Microstory 2691: Mettle

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Ronan and Mayumi are at the entrance, waiting for the elevator to lift up to the surface of their first dome. He’s staring at the screen, which is playing footage of the Nordome Network, as if they’ve not already bought into the adventure. He’s not paying attention to the video itself, but the fact that it’s on a screen. They weren’t invented until the 19th or 20th centuries. That seems like so long ago, and they’re jumping so much further into the past than that. But he’s not really thinking about that either. He’s thinking about that screen; about how it’s the last one he’ll ever see for decades. His character is 29 years old, and Mayumi was made to look about 18. Historically, she probably would have been younger, but there are limits to how authentic they’re going to be. This is wild west of the Charter Cloud. Castlebourne’s laws don’t care how old someone appears to be, as long as the totality of their experiences make them an adult. He’s never heard of any substrate-play which—he doesn’t want to think about it. They’re both adults. Their characters have been married for a year. She’s pregnant. That screen.

They’re sitting here with a couple dozen other people who are entering the simulation at the same time. The walls are gray and metallic in a very rustic way, almost like their means of bridging the gap between the modern era, and the Viking Age. Or maybe it’s just a cheap way to build since all this thing has to do is take you up to a forest that’s meant to look like one you would find in Danmörk on Earth. As he’s still watching that screen, getting a little bit of cold feet, Ronan starts to realize that the only reason the metaphor is creeping into his mind is because of what’s actually happening to his feet. At first, he thinks someone spilled their water, but then he sees that there’s way too much of it. The walls are leaking, and the pod is filling up fast. Others have noticed as well, and start to get worried. There are rules about what your substrate has to be. You can’t come in here as a condor, or have advanced physical traits, like the kind of strength a true Norsemen wouldn’t have ever been physically capable of achieving. And you can’t have gills. His and Mayumi’s consciousnesses are still streaming to the remote servers, and he suspects everyone else’s is too, but they still don’t want to die.

They’re floating now, the water is so deep. People are trying to find some kind of emergency hatch, or a way to contact help. Ronan looks over. The display is still showing the hype video, but it’s starting to shutter and shake. The lights are flickering, they’re about to die. Something bad must be happening on the surface, like a simulated hurricane so powerful that it’s breaking the fourth wall, and literally leaking into the infrastructure of the dome. All four walls suddenly separate from each other and fall away. The rest of the water rushes in so they’re fully submerged. He finds Mayumi, and holds her close to his chest as he looks up. There’s a light, filtering through the water, showing their way to escape. They kick their legs and breach. Ah, their supplies. Some of it is floating around, but some of it isn’t buoyant. The ocean floor isn’t too far away. He might still be able to reach it. “I’m going down for the tools!”

“Okay!” She yells. It is storming, though it’s probably not a hurricane. Splintered slabs of wood are scattered about, which weren’t in the elevator. It’s a shipwreck.

Ronan takes a deep breath, and dives back down. As he’s searching for their tool basket, he spots the elevator pod. The walls are coming back together as it’s dropping back down into the shaft. This is obviously not anywhere close to being an accident. The Custodians set up an elaborate way to introduce them to the world of the Norsemen, and they did it in spectacularly terrible fashion. He absolutely loves it, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to go back up there with nothing. He spots the basket, so he adjusts his heading, and goes for it. Someone else reaches it first. The stranger starts picking up the tools that fell out, and putting them back. Ronan is about to fight him for it, because that’s what a Viking would do, but then he sees something else. A young man is drifting around. His eyes are closed. He’s clean-shaven, wearing farmer’s clothing.

Ronan can’t vie for the tools and save the boy too. He doesn’t know who this is, but if he’s half as enthusiastic about this simulation as Ronan and Mayumi is, he wouldn’t want to die on his first day. Would they let him back in? Is there a waiting period for screwing up this badly this early? Plus, Ronan isn’t even sure that he’ll survive at all. You do not have to be immortal to come here. You have to sign a bunch of waivers, just like Mayumi did with baby Talus, but they will let you in if you really want to test your mettle. Yeah, he has to save this guy. He adjusts his heading slightly once more, and reaches the kid. He takes him by the underarms, and swims them both up.

“Ronan!” he hears Mayumi call. “Ronan, over here!” She’s holding onto a big wooden door. The guy who stole their tools is trying to find refuge on it too. “Get the hell off!” she demands, physically pushing him away. She wasn’t even there when he stole from them, but she has ver good instincts.

Ronan drags the victim over to the door, and together, they lift him onto it. Okay, back then, no one in the world had any clue how to perform CPR, but Ronan has his own rules and limits. He’s not going to compromise his integrity for what essentially boils down to a game. He went down there, and pulled this guy up, so he’s going to get the water out of his lungs, and make him breathe again, even if it’s not historically accurate. While Mayumi steadies the door, Ronan presses on the victim’s chest, and provides rescue breaths. He only does it for a few minutes, and never needs to take a break.

The boy lives. He instinctively turns to his side, and spits the water up. He coughs and breathes erratically as he fully returns to the land of the living, or rather the sea of the living. “Thank you!” he says when he gets the chance. “I’m an idiot.”

“It’s quite all right, son,” Ronan says. “Are you here with anyone?”

The boy shakes his head. “My character is an orphan who just escaped indentured servitude in search of a better life in Danmörk.”

Ronan smiles, and slaps him on the back, incidentally causing more water to spill out of his mouth. “Well, you’re gonna find it.” He looks over at the thief, who is trying to grab onto a skjöldr. It keeps flipping around, and as the storm starts growing even worse, he ultimately loses the tools to the deep. “Stop!” Ronan orders. “It’s gone! If we’re going to make it to that shore, we have to do it together!”

He continues to lead the participants. He figures out how to bring them all together, so no one gets pulled away by the waves. They make their way towards the land mass, which started out about a kilometer away. Man, these people really know how to make life interesting. He didn’t sign up to start this whole thing with practically nothing, but it’s the best thing that could have happened to him, and is only invigorating him. Now they have to really build something here. Now they have to fight for survival. The first step in their long journey is over, and it’s probably the easiest one they’ll run up against. They’ve made it. They start climbing up the beach. And so it begins.

Microstory 1885: Put on Ice

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Yesterday morning, I was walking my cat by the frozen river. Yes, I walk my cat. I know it’s weird, but he likes it, and I like it, so I don’t owe you an explanation. That’s not the point anyway. This is a story about how I nearly succumbed to death, and how that would have been okay, because I still would have saved a life in the process. The trail doesn’t run exactly parallel to the river—it bends away at places, to get around trees, and the like. As we were getting back towards it, I started hearing what I initially thought were birds. It was Buttons who heard it first, actually, he has such great hearing. I’m sure he knew right away that it was a human. Once I realized this myself, I dropped the leash, and left the trail. It was tough, getting through all the brambles and thorns, but I couldn’t wait until we got to a clearing, because then we would be too far upstream. Buttons followed me, he’s loyal too. Finally I reached the bank, and nearly slipped onto the ice myself, which may seem like it wouldn’t matter, because I was ending up out there anyway, but not right there. I discovered how unstable it was right there. I looked across, and saw a child on his stomach in the middle of the river. There was a rope swing nearby that kids use in the summer, so I assumed he came from that side. Irrelevant. He needed help, and there was no one else around, so I found my footing, and crawled out to retrieve him. I know now, you’re supposed to urge them to come to try to come to you, but he was so little. I tried talking to him, but he just kept crying. He wasn’t capable of meeting me halfway. Man, I wish I had been on that other side, though; then I could have thrown him the rope! Or maybe I would have tied it to myself, and been safer.

Well, crawling started feeling dangerous. I could hear the ice crack under my weight, so I decided to lie flat, and slide to him. I dug my fingernails into the top layer, hoping not to disrupt its integrity, and pulled myself closer little by little, ignoring the blood turning the snow red. He was facing away from me, so even though I kept talking to him, I didn’t think he knew I was on my way. Finally I was there. I took him in my arms, and together we kept going to the other side, because we weren’t exactly in the center. We were almost to the bank when the ice just fell out from under me. I held on as best I could, but the current was so strong underneath. The only thing I could do was push the boy forwards, and get him onto the ground. When he looked back, I told him to run for help, but it was too late. I was under. Another random citizen pulled my body out of the river more than twenty miles downstream, where the water was calmer, and not iced over. This was eleven hours later. He assumed that I was dead, but that didn’t stop him from beginning CPR, and having his niece call for help. The paramedics took over when they arrived, and my heart miraculously started beating again. I wasn’t conscious, but I was alive. They drove me to the hospital, where doctors continued treatment. I woke up several hours later, feeling terrible, but still alive. My family was all around me, crying because they thought they had lost me. They were all talking about how God saved me, and I don’t know about that, but I did feel lucky. My own niece was holding Buttons, having snuck him into the hospital in her purse. I was grateful that he was okay, but I told her to take him back home, because there are sick people here, and they don’t need any dirty animals. I was feeling tired just in time for visiting hours to be over, so I said goodbye to my family, and tried to get to sleep. But I never woke up.

Microstory 1867: Lottery Winners All

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In third grade, I took a math test. I wasn’t a child prodigy, but I was one of a handful of students who tested into a slightly more advanced math class. While the rest of the students stayed in the room, we went off to learn at a higher rate. We focused most on probability. The first question our designated teacher asked was what were the odds of winning the lottery. None of us knew the answer of course, nor were we expected to. It was just to get us warmed up to the basic concepts. I don’t remember the numbers people say, but the truth is that the chances are actually a hundred percent. Hi, my name is Arnie Arnoldson, and I’m about to die. But before I go, I’m gonna explain to you what I mean. The reason my answer works out is because each and every one of you has already won the lottery. The chances that the universe would exist were profoundly low. The chances that life would exist were profoundly low. The chances that any given person will be born to this world are low. You went through so much to get here even before you were alive to do anything on purpose. That’s amazing. You’re amazing, and I want you all to give yourselves a round of applause for making it this far, because as I’ve said, it was virtually impossible, yet you did it anyway. You know, I didn’t start out as a motivational speaker. I was just a wee li’le baby, like anyone else. What I did to get to this place in my life is I kept playing the lottery. Sometimes I won the pot, but I never truly lost, because at the very least, it was experience, which helped me play the next round. Because life isn’t really like a lottery, it’s hard work. Put in your time, day after day, and I promise you, no matter what, at the end of the week, you’ll be paid fairly.

Notice how I said that you’ll be paid weekly. This is important, because if you expect that paycheck every day, six times out of seven, you’ll be disappointed. As a result, you’ll stop working as hard, and you’ll start getting paid less, and that will make you even more discouraged. We all receive what we deserve. It may not feel like it, but that just means that you need to manage your expectations, work harder, and never give up. Say it with me, manage your expectations, work harder, never give up. That is your new philosophy. Whenever you’re down, or you think you have done nothing but lose, just ignore all that, and remind yourself that there is always time to turn things around. But you have to take charge of your life, and decide that you’re not satisfied with what you have right now. No one else can do that for you. Let me tell you a story about the moth in the pond. A moth fell into a pond, but he didn’t die. He had spent his whole life fluttering through the air, and landing on leaves, but now he realized that those same wings he used to balance himself and fly were also good for swimming. This opened up a whole new world to him. So he said to himself, I’m never going to fly again. I prefer to swim. I’m a swimmer now. He smiled—insomuch as a moth can smile—and continued to swim around, looking for food. But he could not find the fruits and flowers he normally drank from. Oh, the moth realized, now I know why we moths don’t usually swim. And so the moth summoned all of his might to get back into the air, but he quickly discovered that his wings were too heavy, weighted down by the water. Try as he would, all he could do was swim. He swam until he was too exhausted, but before he could drown, the hand of a human reached underneath, and raised him from perdition. All of you are that moth, and the water is every obstacle you face; past, present, and future. I am the hand.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 6, 2274

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Most of what Athanaric Fury told them about Erlendr probably wasn’t all that useful. If the killer they were after was some kind of complete mystery, they probably could have used their knowledge of him against him in some way, but a lot of it Nerakali already knew. Even for the things she didn’t know about her own father, there was one important thing that made all of it obsolete. Erlendr Preston did not respond well to emotional appeals. He was driven almost exclusively by logic. Now, whether that logic was reasonable was an entirely different issue, but the point was they wouldn’t be able to stop him by bringing up all the people the hundemarke has hurt. Nor could his mind be likely changed by presenting him with new logic, because he was also stubborn, and he didn’t really believe that other people in the world were worth listening to. He was sounding a lot less like Nerakali and Arcadia—who were, even at their worst, always willing to listen to the other side—and more like their brother, Zeferino. They were only able to stop him because Gilbert Boyce protected them from the violence. That was no longer the case, so if brute force was the only option, would they be able to stomach it?

They still didn’t know how they were going to find the guy, even if they came up with a decent plan of attack. Then Leona seemed to come up with an idea. “We need help,” she began. “That’s been our problem this whole time. We keep trying to go out and find people one by one, and they’ve never been enough. They’ve also been very hard to track, especially since we’re getting so late in the timeline. From everything I’ve seen, time travelers seem to stick predominantly to the centuries surrounding the turn of the millennium. No one seems to know why—”

“I can kind of explain why,” Nerakali interrupted. “Well, I have a theory, because I have talked to people about it. Movies and the computer. People in the advanced age are more intelligent, and less superstitious. Mateo, when you first disappeared from the timestream for an entire year, your parents were very upset, but they didn’t freak out, and they didn’t try to exorcise a demon from your body when you came back. They figured it out, because humanity as a whole was capable of recognizing its own ignorance, and not attributing every good thing to God, and every bad thing to the devil. They wanted to understand, and that was enough to keep things sane until they did understand. Imagine going back to the seventeenth century, and explaining yourself. Why, a lot of people wouldn’t even be able to grasp the concept of time travel itself, so you’ve already lost before you began. Of course, that doesn’t mean time travelers can’t go back that far, or that they don’t. But a lot of it is uninteresting to them. They do it mostly to gain a rare perspective on history, and not everyone cares about that. There are just more things to do in the future.”

“That doesn’t explain why there are fewer travelers in the 24th century, and later,” Leona pointed out. “It’s even more advanced then.”

“Right, well now it’s too advanced. Now, it’s boring because everyone’s immortal, and life’s not as dangerous, so there aren’t as many people to save. A lot of entertainment exists in virtual constructs, which time travelers tend to shy away from, because again, it diminishes who they are. You control the laws of physics in a virtual world, which means anyone and everyone can have powers. No, it’s better to stay in the middle; not too early, and not too late. It’s a temporal goldilocks zone. If travelers were more aware that they were limiting themselves, they would probably deliberately stop doing it, but we’re mostly talking about the subconscious.”

“Okay, okay,” Leona said. She wasn’t upset about having been interrupted, and was genuinely interested in Nerakali’s tangent. It actually seemed helpful. “Well, regardless of how time travelers act normally, we know of one moment in history where a whole hell of a lot of them are going to be gathered, right? And though it’s happened in the past, it takes place in my future. I haven’t experienced it yet, but it is there that I can find help. I’ll have the pick of the litter.”

“You want to recruit from Mateo’s memorial service?” Nerakali questioned. She wasn’t reluctant, but she wasn’t quite on board with the idea either.

They looked over at Mateo, who had already experienced the memorial. He could give them insight into whether this was a good idea, if he were so inclined to divulge such information. “Uhh...careful, spoilers?”

“Is that a question?” Nerakali prodded.

“I don’t have a problem with him not being able to tell us,” Leona said. “My only problem now is I have no apparent way of getting to Dardius in 2263. Well, I guess Nerakali and I could jump back in time, and then use the Great Pyramid to jump there.”

“Great. It looks like you have it figured out.” Mateo released his Cassidy cuff, so when the other two started jumping through time, he wouldn’t be tethered to them. “Don’t worry, you’ll see me soon,” Mateo told Leona after she frowned at him.

“I’m worried about you being alone after I leave.”

“We’ll be gone and back in a blip,” Nerakali said. “And who knows how many friends we’ll have with us?”

“Go,” he said kindly. “It was a nice ceremony. I can tell you that it didn’t turn into a red wedding situation, or anything like that. It happened, and then it ended.”

“Were I you,” Leona said.

“Were I you,” he returned.

They both disappeared.

“God, I thought they’d never leave,” came a voice behind him.

Mateo wasn’t surprised to hear it. “I was worried they would stay too long, and you would get impatient.”

“No, that would screw up the timeline. I’m immortal. I have all the patience.”

Mateo turned around to face Erlendr Preston, who he met officially at the former’s memorial, just the other day. “Screwing up the timeline; isn’t that what you’re doing anyway?”

“You mean what we’re doing. And no, of course not; we’re fixing it.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“You agreed to the deal.”

“So, I can’t back out now?” Mateo asked.

“No, you can,” Erlendr assured him. “You can remove yourself from the equation, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. It just means you and Leona won’t be part of it.”

“I just want her to be safe,” Mateo argued. “You promised me that.”

“I can make her safe. I can’t get you away from the powers that be...but I can render them powerless. They’ll still be able to watch, but they won’t be able to change anything. No one will be able to change anything.”

“Then why are you changing things?” He still didn’t understand what Erlendr was going for here. Why was he sending the hundemarke all over time and space if he was ultimately planning to use the hundemarke against itself, and undo everything it had ever done? Arcadia seemed confident it made sense, but Mateo wasn’t much smarter than he was when this all started.

“I have to use the hundemarke a lot. I have to create so many fixed points in time, so when we finally screw with that, the universe will have no choice but to split in half.”

“Is it gonna be destroyed?”

Erlendr shook his head. “You can’t destroy a universe. This will work, Mateo. I’m going to create a world where time travel doesn’t exist, but I can’t do that without a paradox. The hundemarke, and the nonexistence of the hundemarke, have to be at profound odds with each other. If it’s not like that, one of the two realities will simply concede to the other, and collapse in on itself. If you want them both to exist at the same time, each one’s persistence must depend on the other’s. Does that make sense?”

Mateo didn’t start out with the intention of betraying Leona and Nerakali when he went to his memorial. He was hoping to get close to their enemy, so he could defeat him without involving either of them, or any of their other friends. Erlendr and Arcadia’s pitch was too compelling, though. He had long ago surrendered to the idea that there was no escape from the powers that be, but this was his opportunity to change that. Perhaps Leona would never forgive him for it, but at least she would be free. There was still one question, though. “Why did I get Bhulan to go to 2027? Your plan doesn’t work if she destroys the hundemarke.”

“It’s a contingency,” Erlendr explained. “If this doesn’t succeed, at least there’s a world where all those people I killed stay alive. I was only able to do this knowing it could all be undone, even if it’s not the way I wanted.”

“But it’s another paradox?”

“Yes, a third paradox. It’s not safe, I’ll tell you that.”

There was a brief pause in the conversation.

“So you’re sure Leona and Nerakali won’t be back until tomorrow?” Erlendr went on.

“Nope. I mean, yes, I’m sure. I told them to come back in 2275. I didn’t explain why, mostly because I don’t have a real explanation. I just needed to make sure you, Arcadia, and I have some time to discuss this in more detail. Where is she, by the way?”

“I think she’s here,” Erlendr replied cautiously, “watching us.”

“You can never tell with her,” Mateo noted.

“No. She’s, uh, wily.”

“She is coming, though, right? Whether she’s here now, or not, she’ll join the conversation soon?”

“Yeah, I’m sure she’s on her way.”

Arcadia suddenly appeared, but she wasn’t alone. Tons of water flowed out of her portal, and filled the room. It didn’t look like she had done this on purpose, because she was struggling to stop it. Back at the turn of the 22nd century, the Earthans were in the middle of a process to destroy all of their cities and towns, and replace them with arcological megastructures. Each tower was capable of housing tens of thousands of people, and though these towers were meant to be constructed in clusters, they still took up a whole hell of a lot less land than the metropolises of before. They were incredibly efficient, and were designed with emergency protocols in mind. Small ships were kept in vast hangars underneath the towers, which would allow the whole human race to evacuate within a single day, should a massive external threat come upon them, such as an alien invasion.

This wasn’t good enough for the humans, though. They wanted to be safer, and they wanted to be able to do it faster, so they repeated the process. For Project Airtight, they replaced every megastructure with a nearly identical one right next to it, and moved everyone over to it. Most of the look of the new structures remained the same. A time traveler from the past would have a hard time telling the difference just by looking at them. There was one extremely important difference, though. Instead of running drills every year that saw everyone rushing down to the bottom level, so they could enter their respective escape modules, and evacuate the planet a handful at a time, they just turned the whole thing into an escape pod. Each tower was a spaceship in its own right. Accounting for technical delays, and residents who were on safaris hundreds of miles away from the nearest arcity, the planet could now be evacuated within a few hours. This all meant the room the three of them were standing in now was completely sealed up. If someone didn’t figure out how to close the portal, or just teleport them out of here, they would drown. Even if they did escape themselves, what did that mean for the integrity of the room, or that of the rest of the ship?

Mateo looked around, but couldn’t lock eyes on his allies. He saw legs and heads thrashing about, but neither of them were making an effort to reach the surface. Had they both been knocked out? My God, this was up to him, and there was only one way out of it that he could think of. He reached into his bag, and pulled out his Cassidy cuff. Then he reinstalled it on his wrist, punched in the necessary sequence of buttons, and held his breath, because the water had reached the ceiling. He activated the instructions, causing Leona and Nerakali to appear, confused and scared. Now that he had the latter’s teleportation powers back, he prepared to use them. As he was swimming over to take hold of Arcadia’s body, Nerakali was swimming over to Erlendr’s, though there was too much chaos for him to know whether she knew who it was she was trying to rescue. Once they were all ready to go, Mateo teleported them all out of there, and dumped them onto the bank of a rushing river. He didn’t really do that on purpose, but water was kind of the only thing he could think about at the moment. Now the truth of his betrayal would have to come out. Oh, boy.

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