totally unexpected, like throw a fruit at him. One time, she tore off all of her clothes. Or rather, she was going to. He stopped her. Because he saw that she was planning on it. Which was great. Not only could he save her the trouble, but it also proves that changing the future is possible. They have to stop that volcano.

They’re on the rim of the caldera now, in the process of walking around the entire circumference. They’re moving even slower now; again, because Resi can’t keep pace, and because he’s trying to see something meaningful. Nothing is doing anything. He’s starting to think he made the whole thing up. Yes, he has visions of the future, but maybe this one is just a dream. Maybe that’s just what the Kidjum elixir does to his brain. Both things can be true at the same time without it being this complex web of connections. “Well, ladies, I don’t think this is doing us any good. I hope you at least see it as a good way to make your daily steps, because nothing else has come of it.”

They’re all breathing heavily, and nodding. They don’t want to agree with that assessment, but there’s no reasonable alternative. It hasn’t helped anything. Kartica drops her pack, and starts looking for something in it. “There’s one more thing we can try.” She takes her hand back out, coming back with a black box. She opens it, and as she does, dry ice vapor seeps out of the gap. Inside is one vial of Kidjum elixir.

“You told me not to take that stuff again,” Resi reminds her. “You said it was too dangerous.” He can’t admit that she was right to bring it. It only makes sense.

“It is,” she confirms. “But you look desperate, and honestly, so am I. You also look like you might not survive the night, so if you’re willing to take the risk, I am too.”

“Don’t do this,” Caprice urges. “She’s wrong. You will survive the night, and when we wake up in the morning, we’ll take the fast trail back down. If we think you won’t be able to handle it, we can call for a helicopter ride.”

“How would we do that?” Chaya questions.

“With this satellite phone.” She takes it out of her pack. The thing is giant, probably to accommodate a huge power source, so it never requires charging, and to make it harder to break. “I have a direct line to the Bungulans. I had to, it isn’t safe.”

Caprice and Kartica start arguing with each other, but Resi interrupts them. “I’ll decide.” He takes the sat phone, and then the box. “Let’s all have some dinner, then go to bed. “Okay?” He doesn’t get a response. “Okay?” He adds, “okay,” when they nod.

That night, he sneaks out of the tent he’s been sharing with Chaya, puts his shoes back on, and then begins the descent into the caldera. That’s where his visions are waiting for him. He knows it.

Microstory 2680: Brooke, Bungula, and Blood-Brain Barriers

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Resi has big plans to break into the Assembly Chambers, and find out all their secrets, but he can’t act on his rage just yet. He is still so weak. Father doesn’t think he will ever be strong enough to be part of the physical aspect, but surprisingly, he doesn’t say no to the plans altogether. He decides that, even though they managed to get their ally, Keller, in a position of power, it hasn’t been enough. They have been at this for decades, and still haven’t moved the needle, he laments. Resi isn’t so sure about that. If the insanity of the last few years is any indication, it must be a maddeningly constant battle. Things could be far worse if they chose to stay out of it. In that theoretical reality, Yana might be a police state, or an entirely apocalyptic nightmare. That is what Resi needs to focus on while he is recovering. He asks to see Caprice, since she is the only one he can trust with this particular task who would also have hypothetical access.

She is able to procure him one dose of the Kidjum elixir, and doesn’t even argue that it’s dangerous for him to take it. She doesn’t know how important it is for him to conjure a vision. She doesn’t even know about the visions in the first place, but she believes in him. He loves her for that. The house is empty now. She has offered to stay by his bedside and be responsible for his care while the rest of the family is out in the fields, or in Kala’s case, attending what are potentially her final days of school. The Assembly still wants to drop the age of majority, in labor terms. It still hasn’t taken effect. Those who will turn twelve before the official start date will grandfathered in, but they might be expected to go through it when they turn thirteen in a year, or maybe fourteen. It is all still high up in the air, and hopefully it never comes to that anyway. They have to do everything they can to put a stop to it.

Resi accepts the dose, and lies back down on his pillow. He might be the only person in the universe who has done this more than once. Now it’s three times? There’s no other choice. The first time, he had no idea what he was in for. The second time, he didn’t know it was going to happen at all. Now is his chance to take control of the reins. Earlier, he read up on lucid dreaming techniques; data he downloaded from the Bungulan network while he was briefly on Anchor Island. He shuts his eyes, and lets the solution flow through his veins, and break the blood-brain barrier.

The next thing he knows, he’s lying in a hospital bed. Kartica is looking down on him with that weird little smirk that she has had since she reyoungified herself. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demands to know. “What did you do to me?”

“Resi, don’t you know, there’s a reason Kidjum elixir is so regulated. This is dangerous stuff. You can’t just take it whenever you’re thirsty”.

“You’re the one who wants me to see the future. Now that I’m actually trying, you’re trying to stop me? Make up your mind, granny.”

“I’m not doing anything of the sort. Res, you have the power to see the future. The elixir taps into it, but it comes from you. If you had taken the real stuff, you may have died. I saved your life by switching the vials. You’re welcome. You need to learn how to trigger a vision without aid. It’s the only way you’ll avoid the negative consequences.”

“Oh, and I suppose you’re the only one who can teach me how to do that.”

“No.” Kartica steps to the side to let someone else dominate Resi’s field of vision.

“Hello, Mr. Brooks,” the woman begins. “My name is Brooke Prieto. I believe that you’re named after me?”

Microstory 2505: Health Smeller

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I can smell your health, and heal your ailments. I was Landis Tipton before Landis Tipton was Landis Tipton. While we gifted him with all of the Vulnerabilities, mine is the one that he uses primarily, if not exclusively. I want to make it clear that I did not waste my gift when I had it. I too healed people. It was at a smaller scale, but you have to understand that none of us believed that we could announce ourselves to the world. Before Landis was brave enough to stand in the spotlight, it felt too dangerous to be open to the public. We decided that we had to be very selective with our clients. Of course, that didn’t always work out, but we did our best. I think we helped a lot of people. Everyone we chose was entitled to a healing, but it was sort of usually considered secondary to the other—more abstract—therapies. People get sick; it’s a way of life, and I didn’t think that there was anything I could do about it. It didn’t even occur to us that my gift of healing could one day be synthesized into a mass-produced cure-all. What people really needed was to feel better about themselves, and realize their dreams, even if that meant shifting those dreams to things that were a little more realistic and attainable. I’m not saying that I was a pointless member of the team, but we did see our responsibility as being more holistic. On the contrary, my job was very important, and should not be discounted. You see, healing begins from within, but physical pain and suffering is real, and it can make it impossible to feel like your life can get better, even if you’ve not been stricken with some serious disease. Everyone has something. They have joint pain, or frequent headaches, or circulation issues. I could fix all of that. Maybe not permanently, but those first few days after the clients met us were incredibly vital. It was at least one less thing that they were worried about while they were trying to move on, and improve their situations. It gave them a new baseline by which they could judge the things that happened to them in the future, both good and not-so-great. Healthy body, healthy mind, as they say. I have heard people ask Landis what people’s health smells like, but I have never heard his answer. That’s probably because he’s so busy saving the world. That’s not me being resentful, but it does lead well into the answer to their question. When something is particularly wrong with someone, their health typically smells sickly sweet, like spoiled fruit. The disease is rotting away in their body, creating a build-up of waste, and generating a toxic smell that anyone would perceive as being wrong, if their noses were designed to detect the right signals. Poor general health, on the other hand, is bitter, with metallic overtones, and I could sometimes cure that too, but generally not. So if you ever meet Landis in person, and he’s a little shy or standoffish, I can’t speak for him, but that might be why. People just kind of smell bad all the time, even when they’ve been cured. It’s unsettling, but it’s part of the job, and I for one think that Landis faces it valiantly.

Microstory 2380: Vacuus, October 29, 2179

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Dear Condor,

Thanks for the compliment, you’re not so bad yourself. I wouldn’t mind seeing a few more photos. As for your question about what I might have done with my life had I been born on a pre-apocalyptic Earth, I’ve always wanted to work with my hands. Obviously, I need my hands to do my real job well, but I’ve never gotten those hands dirty. As your twin and I realized, our base is immaculate. The systems are designed to keep out all the Vacuan dust, and keep the atmosphere in. If I had been born on Earth instead, say a hundred years ago, I guess I would have liked to be a gardener, or something. Yeah, we have a garden here, but it’s not really the kind I’m talking about. It’s so stale and perfect, like everywhere else. It would have been nice to plant beautiful flowers just for the sake of it, not because anyone needed food. To crouch there on the edge of the colorful garden, smiling up at the sun. We don’t have a sun here, so I suppose just about anything outdoors would be amazing. I do yoga too, so I’m flexible, and don’t have any problem being on my hands and knees. I’ve attached a photo of myself doing my morning yoga. It was taken a few years ago, when I was in slightly better shape, but I’m still doing okay. That’s about all I can do to workout unless I want to fight over the three treadmills that we have. You must have other ways of staying fit. Exactly how big and comprehensive are these domes that you live under? Have you ever gone swimming in a pool, or an artificial pond? You can send me a picture of that if you want. We’re so confined here, and swimming would be a huge waste of resources, we would never dream of it. Back in the day, people would make fun of one of my grandfather’s friends because he didn’t know how to swim, but these days, that’s probably a whole lot of people. It looks fun, but it’s just not practical. I did design myself a swimsuit once, just to see what it looked like. I can send you that photo too, if you’re interested. Researchers are developing virtual reality, which could give people so many opportunities that they never had before, like swimming, or opportunities that would be impossible in the real world, like flying without an aircraft. Could you imagine? Okay, I’m just fantasizing now. What kind of fantasies do you have? Don’t be afraid to be a little provocative, if that’s what’s on your mind. We all have dreams.

Dreaming of you,

Velia

Microstory 2145: Fresh Fake Baby Brains

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Wow, yesterday was some roof stoof, wasn’t it? I guess I need to explain a bit more. What you need to understand about the bulkverse is that some universes can stand on their own, while others need some kind of oversight. It’s not that every world that you can imagine can exist, but a lot of them can, and the more reasonable ones tend to be stronger. For instance, there’s a movie where I’m from where two Earths orbit each other so closely that you can actually take an elevator up from one to the other, and depending on which one you were born on, gravity remains the same for you, so if you travel to the other one, you will fall up towards your homeworld if you’re not careful. It’s super ridiculous, and practically impossible, and the universe where that story took place only lasted for one hour and fifty-four minutes before it imploded. Basically, the more normal things are, the safer you are there. That sucks for them, yeah? Well, unfortunately, it also sucks for you, because even though your planet doesn’t violate any reasonable laws of physics, it is weird. It’s too dependent upon the historical context of a different universe. I couldn’t tell you which one that was; maybe mine, but either way, yours too lacks stability. You’ve obviously lasted a lot longer than two hours, but that doesn’t mean you’ll last forever. It’s entirely possible that literally none of you existed until I entered the brane. My alternate self back on my homeworld may have conjured you up in that moment, and automatically implanted memories in your fresh fake baby brains, which make you believe that you’ve been around for years, even generations, or even for billions of years. That doesn’t make it so, but it happens. It happens all the time. It happens in dreams. I know it’s scary to think that this might be the case, but as I said in my last post, that doesn’t make you any less real. It’s all relative, and all in how you frame it. I long ago made peace with the possibility that I was also conjured in this way, and that I could one day blink out of existence. It didn’t change how I lived my life, because I couldn’t do anything to change it, so if you look at it that way, you’ll be all right. If you do happen to blink out of existence soon, you won’t be able to experience any emotions on the matter. You won’t experience anything at all. So you might as well just keep going. Me, I’m different, because I can leave. And I must.

Fluence: Anchor (Part V)

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Briar was a normal biological human, Goswin was a transhuman with biological upgrades, Weaver was technologically enhanced, and Eight Point Seven was mostly inorganic. Despite the range of substrate properties, they all slept in one way or another. Even Eight Point Seven needed to periodically take time to reorganize her data drives, perform diagnostics, self-repair, and give her microfusion reactor some time to power cycle, and purge waste byproducts. For the longest time, researchers believed that giving inorganic intelligences the ability to dream was nothing more than, well...a dream. They figured that they would have to directly program scenarios for them to merely simulate the experience. As it turned out, once technology advanced sufficiently, this was not necessary. Androids will do it themselves during these periods of low-power memory consolidation. Random neural firings will generate aberrant thoughts akin to the way that  humans dreamt. One of the greatest challenges of 21st century AI research was figuring out how to teach such intelligences to wake up from these dreams, and leave those thoughts behind, so that they didn’t negatively impact their normal operational requirements. Occasionally, this subroutine will fail to trigger, just like it can in humans, who sometimes wake up angry with someone for things that never happened in the real world. Early models sometimes became unexpectedly violent due to these errors.

The first night that they spent in Briar’s old camp on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida just so happened to be when Eight Point Seven needed to go into sleep mode for about an hour. She tried to hold off on it, so she could keep watch over the others, but she was not yet used to this new substrate. She didn’t even take this form on purpose. Her consciousness somehow uploaded itself to it at some point before their first jump. They had been so busy with all this stuff that she hadn’t taken the time to really investigate. That was probably why she had to do this now, because her mind was in conflict with her body. They were unfamiliar with each other. That night, she dreamt of her home. She was first created on a planet called Bungula, which orbited Rigil Kentaurus. Theirs was an ever-changing society, always run by an artificial intelligence, which frequently purged its own memory to be made anew. Her name was Eight Point Seven because she was the 78th incarnation of this entity.

Something went wrong with Eight Point Seven’s programming. She decided that she wanted to live, and not make way for the next version. The Bungulans eventually accepted her decision, and let her keep administering them accordingly. She grew tired of this, however, and ultimately chose to leave with Leona Matic. They eventually made their way to Bida together, and then separated to different ships. She had always wondered what became of Bungula, though. They had to have some form of government without her. Was it a human this time, or did they recreate the old program, and finally get their Eight Point Eight? Perhaps they skipped all the intervening versions, and just went straight to Eleven Point Nine.

All four of them woke up with a start. They were no longer in the jungle of Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, but under a geodesic dome on the very end of a lava tube. They could see the stars above them, shining through the triangles of polycarbonate. The air wasn’t stale, but it wasn’t windy anymore. The whole world felt still, whichever world this was. Eight Point Seven Stood up from her cross-legged position. “This is my homeworld,” she determined. “This is Bungula.”

“Why are we here?” Goswin asked. “Who brought us this time?”

“We all did,” Weaver stated. “Remember? We don’t go anywhere unless we go together. There has to he some kind of consensus”

“No, it was me,” Eight Point Seven argued. “This is what I was dreaming about.”

“You can dream?” Briar questioned.

Of course they could dream. Goswin ignored the question. “Maybe we’re not entirely right about how this works. Maybe one of us sometimes pilots the whole crew. Someone’s...psychic power is just a little bit stronger. I wasn’t dreaming of going anywhere in particular. If your thoughts were more specific, they may have overwhelmed the three of us.”

“I was dreaming of seeing Leona again,” Briar explained.

“She’s here,” came an unfamiliar voice. They turned to find an unassuming man standing outside of their circle. “But you cannot see her. Hi. I’m Lieutenant Administrator Eleven Point Eight. I am...moderately aware of this time travel stuff, but I’m not well-versed, and I would not like to be. The current Administrator is very busy with her new plans for this world, and she does not have time to deal with whatever this paradox-waiting-to-happen is. Please leave however you came.”

“Forgive us,” Goswin said. “What is the date?”

“October 19, 2226.”

“This is the day I left,” Eight Point Seven noted.

“Yes,” Lieutenant Eleven Point Eight concurred. “You’re about to launch, and I’ve been asked to retrieve Madams Prieto and Prieto so that my superior may speak with them. As I asked, please leave.”

“Hold on,” Eight Point Seven stopped him. “The past version of me has not yet left, but there is already a new admin?”

“Of course,” Eleven Point Seven confirmed. “You thought there would be a gap?”

“Have we met? It and I, have we met?” Eight Point Seven questioned.

“Yes, you met. I was there during the handover ceremony.”

Eight Point Seven’s eyes widened. “That didn’t happen in my timeline. I never met my replacement. There was a gap, because it’s fine. The colonists mostly govern themselves.”

“Things have changed beyond Bida,” Weaver acknowledged. “We changed them.”

“Why should they?” Eight Point Seven questioned her. “This is before I showed up on Bida. I had never heard of Briar or Irene yet.”

Weaver shrugged. “Harrison was in the twelfth century, in England. That was the point of divergence. Nothing we know of history since then can be trusted.”

“Could you please get on with it?” Eleven Point Eight urged. “I have to go, and so do you.”

Eight Point Seven shook her head. “We can’t stay in the past. I know you wanted to keep studying that tree, but it’s too dangerous. We don’t know anything about what the universe looks like post 2400. That’s the only safe point in time for us. We have to stop risking these paradoxes, like he said.”

“She’s right,” Goswin agreed. “Let the past stay in the past.”

Weaver nodded. “Okay.”

They all turned to Briar, even Lt. Admin Eleven Point Eight. He was taken a little aback. “What, you think I would sabotage this? It’s fine, it’s fine. Let’s just go.” He sighed, frustrated at still not being trusted. “I said, let’s go!”

They blinked, and the scene changed. They were back in the ship bay in the asteroid near the planet of Po. “Hmm, that worked,” Briar mused.

“Yes, so it would seem. Or maybe not. “We’re still in the past, just not too terribly much this time.” Goswin nodded over to the clear end of the bay where he could see himself.

The other Goswin was holding a tablet and staring at them while staying in the discussion that he was having with the man next to him. He pointed towards the door, like he was respectfully instructing the other guy to leave.

“Though, I don’t remember this,” the present-day Goswin noted. “I don’t recognize that man at all.

Once the local was gone, Alt!Goswin made his way to the group. “Report.”

“Uhhh...report,” Goswin said back.

Alt!Goswin kept his eyes on his other self, but lowered his chin in distrust, and repeated, “report.”

“Report.”

“Report.”

“Report!”

“Report!”

“REPORT!”

“REPORT!”

“Enough!” Weaver stepped in. “This is never gonna end. Goswin that we don’t know, how long have you been here?”

“A few months,” Alt!Goswin replied.

Weaver looked over to her Goswin. “We’re not in the past. We’re in a new timeline. The changes we made, this is a natural byproduct of that.”

Just then, another version of Weaver appeared behind them. “That’s not exactly what’s happening. Tell me, were you on the X González, or the Emma González?”

“The X, of course,” the first Weaver replied. “That’s their chosen name.”

“Yes, but sometimes the ship is named after their original name,” Alt!Weaver clarified.

“Sometimes?” Weaver echoed. “How many timelines are there?”

“All of them,” Alt!Weaver said cryptically.

“What the hell does that mean? What was the point of divergence?”

“It’s not like that,” Alt!Weaver answered, still not clarifying anything. “There was a moment of split, but it wasn’t linear. Perhaps you remember seeing a whole bunch of other yous on the González?”

Yeah, that happened. They saw a few alternates on the bridge, but they assumed that that was just some temporal glitch, since they quickly disappeared. They didn’t think that those other selves still existed somewhere. How many splits were created that they didn’t witness? “Yeah, were you one of the alts we saw on the bridge?”

“No, I was in the engine room at the time,” Alt!Weaver began, “but not all of us were. Not all of us were even on the ship at all. Like I said, it wasn’t linear. We’ve been replicated all over the timeline, and rescattered all over elsewhere on the timeline, and in every parallel reality. Furthermore, we can move ourselves along the timeline, and across realities, at will. This star system here is a sort of an anchor point. We’ve all been showing up here for months, and recording each other, adding to the data pile. It’s difficult, though. I don’t always know if the versions of my friends that I’ve been with are still the ones that I’m with now. We may be shifting between groups, and not even realizing it.”

“That’s why I have a body,” Eight Point Seven realized. “It’s not my body. I was uploaded directly to the ship, but I stole this from someone else. What happened to her, the victim?”

“Mapping our alternates is even more difficult than mapping the timeline itself,” Alt!Weaver explained. “I don’t know how to differentiate anyone. A lot of people think that time is a river, and that’s only a metaphor that they recognize because it’s not analogous to time...but to consciousness. Your mind is fluent, and you are not the same person that you were a split second ago. Shifting to your alternates could be happening literally as we speak, and we wouldn’t be able to detect it. In this region of space, spacetime breaks down. Everything converges here. Everything diverges here.”

“Did we cause that, or did it cause us?” Goswin asked her.

Alt!Weaver smiled. “Yes. And no. There is no cause. There is no effect. It’s just bleh.” She pantomimed vomiting. “It’s everything,” she added, mouth still agape, and hands still cupping the bowl of the imaginary toilet.”

“Everything, everywhere, all at once?” Alt!Goswin offered.

“Pretty much,” Alt!Weaver replied.

“There is a magnolia on Bida,” Weaver said to her alternate. “I believe that it can reconverge us. We just have to figure out how to control it.”

Alt!Weaver nodded. “The Blending Tree. Yeah, it’s possible, but we would have to get everyone there at the same point in time; to the everything bagel,” she said as she was gesturing to Alt!Goswin to reinforce his reference. “As I was saying, I don’t know how many of us there are, or where they are, or what they’ve changed in the timeline. Some of us keep displacing other people, and that’s a whole other box of problems,” she added under her breath.

“Oh, haha,” Goswin laughed awkwardly. “What a bunch of bozos.”

Two different versions of Eight Point Seven showed up, one of which had a deep scar running across her cheek. The first Eight Point Seven stepped closer and regarded her, tilting her head to the side as if she had a lizard brain nestled inside of her dominant neural net. After taking a look at the scarless Eight Point Seven, who was indistinguishable from herself, she reached up to her own face, and dragged her fingernail across her forehead. Blood leaked out, and dripped down. She then stepped back to where she was, not bothering to clean it up.

The Eight Point Seven with the other scar nodded. “Your new designation is Eight Point Seven Point Six.”

“Dude,” Briar said, aghast.

Eight Point Seven tilted her head back to where it belonged. “It didn’t hurt,” she said, a little like Cameron from The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

The other scarred Eight Point Seven addressed the whole group. “It’s beginning.” She sounded even more like Cameron, so robotic.

“What’s beginning?” Goswin asked.

“The Reconvergence,” the other, other Eight Point Seven answered.

“Of us?” Goswin pressed. “We were just talking about the magnolia tree.”

“It has nothing to do with us, I don’t think. The destruction of four realities, and the creation of a new universe, is happening today. The war begins tomorrow.”

< > Entire Story

Microstory 1750: Wolves in the Woods

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Every night it’s the same thing. I’m creeping through the forest, trying to find a safe place to hide. Even though I dream of the same place every time, I don’t always remember at first what it is I’m running from. Sometimes I’m not even running from anything, but towards something good. Only later do I learn that there are wolves all around me. One is angry, one is sad. Another is guilty, and yet another is hateful. Some of them try to attack me, but mostly they just attack each other, fighting over prey. I try to keep them apart, but that usually only makes things worse. They battle it out, and whoever wins is how I’ll feel in the morning. The wolves do not merely have these feelings themselves, but represent them. It’s not just an angry wolf, but the wolf of anger, and every time it wins, I wake up angry. Of course, the wolves aren’t real, this is just my subconscious preparing me for the day ahead, upon a foundation of the days behind. I’m not angry because my anger wolf won. The anger wolf won because I’m angry. Presumably, I heard The Tale of Two Wolves when I was young, and it stuck with me in a profound way. Everyone supposedly has two wolves inside of them, fighting each other, which determine your personality. The one who wins is the one you feed. I don’t feed any of my wolves. I guess I’ve always considered that their problem. None of them has died yet, I’ll tell you that much, but honestly, the wolf of contentment hasn’t been looking too good these days. I dream of nothing but my wolves. One of my many therapists once suggested I keep a dream journal, because he figured I actually was having other dreams, but I was just so focused on the one that I never remembered the other symbolic stories. He was wrong. It is only the wolves in the woods.

I’m seeing a new therapist today who specializes in hypnosis. I’m hoping she can get into my head, and perhaps take the wolves out. It would be nice if I could dream about something not so bloody on the nose. I mean, the wolves are a metaphor, but it’s so obvious, it makes me feel like such a basic person. My subconscious mind can’t come up with something more clever—maybe something slightly more difficult to interpret? Really? Hell, I’ll take walking into school with no clothes on, or my teeth falling out, just to get some variety, even though those are still basic. The hypnotist sits me down in a chair, but after we get to talking, she decides that hypnosis is not for me. She doesn’t think it’s going to help, but she thinks maybe I can handle the problem on my own. My issue is that I have no control over the dreams, so they consume me. It’s like the wolves are deciding who I am without giving me any say. If I want to interact with them, I have to assume control. I have to learn how to have lucid dreams. She says to restart the dream journal, that it will help me, but also gives me some books which spell out some other techniques. Not all methods work on everybody, so I need to find what fits me. I read the books cover to cover, and formulate a plan. Then I go to sleep, and enter the woods. All of the wolves are in one place this time, sitting quietly in a pack, apparently waiting for my instructions. “All right, wolves,” I say. “We’re gonna do this in an orderly fashion. No more fighting for scraps. We hunt together, we dine together. Everyone gets their fair share.” From then on, I continue to have the same dream, but I’m in charge now. The wolf who wins is the one I feed? If that’s true, then I’m going to try to stay balanced, not even bothering to kill the negative wolves. I’m going to feed them all.

Microstory 1613: Prime Mover

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Like me, The Superintendent is a spirit, and also like me, he can witness events in other universes, and he can see more detail. But it’s more than that. He’s also creating these branes, and controlling certain aspects of them. Free will is still a thing, but the people’s actions always follow his logic, and going against his explicit wishes is only possible once you’re made aware that he exists. I mean, I’m the one telling you this story right now, but I’m doing it through the Superintendent, and it’s being published in his world. It’s called Universe Prime, and no matter what he tells you, it’s because that’s what he decided to call it. It’s not the most important brane in the bulk, but it’s the most important to him, so he got to name it. He chooses the names for each of his universes, if he chooses to name it at all. He is not a more powerful storyteller, or dreamer. Anyone can conjure a new universe into being with nothing more than their thoughts. The difference is that he understands that he’s doing this, and uses it to his advantage deliberately. Every world I discuss throughout this series belongs to him, except for this one today. Universe Prime is where he lives, and he has no control over the outcome of events. But that doesn’t mean he exerts no influence at all. Most of what happens in Prime is a result of interference from a different universe, and if he really wants to, he can make or break such occurrences. For his version of Earth, there is a quite literal universal rule that it is to remain pristine and untouched. It’s written into Martian Law, and honored by the Fosteans. It’s recognized by the residents of Dextoculo, and frightens travelers from beyond the membrane. No one messes with the Superintendent’s Earth, and that is in no small part, thanks to the Superintendent himself.

He’s telling a story...a huge story. It’s so big that it’ll take decades just to get everything out. He’s in control of it, even if there is a high level of free will when it comes to individual choices. Everyone is so afraid of going against him that they follow his rules with little question. They know if they do something he doesn’t like, he’ll just wipe their story away. The Ochivari would never dream of invading, even though it’s a logical target. They’re struggling terribly with climate breakdown, and the future looks pretty grim. My voldisil ability operates according to his timeline, so I can’t see into its future from his perspective, but things are not going well. If any planet deserves the wrath of a race of antinatalistic mass murders, it’s his own. He won’t let it happen, though, for obvious reasons. If the Ochivari attacked, he would just write a story where The Allies of the Darning Wars all came together, and defeated them once and for all. They don’t want that, so they stay away from Prime, and tread lightly in the Composite Universe, and just leave it at that. Prime has plenty of problems of their own. The Fosteans generally respect the rule about Earth, but its leaders are not good people, and they are not peaceful. It and the Composite are twins, and together, they form the Biverse, so they are permanently linked, and dependent on each other. The Superintendent tells their stories, but does not do much to make himself a part of it. They’re strong-willed, resilient, and other than Composite, they probably contribute the highest number of notable individual members of the Transit Army. I don’t know how it ends, if it ever does, but I’ll be keeping a close eye on it.

Microstory 1610: Hypnopedia

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All universes are strange in their own way from most people’s perspective, and that’s just a product of only living in one universe for a long time before you encounter others, if you even ever do. I’m a little different, because I grew up with them, so even the stranger ones aren’t all that strange to me. Hypnopediaverse is pretty strange, though. It’s one of the few places where the bulkverse is common knowledge, and where they use the knowledge of it to their advantage. As one might assume, most universes are independent, alone, isolated. If you want to travel from one to another, you’re first going to need something powerful enough to tear a hole in the membrane that keeps it all together, and then you’re going to need some way to navigate. The first step is hard. The second step is just this side of utterly and hopelessly impossible. Very few people have the means to navigate the bulkverse. I can only do it mentally, and even then, I get lost a lot. It is simply not meant to be traveled. There are small exceptions to this rule, and it has to do with multidimensional proximity. Some universes are very close to a counterpart, like a binary star system. They refer to these as twinverses, and while I suspect they’re rare, I haven’t mapped the bulkverse, so I don’t have the data to back up my claim. After all, multi-star systems are more common than single stars, if you can believe it. It’s part of what makes Earth so special, and probably has a lot to do with its habitability. Getting back to the real story, however, when you’re talking about twinverses, you’re talking about two branes that are perpetually linked to one another, and follow the same temporal vector. The inhabitants may not be using the same calendar, but if you leave one, go to the other, and spend X amount of time there, X amount of time will have passed for those you left behind once you return.

I’m not sure how twinverses come into being, and there could be multiple reasons for this, but the thing about them is that this phenomenon has always been discovered. The residents have always eventually learned about the other side, and this is no truer than it is for Hypnopediaverse, which is a little different, because only one of the universes has a native population. The second brane that the one is attached to only contains plantlife. Whenever someone dreamfalls into it, the only people they encounter are from the main universe. This is how dreaming works, by the way. Everyone travels to other universes when they dream. It’s just that these branes are unstable, and usually only last as long as the dream does. In this case, though, the attached brane is stable, self-sustaining, and affords the dreamers a level of lucidity generally only reserved for the lucky few. Now, they could use this world to reach out and enjoy each other’s company while they’re still asleep. They actually do this sometimes; set up dates and other meetings to maximize their time. This population has decided, however, that the main purpose should be education. And not just regular school, but special skills they didn’t before know existed. The most common of these is flying like a bird, but it’s not that easy. They can fly in the dreamworld, but the skill will not transfer over to the main world. To make that happen, they have to enter yet another universe that’s only attached to the second one. That’s right, hypnopediaverse is actually a trinary system, and as far as I know, the only one of its kind. The third operates on a different temporal vector, however, which adds a level of complexity that the residents have to account for every time they dreamfall into it.

Microstory 1574: Nap

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Prompt

I just woke up from a very unfulfilling nap where I dreamt that...

Botner

I think I had a dream once that my future husband and I were in our bedroom talking. We were talking about what a close relationship he wants to have with his parents. I remember talking about how he needs to talk to them before he tells them about our relationship. The problem is, they are moving and they are leaving the state before he can tell them, or they are moving to another country. He left to go talk to them and I got mad because I was supposed to tell them before they moved. I went to go talk to them and found that they had moved and I wasn’t invited to the wedding. My fiancé was there though. He was not at the wedding. I was so mad. I looked over at my fiancé and he had tears in his eyes. I felt bad. Then I woke up. I am always very, very glad that I am not still in that relationship. When I had this dream, I always thought, man, maybe I’m about to have a really bad life. I’ve recently gotten into reading the Harry Potter books. And I think I’m in the...

Conclusion

...minority here, because everyone else has already read them, and they managed to do it before all the news broke about the author’s transphobia. I’m in the middle of the third one, and I don’t know if I should keep going. It’s one thing for an actor or filmmaker to be cancelled. You can still enjoy their work, because it’s not just their work. A lot of people worked very hard to make that, and why should they suffer because this one person screams at young women, or does worse to them? This is different. She’s the only person who made these books, and I feel committed to them, but I also feel dirty. The nap was meant to make me feel better, but I only feel worse now, because the doorbell rang in the middle of a cycle, or something, and my heart is racing. I can’t even remember what happened in the dream, and it was only moments ago. That’s why I started talking about an old dream. Though, maybe it’s more relevant to my anxiety than the recent one was. People around me were making decisions, and they weren’t asking for my input, or even warning me about them. That’s kind of how I feel about cancel culture. So much of it is happening too fast that I don’t have time to really dig deep, and find out what happened. I’m just supposed to accept that we don’t like this person anymore, and not ask questions. The author thing is a pretty easy answer, but they’re not all like that, I just don’t know. I guess that’s what the dream was trying to teach me, that I have to slow down, and make time for the facts, or I’ll make bad decisions, and piss off everyone else.

Microstory 1484: Necter of the Gods

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The universe is but one in a sea of infinite others. Each is called a brane, and is swimming around a sort of hyperdimensional metaspace known as the bulk. Do not confuse these with alternate realities. Any similarity between two branes only occurs because one was modeled upon the other. Some of them are natural, but some are conceived in the minds of people. The latter can last indefinitely, or collapse quickly, and are usually created through dreams, or fictional storytelling. An example of the former, on the other hand, will not resemble any other. It may have humans in it, or it may not. Its physical laws may feel familiar, but that will be coincidence, not because of some inherent interversal connection. No matter what, each universe is independent, through both time and space. And it is extremely difficult to travel between them. Interversal travel has only been invented twice in the entire histories of the entire bulkverse, and every means of travel beyond it has been based on that original technology. Because these branes do not operate on the same timeline, there really isn’t any such thing as the first, but one did inspire the pursuit of the other. They called it The Crossover, and the biggest reason the one group of people who encountered it were capable of replicating its function was because they were immortals who were billions of years old. They called their version the Nexus Network. It started out as a way to jump between systems in a galaxy, before expanding to other galaxies, and eventually all over the universe. Once the process was fully automated, and left to conquer the cosmos, its inventors decided they needed a new challenge. They chose interversal travel as that challenge, and proceeded to spend millions of years working on the problem. That was how difficult it was.

Getting out of one’s current brane was the easy part, but navigating the bulkverse, and finding somewhere to land was all but impossible. The best computer in any universe is usually not anywhere near good enough to make the necessary calculations. Once those calculations are made, however, the system that utilizes the data doesn’t have to be very large, or even all that complex. After all that time figuring out how to travel to other universes, this small group of immortals had to come to terms with the fact that their latest challenge was over, and they had nothing more to do with the rest of their eternal lives. There was talk about building more systems in these other universes, but they weren’t sure that it would be worth it. Their home universe had quadrillions of people in it, spread across many galaxies, and they needed a way to reach each other quickly and conveniently. In these other branes they visited, the population was always a lot lower. They expanded within their galaxy, and into neighboring galaxies, in some cases, but their levels never reached a meaningful fraction of the number the immortals were used to. Even further down the timeline, they seemed to be doing okay with their own technological advances. Still, there were a few cases where the group’s means of instantaneous intergalactic travel would be quite useful. In salmonverse, they didn’t build a full network, but they constructed a handful of them in strategic locations. One of them was Durus. The Durune were aware of temporal manipulation, and psychic abilities, and even a hint of other branes, so they were deemed worthy of being connected to this very small network of replica Nexa. It was constructed in secret at some point, and discovered in 2195. But they weren’t allowed to go anywhere yet.

Microstory 1351: Overqualified

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Cemetery Services Supervisor: Good afternoon, sir. Can I help you find someone? We have a new system that can locate any grave for you, but it’s up in the main office.

Overqualified Executive: No, I’m here for an interview for the Cemetery Services Specialist job. I haven’t heard back, so I figured I would be proactive, and just swing by. I hope that’s okay.

Cemetery Supervisor: I thought that was a joke.

Executive: I’m sorry?

Cemetery Supervisor: I figured you sent in your résumé because you lost some bet you made with your fellow billionaires, or something.

Executive: Uh, no bet. And I’m not a billionaire.

Cemetery Supervisor: You’re rich, though, ain’t ya?

Executive: I’m rich, yes, but I’m completely serious about this position.

Cemetery Supervisor: I don’t think I have to tell you that you are profoundly overqualified for this job.

Executive: I understand that, but believe it or not, I’ve wanted to be a cemetery worker since I was a kid. Being around nature, working with my hands, making sure people have a safe and peaceful place to go to visit their loved ones. I’ve always felt that sounded so rewarding. Of course, my parents would have none of it. They had a lot of ambition for my life, and before I knew it, I was the executive of a multi-million dollar company. I was never really happy, though, and when I looked at my accounts a couple months ago, I realized I had no reason to stay. I gave that place twenty years, and nearly all of it was in the top position, so I have more than enough money to live off of for the rest of my life. All that job did was stress me out, so now it’s time to pursue my dream.

Cemetery Supervisor: This isn’t easy work. I hardly believe it was ever your dream.

Executive: I know it’s not easy, but I hear it’s not stressful, as long as you can handle watching other people’s heartbreak, which I think I can. I’m very empathetic, and I’m sick of taking my work home with me. I want to come in every day, help people through the hardest times in their lives in my own way, then go home.

Cemetery Supervisor: You don’t think you may be taking a job away from someone who really needs it; whose rich father didn’t make them go to college and such?

Executive: ...I’ll work for free. You can set up a volunteer program.

Cemetery Supervisor: Well, that’s this whole legal thing we would have to figure out. The boss would be the only one on hand who would have any clue how to maneuver something like that, if anyone. Right now, I can already see a problem, though. You’re still taking a job from someone, because if we have you to do the work, regardless of what we pay you—or do not pay you—we still wouldn’t need to hire anyone else.

Executive: I understand. I don’t want to make anyone’s life harder; that’s counterproductive to my goals. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.

Cemetery Supervisor: Now, hold on. Just because we can’t help you, doesn’t mean you can’t realize your goals. Are you still workin’ at the corporation?

Executive: I gave them two month’s notice. Jobs like that require a little more time to find a replacement. My tasks are being completed by others, though. I haven’t gone into the office in over a week.

Cemetery Supervisor: If you’re really serious about making a change in your life, then do it. Use your money to make a difference, instead of ignoring it. People will always die, and they will always want to be remembered. There’s more than enough room in the industry for you to start your own funeral home. That way, you can do however much of the day-to-day work you want.

Executive: Hm. That’s not a bad idea.

Cemetery Supervisor: Glad I could help. In the meantime, I suppose I could let you shadow me for a day. I’m sure that won’t cause us any legal problems, and it’ll get you some real experience.

Executive: I sure appreciate it.

Cemetery Supervisor: Well, go on; pick up that shovel. We’re gonna plant a nice shade tree right here. I already started the hole for ya.

Microstory 1350: Advice

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College Student: Thank you for meeting me. My name is College Student, and I’m interested in your program.

College Advisor: All right. Well, how many film classes have you already taken?

College Student: I took a screenwriting class, does that count?

College Advisor: That could count towards credit. You’re a junior, though?

College Student: Yes.

College Advisor: Well, let me take a look at your transcript.

College Student: Sure, here it is.

College Advisor: [...] Okay, so you have all of your core classes, so you’re well on track. It looks like you are a writing major now, is that correct?

College Student: Yes, I thought I liked it, and I do, but I’m having doubts about leaving school with that as my degree. I mean, I don’t feel like I wasted my time with all those courses, but when I’m applying for work, is that what I want them to see?

College Advisor: Well, what kind of work are you looking to apply for? This ain’t California.

College Student: I plan to move to California.

College Advisor: Well, Hollywood job hunting is a lot different than regular jobs. What did you want to actually do in the industry? Write?

College Student: Yes, I would still write, but I feel like I’ve gotten too much experience in other areas, like literature, and creative writing. I just want to look as good as I possibly can. So the classes will help. It’s just the major that I’m worried about. I’m really hoping to graduate in a year and a half, since I already have a place to live in L.A. lined up.

College Advisor: Okay, well Film Studies is not a blow-off program. It requires a minimum of sixty credit hours. Of course, that’s on top of the general education requirements, which it seems you already have. I don’t know them all by heart, so it’s possible you’re still missing one or two of those. Let’s do a little bit of math, and see if we can get this done in a year and a half. You would definitely need to take summer classes, and either way, your workload would be huge.

College Student: Okay, cool.

[transcript cut for relevance]

College Advisor: Okay, thanks, bye. [Hangs up phone.] Yeah, it looks like that history class doesn’t count for us, so with that included, you’ll need to take eighteen hours for three semesters, and three summer classes. We got lucky on those ones; they’re not offered every summer. And this is all assuming we can get you into a couple different classes this semester. I would have rather you asked me about this a few weeks ago. No matter what, we’re talking about a huge workload, and you can’t fail a single one. It’s technically feasible, but it leaves one major question.

College Student: Am I willing to commit to this change?

College Advisor: That’s right. Are you? You could graduate this coming summer with your current major, and all you would need to do is take one summer class.

College Student: That certainly sounds like the most rational choice. What would you do? I don’t know your personal history, but if you wanted to make it big in Hollywood, does all this matter?

College Advisor: Honestly, no. The degree, that is, doesn’t matter. The classes definitely do. It would still be tremendously helpful to your education to learn some of this stuff. When you go to Hollywood—and I’m not going to be one of those people who tells you that you probably won’t make it; your family can do that—they don’t care what your major was, or even if you have a degree. What I recommend you do is hold off on graduation, and take as many of these classes as you can, within reason. I wouldn’t bog yourself down with them; we can go over the most helpful ones. That way, you can stick to your current major, and be fine. How does that sound?

College Student: That’s not a bad idea. I suppose the education is more important than the diploma.

College Advisor: I would agree with that. Now, let’s talk about which classes someone in your position should take, and when.