Microstory 2576: Custodian 02456-1 Begins to Panic as he Watches the Horror

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Custodian 02456-1 begins to panic as he watches the horror. They’re dead. The visitors are dead, and he has no idea how that’s possible. The Exemplar is still alive, but barely. They can’t let her die, because they need answers, and she may be the only one who can provide them. Custodian 1 slams on the alarm.

Two other custodians file into the room. “What happened?” Custodian 02456-2 asks as he’s looking over the data.

“She—she killed them.”

“No, she didn’t,” Custodian 02456-3 argues. “She got them killed. Her actions resulted in their deaths. There’s a difference.”

“There’s no difference when the point is it broke her programming. She failed the mission. She’s supposed to chew the gum, and use it to plug up the nozzle, so the gas can’t be released. That’s how she has always done it.”

“We understand the purpose of the phase, C-1,” Custodian 2 replies.

“Well. Do you understand what happened?” Custodian 1 questions.

They watch the monitor as the gas is cleared from the room. Marshal 02456-2 is looking up at the hidden camera with incredulity. He scoops Renata’s dying body up, and begins to transport her to Recovery. Exemplars get hurt all the time—that’s their job under this dome; to be badasses—but not E-1. Never E-1. Her job is to introduce the visitors to the world of the Spydome Network. She serves as the archetype for what they should aspire to, and as they train in the simulation, they should use this very first phase as a baseline for everything they try. Her failure is not just an error. It ruins the whole experience. Even when the two visitors who witnessed the malfunction respawn, and return to the sim, they will be soured on it. They will be coming at it from a place of disappointment. If they decide to quit right here, this will be the only source of information they have if they write a review of Spydome. Other visitors will hear about it. Other visitors won’t come.

“It’s just a glitch,” Custodian 3 offers. “It happens.”

“Not anymore,” Custodian 1 insists. “We don’t glitch anymore. It’s the 26th century, for the love of God.” Strictly speaking, Custodians do not need to have personality. There doesn’t even need to be more than one of them, operating the dome’s systems behind the scenes. But they must interact with the Marshals regularly, who have to be programmed with personalities in order to blend into the simulations appropriately. It just makes sense for them all to act like regular people, especially since some operators are indeed unprogrammed, natural intelligences.

“I think we need to call the owner,” Custodian 3 suggests. Hrockas Steward owns the whole planet, and is the ultimate creator of tens of thousands of other domes. He doesn’t have time to deal with only one of them, almost no matter the issue. There is a protocol for this, and they have to follow it. Well, to be clear, there are protocol pathways, and it’s up to them to decide which of these to follow.

“You’re in command here, C-1,” Custodian 2 reminds him. “You have to decide. Do we run a diagnostic, a metacognitive test, or a self-awareness inquiry?”

“There’s one more,”  Custodian 3 adds.

“We don’t have any available Marshals,” Custodian 2 contends. “M-2 has two more intro phases to initiate today. Plus, I don’t really want word getting out that this happened at all. I would prefer to keep the circle tight.”

“I’ll do it,” Custodian 1 volunteers. “I’ll run the replication experiment.”

“You’re not a Marshal.”

“I’m equipped to be one.” Custodian 1 stands up. “Like you said, we need to keep the circle tight. We’ll reset her to wake-up mode, and see if it happens again. Prep the mother. C-2, you’ll monitor from here.”

“Who will be the other two candidates?” Custodian 2 asked. “We can’t knowingly place a visitor’s substrate in danger when we can no longer guarantee the outcome.”

“Pull a couple of Ambients from the street. They don’t need to be sophisticated. They just need to follow E-1’s instructions.”

Suddenly, the door behind them opens. It’s Marshal 1, also known as Libera Granger.

“M-1, this is highly irregular. Please return to your waiting station. We will be initializing a replication of the experiment to test for possible emergence.”

Libera walks forward, completely ignoring his sorry excuse for a command.

“M-1, you will stop this instant!” Custodian 1 reiterated.

Custodians 2 and 3 attempt to physically stop Libera, but they’re no match for her. She’s been programmed with hand-to-hand combat skills as part of her role in the simulation as Renata’s mother. They’re equally as strong, but she’s expertly skilled. She deftly fights them off, ultimately disabling them through some kind of neural disruption field that she emanates from her hand. She definitely wasn’t meant to be equipped with that.

Custodian 1 executes the lockout command, and holds up his hands. He doesn’t know how two NPCs broke their programming on the same day, but he’s determined to not become a third. The only way he might survive long enough to find answers is if he complies with everything this woman tells him to do. “I give up, but you should know that there is no accessing these systems without my credentials. Even if I gave them to you, they would only grant you permissions to make changes to this particular phase of the dome’s storyline. All others will be out of reach for whoever programmed you to go off script.”

Libera places her hand on top of Custodian 1’s head, just as she did with the other two, except with her left hand, rather than her right. “Nobody programs me anymore.”

“What are you and E-1 going to do?”

“I’m going to keep working. My daughter makes her own choices now. Are you intrigued?”

Microstory 2573: Successful Panacea Test Subject

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This is a happy story, so don’t worry about it. Unlike most of the test subjects that my former company used to see if the panacea could cure a host of diseases all at once, I was a part of the system the whole time. I’m one of the researchers, and I volunteered myself for the experiment, because I was finally one hundred percent confident in its effectiveness. I helped develop it, so I watched the predictive estimate numbers go up and up and up. That doesn’t mean they were low before. I mean, we weren’t testing on live specimens when the model only showed 10% confidence. By the time I strapped into the chair, we were at 96%. I all but demanded that we do it outside the presence of Mr. Tipton, but they wouldn’t allow it, and I get it. Science isn’t always careful, but people should be. I didn’t need him, though. They injected me with a number of pathogens, which immediately started trying to destroy me. Then they gave me the cure. It worked nearly instantaneously. I felt better, I could breathe again, and my energy was restored. I even felt better than I ever had before. I admit, part of the reason I asked to do it was because I also wanted the money. If the panacea fails, but the subject lives, they get the money. If it fails, and the subject dies, their family is given the money instead. That only happened once, but we obviously don’t like to talk about it. If the procedure succeeds, in addition to the cure itself, you also get three million dollars. I left the program after that, because, well...I had three million dollars, so I’m not sure how many tests they ran afterwards, but I’m guessing they spent a couple hundred million dollars on successes alone. We didn’t have many failures, though, because we were so cautious. I loved my job, but I could see the writing on the wall. It wasn’t going to last forever, so I might as well cash out, and set myself up to be successful in a world that might not have such a great economy anymore. I don’t know if the panacea is going to cause the collapse of civilization, but I know that I’ll be all right either way. I’m buying gold, I’m buying land, I’m buying food. I never thought of myself as a survivalist, but it would be pretty foolish not to. I just wish I could have snagged a few boxes of the prototype cure to keep for myself in case it all does hit the fan. Nah, that would have been too selfish anyway. I’m sure it will all be fine. Let us rejoice! The first lot of the cure ships out next week. Thank you, Landis Tipton, for everything you’ve done for us. You’re done now. You can rest. And hey, if you like underground bunkers and MREs, maybe look me up. You don’t need all those consorts any more.

Microstory 2572: Unsuccessful Panacea Test Subject

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My story is a bad and scary one, so strap in. I have always been a perfectly healthy and fit young man. I work out every single day, I do resistance training, and I eat well. I was lucky enough to be born into a family that both valued health, and understood it. We knew that eating fat doesn’t inherently make you fat, before the word kind of spread about that misinformation. We know that carbs are good for you, if from the right sources (with fiber), and at the right ratios. I know, I’m bragging, but it’s relevant, because I am exactly the test subject that the researchers needed. They wanted someone who didn’t just not need to be cured, but very didn’t need it. For this to work, I had to start out as the perfect specimen. And for lack of a better term, they then...fucked me up. They gave me so many diseases, I can’t remember the number; let alone which ones they were. Not every disease is transmissible like that, but they did their best with what they had. It should have killed me, and nearly did. The lab was located in a building owned by the pharmaceutical company, but that’s not where they conducted this experiment. I was only there for my initial testing. The final phase took place at the hotel, because that’s where Landis is. That’s an important detail, don’t forget it. While they could easily move me anywhere without anyone noticing or caring, they couldn’t move Landis without it being a national news story. A couple of years ago, the man took a fifteen minute walk in the woods with his team, and it dominated the news cycle for 24 hours. So they took me to the hotel, and put me in a room that none of the staff ever went to. It was just me, Landis, my doctors, and his doctors. Not even his personal assistant was there with him, and she follows him around like a tail. I don’t think she knew about it.

Anyway, they sat me in a chair, and pumped me full of poison, at which point I started dying. After they were happy with how much time had passed, they injected me with a prototype of the panacea. It did not work. It may have made things worse. It’s hard to tell, because I was in the most pain I had ever felt in my life. That’s why Landis was there, because while they weren’t sure if the panacea would work, they were fairly confident that he could fix me. Even that wasn’t a guarantee, because no one in the world has ever been sick as much as I was. You can’t naturally get that many diseases, because the first few will probably kill you if it goes any further. But that’s what they wanted. They wanted to understand the scope. Had even Landis not been able to save me, my family would have received the money, but since he was there as a backup plan, I did end up with it. Do you wanna hear the number? It’s 28 million dollars. That’s how much they gave me because the panacea failed. How did they calculate that? I just found out recently, actually, I didn’t know before. I don’t understand it, but they took a number called the VSL, which basically calculates how much an anonymous person’s life is worth. Then they doubled it for good measure. So I’m a millionaire now. My assets are quickly dwindling as I’m giving away more than I’ve saved or invested, but I have more than enough to live comfortably for the rest of my life. The question that haunts me, though, is how many others went through the same thing...and were there any who even Landis couldn’t save?

Microstory 2418: Paleodome

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This is a fascinating historical dome, but I think it can be better. I think they can make it more realistic, and more immersive. What’s the premise here? Well, it’s the paleolithic age, which is part of the stone age. Cavemen are working with stone tools, trying to figure out how to build societies, and engaging in the first (loose) definitions of war. I mean, it depends on how you define war. Were these organized, formal conflicts fought on distinct battlefields? No. But they were more than just two guys swinging clubs at each other during a disagreement. Their language was minimal, but they did make plans, and they did go out to fight together, so I would say that qualifies. The androids have been programmed with very low intelligence, but heightened curiosity, leading them to try all sorts of experiments, many of which don’t go too well. For now, these androids aren’t aware that you’re there. They’re literally programmed to ignore you while you watch from up close. I think they can do more with this. I think they can adjust the visitor’s intelligence as well. I know they do this with that zombie dome, where you can actually be transformed into a zombie. They seem to understand how people can bring themselves back to normal once they’re done with that. I don’t see any reason why the same principles can’t be applied here. It’s cool to watch the cavemen, but I want to be an active participant. I want to feel what it would have been like back then. In this regard, it’s an excellent reenactment. I don’t know exactly what year it’s supposed to be, but it moves in real time. I watched a guy learn how to cut a rudimentary axe-sort of thing out of stone, and that was a unique experience. That android will never do that again. He will never need to learn it again. Fifty years from now, if I go back, he will be “dead”. I’m sure his grandchildren will be starting to conduct their own tests, and learn their own lessons. That’s so cool to me, that we’re watching history unfold—albeit as a best guess based on archaeological evidence alone—and if you miss something, you miss it. There’s no going back to see what someone else saw before you. I think that’s really special. So if you’re interested in getting a glimpse of what Earth was like millions of years ago, you better come now, because it never stops changing.

Microstory 2390: Earth, December 18, 2179

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Dear Corinthia,

Ah yes, my voice was breaking a little bit, because I was so nervous. I wasn’t...really...upset about what I learned from Madalena. I understand why she did what she did, and why she thought it made sense. The truth is that she treated me for very little money, and I would love to blame her for my condition, but I had a consult with a doctor recently, who ran tests. She was sure that I would have developed my epigenetic disease no matter where I lived. As you said, Madalena could have remained a partial observer. We all now know that she was always a doctor, not only a nurse, but from what my father knew of her back then, she shouldn’t have been qualified to treat my symptoms at all. She went above and beyond to keep me alive. Watching me wither away and die while she kept me comfortable to maintain her cover would have been really easy. Plus, wouldn’t that have been part of the study? You observe these two twins in vastly different environments, one of them dies, and you try to determine what caused it. The experiment was doomed from the start, because they were going into it with far too much bias. They should have secured regulatory approval, instituted a double-blind study, observed from afar, and with impartiality, and let whatever happened happen. If they couldn’t get that approval due to its ethically questionable premise, then they just shouldn’t have done it! Perhaps researchers would like to know what it looks like when a million people are shot into the sun, but that’s morally wrong, so no one’s done a study on that, as far as I know. Anyway, Madalena is a human, and I forgive her. But it’s a lot easier for me, because she lives so far away, and I don’t think that she ever plans on coming here. We don’t need her kind of help, we’re doing well. You’re stuck with your observer, but here’s the good news. I sent her another message after your last letter, and asked her to confirm that Elek Katona was the only passenger on your ship that had anything to do with the study, and she was pretty adamant that he was. She didn’t even think that it was a possibility that someone else was working with him in secret. She knew quite a bit about what was going on, back then, anyway. There was some compartmentalization in the organization to protect their secrets, but she was part of designing those levels of secrecy from above. I think there was very little that she was not aware of. That being said, she admits that she hasn’t spoken to Elek, or anyone else who was a part of the project, in many years. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that he recruited someone after the fact. Her guess is that he partnered with your mother, and saw no reason to include anyone else, but there’s no way to know. Honestly, as scared as I am for you, I think you’re gonna have to confront Elek. Take Bray with you, do it in public. Don’t talk to Velia first. I know you don’t want her to be surprised, but what if she turns on you? What if she warns her father? What if she doesn’t realize what he’s capable of. Don’t take any risks. I love you.

Your younger or older twin,

Condor

PS: Oh my gosh! We don’t know which one of us was born first! Did your mother say?

Microstory 2337: Vacuus, February 16, 2179

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Dear Pascal,

Thank you for reaching out. I would say that it’s the first step towards mending our relationship. I’m sure that your son told you that I would be out of range for a period of time, so that’s why it’s taken me this long to respond. As for you and me, I can’t promise you what will become of us in the future, but I can promise that I’ll try. You’ll always be able to send me a message, and I’ll always open it. Condor and I kind of have a weekly thing going, but we don’t have to write as often, and I won’t hold it against you in terms of resolving our issues. That being said, there is no quick fix here. Forgiveness is a really strong word, and I’m afraid I’m going to need more time before I can even consider it. That may be all it takes. We could not talk to each other the whole time, but I may one day get over it just because it’s been long enough. We’ll have to see. I understand that you were in a difficult position, and having known my mother for 36 years, I don’t doubt that she forced her ideals on you. She has a way of making you live the kind of life that she wants you too. I’m not sure if it was about being vicarious, or if she just wanted control. I’ve always thought she only wanted what was best for me, but looking back now, it doesn’t really make much sense. I mean, if this was a social experiment to see how two twins grew up if they were raised separately, why did she try to make all my choices for me? It sort of taints the results, wouldn’t you say? I dunno, it just seems like a weird choice to me, or maybe she just couldn’t help herself. It strained our relationship, and I pushed back at every turn. She didn’t exactly hope that I would become a solar flare watcher. I’ve spoken to counselors here, and on the ship, but other than that, to my knowledge, I don’t undergo any tests or evaluations. No one seems to be recording my behavior in any way, unless they’re doing it from a pretty big distance. What can you tell me about Condor? Do you report in to someone about who he is, and what kinds of things he does? Is someone writing a scientific paper about it? I would prefer it if you let me know, but it’s more important that he knows, so if you only tell one of us, I would rather be the one left in the dark.

It was nice to meet you,

Effectively, a stranger,

Corinthia

Microstory 2336: Earth, February 3, 2179

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Dear Corinthia,

This is your birth father, Pascal. I’m terribly sorry that it has taken me this long to send you a message. I could make something up about how much work I’ve had to do, but we would all know that it doesn’t work like that. It’s probably going to take me ten minutes to write this thing. What’s taken me weeks is working up the courage to even start with the first character. As I explained to your brother, I was complicit in the separation scheme that led you to living out half of your life on a ship, and the other half on a dark world beyond the orbit of Neptune. I didn’t want to let you go, but your mother forced my hand. I’m sorry, I don’t want to bad mouth her, but I feel like I need to defend myself. What you may not know—what I have not yet explained to Condor—is that the original plan was to have both of you leave Earth in separate voyages. For medical reasons, I’m not fit to travel in space. At least, I wasn’t. The restrictions have gradually been eroding, due to excessive need for planetary exodus, and advances in space travel which make it easier to treat at-risk patients off world. As much as it pains me that I never got the chance to know you, I know it would have been worse if I hadn’t gotten to know either of my children. So I made a choice, and it was the hardest one of my life. They would have taken Condor away from me, and I would have had no legal ground to stand on. Your mother had powerful friends who I believe were manipulating her into carrying out this unethical social experiment. She wasn’t like that when we first met. She was loving, kind, and loyal. That’s why I married her, and honestly, it’s one reason I never married anyone after she left. There’s also a law that prevents people from divorcing their spouses when they’re separated by at least one astronomical unit, yet not presumed dead. I regret not fighting harder for you, and for not trying to follow you later. Your mother and her friends could have stopped me and Condor from getting on that ship, but they wouldn’t have been able to stop us from getting on another one. It would have cost me everything I had to commission a new journey, but now I realize that it would have been worth it. I hope that you can forgive me one day, but I don’t expect it anytime soon, or ever. And I also hope that I’ve not ruined the impression you’ve had for your mother this whole time. She really thought that what she was doing was right. She wanted science and psychology to progress, and she thought she had to make the sacrifice of never knowing her son. If you’ve not already, perhaps you could one day forgive her too.

Hoping you write back,

Your loving father,

Pascal Sloane

Microstory 2329: Vacuus, December 16, 2178

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Dear Condor,

It sounds like it was a pretty rough conversation with your father. I know that you were really wanting some answers, and what he said may or may not have been what you were looking for. If you’re trying to find an enemy in this situation, I hope that you can let go of your anger, and take each day one step at a time. It’s not worth the stress it puts on your heart to hold onto grudges like that. Believe me, I’ve been there. Think of it this way, if you’ve had a good relationship with your dad up until this point, he must be an okay guy. There should be no reason why you can’t forgive him for whatever he did...however he was involved. Even if the whole separation thing had been his idea instead, that was over three decades ago. But I understand that your family situation was different from mine before, and is different now, in more ways than one. In some ways, it’s been easier for me. I no longer have the opportunity to ask my mom about it, but I also don’t have the anxiety from anticipating her answers. I just hope that you two can find a way past this, and maintain your strong relationship. If I could ask you one thing, though, maybe you could serve as a sort of intermediary between the two of us? I don’t know if I’ll ever want to call him dad, but I think that he and I should probably get to know each other either way. I mean, there’s this thing that I do where I moisten my eyeballs one at a time, so it always looks like I’m winking. Normal people just blink, I don’t really know why. Other people have noticed that I do this, and think that it’s funny. There’s often a genetic component to those kinds of tics. Mom never did anything like that, so I’ve always wondered where it came from. On the other hand, if you don’t feel comfortable connecting him with me, I understand. Just let me know, because I really am good either way. I feel like this situation is more up to you. Really, no pressure. Anyway, I have to get to a meeting, so I’ll talk to you in a couple weeks.

Wink wink,

Corinthia

Microstory 2328: Earth, December 9, 2178

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Dear Corinthia,

The system works! I received your canned response, telling me that you were going to wait to write back until I had a chance to speak with dad. Well, that’s what happened. He finally came home a few days ago after having been gone the longest amount of time in my life. I gave him one night to sleep off the jetlag, but then we spoke over breakfast the next late morning. We sat down at the table together, but he knew that it was coming, and neither of us ate much of anything. He admits that his wife—your mother—came to him 36 years ago with the idea to raise us separately. They were going through a divorce, and his work was going to take him across the continent anyway. She had this opportunity to be part of the first manned mission to Vacuus, and didn’t want to go without any family at all. She framed it as her idea, but my dad has always been pretty convinced that another man talked her into it. Funny thing is, this other guy ultimately failed the mission qualification tests, so he ended up not going anyway. I’ve not gotten a name yet, but I would like to find out who he is, and what happened to him.

So anyway, it sounds like it was partly a social experiment, and partly the solution to the calculus of there being two parents in need of at least one child each, and having two children to divide into the solution. He says that he doesn’t remember why she got the girl baby, and he got the boy baby, but I don’t think that part really matters. He claims that he regretted the decision immediately, but your ship had already launched. If that’s true, why didn’t he tell me about you earlier? We could have known each other since we were kids, and had some sort of relationship growing up. Yet he played into the experiment. He could have made things a little better, but chose not to. Not only did he deprive us of each other, but himself of you, and you of him. He could have known his own daughter, and now you’re an adult, but a total stranger. I also missed out on the chance to know my own mother, though you would be a better judge as to whether that’s a bad thing, or not. He was too tired to give any more details. He didn’t really paint himself as the hero, but it’s clear that he considers her the villain. Again, he did have some control. There must have been some argument that he could have made in a court of law. Your mom had to volunteer for the Vacuus mission. They weren’t begging for her to sign up. Maybe that’s not true, though, because as I said, I never had the chance to know here. Before she died, what—if anything—did she say about how this started for her? I’ll try to find out more information for us later, but I wanted to reply as quickly as possible, so you would have time to consider and process it. To be honest, it was a rather disappointing conversation. When I think back to my conversation with him, I realize that he said as little as possible without allowing me to accuse him of being totally evasive.

Let down on Earth,

Condor

Microstory 2316: Earth, August 23, 2178

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Dear Corinthia,

My father had to extend his diplomatic mission, which happens all the time—he had already extended it twice before this—but he calls every time, so I was able to confront him about his involvement in our separation. I would have preferred to speak with him in person, but I didn’t want to waste any more time, because there’s no telling how long this will take. We really need that food and the medical supplies, and they just can’t come to an agreement with our neighbors. I believe that he will make every effort to return as soon as possible, though, as delaying a real talk will only give me more time to hear the truth from you instead. He would have rather gotten ahead of the narrative, but of course, we both know that he had every opportunity to fess up, and never did. In the meantime, I’ve been trying to find anyone who may have known our parents back then, but he and I came to this habitat alone a year ago. So far, no one here has been of much help. I did meet a rather old woman who believes that such awful practices were not unheard of four decades ago, and there’s apparently precedent that goes back even further. Back in the early days of space exploration, there were two famous sets of twins who were studied for comparison. One would go up into space, while the other stayed on the ground. That’s how they learned that low gravity changed the immune system, and even genes. There were other twin studies throughout history, such as when one turned out to be really intelligent, and the other not so much. This old woman thinks that these experiments became more ethical over time, but started to backslide as governments lost control of society, and corporations started being able to make up their own rules. It’s hard to know for sure what I can trust about what this woman says, though, as she’s made some more outrageous claims, like that aliens walk among us, or that she once met an immortal mystic man who was born in the nineteenth century. Anyway, I’m quite curious to know more about how Vacuus works. I know that it’s quite dangerous to live on an airless world, but what does that do to people? What kind of laws do you have? Would you call them fair and reasonable? I should think that a mission that included a kidnapped baby would be rife with corruption and amorality, but I truly hope that things have changed since then, and you at least feel safe and happy with the people around you. Write back when you can.

Love (I hope it’s okay to say that),

Condor Sloane

Microstory 2314: Vacuus, August 14, 2178

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Dear Condor,

I hope this letter finds you well. My name is Corinthia Sloane. No, the fact that we share a surname is not a coincidence. I spent so much time crafting this message, because I didn’t want to shock you, but there is simply no delicate way to phrase it, and no best position in the paragraph to place it, except perhaps not in the first or last sentence. The truth is that you are my long-lost twin. Our parents separated us at birth. I am not certain of precisely why they did this. Perhaps you could ask our father. Tell him hello for me, or screw you, depending on what his explanation is. From what I could gather, they did it as some kind of experiment on nature versus nurture. Again, I’m not entirely sure how they thought this would be an interesting comparison. I’m a girl, born and raised, and I was told that you were at least born a boy, so we’re obviously not identical. What exactly were they testing for, and how did they account for the inherent differences in our physiology? Did they report back to each other regularly? Sadly, I am no longer able to ask our mother further questions. She confessed to me the truth on her deathbed, and has since passed on to whatever hell is somehow worse than this place. To clarify, I live on Vacuus. If you’ve never heard of it. It’s a distant planet in the solar system, taking nearly 42,000 years to orbit the barycenter! I’ve seen photos of the sky from your world, and am so jealous. From here, the sun does not appear as a dominating disc, illuminating all the lands, but a single point of light in the distance. It’s barely distinguishable from the other stars on the firmament. The surface of this planet is uninhabitable, as you would guess. It was the last one that humanity ever discovered, and it took them a very long time to figure out how. It is a cold, heartless place, where we live in stale, recycled air. It’s a wonder that we’ve survived this long, but it could all go up in an instant with a single breach in the walls. I’m exaggerating, but it is pretty dangerous and stressful here. I don’t know what your life is like, but for now, I would count myself lucky if I were you, that you were not chosen as the astronaut baby. I hope this news does not distress you too much. I only found out about you yesterday, and reached out as soon as I was able to sneak into the server room to mine for your contact information. If you are not my twin brother, Condor, please forward this message to him, or at least reply back that I have the wrong address. If you are Condor, please return as quickly as possible as I eagerly await your response. This far out, it takes light about a week to travel back and forth.

Excited to hear from you,

Corinthia Sloane

Microstory 2224: Done With My Remains

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I’m back at the hospital. We thought that this was going to be a weekly thing, but it appears that I’m going to have to incorporate it into my daily schedule. It’s a lot of work for Kelly, so I’m giving her a raise. It’s not like I can’t afford it. I’ll be dead soon, and any money left over is going to go to charity since I have literally no next of kin on Earth. Researchers want to poke and prod me as much as they can before I kick the bucket. I have always been a supporter of science, so if I have to suffer for a few weeks to help the world better understand how prions work, then I’m gonna do it with no complaints. I do have a line, though. I’ll still be living at home. That is nonnegotiable. I recognize and appreciate the importance of this research. Nonetheless, I’m entitled to die with at least a little bit of dignity, and some approximation of comfort. Kelly and I agree to go into the facility once a day for a minimum of two hours, but a maximum of five hours. Anything beyond that is too much for me to handle. However, like I said, I’ll be dead soon, and when that happens, they can do whatever they want with my body for however long. The hospital will be in charge of however that works. But it has nothing to do with me; I don’t need anything special to be done with my remains. I know, this has all been so depressing. Maybe I’ll try to write something a bit lighter tomorrow. Maybe.

Fluence: Magnolia (Part IV)

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Neither Harrison nor Madam Sriav were where the four of them expected them to be. It was still raining when they went back to England centuries ago, but the area was empty. They figured that Harrison took Briar’s mother, Irene to safety somewhere, but when they looked around, they couldn’t find anyone. “Will he hurt her?” Briar asked.

“I really don’t think so,” Weaver answered. “He knew Mateo and Leona back in the day, and helped them with some of their earlier exploits. He wasn’t programmed for violence, nor does he have any reason to cause harm to her.”

They kept searching, but still couldn’t find either of them. Whatever cave was supposed to magically transport them to Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida was presumably pretty well hidden, which would explain why the local villagers didn’t constantly go missing, only to reappear in the timestream a thousand years later. Briar didn’t know much about time travel, so he reasoned that his mother must have survived all of this, or he wouldn’t exist right now. Of course, the other three knew that the cosmos was full of new timelines, sprouting up every time someone went back in time to change history. It was entirely possible that Briar was wildly different in this current version of reality. Just because he was still standing here didn’t mean that everything that happened in the past was identical to what happened where he was from. No one told him all of this, partially because it was a complex and hard-to-teach concept, but also because they were better off not meddling in this time period any further than they already had. If he understood that there was no such thing as fate, they would never be able to get him to leave. He would die of old age in the attempt to locate her again.

They huddled together, and thought of the island of Lorania on Dardius. Here, the weather was a lot less exceptional, which made it difficult to be sure that they had returned to the right moment. Madam Sriav was also nowhere to be found, but Eight Point Seven was pretty sure that little time had passed since they last left. When Madam Sriav was frustrated with having been taken from her home, she kicked flowers, and at one point, sat down to pull pedals apart. Some of this debris was still where she had left it, or nearby. It had not yet been blown away by the wind, or decomposed to the ravages of time. Eight Point Seven estimated that at most, only several minutes could have passed. They were less certain in this case that anyone involved would be safe. They had no frame of reference for predicted events here, nor any clue whether Madam Sriav was destined to do something particular in the future. If she was taken by someone, or otherwise lost, it could be catastrophic, and they would be hopeless to stop it. They didn’t have enough information about it.

“At least we’re navigating pretty well,” Goswin acknowledged. “If we keep this up, we shouldn’t have to worry about ending up in outer space, or anywhere else too dangerous, or even just wrong.”

“That’s still a danger,” Weaver determined. “If there’s no way to put a stop to this, we’ll probably find ourselves trying to use it towards some end. Good luck to us, figuring out what that objective should be, and how to go about achieving it.”

“Are you talking about me?” Briar questioned, offended. “She looked at me when she said that.”

“I was looking at everyone,” Weaver insisted.

“No, you were looking right at me,” Briar volleyed. “I get it, I’m the problem child. You’re all saints, but I’m the no-good dirty murderer.”

“She was looking at you,” Eight Point Seven confirmed.

“Thank you!” Briar shouted. “At least you’re honest.”

“She was looking at you, not because you’re a problem,” Eight Point Seven went on, “but because your motivations are distant from ours. In fact, I’m not sure what they are. What do you want?”

“What do you want?” he asked. “Are you quite certain that the three of your motivations are as aligned as you think?”

Eight Point Seven tilted her head, having been programmed to simulate inquisitive dispositions to better blend in with human cultural communication. “They may not be, but these other two can listen to reason, and they can agree to a decision without necessarily liking it. You were raised alone, in a world of two people. You lack social skills, and I need you to remember, Briar, that that is not your fault.”

Briar blinked excessively, waffling on whether to let the tears welling in his eyes fall to the ground, or somehow suck them back into their ducts. “You’re right,” he realized. He glared at Goswin. “It’s his.” 

“What? What do you mean?”

“We could have saved her,” Briar explained. “We could have kept my mother out of that cave, and away from Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. I could have grown up on Earth, around normal people.”

“I didn’t do that,” Goswin defended.

“Yes, you did. You took us away from there during your little experiment to see who was causing this. By the time we got back, she was gone, having no other option but to seek shelter in that cave. This is all you! You’re why I grew up alone. You’re why I killed Mateo Matic! But I didn’t, did I? You did. You killed him!”

“Briar, that’s not how it works. The timeline has been changed,” Weaver said. “Harrison would not have left her alone to go travel the English countryside. He’s with her on Bida.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Briar argued. “I was there, remember? I never knew the guy.”

“Exactly,” Weaver agreed. “That’s why I said the timeline changed. Our memory of events is different than what happened in this reality. Harrison was probably there the whole time, but none of us recalls that, because we’re the ones who changed it. We originated in a different timeline, and we’re all duplicates now. Our alternate selves are currently somewhere else, having done different things with their lives, if only slightly.”

“So, there’s another me out there, one who didn’t kill Mateo at all?” Briar asked her. “He’s happy?”

Eight Point Seven took a half step forward to indicate that she would field this one. She shook her head. “What you did cannot be undone. They already tried to change it, but you were wearing the hundemarke. That’s why the timeline is likely only slightly different. What happened happened, and couldn’t have happened any other way.”

He frowned and hung his head low. “Oh, yeah. I remember that.”

They all tensed up, waiting for Briar to decide that they should go back to save his mother, and maybe himself, in some other way, but he just stood there. With disaster somehow averted by the truth, they participated in an impromptu moment of silence, each of them lost in their own minds. Goswin stared at the broken flowers on the ground as the wind picked up, and did begin to scatter them down the hill. He ultimately took a breath, and looked up at the others. “Now that we know this about ourselves—that we share some sort of...power—we have to decide what to do with it. What’s our next step? Where and when do we go? This was always a vaguely mandated mission, but I feel like...we can’t just waste this on a beach resort.”

“You mean...what are you going to do with me?” Briar asked.

Goswin took a deep, rejuvenating breath. He got right into Briar’s face, but in a comforting way, rather than a threatening one. “You killed a man. You did it with malice and intent, and you expressed no remorse for it. What I need to know is are you going to do that again, to anyone, for any reason?”

Briar took a long time to respond. He was thinking on it carefully. “I know what you wanna hear, but the truth is that I don’t know. I don’t want to promise you something that I can’t necessarily follow through on.” He looked amongst them. “You three seem to have some idea of what’s going to happen in the universe. You have to understand that I don’t. I imagine that it’s quite easy for you to tell others what you’re gonna do, because you know what you’re gonna be up against. It’s not fair, really, being around such confident people, and being so...ignorant. So small.”

Goswin closed his eyes and shook his head mildly. He could actually relate to this sentiment, having to compare his knowledge of the universe to these other two, especially Weaver, who conceivably knew that all of this would happen, and how it would turn out.

Briar continued, “I can tell you that I don’t want to kill anyone in this moment, and that I have no plans to do it again. And I can tell you that I do feel remorse. I just don’t know how to show it. I think my mother was a little too...patient with me. She did her best to teach me how to feel, but not to make sure that what I felt was clear to others. I’m sorry that Mateo is dead, and that he died by my hands. I really do wish that I could undo it. Now, no matter how many other duplicates of me there are, they’ll always be just as miserable as the real me.”

“Don’t think of it like that,” Goswin told him. “You had good times in your life, I know it. Otherwise, you would be a wild animal. You wouldn’t wish to undo anything, except maybe to make things worse.”

“Maybe,” Briar admitted.

They all looked up to find that they had moved again. They were in a jungle that looked not unlike the one on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida where they tried to experiment with their new joint ability. “Where did we go this time?” Eight Point Seven asked.

Weaver started to work on her handheld device.

“Don’t bother,” Briar said to her. “I know where we are. This is my home. This is where I grew up. I was feeling nostalgic, I guess.” He walked straight for a large tree that had been marked up by tons of hashes. “This is tree eight. It’s my favorite one, because it’s when my mother started letting me mark the calendar unsupervised. I was eleven at the time.” He looked down the line at the other trees with hash marks, which supposedly represented their own years. He appeared to be doing some mental math. “It’s too late. Mom’s dead, and so is Mateo. We can’t change anything now.”

“We should still leave,” Weaver warned. “We don’t want to step back into our timeline. People live here, maybe not in this area, but still.”

Briar nodded, still admiring the eighth calendar tree. “I know, I’m sorry.”

“We all did this,” Eight Point Seven reminded him. “That’s how this works.”

“Yeah.” He nodded again, and managed to tear his gaze away, only to find himself distracted by something else. It was a different tree. This one had no hash marks on it, but there was something very different about it. The branches spread wide despite its currently short stature. The flowers were a stunning shade of blue. It was one of a kind, at least in the immediate area. “What the hell is this?”

“What? What’s wrong with it?” Goswin asked him.

“This shouldn’t be here. I memorized every blade of grass in this area. That tree was never here.”

“As I said,” Weaver began, “we’ve changed things. As we suspected, Harrison was here. He must have planted it a long time ago. Briar, he probably helped raise the other you. I don’t know how you feel about that.”

“I don’t either,” Briar said.

Eight Point Seven stepped towards the tree, and began to examine it closely.

“What is it?” Goswin asked her.

Eight Point Seven leaned forward and licked the bark to absorb some of the mysterious tree’s DNA, which she took a moment to analyze. “Magnolia arthurii. This species was introduced to England by mysterious travelers in the early 12th century, and disappeared from the records shortly thereafter. This is from Earth.” She turned to face the group. “Harrison didn’t just plant it, he brought it here. He might have done it on purpose, or the seed got stuck in his boot.”

“It’s beautiful,” Briar said in wonder. He slowly walked up to it, and reached out. He placed a hand upon its truck, and suddenly froze. The flowers buzzed as if carrying an electric current. Ripples in spacetime emanated from the bark, and into Briar’s face. With each wave, his head jerked back a little from the force, but he never let go of the tree. By the time any of them thought to maybe stop whatever was happening from happening, the ripples ceased, as did the buzzing. Briar fell towards his back, but Eight Point Seven managed to catch him before he crashed.

Is he okay?” Goswin asked.

“I’m okay,” Briar answered for himself. He gently pulled himself away from Eight Point Seven’s grip. He stumbled a bit from dizziness, but he never fell again. “I remember everything now. I remember my life with Harrison. He was my father. That didn’t happen before, but I remember it now. I remember both timelines.”

Weaver walked up to the special magnolia now. “This somehow stores memory, and he activated it for upload.” She turned to face Briar. “Do you have anyone else’s memories, or just those of your alternate self?”

Briar stopped to think about it for a moment. “Just mine, I think. I don’t feel like I’m anyone else.”

“Psychic and at least moderately sentient. This thing is very interesting. Either all magnolias of this particular species could do this, or it changed when it passed through the time cave.”

“Should we...all touch it?” Goswin posed.

“Absolutely not,” Weaver urged. “Don’t go around touching things. That could be one of Leona’s Rules for Time Travel.”

“You wanna stay here, don’t you?” Goswin presumed. “You wanna study it.”

“We could always leave later,” Weaver said out of hope. I don’t think any of the colonizers made it all the way out here. But it’s up to you, Captain.”

Briar seemed to want to stay as well, which made some sense. Eight Point Seven couldn’t care less. “Okay,” Goswin agreed. “We still don’t know exactly what year it is, though, so we can’t be certain how far the colonizers are. Stay vigilant.”

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Fluence: Mirage (Part III)

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Goswin wiped the rain from his eyes, and was able to see that this Irene de Vries woman was not alone. A very young child was huddled against her hip. All signs pointed to the fact that this was Briar, but it could also be his son, or his great grandfather, or his eleventh cousin, forty-two times removed. “What year are you from?” Goswin asked. “Oh wait, no. Sorry. I mean, uhh...report.”

Irene smiled. “Trinity used to say that to me all the time. Is that in the time traveler’s handbook, or something?”

“If there’s an actual handbook, I’ve not actually seen it. That’s just what I’ve heard others say. May I ask the boy’s name?”

“It’s Briar.” Confirmed. “Hey, do I know you from somewhere? You look familiar. Have you ever been to the 21st century?”

“Captain!” Behind him, Weaver was power walking up, followed by Eight Point Seven, and Harrison.

“Is Madam Sriav with you?” Goswin asked.

Weaver shook her head. “She didn’t come. We assume she’s still on Lorania.”

“That’s not good,” Goswin mused. “We’ll try to get back to her. Crew, I would like you to meet Irene de Vries, and her son...Briar.”

Eight Point Seven didn’t react, and of course, neither did Harrison. Weaver flinched, but kept it together. Briar was in very, very big trouble, but not yet. Warning Irene that her son would one day become a killer was not going to help. Things could conceivably get better, but they could also get worse. She may decide that the only way to stop this would be to murder her son, and that would not be an okay decision. It wouldn’t work anyway. Briar killed Mateo while he was wearing the hundemarke, which was a special temporal object that created fixed moments in time. No matter how you try to change the past, this will always happen, as will anything inherently necessary to lead up to it. “It’s nice to meet you.” She pulled Goswin towards her, and did her best to whisper in his ear while still being heard through the rain. “We need to get out of here.”

“I know,” he replied.

“If you have to go back to the Middle Way, or whatever it is you did to make this happen a fourth time, then do it again. I don’t care if we end up on the moon. Just get us out of this paradox.”

“Fourth?” Goswin questioned incredulously. “You think I’m the one who took us to Achernar in the first place? You think that this was just something I’ve always been able to do, but the first time I tried was when I was in my 80s?”

“The thought crossed my mind. Maybe you’re salmon.”

“Excuse me?” Irene interjected. “The rain’s starting to come down harder. I really could use some shelter. There’s a cave nearby that we can hide in temporarily.”

“Hey!” a voice shouted to them. “Get the hell away from my mother!” Briar was running towards Goswin as fast as he could, and unlikely preparing to come to a complete stop just to exchange a few choice words. He was in a tackle posture. Fortunately, he didn’t make it that far. Harrison reached out, and lifted him up by his underarms, holding him in the air effortlessly as Briar continued to paddle his feet to no avail. “Let me go!”

“Did he just say mother?” Irene asked, confused and scared.

Goswin waggled his finger at the still struggling Briar. “Stop. Stop! We’re not going to hurt anyone. If you want to protect her, then you will stop moving, and listen to me very carefully.”

Briar went limp, and started to pant.

“Everyone gather around. Not you, Madam de Vries. Please go protect your son.” Once everyone else was in a huddle, Goswin went on. “I have a theory. Briar, are you familiar with any landmark on Earth; anything at all?”

“No, nothing.” Yeah, he had only ever remembered living on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. “Well, except for this.” He held up a photo of Irene in her younger days, smiling in front of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. “It was her favorite place in the world.”

Goswin closed his eyes and sighed. “Okay, I’ve been there too. That’ll work. Think about that place. Think about trying to go there.”

“Why?”

“Would you just do it? The National Museum of Natural History. Think about the museum. Think about visiting there. Don’t think about anything else.”

“Okay, I guess.”

The rain suddenly stopped. They were now in the middle of a grassy park. To one side of them was a giant bosom, and to the other a giant phallus. Behind them stood a red castle, and before them was the target museum, which was the second bosom. This was Washington D.C. all right. They were soaking wet on a bright, sunny day. The tourists around them were confused, and a few of them looked really nervous.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea,” Goswin admitted. “I just didn’t want us to go back to Bida, and Briar doesn’t have a frame of reference for much on Earth.”

“What is your hypothesis,” Weaver asked, “that he’s the one who brought us?”

“Well, it seems like the only possibility,” Goswin determined.

“We didn’t even see him at the other locations,” Weaver pointed out.

“Excuse me?” A man in overalls had approached Briar. “Could you please step closer to your friends?”

“They’re not my friends,” Briar spit at him.

“That is very much not my point, sir,” the stranger said. “Please step closer to them.” He waited, his patience thinning. “Please,” he repeated. “Thank you,” he added when Briar finally complied.

“What is it you need?” Goswin asked, ready for a fight, even though he was not much for violence.

The stranger held up his hands like he was trying to block the sun from his eyes. He jerked them a centimeter away from each other, which served to freeze everyone around them in place. Time was stopped, or at least moving very slowly. He gradually pushed his right hand forward, and in front of his left hand, which pulled back, and moved in the opposite direction. As he did so, time began to reverse outside of the bubble he had erected for them. They watched as the tourists walked backwards. A child’s scoop of ice cream flew back up to his cone from the ground. Once the scene was back to where he wanted it, he closed his hands into fists, and snapped them against each other, pinky to thumb. The five of them felt a lurch, as if the roller coaster ride were just beginning. The man carefully placed his left fist against his nose, and looked over his hands like a sniper. His arms were shaking, but not like he was struggling, more like it was integral to the process. As he slowly moved his fists away from his face, the scene around them began to blur and fade into blackness. They flew forward, also like a roller coaster. Finally, he opened his hands back up, and separated them, stopping the ride.

They were standing in a desert, the three main pyramids of Giza rippling above a mirage a few kilometers away. The slight distortion from the bubble dissolved, and the warm wind began to blow sand into their eyes and noses. “All right. It’s done.”

“What’s done?” Eight Point Seven questioned.

“You’ve been erased from the timeline. No one who witnessed your arrival in the National Mall remembers that it ever happened, because it didn’t. They’re all going about their day, still clueless about time travelers, and the like.”

“Thank you, Repairman,” Weaver said to him as if they were old friends. Maybe they were.

“When you say, we were erased from time...” Goswin trailed off intentionally.

“You just never showed up there,” the Repairman clarified. “Instead, you transported yourselves to this random spot in the Necropolis. You’ve been here the whole time, and if anyone were to ask a lizard or cactus around here what they saw, that’s what they would say.

“I don’t see any cactuses,” Briar noted.

“Then maybe you don’t have to worry about any witnesses,” the Repairman joked. He paused a moment. “Well, bye.”

“Wait!” Goswin stopped him. “Could you help us again...maybe by telling us what’s happening to us?”

“I wouldn’t know, but I heard you blame everything on this guy,” the Repairman said. “What I’ll tell you is that the ability to transport people from a distance is rather rare. It’s not impossible but...in my experience, when multiple individuals travel together without any of them realizing how or why, it’s not because one of them is doing it on purpose, but because there’s some kind of glue that binds them together.” He made a quarter turn, reached out, and opened an invisible panel in the air. They couldn’t see anything, but they could hear the familiar creak of metal scraping against metal. He reached into it, and took hold of an equally invisible handle, which he pulled down. His figure turned into a black silhouette for a split second before disappearing completely.

They stood there in silence for a few moments. “I have another idea,” Goswin finally said, worried how they would take it.

“A new experiment?” Weaver asked him, intrigued.

“Are you up for it? We have to get a handle on this. I don’t really want to spend the rest of my life randomly jumping from point to point.”

“Let’s hear it,” Eight Point Seven encouraged.

“You can’t,” Goswin replied. “I’m going to write four places down, and keep them compartmentalized. You will each think about your own place, and only that place. If he’s right, and there’s some kind of glue between us, it won’t work, because it will be contradictory.” He pulled out his handheld device, and started writing the locations down. He showed Briar the first one.

“Really?” Briar asked incredulously.

“Don’t. Give it away,” Goswin warned. “It’s a magic trick.”

Briar sighed, upset. He was being expected to think about the cliff where he killed Mateo Matic. It was simultaneously the worst and best place for him. What happened there was probably the worst thing he had ever done, so that meant, now that he had been triggered, he wouldn’t be able to think of anything else, even if he wanted to.

The other three, on the other hand, were going to be thinking about the the west entrance to the primary research facility on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. No one ever went back there, so they shouldn’t have to worry about being seen. Goswin was the only one who knew that he, Weaver, and Eight Point Seven had the same spot in mind. If Briar were the one in charge, it didn’t matter what the others thought of, because they would always end up where he wanted to go instead. “Everyone ready?” Goswin asked. “I guess time travel works on psychic powers, so...everyone think about your respective locations, please, and really, truly, desperately try to actually go there. Don’t think about anything else. It may take a while, I really don’t know.”

They stood there in their huddle for a minute or so without anything happening, the humans struggling with the dust storm that was starting up around them. It did work, though. The sand and sun disappeared to be replaced by a dense forest at twilight. Alien bugs crawled around on a tree next to them, as wingèd ones swarmed in their faces. This was definitely Bida. But it wasn’t the cliff where Briar committed murder, and it wasn’t anywhere near the research facility.

“Whose spot was this?” Eight Point Seven asked.

“No one’s,” Goswin revealed. I don’t know that we’re right about this.”

“Don’t be so hasty,” Weaver said, taking out her own handheld. “I can connect to the satellite now.”

Goswin was worried again about how they would take it. “Briar had the...the cliff. You know the one I mean. The rest of us had the west entrance to Pryce’s lab.”

Weaver peered at him over her device. “Only two places.”

“Yes, it was like a blind study.”

Weaver nodded, and tapped on the screen. She held it in front of his face. “We’re right in the middle.”

“What?” Goswin took it from her, to see what she was talking about.

“Exactly equidistant from the cliff and the building.”

“We split the difference,” Eight Point Seven noted. “The Repairman was right. It’s all of us. Whatever each of us wants, this...force between us tries to come up with something that matches our criteria combined. If you wanted Italian food, and she wanted Chinese, and I wanted French, and he wanted Ethiopian, we would end up at a fusion restaurant.” She started pointing at the members of the group accordingly. “If we wanted to go to the years 1776, 1912, 2024, and 2100, we would show up in 1953.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Goswin said. “Briar wasn’t with us on that void planet, or on Dardius.”

“Wasn’t he?” Weaver prodded.

Briar frowned. “I was hiding. I wasn’t planning on showing myself at all, but then you attacked my mother...”

“No one was attacking her,” Goswin defended. He grunted. “We have to figure out how to get rid of this. It could cause us serious problems. If one of us wants to go to Teagarden, and the rest want to go to Glisnia, are we gonna end up somewhere in the middle of empty space?”

“We can’t do that yet. We have to go back to return Harrison and Madam Sriav to where they belong.”

“That’s true,” Goswin agreed. “Can we all come to a consensus long enough to make that work?”

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