The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 11, 2463

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Carlin McIver knocked on the door, and waited patiently. Kineret opened it, even though she knew that he was on the other side. She looked him up and down as if she hadn’t seen him before. Then she sighed, and looked behind her where her boss was working. “Have you changed your mind?”

“Have you?” he prodded.

“I’m steadfast in my convictions.”

Carlin peeked over her shoulder at the Primus. “Or is that just what you would have her believe?” Kineret didn’t believe in using the Westfall boy as a bioweapon any more than he did, but this was what the world government was trying to do, and she had to fall in line. As influential as she was in her position, she wasn’t a god. He was only hoping that she would eventually openly admit her disapproval, so it would at least be on the record.

“Did you need something, Carlin? Because if you’re not going to change your mind about sending one of the sick Ochivari to their homeworld, the Primus has nothing to say to you.”

“When was the last time you even had an Ochivar as prisoner?”

“It’s true, it’s been slow, but we’ve never gone longer than eight months without a new incursion. We’ll get a new test subject soon. I’m hoping that you see reason. We have a saying where I’m from, all’s fair in love and war.”

“That it’s poetic does not make it true. Where I’m from, we call that an aphoroid, not an aphorism.”

“Goodbye, Carlin.”

“Madam McArthur, Madam McArthur!” a man in uniform yelled from down the hallway. He was running towards them.

“Slow down, soldier. State your business.” She was being protective of Naraschone.

The soldier caught his breath. “We found ‘im. The weapon.”

“Where was he, an oceanic island?” Dutch Haines, a.k.a. The Dragonfly Slayer. He was the carrier of a disease that seemed to only affect Ochivari. They wanted to send him to the aliens’ homeworld to wipe them all out, but some people believed that to be a war crime, including Ramses Abdulrashid, who decided to put a stop to their hopes and dreams by abducting Dutch, and hiding him somewhere. Since Ramses only existed in the timestream once a year, even if they had the means of extricating the information from his brain, they would only ever have twenty-four hours to get it done. For two years now, all available resources had been funneled into the manual search. They had evidently finally been successful in that mission.

“No, he was living in a cave above the arctic circle. He was actually only about forty kilometers from the nearest settlement. He was apparently quite comfortable there, albeit alone.”

“Is he on his way here?” Kineret asked

“Yes, by chopper.”

She looked at her watch. “Team Matic comes back in three days. We have two to make this happen if we don’t want further interference. Divert them to the Ochivari prison. The Primus and I will meet them halfway.” She looked back at Carlin. “You’re coming with.”

“Oh, no thank you,” Carlin said.

Kineret just darted her eyes to the soldier, who knew what that meant. He took Carlin by the shoulders, and escorted him away.

A half hour later, all three of them were in Carlin’s jet, along with Primus Mihajlović, as well as a small strike team, and of course, the pilot. He didn’t love them using this for a mission that he did not agree with, but it didn’t really belong to him, and anyway, that wasn’t the problem here. They were likely planning to coerce him into transporting Dutch to the Ochivari home universe, and he was worried what their methods would be. This was a civilized society, with laws and everything, but they didn’t all make a whole lot of sense. For instance, a prisoner of war could only be held for a certain amount of time before they were legally entitled to a return trip home, but the laws determining what the prison could do to them within that time frame were a lot less clear cut. Did Carlin qualify as a war prisoner, or were they just going to call him a guest, and in that case, were there any laws dictating their treatment of guests? Were there other loopholes? And what about Dutch’s rights? Did he have any, or was he nothing more than a walking, talking, Sunday chillin’ weapon of genocidal proportions?

They arrived in the Subarctic North, and landed by the prison. Dutch was already there, taking a nap in something called the VIP room. Carlin was dragged in there too, which served to wake the former up. “Hey, dude.”

“You been doin’ okay?” Carlin asked.

“Same as it ever was.”

“That can’t possibly be true.”

He just shrugged. Dutch was a carefree guy who once worked at a plant nursery, and seemed to take everything that happened to him in stride. Surely there was a limit to that. Surely dying in a strange universe after spreading a deadly disease to upwards of billions of aliens would be enough to wipe that kind smile off his face. Once the Ochivari realized what was happening to them, and that Dutch was responsible, were they just going to let bygones be bygones? Probably not.

“You know this isn’t right, right?”

Dutch shrugged again. “They need me to go to that universe and kill all those funky-lookin’ people. They need you to send me there. Way I see it, we just keep refusin’, no matter what they do to us, their plans ain’t happenin’.”

“I wish I had your confidence,” Carlin lamented.

Dutch stood up, and opened his arms up. “Come on. Come on,” he urged quietly.

Wanting to keep this oddball on his side, Carlin approached, and accepted the hug. It was actually kind of nice.

“With this warm embrace, I donate to you...half of my confidence.” He pulled his chest away, but kept his hands on Carlin’s shoulders. “It’ll grow to full-size before too long, like a lone lobe of a liver.”

Carlin unwillingly released a chuckle, and looked away as he struggled to tamp down his own smile. “Man, is that how livers work?”

Dutch nodded with a wider smile. “Yeah.”

Carlin breathed deeply, and separated fully from Dutch to pace the room a little. “There’s a way to put an end to all of this. I could just send you home. I don’t know about you, but it sounds like the safest place for you. Do you want that?”

“I don’t know that that would be a good idea. The government is aware of your power. Why would they put us in a room together, knowing what you’re capable of? Seems sloppy to me.”

Carlin looked over at the door. “You’re right. Sloppy, or...part of a plan.”

“Have they experimented on you? Maybe they have a way of overriding the navigation, or just suppressing your powers altogether.”

“Yeah, that’s...that’s certainly possible. This whole situation is fishy.”

“I’m willing to try if you are.”

“It’s too risky. You can’t go within two meters of an Ochivar without making them sick. By the time you can run away, the damage will have already been done.” Carlin shook his head disappointedly. “They’re playing mind games with us. They know we can’t try without being absolutely certain. We’re in this room together either because they have indeed screwed with my powers without me realizing it, or because they knew we would be worried about the possibility, and end up stuck. Either way, it’s hopeless.” He had a way of finding out the truth, but it wasn’t a peaceful solution, and it would burn a pretty big bridge. Plus, a lot of things would have to go right for him to even be in a position to gather the truth. He didn’t want to threaten Naraschone’s life anyway. He didn’t agree with her, but he wasn’t about to take her hostage for it.

Kineret stepped into the room. “You’re still here.”

“Yeah, it was locked,” Carlin reasoned.

“Right, but you could have sent him home.”

“Or is that what you wanted all along?” Carlin questioned.

Kineret didn’t understand why that should be so nefarious. “Yes, we figured you would want to do that.”

“Did you mess with my power somehow?”

“We would have no clue how to go about that. We took blood samples from you years ago. The power isn’t in your blood, it’s in your brain, and I think you would remember if you had had brain surgery.”

“Would I?” Carlin pressed.

Kineret exhaled, annoyed and tired. “Your powers are fine. We don’t need him anymore. Elder came up with a new plan. All we required were more blood samples from him. His job is done now.”

“Blood samples for what?” Dutch asked.

“The virus,” Kineret began. “We’ve abandoned our plans to attack the homeworld. We’ve decided that our only concern is our world. So we will be distributing it to our people, and our people alone. It won’t end the war, but it’ll get us out of it. And I guess that’ll just have to be good enough.”

“You’re gonna spread a virus to the whole planet? You don’t see a problem with that?” Carlin asked her.

“Obviously I do, but Elder is confident that it will not mutate into something that can harm humans as well.”

“Oh, right. Elder Caverness, the security guard with no background in epidemiology. Glad you got your top people on it.”

“I swear,” Dutch said, “I never donated any of my confidence to Elder.”

Kineret winced, having no clue what that meant. “Send this man home. This will be your room alone, and you’ll only be given rations for one person. Your job for the government is done as well. You’ll be permitted to leave when Team Matic does, if they should ever come back with a way to travel freely.” She unceremoniously left the room.

Carlin tried to open the door, but it was locked again.

“We can try to share the rations,” Dutch suggested.

“No, she’s right. There’s no way they could have messed with my power. I’m from another universe, it’s not that easy. Very few people in my universe are called metachoosers because they can do things like that, and they’re always on the run because of it. If any rando scientist could figure it out on their own, that wouldn’t be such a problem.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone with these people,” Dutch said sadly.

“I’ll be fine. I should have sent all three of you home when you first got here. I was under the impression that you were here for good reason, but...well, I suppose that’s still true. I guess I just never thought it would be for a distasteful reason.”

“There’s a parable from my world. A man was late for dinner after he was working in the fields,” Dutch began to recite. “When he did return, the dog had eaten his portion while the family was asleep. So he returned to the fields, and picked some vegetables to eat instead. That night, a storm rolled over the lands, and destroyed the fields. And the farmer, he, uhh...well. Hold on. A farmer went home for dinner, and the dog. The dog... What was the dog doing? There—there was a war. And the farmer’s son...”

“Dutch?”

“Yeah?”

“I think I get it.”

“Okay.”

Carlin didn’t get it, but Dutch was never going to get to the end of this story. It was time for him to go. Unfortunately, fate had other plans. Carlin relapsed him back to his universe, or at least he attempted it. It was unclear whether he ever made it at all, because seconds later, Dutch walked through the door. Westfall brought him here, so this was where Westfall wanted him to be. There was no getting around that. They still didn’t know who was the mysterious force running the show, but there was probably no overriding that kind of power.

Kineret and the government believed them, and allowed them to stay in the VIP room together, one portion of rations each. A few days later, Ramses and Olimpia came back. They were not happy about what the Primus had decided to do. Ramses looked over the data as best he could, but he was no epidemiologist either. He understood how profoundly unpredictable the variables were, though. Just because Elder thought he knew how the virus worked, didn’t mean he was right, or that things wouldn’t change in the future. Just the very idea of a difference between the future and the past had to be thrown out the window. They may not see the consequences for centuries. The people of Stoutverse may never know the damage they caused. But Ramses knew one thing, Elder’s plan didn’t work the way he wanted it to. Humans were going to die. That was how the multiverse worked.

Ramses also wasn’t down with the whole VIP room in the prison thing, so he swiftly teleported them out of there, and placed them somewhere safe. While not particularly luxurious, they had everything they needed on the island, including one important thing. If Dutch was ever going to find his way back to his universe, it likely required constant access to a door.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 10, 2399

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Ramses tethers the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to a small asteroid. It’s just within teleporter range of the Constant. It’s not the perfect quick getaway plan, but it’s better than letting himself and Alyssa be trapped in there with no hope. They don’t know who they’re going to find, or what their intentions will be. Once the ship is locked up and secure, they make the jump.

“Mr. Abdulrashid, it’s nice to meet you. Miss McIver, nice to see you again.” Danica holds out her hand as if greeting a couple of guests that she respects.

“We’ve never met,” Alyssa says.

“Oh, but we have.”

“You erased my memories, which means that—for all intents and purposes—it never happened. Your accounting of events is irrelevant to me.”

“I see my reputation has spread.”

“My mother would always say, your reputation starts with you.”

“Wise woman.”

“Dead woman; thanks to you, no doubt.”

“Why would you say that?”

“The causality chain is profoundly long, but everything that has ever happened in this reality started with you.”

“Is this the kind of stuff you’re teaching her?” Danica asks Ramses.

“She’s an independent human being. I taught her how to teleport, that’s it.”

“And how to use my illusion powers,” Alyssa reminds him.

“Right.”

“But that was in my old body,” Alyssa adds. “Perhaps you can shed some light on that too? Who is trying to murder my friend, Leona?”

“Contrary to what you’ve been...” Danica trails off, not wanting to repeat the word taught since it seems to be a sensitive subject for them. “...what you may have heard,” she amends, “I am not the god of this world. I don’t control everything.”

“You control enough,” Ramses contends.

“Is that why you came all the way out here?” she questions. “You just wanted to tilt at windmills?”

“You’re not imaginary; you are clearly very real.” Ramses takes a beat. “But no, we’re looking for answers, and for help.” He takes out his handheld device, and clears his throat. “Number one, how do we safely get Leona out of Leona Reaver’s body, and back into—?”

“How many questions do you have on your list?”

“At the moment, two hundred and sixteen.”

“Ye, my child, I will answer but one question per member of your party,” Danica teases in bad faith.

“Does my dick count as a separate member?” The look on Alyssa’s face, he can barely see it out of the corner of his eye. They did not rehearse that line.

Danica sighs like a teacher who hasn’t reached her tipping point yet. “You must be hungry and tired from your journey. Please follow me to the master sitting room.”

“We ate and slept on our ship,” Ramses explains.

“Surely you’re sick of Third Rail Earth food. When was the last time you were able to order literally anything you wanted from a molecular synthesizer?” Danica asks.

“Tantalizing us with food,” Ramses muses mockingly. “You know us so well, we’re eating like pandas down there.”

“What’s a panda?” Alyssa asks.

“I’ll tell you later,” he replies, still staring at Danica. “I’m winning a battle of wits right now.”

Danica smiles on the edge of a laugh. “You think you’re winning?”

“Show us who’s here,” Ramses demands.

“Is that the first of your two official questions?”

“I didn’t raise my inflection at the end of that sentence. Did it sound like a question? Do you want me to write it down for you?”

“Which of those two questions is your official question?”

Now Ramses is growing frustrated. “Show us who is here. Show us why Mateo is risking his life in a stasis pod in the middle of interplanetary space.”

Danica purses her lips. “Follow me.”

“Wait, we need to check on Angela first,” Alyssa realizes as they’re walking down the hallway.

“They’re both in the infirmary,” Danica tells them. She leads them away.

A man in a white lab coat is sitting next to one of the stasis pods. He stands up when he sees them come in. He’s nervous, and seemingly a little protective. When they get closer, they can see that he’s watching over Angela. “How is she?”

“Couldn’t tell ya,” the doctor says in a frustrated voice. “I don’t know how these machines work. She hasn’t moved a centimeter.”

“She’s frozen in time,” Danica has to explain for probably the upteenth time. “You’ll be staring at her for a long time if you want to see her move even a millimeter. Even then, I gave her a sedative, so she’s probably not even active within her own temporal reference frame.”

The doctor looks to Ramses, even though they don’t know each other. Ramses takes a look at Angela’s readings. “She looks fine.” He places a hand on the doctor’s back, and leans them both towards it. “Watch this number here. It’s the differential. Alert someone if it changes even a decimal point, as that could mean her time is starting to catch up with ours.”

He nods. “Okay.”

And see this soft pulsing light,” Ramses goes on. “It should stay green. If it starts to turn red, it means that the containment field is failing. Red, right?” he asks Danica.

“Is that your official question?” she asks again. That joke is getting old.

“Danica.”

“Mauve,” she corrects. “Mauve is a broken field. Watch for a blue or purple light.”

“Got it,” the doctor says gratefully. “Thank you.”

“Did you want to see my other patient, or what?” Danica asks.

“Ramses Abdulrashid.” He shakes the doctor’s hand. Then he jogs over to Danica while Alyssa introduces herself as well, having to take a moment to explain why she looks like Leona right now.

“Who is it?” Ramses asks. He’s looking at a very old stranger in his own pod, though it’s not stasis. He’s hooked up to advanced life support.

“Lucius Carlise.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s dying. He’s dying of old age. He made his way here too many decades ago.”

“Can’t you save him?”

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Danica responds. “I wasn’t given the kind of resources that I would like. The medicine and medical equipment, in particular, are severely lacking. I guess the builders of this place decided that it wasn’t my job to save people’s lives. That’s the responsibility of people like Doctors Sarka and Hammer.”

“He looks...old enough to pass away. Does he want you to save him?”

“I didn’t ask. He’s been unresponsive for weeks.”

“What’s so important about keeping him alive?” Ramses asks.

She bites her lower lip. “Is that your official—”

“Just answer the goddamn question, and stop it with the arbitrary rules,” Ramses interrupts, fed up with this bullshit.

“He’s a molecular teleporter.”

“I know that. He can tear you apart, sending individual molecules to different points in space and time. That doesn’t explain why you need him alive.”

“There are things that you don’t know,” she says, “about the future.”

“Then tell me. That wasn’t a question either.” He needs to be careful about those.

She really doesn’t want to answer, but she’s kind of giving him the impression that she needs him, or someone else on the team. “There’s a war coming. I tried to stop it, but I failed. I failed one hundred percent of the missions I ordered. Now the only way to save lives is...”

“Is to win this war?” Ramses figures.

“I don’t want to fight anyone.”

“Danica, this guy doesn’t fight. I mean, for a dude with such massive muscles, he sure doesn’t need them. How powerful is he? Could he destroy a planet without lifting a finger? A star system?”

“He could destroy a star system. It would have to be one celestial body at a time, but yeah. I don’t plan on using him.”

“He’s a deterrent, I get it. I’m from the main sequence too, remember? Our wars came with real risk of precipitating a nuclear holocaust. We didn’t have any religions telling us not to. But we moved past mutually assured destruction, and rose to a higher level of understanding. You were born in a more enlightened age, and you had the opportunity and power to make an even better world here. I was told that that’s exactly what you were trying to do, but now you tell me that you’re just gonna throw it away?”

“Like I said, I don’t want to kill anyone, but the Parallel is too powerful. We have no other defenses against them, because I’m not in control of the Omega Gyroscope. No one is. It’s been on autopilot for billions of years. He may be our only hope.”

“Wait, the Parallel? This is a war between realities?”

“Yes. That is what I witnessed.”

He looks back down at the half-dead Lucius. Ramses doesn’t know any version of him all that well, but there is no way he wants this. If her story is true, then he must have come here on purpose, and it was not to commit genocide. Nothing about how Mateo described him suggests he’s that violent. He probably came here knowing that his powers wouldn’t work. He looks back at a frowning Alyssa. “Do it.”

She nods, and lifts her watch up to her mouth. “Mateo...burst mode.”

Microstory 1681: Dark Studies

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An Efilversal survivor named Nils Nilson was the one who ultimately taught the Ochivari how to start their antinatalistic movement. It was he who believed most passionately that the only way to protect life was to destroy it. He saw no irony in this. “To prevent suffering, one must cut the threads of existence before they get too long,” he was once heard saying. He was insane. But he was an excellent orator, and a very moving teacher. In exchange for his words, he asked the Ochivari to transport him to a new universe. He didn’t specifically say that he was going to continue to spread his message, but that was definitely what he wanted to do. His people were becoming extinct, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. If he wanted to mould a civilization into his image, he had to find one still with a significant population. That was what he really wanted, to turn people to his side, and convince them to do whatever he wanted. It probably didn’t matter much what he convinced them to do, as long as he would go down in history as the most influential voice of all time. It worked. The world he ended up on was falling apart. Wars and unregulated technology were threatening everyone in some way. There weren’t really even rich people who could protect themselves against the consequences. It was just a huge mess, and from just about everyone’s perspective, a lost cause. Nilson saw potential in them, though. If he could condition them to despise technology beyond a certain level, he could have his notoriety. He got to work. He used his charm to gather a few followers, and with the power they gave him, he was able to gather more. And more, and more, and then after that...more. It was never enough.

No one could stop him, even if they wanted to. Any government still standing at this point in time was wholly ineffectual, so there was no one willing and able to oppose him. Anyone who had some kind of principled stance against his ideas didn’t give him much thought. The reality was that he was not only the loudest voice in the crowd, but one of few who had any interest in using that voice to enact change. With little resistance, he banished sufficiently advanced technology, and killed anyone who did actively operate against him. Most people were too scared of him to argue. Yes, he was violent, but he was ending wars, because people no longer had the suitable resources to try, and they were all coming together under one banner anyway. Eventually, no one was left to fight, because they were either dead, or on the same side. Now, the Ochivari promised never to enter the universe where they left Nilson to start a brand new life. They had every intention of keeping that promise. Unfortunately for all of us, that kind of attention to detail can get lost when you’re dealing with bulk travel. Nilson died not too long after he arrived, which only augmented the mystique surrounding his philosophy. When the Ochivari finally did arrive, it was nearly thirty years later, and no one on the mission who made the original promise to him was even still alive. Despite their ability to travel through time, a generation for the Ochivari goes by quickly. Each time an individual tries to make a jump, there’s about a fifty percent chance that they’ll die, and past successes hardly increase those odds. Anyway, since their outlook was transformed, these humans were happy to welcome the Ochivari to their home, and were more than willing to join their cause. The loop is complete. The Ochivari gave Nilson to these people, which made them the confederates they would end up becoming to the Ochivari.

Microstory 1667: School of Thought

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When the Ochivari arrived in what would come to be known as Efilverse, they didn’t really have any specific intentions. They were explorers at that point. Sure, they hoped to gather resources, but they believed the multiverse to be infinite, so they weren’t too worried about whether this one would be useful to them. They could always figure out how to travel somewhere else. The Efilversals didn’t know what to think about these alien visitors either. They didn’t seem to be hostile, and it didn’t seem like they had technology, or other knowledge, that they would find useful. In the beginning it felt like an innocuous situation, and everybody could kind of take it or leave it. They did tell stories about their respective homeworlds, though, and learned from each other just the same. Both races were shocked to discover that they each had faced the same problem with destroying their own environments. Even with a sample size of only two, they were beginning to think that it was an inevitable development. If other races evolved on other worlds, they were destined to destroy it, just like the two of them had. Of course, we know that this is not true, but they didn’t understand that, and over time, the idea became so ingrained in their culture that there was no way to prove them wrong. They didn’t, and couldn’t, listen to reason. The Efilversals taught the Ochivari their ways in a general sense, not by directly telling them how they should do things, but through unintentional inspiration. The idea that any given ecosystem could be saved by taking action to preserve it faded from their hearts—if it was ever there in the first place—and was overwritten by the belief that the only way to save it is to kill anything that threatens it. One Efilversal in particular felt that some form of genocide was sometimes the only answer. The most famous quote of his would become the basis of the Ochivari’s entire belief system. “If a man begins to walk the path towards annihilation, the only way to stop him from reaching the end is to break his legs. There are no nexions from darkness to light.” In this case, a nexion is a small path that connects two paths somewhere after the original splitting fork. Apparently, you can’t even walk back in the opposite direction in this metaphor.

The Ochivari travelers saw no problem with the man’s claims, and took his words to heart, along with many more. He seemed to be the wisest of them all, and they hoped that he would help them make the multiverse a better place. They no longer wanted to be concerned with resources and expansion. They wanted to fix worlds. They wanted to prevent others from making the same mistakes. No, that’s not it. That they could do, if they interfered with any given culture’s timeline at the right moment. Instead, they just wanted to stop those who were already destined to fail their planets. They were going to proverbially break their legs. The wise man seemed to be the best person to teach them how to make their new dream a reality. He seemed willing to do as they asked, but his teachings would no longer be given for nothing. In exchange for his help, he wanted to be relocated to a universe that was free from all the drama and trauma. It would have to be normal and safe, and the Ochivari were not allowed to visit it again for any reason. These seemed like fair conditions. Again, they knew that the bulkverse was infinite, so if there was only one universe they could not save, even if it needed it, then that was a small price to pay. The teacher actually stood on a hill, and continued to disseminate his philosophy, but it eventually turned more into a group effort. The Ochivari came up with ideas that he had not thought of himself, and eventually, the radical antinatalistic school of thought was born. Once the planning stages were complete, the Ochivari stayed true to their word. Two volunteers agreed to transport him to a random universe. Unfortunately, the psychological disease he carried managed to follow him through the portal, and once he was on the other side, it began to infect everyone there as well.

Microstory 1617: Efilism

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The Ochivari were not born as antinatalists. In fact, they were quite the opposite in the beginning. They multiplied like crazy, obsessed with developing galactic dominance through sheer numbers. Even without the technology of many human civilizations, they figured they could ultimately win any conflict simply by the fact that it was more difficult to kill them all. They would win any battle, because so many of their kind would be left over. This sentiment was not limited to the population growth itself. Overexploitation of resources became almost a point of pride amongst their species. They destroyed their planet as they raced to increase their numbers, and as they fought to spread out to other planets, so they could take those resources as well. Of course, this was a completely unsustainable model, and caught up to them quite quickly. They would have died out if they had not discovered that they were biologically capable of crossing over into other universes, where resources would ultimately prove infinite. As it would happen, the second universe they went to experienced a similar fate, though not quite as on purpose. The humans there were not living on Earth, but had evolved elsewhere in the galaxy. They wrecked their own world, and due to a number of unfortunate circumstances—including a relatively low oxygen ratio in the atmosphere, and relatively high surface gravity—they were never able to venture out into the solar system, let alone beyond. In the end, in order to preserve their planet’s future, they were the ones who came up with antinatalism for themselves. They killed almost the entire population, save for an elite few who were selected to survive in stasis. With humanity out of the way, their planet could once again take over, and eventually repair the damage. They would not awaken for millions of years. Now, while this brane is referred to as Efilverse, its inhabitants weren’t truly efilists. Efilism is a philosophical stance that places a negative value on both birth, and life. The efilversals make no such moral judgment. They just saw how much their civilization destroyed of their world, and decided that it was their responsibility to fix it, which they chose to do through genocide. Real efilists are not murderers.

The efilversals didn’t want their species to die out completely, but thought they could do things better once they returned from stasis, and restarted civilization, equipped with insight, and advanced technology. Unfortunately for them, they continued to make bad decisions, right up to the end. They made no attempt to choose the most practical survivors for the stasis program. Many of them were too old to bear children. Others were prone to genetic diseases. Some suffered from fertility problems, while others never thought of themselves as parents. They agreed to join the program, because they wanted to live, not because they would be particularly beneficial to the movement. Some stasis pods even malfunctioned, and killed their occupants long before they could be revived. The rich and the lucky survived, while all the poor people perished in the nuclear holocaust, which was already ironic, given why it was they were doing any of this in the first place. They were doomed from the start, even if everyone came out of stasis alive, was biologically suited for the task, and wanted to do it, because they did not have the numbers. Only a few committed themselves to realizing their dreams, but it just wasn’t enough. They died out within two generations, and that was that for the efilversals. Yet they did not go extinct without leaving a legacy. During their final years, the Ochivari showed up, only looking to expand their empire. The efilversals taught them what they had done—how they had fixed their world, which was the only successful part of their plan. The Ochivari weren’t willing to become efilists themselves, but it did spark the idea to be antinatalistic instead. They went back to their homeworld of Worlon, and fought in a great war, which saw the antinatalist faction to victory. This was when they began their crusade. They returned to efilverse, and started using that planet as their new homebase, and from there, they began to travel to other branes, where they would sterilize any civilization destined to make the same mistakes as them.

Microstory 1608: Par Excellence

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I was tempted to believe at first that this next world involved mass spiritual abilities. There appears to be no particular reason why half the population possesses the same special ability, and the other half does not. It’s quite clearly not genetic, as one twin will often have it, while the other does not. But not always. It seems to be, on the whole, random. One in every two people will, early in their childhood development, start to be accompanied by a guide. This guide, which this world calls their excelschian, appears in the form of a person, and can alter their shape to fit their human’s needs or preferences. Only the human attached to the excelschian can see it. It’s unclear if excelschians came to be due to some evolutionary necessity, but it seems rather unlikely, since like I said, it happens to only half the population. The other half is left to their own devices, which as we’ll discuss, may not be a bad thing. The excelschian can answer any question that their human has, as long as the answer falls within the realm of humanity’s current well of knowledge. They could not, for instance, explain the answer to life, the universe, everything, because no one knows what that is. For the excelschian to know it, enough other people need to know it so that it’s accepted as fact, if only until new evidence comes to light. It couldn’t tell you someone else’s password, and it couldn’t reveal some other well-protected secret. It could, however, reveal other secrets, if too many people are cognizant of it, which is what really makes this universe so much different than others. State and trade secrets, and other proprietary information, does not exist, because it would not be able to. It wouldn’t even occur to this version of the human race to try to hoard such hidden knowledge, because it would get out, and it would get out quickly. So their civilization was built from a place of honesty and openness, not because they were more virtuous than you or I, but because it wouldn’t work anyway.

The assumption here is that people who have excelschians are more intelligent than the people who don’t. After all, they can pass any test simply by posing the questions to their excelschians. The excelschian won’t answer you if you don’t ask it something, but the asking can come in many forms. You could rub your finger along the paper, underneath the text, so it knows what you want to know, or someone else can ask it, and you can use microexpressions to defer it to your excelschian. This is all well and good, except that the excelschianed never really learn anything for themselves, because they never need to. Regular people have to work hard, and study new data, and memorize concepts, and fully grasp practical information. They’re generally more independent, stronger-willed, and far more likely to make the informational breakthroughs that people with excelschians will come to take for granted. They’re the ones moving humanity forward, and advancing science and technology. They’re changing the way people live, and ultimately making the world a better place. Sadly, this was not enough. With only half the people actually working for progress, this version of Earth was not able to develop sustainable strategies early enough to satisfy the antinatalist eco-terrorist Ochivari. In the early days of The Darning Wars—if there even is such a thing—the Ochivari came to this Earth, and destroyed it. And since this universe did not allow time travel, the attack could not be undone. They never stood a chance.

Microstory 650: An Escaped Murderer Kills No More

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This is one of those taikon that are hard to judge, which is why it’s so important that we have trained and conscientious verifiers to make sure that all events in question qualify. Lightseers have been worried about this one since the Book of Light was first written. It describes the life of a murderer who changes his ways. It doesn’t say who this killer is, why he’s meant to stop, or even what amount of time is supposed to pass. All humans are potentially immortal. Even those who haven’t worked hard enough to gain access to transhumanistic upgrades still have access to basic medical treatments that can extend life by decades...centuries, even. Though many of us never worry about death, or at least death by old age, we still measure time by the same lifespans of old. In fact, lifetime remains a legal term in most courts. Seventy standard years is used in sentencing systems as a baseline to determine how much punishment an offender deserves, be it more, or less. It is for this reason, and other traditions, that people still experience their lives in increments of about seven decades. People often alter their lifestyles to account for these transitions, as arbitrary as they may be to medical science. Because of this, believers were unwilling to wait however long it may take for an escaped murder to prove that he has stopped killing. Does the clock start once the taikon themselves begin, or can a murder have effectively quit long before, and somehow qualifies now. Fortunately for the more impatient amongst us, the former turned out to be the right answer.

Peve Stannon is considered to be one of the worst serial killers of all time; in this galaxy, and likely beyond. Of course, murder in Fostea is completely legal, as it’s a free choice that any central government would be powerless to prohibit. There are many good reasons to kill someone else; personal vengeance, business purposes, or even to protect others. Peve Stannon did not kill for these reasons, though. He did it for fun, and he was quite particular. Stannon went after people who his twisted sense of morality told him were too different than him to be trusted. He didn’t like being around those who were not heterosexual (which includes most everybody), those with darker skin, or people who chose to associate themselves with diversity. As terrible as it was to live under the rule of the dirty communists back in Lactea, one thing they had going for them was their ability to accept others for who they are, which is a sentiment we continue today, if only that. Stannon got his ideas by studying the planet isolate, Earth, which is where Fosteans lived for a brief time during its early civilizations. Since then, racism and homophobia has come and gone to the Earthan peoples. They are now living in the middle of the first decade of their third millennium, and things seem to be going okay. Decades earlier, though, bigotry and hatred were almost ubiquitous, with an entire political party being built on the platform of killing people who were different than them; their main issue being those of a rival religion. They ultimately resulted in the deaths of millions of people. We fight against our rivals as well, but we do so on an even playing field, and our goal is to show them The Light, not to simply be rid of them. Peve Stannon was fascinated by their behavior, and that of others later on, notably a white skin supremacists group who, umm...dressed up like ghosts? Stannon went on several killing sprees for years, eventually killing thousands of people. He was finally caught by a collective of the survivors of many of his victims, who created a court system for the sake of hunting, and prosecuting, Stannon. Sadly, Stannon escaped from the prison they built for him, and has spent years hiding out, having left no trace of where he might be going. But one thing he did do was spend the rest of his life without killing anybody else. His body was found in the middle of the woods by the survey team shortly after former Eido, Mateo’s departure from this universe. Verifiers still don’t know how he ended up on Kesliperia, or Hargrave Peninsula, but decided that he had died recently enough to qualify for the fiftieth taikon.