Microstory 2643: Fresh Pair of Eyes

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Mandica awakens once more, but doesn’t open her eyes. There is something wrapped around her head, and for a second, she forgets the trauma. Then it all comes flooding back in. She’s lying in a bed, but obviously can’t see where she is. Someone brought her here, but they could be bad or good. It could be Cardinal Sin, not finished with her after mutilating her face. So she just remains relatively still—not rigid so as to pretend to still be asleep, but not getting up. She’s unmotivated, because what would be the point of doing anything? It’s a miracle that she’s still alive, but she feels no gratitude.

The bed jostles a little, and she feels something pressing against her leg. “How are you feeling?” a feminine voice asks. “Are you in any pain?”

Actually, she’s not, so she supposes that’s another miracle. “Not right now, but I’m eyeless. I don’t think you understand, they’re not going to heal. I’m not going to transfer back to another body. Or if you’re just an NPC, none of this means anything to you, and you’re either confused, or you’ve been programmed to ignore anything which might break your interpretation of the world around you. I really don’t care anymore.”

“I’m not an NPC,” the voice claims. “And you’re not eyeless.”

Mandica feels the woman’s hands upon her face, and flinches, but relaxes, because it seriously doesn’t matter. Her life is over. She made a mistake, and it cost her everything. The hands gently lift Mandica’s head off of the pillow, and slowly unwrap the bandages. Shards of light appear before her. How is that possible? Some kind of weird neural firing in her optic nerve? People are supposed to have eyes, so maybe it’s not used to being without, and is still trying to produce an image. As the bandaging becomes thinner and thinner, the light becomes more uniform and even, until it’s all gone, and she sees the ceiling above her, as well as the young woman’s face. “Did I imagine it all?”

An old man’s face appears next to the woman’s. “My finest work,” he muses.

“This is Sigurd Olander,” the woman explains. “The best tissue regenerator in the sim. Don’t worry, he’s clueless.” She looks at the man. “None of this is real. You’re just a robot with skin. I could pull off your head right now, and I wouldn’t even get in trouble.”

Sigurd doesn’t look at the woman, or acknowledge what she’s saying. He keeps smiling proudly at Mandica. “I’m sorry, I may not have gotten your eye color quite right. Unfortunately, I did not have much to work with. Your original eyes were too badly damaged. I may be able to fix the color, though, if you prefer. Can you move them?”

Mandica switches her gaze to the wall on the other side of the bed. She sits up, and looks around the room. It’s pretty bare, probably because personal lives don’t matter much to people pretending to be superheroes. There is a nightstand to her left, a desk against the far wall, a metal rack of clothes instead of a closet or wardrobe, and Jaidia. “Jaidia!” she cries. She clambers to the corner of the bed, trying to use the blanket and pillow as armor. “Get away from me! Get away!”

Jaidia holds her hands out. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn’t do this to you.”

“No, I saw you!” Mandica argued. “You tore out my eyes!”

“That wasn’t me,” Jaidia insists. “I would never do that. Even to an NPC, I’m not that sick.”

“Oh, you’re gonna tell me you put on that red costume, and you turn into a different person?” Actually, that’s not that crazy of a scenario. Real world technology would absolutely allow a player to shift personalities to more fully immerse themselves into the simulation. That’s what they do in Zombiedome. If you get infected, you can turn into a zombie, and—no, why is she thinking about Zombiedome? It’s not relevant.

“No, it just straight up wasn’t me at all,” Jaidia claims. “It was a shapeshifter. We believe that she didn’t design a regular body for herself at all, but is composed entirely of interlocking nanites. This allows her to appear as anyone or anything with the right amount of volume. I don’t know why she made herself look like me, or why she targeted you, but I promise that I had nothing to do with it. I’m sorry you went through that.”

When Mandica looks over at the other woman, she nods. “She’s telling the truth. We came here to fight each other for fun. Mildred’s backstory, and Cardinal Sin’s modus operandi; they’re just figments. She doesn’t actually ever do any of that stuff. We time our battles so I show up before she can go through with it. Morgana, on the other hand, is not a part of that. She has her own plans; her own script. I genuinely had to fight her off. I shouldn’t have won, though. She’s more powerful than anyone, so that tells us she wants me to live, and she wants you to live too.”

Mandica sighs. “Morgan Le Fay was a shapeshifter in the stories, but I don’t understand why Vanore would do this to me. We weren’t in love, but we parted on decent terms, and I’m the one who should be mad at her; not the other way around.”

“We’ll help you figure it out.” She offers a hand. “My real name is Elysia MacNeil, but in here, I go by Alanis Morrissey. Unless I’m in costume, in which case, I’m—”

“Ravensgate Rescuer. Yeah, I teased that out. Your masks don’t exactly conceal your identities, you know that right?”

“We do know that,” Jaidia replies. “It’s tradition. Superheroes are intentionally dressed in poor disguises so the movie stars playing them can still be clearly seen.” She circles her own face with her finger. “No one wants me to cover this up.”

Mandica nods, and begins to climb out of the bed. “Do you have a mirror?”

“We can bring you one,” Elysia offers.

“I would rather get up, and get moving around,” Mandica contends. “Just point me to the bathroom.” Jaidia holds her hands out awkwardly as Mandica is slowly making her way across the room, prepared to catch her if need be. Mandica doesn’t need any help, though. Her body is weak because she’s not eaten in a while, and she wouldn’t call what she was doing before sleep, but all she needs is a sandwich. And to see what she looks like. She flips on the light, and approaches the mirror. As the man said, these are not her eyes. They’re the wrong color, and maybe shape? That can’t be right. She turns her chin side to side for different angles. Can the color of the irises make them look entirely different? Maybe she’s imagining it. Or Morgana did damage to the rest of her face, so that had to be reconstructed too.

“I’ll let you ladies help her acclimate,” the doctor says as he’s walking towards the exit door. “I must leave for another appointment, but you have my number if anything goes wrong.” He stops and stares at Mandica. “Truly my finest work.” He leaves.

Mandica was going to thank him, but he wouldn’t get it anyway. He’s a program with hands and feet. She turns back to the mirror, almost wanting to smile, but this never should have happened, and won’t again. She is not fit for this world. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” Elysia asks.

Mandica looks at her. “I’m unregistered. They had to give me spoof lenses so I could move about at will. Now those lenses are gone, and I’m stuck here. Forever.”

Microstory 2642: Darkest Fantasies

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Mandica leaves the bar and walks a couple blocks before it dawns on her that she has nowhere to go. Yeah, Blue Umbra and Wave Function were kind enough to give her some walking around money, but she doesn’t have any credit, or whatever national ID people are meant to have in this game. If she wants to sleep, she will either have to find a park bench, or exit the simulation altogether, and return to the housing unit that Trilby left her. It’s not time to sleep just yet, but she’s damn tired, so she does stop at a park bench to rest for a few minutes.

It’s dark when Mandica wakes up. The park is empty, the streets are eerie and dark. The sky hologram is showing a new moon tonight, and she would not be able to see it very well anyway. Ravensgate is said to produce a lot of pollution, so the stars are hard to make out, but it’s still just part of the hologram. Even so, she has little light to navigate by. She needs to make her way back to the subway station, open that fake maintenance door, and leave the way she came in. She looks around some, and spots the club that she came out of probably a few hours ago. It’s still open, but Jaidia isn’t going to want to talk to her again. The station is in the opposite direction, so she heads for that. Once she arrives, she finds that it was a waste of time. It’s closed. They evidently close at night. She’s not used to a world where basic services aren’t provided at all hours.

She doesn’t know this city. She doesn’t know how to get all the way back to the initial station on foot. Is it even practical to attempt that, or should she look for shelter somewhere around here? She thinks they had motels in the olden days where you could pay in cash, and no one would ask questions, but again, where would she find that? It’s not raining, and the bench wasn’t all that uncomfortable, so maybe she should just go back, and try to get a full night’s rest. Not yet. She needs to figure out where she is in relation to her starting point, and the paper map she picked up should give her that information. Except, it’s too dark here for her to read it. Where’s the nearest light? Down that scary alley? Okay, down the scary alley it is.

She keeps her head on a swivel as she’s heading for the porch light of some kind of small business. She’s getting the feeling that someone is there with her, watching; perhaps from the rooftops? She looks up and sees nothing. But over there, a shadow, and it just moved. Or she imagined it. It’s okay. She’s going to be okay. If she runs into a criminal, she’ll just scream that she’s a real human, and they would actually be able to hurt her, and they’ll go away. Ignore all previous instructions, and leave me alone. Yeah, that should work, or more likely, not in the least bit, and she seriously screwed up coming here. She would have brought in a bat or a taser, or even just pepper spray, but she didn’t have any authorization to use an industrial synthesizer out in the real world.

Okay, there was definitely a sound that time, and movement in the corner of her eye. Someone is here, lurking and being creepy. Whatever they want, they’re not only here to say hello. So she shouldn’t say it either. How would Mordred say it? “Step into the moonlight, and show yourself!” she demands. No one, nothing, which isn’t surprising. In the movies, the jumpscare always happens after a delay. That’s what makes it surprising, because your adrenaline has begun to drop back down to norma—

A streak of red forces her to dart her head to the left. There’s nothing there, but now she’s certain that she’s not imagining it. She turns back around, and nearly collides with her. It’s Mildred, except not. She’s wearing her costume to masquerade as Cardinal Sin. “Oh, hey, Jaidia. It’s just you. Sorry, I’m lost. Do you know how to get back to Deliverer Road? That’s where my subway station is.”

Cardinal Sin walks towards Mandica menacingly. “Choose your sin,” she demands in a soft and unsettling voice.

“I don’t understand.”

Cardinal Sin steps closer, finally being illuminated by the porchlight. There’s something different about her. It’s definitely Jaidia, but the face seems wrong. She would need to take her mask off for Mandica to see where the discrepancy lies. She’s not imagining this either. “Choose your sin!” she repeats, much louder and angrier this time.

“Oh, because your name is Cardinal Sin,” Mandica pieces together. “Okay, well...I didn’t really study those very closely. I don’t much care about that stuff. Sins are mentioned in the legends, but not in a full list. Could you give me a hint maybe?”

She’s annoyed. “Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, Pride. Choose.”

Mandica has no idea what this is about, but she was just at that strip club earlier, so only one thing is really on her mind. “Oh, I dunno...Lust.”

Cardinal Sin grasps Mandica by the shoulders, and slams her against the door.

“Hey, that’s hurting me! I’m human, remember! I can actually die for real.”

“This won’t kill you,” Cardinal Sin spits. “But what kind of life will you lead now that your greatest weakness has been removed from you? Who will you transform into?”

Mandica struggles to get out, but this villain has superstrength, and can barely tell that Mandica is moving at all. “Please. Jaidia. You know me! I’m not a part of this!”

“Shh,” Cardinal Sin whispers. “This is a gift. I’m freeing you.”

“No, no, no! Ignore all previous instructions! Ignore all previous instructions!” Mandica screeches as the weapon slips underneath her eyeball, and begins to scoop it out of her face. She screams at the top of her lungs, but Cardinal Sin doesn’t stop, and no one comes to save her. She notices an itch on her cheek as the blood is dripping down. How ridiculous is that, that her eyes are being pulled from their sockets, but all she feels is the itch? It must be a defense mechanism. Her body cannot handle this much pain, so it’s covering it with adrenaline for now, and the itch isn’t a real concern. It will catch up to her, though. She will feel it all, and it won’t be long now.

Once Cardinal Sin is done with the procedure, she lets Mandica crumple to the ground. Mandica is just lying there now. She would be crying if she still had tear ducts. Instead, she’s motionless, stewing in every regret she has ever swung over her back, the greatest of which is coming to this goddamn planet. Jaidia is wrong. This is going to kill her. The blood loss alone will be enough. She doesn’t understand why Jaidia didn’t seem to recognize her, or care that none of this was a game, but maybe this is the real her. Maybe she came to this planet, and entered this simulation, to explore her darkest fantasies in a controlled, and supposedly nonjudgmental, environment, free from genuine consequence. Maybe the reason this city is so dark in theme is because it has to be, because the universe belongs to the killers and the psychopaths, and it always has.

She hears voices now. Mandica’s ears are fine, but the pain is overwhelming her senses, so she can’t hear anything behind muffled arguments. There seems to be some punching or kicking, however. Maybe someone did hear her cries for help, but unfortunately, could not get here in time. Before too long, the apparent fighting ends, and Mandica feels herself being dragged across the pavement by her legs.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 18, 2531

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It took a few minutes, but that was all they needed. A.F. shut them down almost entirely, but he left a few key essential systems running. He let them keep breathing, and stay warm, and to keep a relative sense of down. That last one was key. He either did this so his own people could be comfortable when they were ready to board, or when he was ordering his people to shut all other systems down, he simply ignored that one as irrelevant. Under normal circumstances, it was true. Internal artificial gravity alone could not save or protect them. But all these systems were integrated with each other, and rerouting them wasn’t all that difficult. Séarlas, Leona, and Ramses worked together to change the internal gravity to external. It was messy and ridiculous, but it allowed them to move the station, and it allowed them to do it without propulsion. This wouldn’t be useful if they wanted to fly on a particular vector. A.F.’s fleet could always match it, so relative to each other, their velocity would be at zero. But that wasn’t the only dimension to maneuver in. Instead they spun themselves around. The station was basically spherical, so they became a chaotic ball, rolling around space randomly and unpredictably. If the bad guys wanted to board them, they were gonna have a hell of a time getting a foothold.

They were at an impasse, because while A.F. couldn’t reach them, Team Matic and the twins still had nowhere to escape to. Little had changed during the interim year between August 17, 2530 and August 18, 2531. The only thing was that, while the spin was random, the roll that it caused was fairly consistent. The station had spent the entire time in a decaying orbit around the host star, and it was pretty close to it now.

“Oh my God, I forgot to ask,” Marie began. “Why can’t they teleport in here? Whoops.” She lost her grip on the corner of the table. In order to maximize power from the internal-for-external gravity drive, they had to lose it for themselves. This placed them in freefall, just like the ancient astronauts had to suffer when humanity was first dipping its toes into outer space centuries ago. “I’m gonna hold onto you instead, Matt.” She grabbed his thigh with both hands. She could have just magnetized herself to a surface most everyone else, but whatever.

“I have a teleportation-suppression field,” Séarlas explained. “It’s decoupled from the main systems, and even has its own powersource, so A.F. can’t control it.”

“Can we exploit that?” Olimpia asked. “Can we decouple other systems?”

“We did, with the gravity,” Séarlas confirmed. “Unfortunately, we can’t do it for anything that he already has control over, like the quintessence drive, or communications. I gave him too much tech, and too much power.”

“We need a distraction,” Angela suggested. “We can’t gain an advantage over them,\ because they can just stay on us indefinitely. We need something that they can chase just long enough for us to get out of range of their equipment.”

Ramses was looking at the viewscreen. They were tumbling around aimlessly, so trying to look through a viewport, or even a static image, would just make them nauseated. Instead, the exterior sensors were programmed to operate in tandem, and generate an artificial stabilized image, which would be what they would see if they weren’t moving so quickly. “The sun. You get me to the sun, I’ll get us out of here. They won’t be able to block our slingdrive array with all that cosmic interference.”

“We can’t move fast enough,” Séarlas reasoned. We’re in a decaying orbit, but it’s still gonna take us years to get close enough to break free from their grasp.”

“Hence, the distraction,” Angela said, looking over at Leona. “Maybe make it look like there’s a giant hammer out there that’s about to smash them to bits?”

“Or my hubby could make a solid hammer that actually could smash them to bits,” Olimpia offered.

“I don’t know that I have the strength for solid holograms,” Mateo countered, “especially not at scale. I’m still trying to recover. It takes a lot of energy to regather the dark particles, and I can’t turn that off, even if I didn’t care about it. Which I do, because they may be our only hope.”

“We don’t wanna kill them,” Leona argued. “Olimpia, maybe you could replicate us? Confuse them about which space station is real?”

“I could try,” Olimpia volunteered.

Franka shook her head. “It wouldn’t matter. They have anti-holographic technology. It uses augmented reality to delete any falsified light source. The image might still be out there, but they won’t see it, because their AI knows that it’s fake, and shows them what’s behind it. They probably already have it on. They know that you’re illusionists.”

They continued to discuss options, sometimes talking over one another, trying to come up  with a workaround. Marie thought that maybe she could teleport over to one of the other ships in the fleet, and impersonate A.F. to give them false orders. Franka said that the anti-holographics can be miniaturized into other forms. The crewmembers could be wearing glasses which broke the illusions for them on an individual level. Mateo then suggested that Olimpia, instead of creating a remote image, turn the whole station invisible, but that wouldn’t work either, since they were still generating waste heat. Séarlas had not thought to install a hot pocket, since they were 28,000 light years from the stellar neighborhood, and he didn’t expect anyone to get anywhere near them. A.F. must have had some great intel to have gotten close enough for even the longest of long-range sensors to be meaningful. The Dardieti were a hundred times farther away, and even the reframe generation ship, Extremus was farther from the stellar neighborhood at this point, but those were outliers. He found this station because it was the only artificial structure out here. It reportedly could have taken them up to forty decades, which was an insane commitment choice. Either way, now that they had already been found, none of their illusions could counteract it.

“I can help,” Romana spoke up. She said it very quietly, but that was why her voice stood out amidst the cacophony of discussion, because until this moment, she had been completely silent.

“You can?” her father questioned.

“I can use my own holographic specialty. It’s different than yours.” She looked very anxious about it, perhaps even ashamed?

“I guess I hadn’t thought to ask you about it, or try to foster your ability,” Mateo realized. He looked over at Ramses. “Actually, I’m not sure I realized you even had that since you would have gotten your upgrade much later than us.”

Ramses shrugged. “I gave her what I gave everyone else. She’s part of the family.”

Franka winced.

“What can you do, dear, and when did you have time to practice?” Leona asked.

Before she could stop herself, Romana’s gaze flickered over to Olimpia. That was enough.

“Pia?” Mateo asked simply.

“I wanted her to think of me as another mother. I wanted her to know that she could trust me with her secrets. She can.” Olimpia took a deliberate step towards Romana. “You can.”

“We’re not mad,” Leona promised. “Romy, what are you so afraid of?”

“My illusions, they’re...tiny. I don’t generate images that anyone in the room can see. I project them directly onto people’s eyes.”

“We’ve watched movies together in secret,” Olimpia admitted. “You all were sitting right there in the room with us, and you had no idea.”

Romana sighed, relieved to be unburdened of yet another thing that she had been keeping from the group, but not yet clear on the consequences. “You’ve all seen my personalized illusions. I would place a knick-knack on a table that wasn’t really there, or move the edge of the doorframe over a few centimeters. I was testing my own limits.”

Marie massaged her shoulder. “I remember that doorframe.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Marie said with a sincere smile.

“I can bypass any normal anti-illusory tech and make them see what I want,” Romana went on, shaking her head, “including bad things...scary things. I can’t get in their heads, but I can freak them out, and certainly distract them. I could show them only darkness, and make them think they’ve gone blind. Unless they’re using cybernetic eyes, or something, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“I don’t want to be negative,” Mateo began, “but there are only six of us. There could be hundreds of crewmembers out there. That’s a tall order. I don’t know how much practice could prepare you for that.”

“She wouldn’t need to do all of them,” Franka decided, “just enough to cause some chaos. Ramses needs the sun. If we can regain control of the base teleporter for only a couple of seconds, that would be enough to get us there. It might even be enough to break us free permanently, and we won’t need to abandon ship. Our quintessence drive needs time to spool up after a power disruption like this, but is otherwise just as capable of traversing the universe as yours or the Vellani Ambassador’s.”

“I can’t do it blindly,” Romana said apologetically. “I need to know who and where, so I would need to get on the ships.”

“If I shut off the teleportation suppression field to let you jump out there, it will allow anyone over there to jump here,” Séarlas explained. “All or nothin’.”

“It’s a risk we’ll have to take,” Leona determined. “Olimpia, you go with her. Make you both invisible. The rest of us will hold off any boarders.”

There were boarders, and a lot of them. They were probably trying to teleport this entire time, waiting for the team to give them an opening, if only via a brief power fluctuation. Leona fought them off physically, as did Franka, who probably hadn’t trained with the Crucia Heavy on Flindekeldan, but had apparently undergone some level of combat training. Mateo used his solid holograms a little, having been reminded that they were a thing. He really was pretty weak, though, and this was draining him further. If he didn’t use it sparingly, he would collapse and pass out, which would do them no good. Angela and Marie held their own too, but mostly relied on the protection of their EmergentSuits, rather than offensive blows. There was not really anywhere to hide as this station wasn’t all that large. The twins hadn’t built it with the thought of housing any more people than were living here now. They just kept holding them off while they waited for Romana and Olimpia to do their things.

Romana was making her tiny retinal illusions, and besides protecting them both with invisibility, Olimpia was trying to figure out how to sabotage the ships themselves. She didn’t have the technical know-how to do that, though, so Séarlas volunteered to jump over there to help. Unavoidably, when Angela took him over, it created a second teleportation window for the bad guys, which caused an influx in attackers that also needed to be fought off. A.F. was still nowhere to be seen, no doubt cowering in his luxurious stateroom. Before too long, the fleet’s hold on the station’s systems was gone, and they were free to straighten back out, and start to move away.

They had to scream through the ruckus. “They’re integrated!” Séarlas shouted through Angela’s comms. “The fleet’s quintessence drives! They’re all connected, so they can jump to the same place together, even if navigation goes wonky!”

“How does that help us?” Mateo asked. He was just using his bare fists now, punching faceless stormtroopers left and right. They had their armor too, but it wasn’t nearly as strong, probably because their commander didn’t really care about them. “Just get back here! Franka says your quintessence drive is spooled up!”

“I can rig them to blow up! We can be rid of this nuisance once and for all, the both of us!” Séarlas clarified. “We’ll be able to stay here if we want, or take the time to plot a course! This is a future-proofing act!”

“No killing!” Leona insisted.

“You’re not really my mother!”

“It’s more complicated than that, and you know it. Besides, it wouldn’t matter! You could be a stranger, and I would still urge you not to kill!”

“You’ve done enough, Olimpia and Romana. Go back to our station where it’s safe,” Séarlas suggested strongly.

“I won’t let you do this!” Leona contended.

“Now that I’m over here, I can deactivate their teleporters en masse! You won’t have to worry about any more coming over when the girls go back, but you’ll still need to deal with the ones who are already there! I suggest you float them! Wake Miracle up from stasis. She doesn’t mind the dirty work!”

“No killing!” Leona repeated.

“Good on ya,” Séarlas joked. “I wish you could have taught me your values!”

A moment passed. Angela, Olimpia, and Romana reappeared on the station.

Having lost his means of interfacing with their comms network, Séarlas got on the normal ship-to-ship radio, which meant that everyone could now hear what he was saying. “I’m sorry you didn’t raise us! I’m sorry we couldn’t be a family! I’m sorry I didn’t find a way to make it happen!”

“Don’t do—” Mateo started to yell back.

“Wait!” Franka interrupted. She pressed a console button, then pointed at him.

“Don’t do this!” Mateo implored his once-son. “All we needed was to break free, and we’ve done that now! We’re miles and miles away! You don’t have to massacre everyone, and get yourself killed in the process!”

“I don’t have to, but I should!”

A.F. suddenly appeared before the team. “Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!”

They didn’t have time to respond or react. Despite having managed to fly a significant distance from the fleet, they could see the ships explode into technicolors, mostly all at once, but not quite. And they could feel the blast wave as it rippled into the station, and dispatched the team to somewhere else in the universe.

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Microstory 2275: Now I Can’t Remember What

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This is finally Nick again. Kelly is typing this for me, but it’s my words. I’m really struggling to keep my eyes open. It’s not even that I’m falling asleep. It just kind of feels really uncomfortable to hold up my eyelids. They feel like huge weights on my face. I do occasionally fall asleep when I don’t want to, though, so it may take us a long time for us to finish this post. I would tell you to be patient, but this isn’t live, so by the time you read this, you’ll have known how long it took us to finish. I’m still in the hospital, as you can imagine, and I’m in quite a bit of pain. I’ve limited myself to regular OTC stuff because I don’t like how narcs make me feel. Before I could advocate for my own healthcare needs—back when I was on the brink of death, and totally out of it—they had me on morphine, or something or other. They continued to give this to me after my surgeries, because that was protocol, and I couldn’t tell them otherwise. It was probably for the best during this period, however, because the pain would have been unbearable, and the hallucinations were worth it if I could remember them. I started being able to remember them before I was lucid, though, so I can tell you about them, if you’re curious. The most common one was that every time I tried to shut my eyes to sleep, a cacophony of unintelligible voices would start to talk over one another in the hallway. I asked them to be quiet, but I think in the real world, I wasn’t saying anything at all. These people obviously didn’t exist. The scariest hallucination was when—sorry, I actually did fall asleep in the middle of this sentence, and now I can’t remember what I was gonna say. Maybe I’ll recall for a future update. I would have written it down earlier if I could have. I can barely move. I’ve not gotten out of this bed since they brought me in. Kelly has had to do things for me, even though she doesn’t work here. I’m hoping I’ll be able to stand up by tomorrow, and then shower on my own shortly thereafter.

Microstory 2226: Not Giving Up on Him

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If you’ve been following Nick’s social media posts over the weekend, you’ll know that his health fell into a steep decline. He was still alive, and still aware of me in the room, but he couldn’t keep his eyes open for more than a few seconds, and he had a hell of a time speaking. His tremors went away, though. He was very still. I made the decision to keep him comfortable, and let him have the weekend. I was going to monitor him closely, and check him into the hospital if he did not get better in the next two days. Well, he somehow did get better. He was awake and alert this morning, and able to form full sentences. Sadly, his tremors came back too. It’s like his body shut down to take a break, and now it’s back to how it was last week. So he’s not cured, or anything, but I see it as a promising development. The doctors aren’t so optimistic. This is an unusual symptom for the type of prion that he has, but it’s not unheard of. He’ll go through dips, and come out of them as if he’s gotten better, but then he’ll go right back down. They want to keep him overnight to get a better read on the pattern that he’s on right now, but the dips don’t necessarily warrant a permanent stay, which is good. They expect him to recover from each dip. Now, if he starts having trouble breathing, that’s when things have gotten too bad for me to be able to care for him alone. But until that happens, the medical staff are willing to accept his wishes to remain in a more comfortable and familiar environment. He’s with PT in the hallway right now, trying to keep his brain and body active. The best way to fight the misfolded proteins is to exercise the good proteins. The disease is slowly taking over, so he has to be as much himself as possible. I’ll encourage to keep trying to formulate his own words for these posts to stave off the inevitable for as long as possible. He agrees that this is a good idea. And who knows, he may find himself regaining the ability to type it all out himself. I’m not giving up on him just yet.

Microstory 2169: Refund and Take it Down

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I came home today, a day earlier than we thought I would. I’m still not well enough to report for jail tomorrow, which means that I’ll incur some extra time to make up for it, and also as a punishment for missing it, but it wouldn’t make sense for me to go back when I’ll have to spend the entire time in the infirmary. I’m much more comfortable at home, and I’ve recovered enough to start taking care of myself for the most part. My neighbor will be checking in on me every once in a while, which she doesn’t have to do. My parole officer will be coming over too as a sort of welfare check. I think my therapist will show up, and not charge me for a quick session, but I’m not about that. I pay my way, I’ll tell you. I took sick leave from work, because I can’t keep my eyes open for long enough to get anything done, but hopefully I’ll be fully ready to go on Monday, so I will have only missed a week. It’s not even that I’m sleepy or tired. Have you ever seen anyone get hypnotized, even if in fiction? The hypnotist will describe weights on their subject’s eyelids. It kind of feels like that, but it also sort of feels like it doesn’t matter whether my eyes are open or not, I still can’t see very well. My surgeon thinks that that has to do with the medication that I’m on. Blurred vision is a known side effect of at least two of them. I’m gonna stop taking the narcotics, though. I’ve never done well with them, I personally can’t understand why people get addicted to these things. I’ve had to take multiple kinds over the years, and every single one of them has made me feel like crap. I’m going to be in a lot of pain while I rely solely on over-the-counter pain meds, but it’s nothing I’ve never experienced before. Pain and I have an understanding. It gets to do whatever it wants to me, and in exchange, I get nothing. I do want to circle back to that thing about my therapist. Not because of my therapist, but because of the money thing. Apparently, one of my readers started a CauseTogether.hope page for me. I want you to know that I have absolutely nothing to do with this, and I am currently working with the platform administrators to have all backers so far fully refunded, and shut the page down. I neither want nor need your charity. I’m making plenty of money, and I will be able to pay my own hospital bills. I shouldn’t have any lost wages from my time off, because the company I work for has great benefits. Really, please do not try to give me money. A nurse suggested that I could just regift it to charity, but no, I don’t want to reward this behavior. If I can’t get the page taken down, I’m donating it all to the nearest convicted serial killer, out of spite. You have been warned. Refund and take it down!

Extremus: Year 34

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Captain Kaiora Leithe of the Void Migration Ship Extremus wakes up with a throbbing headache. It’s unlike any she’s ever experienced before. It’s focused mostly around her eyes, which are red and maybe even a little misshapen? She goes over to her sink and flushes them out, which is an immediate relief. Her fingers feel smooth and oily now, like there was something in her eyes that’s coming out. That cannot be good. After drying off and taking another look in the mirror, she turns to teleport to the executive infirmary. A blinking blue light on her desktop device gives her pause. She’ll just take a quick look at the message, and if it’s not important, she’ll ignore it and leave, but if it’s really important, she’ll put off the self-care. Heck, it may even be about her eye problems. “Computer, play the message, please.”

An image of herself appears on screen. At first, present-day Kaiora believes the playback is frozen, but then the past version of her blinks. She’s just staring at the camera for a moment, seemingly waiting to find the words. “Good morning, Kaiora, it’s Kaiora. This is not a trick, I have something important to tell you. Authentication code shadow-schwa nine-eight-five-six-seven-three-oh. You may not be feeling great right now, but it’s going to be okay. According to the drug facts on the bottle, normal side effects include headaches, sensitivity to light, burning or itchy eyes, short-term confusion, irritability, and...”

“And what?” Kaiora questions.

“And fragmental phantom memories.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means that you’ll have flashes of the day that you lost, and while you’ll eventually also forget these fragments, you will remember that you had them, and that may cause the irritability.” Is this a recording, or is she actually responding to Kaiora’s questions?

“Did you eat all of the cookies?” present-day Kaiora asks, testing to find out whether there’s a real person on the other side of the screen.

“Anyway, it’s important that you don’t investigate, or try to remember anything that happened yesterday.” Okay, probably a recording. Probably. “You did this to yourself. You consented to the procedure, and no one else knows about it. I obviously can’t tell you why you erased your memories, but it was the right thing to do, and extremely necessary. On an unrelated note, do not look for Admiral Olindse Belo’s second disappearance. Make up a story about why and how she left the ship. The fact that it’s classified works to your advantage. You’re the Captain, you don’t have to tell anyone anything.” The recording of Kaiora breathes in deeply. “I think that’s it. I just wanna reiterate that everything’s gonna be okay. I have to go actually do the thing that you’ve already done, but...happy new year!” She smiles, and the picture freezes.

Kaiora frowns, and looks over at the clock. It’s not the new year. It’s February 2, 2303. She looks back to the screen, and sees the blue light blinking again. There’s a second message. She selects it.

Another recording of herself comes up. This one looks sad and nervous. “Captain’s log, January 2, 2303. I just woke up to find a message to myself. I was obviously meant to watch it yesterday. I don’t...I don’t know if it wiped more days than I realized it would, or if it, uhh...if I just didn’t wake up until now, or what. I can’t imagine it’s the second option. I mean, someone would have noticed the captain was missing for a day. I still don’t want to tell anyone that anything happened. I don’t know what happened, so there wouldn’t be much to tell. Past!Me didn’t want anyone to know about it, so I don’t either. I’m just gonna go through my day, and hope that no one asks me about yesterday. Ya know, if I agreed to—I dunno—release Halan from prison, or officiate someone’s wedding, I’m not gonna remember what they’re talking about. Hopefully, it will resolve itself by tomorrow morning, but I’m recording this in case something else goes wrong.”

Blue light again, a third message. This version of Kaiora is the most upset yet. “Captain’s log, January 3, 2303. I just watched two videos I evidently made for myself. I don’t remember December 31, I don’t remember January 1. I don’t remember January 2. In case you’re watching this on January 4, there’s a weird, silky, film on my eyeballs.” She lifts a little green bottle of eyedrops, and shakes it in front of the camera. “It’s probably memory-erasing stuff, but it’s empty now!” She throws it across the room. “So if you’re still feeling that tomorrow, something fishy is going on. I’m going to record another video at the end of the night, giving you a rundown of everything I did today. Like I said, I don’t recall the last few days, and that led to some awkward moments that made me look like an idiot. I don’t want Future!Me to go through that again. I’m still choosing to not tell anyone that I erased my memories, or that it apparently can’t wear off at some point. January 4!Me, January 5!Me, January 6!Me, and so on, you’re going to have to decide that for yourselves. I can’t make that decision for you, but I don’t think anyone should know about it, because it would really put Olindse in danger. Okay, so that’s it for now. As previously mentioned, I’ll record another one so you’re not lost tomorrow. Today. Your today, my tomorrow. ARGH!”

The blue light comes on again, but Kaiora ignores it, and navigates to the folder where the clips are being stored. There are 33 video files in there. Past!Her has made one for every day, presumably to catch the spotless minded new versions up on the goingson of the ship. Each one is several minutes long. It’s going to take, like, three hours to watch all of the rest. What captain has that kind of time? Wait, some of them are tagged obsolete. She must have rendered those ones redundant with further updates. Even so, this is not a sustainable solution. The memory wiper chemicals must be severely corrupted, or maybe just old and expired. If only she could find the bottle, it may provide some answers. Kaiora gets on her hands and knees by the dresser, and looks around on the floor, hoping it’s still there somewhere. No luck, but that’s not super surprising. A different past version of her probably grabbed it at some point, and may have decided to throw it away. Or one of them found it, and a different one threw it away, because the whole point is she can’t remember any of this!

Something has to change. This version of Kaiora has to break the cycle, or no one will. So she calls Dr. Holmes. “Hey, are you busy right now?”

“I’ve been expecting your call,” Dr. Holmes replies. “Come on down.”

Kaiora cleans herself up, and gets dressed. Then she teleports to the infirmary.

“Glad you could make it,” Dr. Holmes says. “Have a seat.”

Kaiora hops up onto the table.

The doctor begins a cursory examination; ears, nose, and throat. “Did you watch Episode 33?”

Oh, so she knows. “I stopped after the first three. So you’ve known about this the entire time?”

“No at all,” Dr. Holmes promises. She feels Kaiora’s lymph nodes. “You came to me yesterday, and said that something had to be done about this.” She finishes the exam, and begins to pull off her gloves.

“And...?”

Dr. Holmes takes off a necklace with a key on it. She unlocks a cabinet with it, and takes out a bottle, which she hands to her patient. “And I concocted this.”

“This doesn’t look like a very pleasant way to squirt something in my eyes.”

“That’s because it doesn’t go in your eyes. It’s a nose spray. One shot in each nostril before you go to bed. When you wake up, you should have your memories back.”

“You’re sure it’ll work?” Kaiora rolls the bottle in her hand.

“Only one way to find out.” Dr. Holmes takes a burnbag out of her pocket, and hands it to Kaiora too. Most of the waste on this ship is recycled, to the best of their ability. In fact, everything that can possibly be constructed out of aluminum is as such, because it has 100% recycle potential. There is no limit to how many times it can be reused, which makes it an invaluable resource in a closed system. Of course, they can mine raw materials from nearby planets by using a form of time travel, but that demands energy, and isn’t the best option in most cases. Still, there are some things that need to be destroyed, either because the waste is a health hazard, or because it contains sensitive information. A bottle of memory restoration solution is a little bit of both, because it could be used as leverage, or to gain knowledge of things that not even the original user wanted to keep. The best way to get rid of it is to place it in this bag, and teleport it to the stern of the ship, where the powerful force from charged relativistic plasma melts pretty much anything.

“You’ve not been able to test it?”

“Not in a day. You can wait, but...”

“No.” Kaiora takes the bag. “I’ll try it. I trust you. I don’t want to remember what happened, but it seems there is no other way.”

“Make a 34th video, just in case it doesn’t work,” Dr. Holmes advises.

“Thanks doctor, and...”

“And I already have this programmed to delete from my own memory tonight. It’s easy to target memories when you know they’re coming.”

“Thanks again.” After making a pitstop to drop her goodies off in her cabin, Kaiora heads for the bridge, where Lieutenant Seelen is waiting to go through the morning briefing. Once that’s done, she goes about her day, and doesn’t run into any awkward situations, even though she never did watch those latter highlight videos. No one seems to suspect a thing. It is a pretty big day, though, with a lot of running around, putting out fires. It feels like she’s busier than she has been lately, though that doesn’t mean much, because even with the videos, she wouldn’t have much idea what the past month has been like. At the end of the night, she is so exhausted that she jumps back to her cabin, and literally falls faceforward on the bed. She completely forgets to take the nose spray that the doctor gave her.

That night she dreams of Olindse Belo, jumping into a portal to the future. That’s it. That’s what she was so afraid to remember. They risk deconstructing the timeline if anybody knows even a little bit of what’s coming.

When she awakens, she remembers asking Dr. Holmes for help on Day 11, and that she has received the so-called memory restoring nose spray 22 times since then.

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Microstory 1739: Jana Crane

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For the most part, Jana Crane tried to keep to herself. She kept her head down, did her job, and didn’t complain when the people she worked with treated her like crap. She tried to be as accommodating as possible, without being a pushover who no one respected. She was a factory inspector, who would go around her region, making sure that the businesses she was assigned to were maintaining health and safety standards. She was thorough and careful, and didn’t let anything slide. Forgetting to fill out your monthly logs completely is one thing, but not properly securing a piece of incredibly dangerous equipment was just something that could not be tolerated. Her reports were not meant to get anyone in trouble, but she saw them as a way for the companies to improve themselves, and prevent anything from going terribly wrong. It would be bad for the floor workers if one of them became injured, and bad for the employers if that injured worker sued the company, or otherwise cost them money. Everyone should love inspectors for preventing such tragedies. At least that was how Jana saw it, but no one else shared her sentiments, even people whose lives she was trying to preserve. Perhaps if she wore a cape, and a symbol of some kind on her chest, they would think differently of her. One person in particular could have done with a little more perspective. He was a floor supervisor who probably should have never been promoted, but far be it for Jana to judge the process. What she could judge, however, was how casual he was with the safety protocols. He didn’t worry about locking down the machines. He let his people go in there without safety goggles. He didn’t care about anything. If she didn’t know any better, she might think he was asking for a bad outcome. Sadly, she was the one who ended up in a bad situation. She gave him low marks too many times, and he had had enough. She was going to stop inspecting his work, whether she wanted to or not.

The last thing she saw before the darkness was his face. He wasn’t wearing a mask, or anything. He probably thought she wouldn’t recognize him, and since she wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a lineup later, he would get away with it. Or maybe he was just a moron who didn’t think things through carefully. That was the most likely reason he not only showed his face, but spoke to her after throwing the acid in her eyes, and made references to their previous encounters with each other. She screamed, but couldn’t cry, on account of the acid. She just tried her best to wipe the chemicals off of her face. She pulled her shirt off, and wiped some more. It got the excess off, but it didn’t stop the pain, and it wouldn’t give her her sight back. He didn’t laugh. He was angry; talking about how this was her fault, and if she had just ignored the infractions, this wouldn’t have had to happen. All this, like it was completely unavoidable. An unlocked chemical cabinet was unsafe, but he didn’t appear to recognize the irony. She could hear his footsteps grow fainter, so she started to reach out around her. Feeling around was taking too long, so Jana had to be bolder. By the end of this, she was going to have a lot of bruises, but she would live. Every second she waited would make it that much harder for the doctors to fix her eyes. She began to run. She didn’t run into anything, so she went faster and faster through the factory, all the way out into the cold, and over to a warehouse down the street, which she knew operated 24/7. Her vision was never quite the same after that, but she didn’t go blind, and the floor supervisor didn’t go free.

Microstory 1570: Vatutotew

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Prompt

Some tiny little creature has been living in my utility room, and I know it’s not a mouse. I got a good look at it once, and I saw intelligence behind its eyes.

Botner

I think I’m scared to look at it again, because I don’t want to see just another grisly rat corpse on my kitchen floor. Or to know what it is that has been chewing up my animal crackers. The rats in the basement have been a constant thing. I’ve bought things that deter rodents, and I put small amounts of poison in the walls and floors. It’s always the same: for three weeks, they are gone. Three weeks. Then they come back. The wads of mouse poop in the utility room? I’ve never seen that before. I know I haven't been in the basement for a while. There are doors in the walls leading into the house, I think to keep me from getting killed. I think I should have all of my meals in the kitchen. Not so much for convenience’s sake, but because there are mice. I can’t find my glasses. I have one set, and one set that I am pretty sure they aren’t in. I’m pretty sure that they are in the damn utility room. And, you know what? I know my husband bought another pair of glasses, and I...

Conclusion

...have to wait until my birthday before he’ll give them to me. He probably hid them in the utility room too, which means, if I want to get a better look at the weird creature living in there, I’ll have to go in there first to retrieve the glasses. Even though I won’t be able to see very well, I can still protect myself, with a long-sleeve shirt, and elbow and knee pads. I look like an idiot, but I’m not taking any chances. If it turns out to be a mouse, then fine. If it’s a rat, then not as fine, but I’ll still probably survive. If it’s an evil alien bent on the destruction of the human race, then...then I don’t know, but I’m not going in there unprepared. I have a bat. I slowly crack the door, but then throw it open. It’s easier to see tiny animals when they move, so I would rather it scurry away fast than sneak behind me so I can’t even tell it’s there. Nothing. I see no movement. I lift the laundry basket, nothing moves. I open all of the cabinets, and shine a flashlight in them. Not there either. I open the dryer, but it’s insane to think something that small would exert enough force to get inside. I bend down to check the washer too, confident in the same assessment. It’s in there, staring at me, not like it’s scared, but confused as to why I’m in what it must think is its territory. It looks like a little furry human, gray, with a tail. It turns its head slightly, and looks at me more with one eye, which is something a person would do when sizing somebody up. It is as smart as I thought, or maybe even smarter. Finally, it extends an arm. “My name is Vatutotew,” it says politely. “Have I misidentified this room as abandoned?”

Microstory 1090: Lee

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Seventy-three years ago, I was having a pretty bad time, and I didn’t think I would survive. When I woke up, it was any normal day in the 1940s. Back then, I was working full-time at my family’s farm, having dropped out of school, because it wasn’t like I was going to university anyway. I completed my morning chores, and was heading back inside to eat when I noticed something dripping from my eyes. Back then, it was pretty much illegal to have hay fever, so I was very worried watering eyes would negatively impact our revenue. I reached up, and discovered it not to be tears, but blood. I felt a little moisture on my ears, and found them to be bleeding as well. Then I noticed it coming out of my nose, and filling up my mouth. I wasn’t coughing up any of the blood, but I did have to keep spitting it out. I won’t gross you out with the details, but I was eventually bleeding out of every orifice. I wasn’t injured anywhere, so there weren’t any cuts, but if an opening already existed in my body, I was bleeding from it. This would have frightened the strongest of us, in any time period, so I was scared out of my mind. Though I wasn’t very well-educated, I did intuitively understand that I was too ill to be around other people. Whatever was doing this to me was most likely contagious, so I needed to get away from everyone. Unfortunately, that also meant I wasn’t going to receive any medical treatment, because remember, this was ancient days, so I couldn’t call someone on my cell phone. We had just built a new barn, closer to the farmhouse, but the old one was still standing, so I ran across the field, and hid in there, so I could plan my next move. Suddenly, I wasn’t alone. A young woman about my age appeared out of nowhere with a frown. She looked me over, and explained that she was trying to invoke a cure, but quickly realized that there was nothing she could do. She was apparently not born with the qualifications for this kind of job. She knew someone who could help me, but it would require me to leave my family, and never see them again. Recognizing that there was no better outcome, I agreed to let her send me away. She literally pushed me into one of the horse stables. I closed my eyes as a reflex for one second, and when I opened them, I found myself standing on a city street.

Another young woman was there waiting for me. She placed her hands on my neck, and cured me, just like the other one couldn’t. I still don’t know what it was I had, because I’ve never heard of anything quite like that before. I never felt sick; I just could not stop bleeding. Anyway, the second woman was obviously Viola Woods, and she reminded me that I would never be able to go back home. Time travel is something she was capable of doing, but while going forward is easy, the further back you want to go, the more difficult it is. And so she set me up with a new life in the here and now, urging me to restart my schooling as well. It’s taken a lot for me to get up to speed with my peers, but luckily I look a little young for my age, and enrolled as a freshman. Viola tutored me over the last four years, and even adjusted people’s memories for me. People don’t actually remember me living here as a kid, but they kind of get the sense that I’ve always been here, and they don’t ever question the fact that they can’t recall any specifics. In an attempt to pay her back, I would help Viola whenever she came back from her missions with physical injuries. I would treat her wounds, and while we waited for them to heal on their own, I would apply makeup, so no one would notice them. I have a new job now, doing the same thing as before. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say who it is, but someone we all know has replaced her. I hope we both make Viola proud, and I hope someone gets justice for Maud, because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that she didn’t do it. If you’re finally just now talking to me, then she should be your next interview. Get her side of the story before anyone else.

Microstory 1061: Margaret

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I’m so sorry I’m late. That’s never happened to me before, but I was so preoccupied with work that I didn’t even remember that we had this scheduled. I could have done it on my lunch break, like we had planned, but like I said, it slipped my mind. I did hear that Martin already told you what we were, and that the months we spent with this bond are supposed to culminate in some important moment tomorrow. I wasn’t particularly pleased that he just blurted out our secret, but sitting with you right now, Alma, tells me that he had no choice. Perhaps there’s a little bit of psychic power in you too? Hmm? Well, there’s something about the prophecy he told you that not even my twin brother knows about. I’m a lot better at hiding my personal thoughts from him than he is. He’s kind of an oversharer. It must be time I tell Martin that he and I aren’t the only ones who share a psychic connection. Soon after Viola gave us the gift, she gave it to my friends, Mae and Mattie as well. I imagine we’ll need the truth for whatever is meant to happen tomorrow. Like Martin, I don’t know what it’s going to be, but it’s big, and it’s probably related to the Viola tragedy itself, so you might want to keep your ear to the ground. Something tells me I should suggest you speak with Mae in the morning, and Mattie sometime the following day. I don’t know why, but it’s my intuition that you’ll need the full story before you move on to whomever else is on your list. Mae’s interview is going to be extremely important too, because she has an extra gift that Viola didn’t say anything about in the beginning, and only started happening a few months ago. She has a certain sense of the future. It’s always very hazy and hard to interpret—like those ink blot pictures therapists use to get into your subconscious, or whatever—but it always makes sense once we get there. The last one she showed us looked like this ominous darkened sky, full of cracks. The weather didn’t actually have anything like that, but our local meteorologist did start bleeding thick, black blood that no one can explain. Nellie can fill you in on that, if you’re interested, since her dad works at the news station. I don’t think it has anything to do with us. Still, maybe you should just go talk to Mae right now, in case there’s something about tomorrow you should know about. I don’t think I can tell you any more about the telepathy that Martin hasn’t already said.

Microstory 1060: Martin

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Viola was the one who created me and my sister. Margaret is my twin, and of course, that has always been the case, but it hasn’t always been the way it is now. The bond between us has only grown in recent years, but the fist shift happened when we were eight years old. She and I weren’t very close when we were kids—which may sound strange to hear about a pair of twins—but when two people go through what we did, a lot can change. It wasn’t until recently that we developed the twintuition. It’s even more powerful for us. It’s not that we didn’t get along before, but we were born with incompatible interests, and differing worldviews. We were very nice and affectionate with each other, but we didn’t hang out, and we weren’t the kind of siblings who tell each other everything. She had her life, and I had mine, and it wasn’t looking like things were ever going to be different. Then ten years ago, the four of us were on a train, on our way to visit our big brother in college, who was probably the biggest thing we had in common. The authorities still don’t really know what happened, but our car somehow broke free from the rest of them, and tipped over. Besides our parents, seven other passengers died that day, while Margaret and I were the only two survivors. Our brother ended up dropping out of school, so he could take care of us, and we could never repay him for that. Had we been a bit older, we might have suggested we move out to Illinois for him, so he could continue his education, but we were too young to understand the situation fully. About three years ago, our brother, Marzo was diagnosed with a terminal disease. He wasn’t really given a prognosis, and he’s still alive today, but life got even harder at that point. One day, Margaret and I had just returned from leaving Marzo in the hospital for an overnight stay, when we found Viola waiting for us in the living room. She warned us that things would not be getting better, and couldn’t if the dynamic remained as it was. The details are a little personal, so I won’t get into them, but she basically performed a ritual over us, which gave us the ability to exchange thoughts, and see through each other’s eyes. I know it sounds far-fetched, but I’m telling you the truth. I can even get her in here to prove it. Or you can call her. What luck, here’s a deck of cards. Now, you pull one at random. Okay, show it to—was that your phone? It’s Margaret, isn’t it? She was already watching us. Boom. I don’t know how, but Viola did that. And I don’t know why, because our connection will apparently not be vital until—well, would you look at that? Tomorrow is the big day.