The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 7, 2520

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Romana lay down on the digitization table. Ramses affixed the spongification helmet over her head. In a few days, this will absorb her consciousness, digitize it almost instantaneously, and transfer it to her new substrate. This part of the process was absolutely vital for the success of the endeavor. During the early days of mind digitization, test subjects were shocked by the new experience, at best resulting in independent duplicates, but at worst in something called bifurcated consciousness. This is when the single mind was divided across the old substrate and the new one. In the movies, this usually involves two copies of each other, one which exhibits some of the traits of the original, but at an extreme, while the other exhibits the polar opposite traits. This will be played for laughs if it’s a comedy, teach the person something about balance if it’s more serious, or even be an example of body horror if it’s meant to be disturbing. In real life, bifurcation isn’t so clean and concise. Neither copy will be able to survive. They will both be missing core physiological characteristics; not just personality traits, but vital neural functions, such as breathing and walking.

Romana was here to dabble in the digital world, so her brain could get used to the feeling of it, before her upload happened. Because once Ramses pushed that button, and began that upload, there was no going back. “Is it going to hurt?”

“It won’t hurt today, but about half of uploaded people claim to experience some pain during the procedure. Researchers are split on whether it’s a psychosomatic memory, or genuine physical pain.”

Romana sighed, and leaned her head all the way back. “Pain is pain. All pain is in the brain. Yet if my body were slain, and my brain placed in chains, that brain would sense no pain, but I would go insane.”

“Poem?”

“Song lyrics,” she explained. “Peter Fireblood. You wouldn’t know him.”

“Was he in the Third Rail?” Ramses asked.

She continued to look forward. “Let’s get on with this.”

Ramses had more to adjust on the equipment. “I need to prep you first. You’ll wake up in a plain white expanse. You will sense the walls around you, yet they will feel endless. Do not be afraid of the expanse. You are still in your body. It should feel just like dreaming.”

“I’ve done VR before.”

“Not like this,” Ramses said. “You cannot return to base reality without me. But I will be able to hear everything you say, so you can bail at any time.” He paused to continue with his work. “After your mind settles into the expanse, lights will appear before you. Some may be blinding, and you cannot look away, as they will always follow your gaze. This is the scary part. You will not be able to shut your eyes. Blinking is an autonomic process, triggered by external stimuli. It is surprisingly the most difficult biological function for digital avatars to replicate, even though in the real world, you’re fully capable of closing them whenever you want. Honestly, scientists still don’t know why, which is what I think is the scariest part. But it will be all right. You will figure it out again, just as you did when you were a baby. The lights are meant to teach your brain to recognize how much control you have over your own residual self-image. They will not stop until you finally do close your eyes. Next will be sound, then smells. Objects will then appear before you for you to feel, inedible ones at first before food materializes to reteach you taste. You could theoretically taste the chair, or whatever it is, before the food shows up, but it’s your call. Interestingly, taste and touch aren’t that hard to fake, at least not until you get into the deeper complexities, like...uh...”

“Like intimate touches,” Romana said. “I get it.”

“I was gonna say umami. Anyway, once you get through sensory school, you will be in the driver’s seat. The world will begin to respond to your imagination, and is only limited by that, as well as the AI’s rendering speed. You can do whatever you want, but I will gently pull you out after about fifteen minutes, depending on what your vitals readout says. It might be earlier, but it won’t be later. You shouldn’t stay too long during the first session. We’ll work our way up gradually over the next couple of days.”

“Okay, I understand.”

“Are you ready?”

“Do it,” Romana answered confidently. She closed her eyes, and tried to relax.

“Count down from eleven for me.”

“Eleven, ten, nine..eight...seven...six...”

Romana felt a shift in gravity, and had the urge to open her eyes. She was not in a white expanse, but a silvery metallic chamber. The space was steamy, or maybe it was only that her vision was blurry. She could make out small beads of water crowding each other on a tiny window before her. She blinked. She blinked just fine. And her other senses didn’t seem to be a problem either. She could smell the sterile scent of medical seating upholstery. She felt the soft grip of the bands of fabric, which barely covered her body, around her crotch, and her breasts. Her breasts. They were back. She was in her adult form. Ramses never said anything about that. They did look a lot smaller, though, which was...odd. She was compelled to taste something, so she leaned over to lick the wall. It wasn’t particularly pleasant, but about as expected. No flashing lights, but her vision was slowly coming into focus. Underneath the tiny window, a message was embossed. Slide down to see the new you. Whenever you’re ready. Another message caught her eye above the window. DON’T PANIC.

She reached over and slid the panel down to find a mirror. That was not Romana Nieman. That was some random chick. “Ramses. Ramses! Can you hear me? You said you would be able to hear me, but you never said if I would be able to hear you?” She waited a moment. “Ramses!” she cried louder. “Pull me out! Something is wrong!”

No response.

“Door.” She paused. Speaking was frustratingly difficult, and it felt like she had just used up her word allotment. “Open,” she managed to eke out.

The door slid open. Romana pushed herself off the back of her chair, and headed for the exit. It was pretty hard to stand too. She was a newborn fawn who had never used her skinny little legs before. Her legs were skinny, whoever this strange woman was. She was now in a dimly lit hallway. She looked to her right. A few meters down, a guy was stepping out of his own pod, struggling about as much; maybe a little more. “Hey,” she said, attempting to raise her voice, but only reaching a whisper. She tried to walk that direction, but her knees buckled.

Before her face could meet the floor, a pair of arms caught her, and lifted her back up. “It’s okay,” the sound of a woman came, like an angel from above. “I gotcha.” She picked her all the way up into the air, and gently lay her down on a gurney.

“Who are you?” Romana asked.

“I’m your Acclimation Specialist.” She looked around. “This is the newborn wing. Anyone who hasn’t transferred before comes through here. There aren’t many of you left. Welcome to Castlebourne, Miss Brighton.”

“Who the hell is Brighton? My name is Romana.” It didn’t hurt so much to talk anymore, but she was slurring her words like a drunkard.

The angel checked her wristband, and looked up at the top of the pod. Then she looked back down at Romana. “Are you sure?”

Romana lifted her new hand, and pointed at the specialist, fighting to keep it aloft. “Hundo-p.” She lowered her hand and tapped on her own temple...or rather, this Brighton person’s temple. “Sharp as a tack. My name is Romana Neiman. I’m friends with Hrockas. He’ll wanna hear about this.”

The specialist tapped on her wristband again. “We have a possible Code Five. I repeat, possible Code Five. Subject claims wrong target.”

“Are we in The Terminal?” Romana asked.

The specialist stepped over, to the back of Romana’s gurney, and began to push her down the hallway. “Seal all newborn pods and halt new travelers to newborn wing. Quarantine all consciousnesses in transit to the emergency digital holding environment.”

“All transiters?” A voice questioned.

“All of them!” she screamed. “Make way! Make way!” she yelled as she continued down the hall. She suddenly stopped. “Owner Steward. Where did you come from? You...you just—”

“Never mind that,” Hrockas said.

Romana couldn’t really see anything from this angle, so Ramses stepped into her line of sight. “Romana?”

“Yes, Rambo. What did you do?”

“I honestly don’t know. What did you say to me, when we were in Underburg? We were at that office cookout. I asked you what your favorite subject in school was.”

Romana turned herself over to the side. “That never happened. It was an implanted memory.”

Ramses stood there for a moment. “Good enough.” He looked up at the Acclimation Specialist. “Thank you. You can go now.”

“Sir?” she asked.

“It’s fine,” Hrockas replied. “Go deal with the lockdown. We’ll determine if this is a fluke, or a new system vulnerability.”

“Thank you, sir.” She left.

“Is it?” Hrockas asked.

“Is what what?” Ramses volleyed.

“Is it a new vulnerability? Should I be worried that body swapping is going to start happening left and right?”

“I draw power from the grid,” Ramses explained. “Might as well. It’s free and easy. I’m plugged into your network for archive updates, but I don’t use your processing power. I don’t need it. I don’t know how this happened. There should be no link between my localized digitization equipment, and your Terminal casting infrastructure.”

“This is the newborn wing,” Hrockas told him. “None of these people has cast their consciousness before. Most of them have not even used surrogacy. Some of them are even escaping colony cults. Isn’t Romana new too?”

“She is, but we were just acclimating her. I hadn’t transferred anything yet. And again, we’re not connected to the Terminal.”

“You are close, though. Treasure Hunting Dome is very close to this one.”

“I don’t see how proximity has to do with anything, if Miss Brighton was coming from Earth.”

“Figure it out, Abdulrashid,” Hrockas demanded. “This wasn’t us. It was you. Millions of castings, not a single problem. You and your time tech are the variables.”

Ramses scooped Romana up, and kissed her protectively on the forehead. “I know.” He teleported them away.

“Beginning decon—”

They were back in Ramses’ lab. “Decontamination override, Ramses Abdulrashid echo-echo-one-nine.” He carried her into the restricted section.

Young!Romana was waiting for him there. She was presumably the real Miracle Brighton. She looked surprisingly calm. “Yep. That’s me.”

“I’m so sorry about this,” Ramses said to her as he was laying Romana down on the secondary digitization bed.

“Don’t worry about it. I came here to have adventures.”

Romana got back on her side. “Can you walk?”

“I walk just fine,” Miracles answered. “It was a lot easier than they told me it would be.”

“It’s your EmergentSuit,” Ramses explained as he was fiddling with the machinery. “It would be like being born in a powered exoskeleton.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Romana decided. “Are you just gonna switch us back?”

“I don’t know if I can,” Ramses said. “I mean, I’m capable of it. People have switched bodies before. It’s a niche leisure activity. I just don’t know what your father is going to say. If I don’t call him back in, will he be madder than if I let him actually see the damage?”

Miracle chuckled. “You’re trying to decide if you should glue the broken vase back together before your parents get home, because at least they come home to a fixed vase, or if it’s better to fess up right away so you look more honest.”

“More or less,” Ramses admitted.

“Too late,” Mateo said from behind.

“Mateo, I didn’t hear you come in,” Ramses said to him.

“Yeah. Decontamination protocols are down.”

“Right. Digital acclimation is a safe procedure. It’s been for centuries. This never should have happened.”

Mateo stepped closer. “I want to comfort my daughter, Ramses, but I don’t want to touch a stranger...” He looked over at Miracle in Romana’s body, “and I don’t want it to look like I’m touching a stranger.” He looked over at Romana in Miracle’s body.

“I’ll switch them back, right away.”

“No,” Mateo said. “That’s stupid. Her new body is ready now, right? It’s in temporal stasis, but fully grown?”

“It’s ready,” Ramses said. “You still weren’t sure, though...”

“I’m on board,” Mateo told him, but he was really saying it to Romana. “Her mind has already been digitized. You might as well finish the process. Forcing her back into that child’s body is just a waste of time and power.”

“Speaking of which...” Ramses walked over to the wall, unlocked a panel with his biometrics, and flipped a lever. The lights shut off for three seconds before returning. “We’re off grid, and all signals are blocked. We’re completely isolated. No consciousness is getting out, and none is getting in.” He moved over to the gestational pod where Romana’s new body was floating around. “Romy will jump into this, and Miracle will jump into her new body.”

“And my old body?” Romana inquired. “The one that looks like a little girl.”

Ramses looked down solemnly. “It will be destroyed. That’s the hardest part of this. I would have rather you be proverted anyway, but I don’t think we really have time for that. I don’t know any proverters.”

“I do,” Mateo said.

“Yesterday, you made it seem like you didn’t,” Ramses reminded him.

“It’s you. You can provert that substrate. After this kind woman leaves it, you can place it in a temporal field, and age it up, so you’re not watching a child’s body be destroyed.”

“Well, I don’t really have to watch as it happens. I just put it in a—”

“Ram. This is how you should do it. You don’t want the memory of even placing her wherever it is you were about to say.”

They waited there in the depressing silence.

“That got dark,” Miracle mused.

“Our lives are sometimes dark.” Ramses flipped another lever, and started to drain the fluid from Romana’s pod.

More silence.

“Wait,” Miracle said. “Don’t do what you were talking about with the temporal field. I’ve never heard of that, but I can guess what it is. I saw you suddenly disappear from here, so there’s obviously a lot I don’t know about the universe.” She took a breath. “Just leave me in this body. I can wait to grow up again. In fact, after what I lived through on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, it might feel like a fresh start.”

“Are you certain?” Ramses asked. “Once I destroy your Castlebourne body, you’re stuck with this unless you choose a new one, in which case you’re just passing the burden to someone else.”

“I understand. I want this.” She hopped off of the bed. “I promise. As long as it’s okay with this one that she has a doppelgänger walking around.”

Romana looked over at Mateo, and said, “actually...that’s a family tradition.”

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Microstory 2241: Me as a Weapon

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Yo, what up, kids? My name is Dutch Haines, and I won’t take up too much of your time. People have just been asking where I came from, and I thought it might make sense to clear the air. I won’t go into too many details, to protect the innocent, and even the not so innocent. Months ago, I woke up just as I normally do, and tried to leave the house to head for work. I never made it, though. I ended up in this underground bunker, apparently on another Earth. That’s what people told me anyway. It was also centuries in the future, so maybe it was our planet the whole time. Wouldn’t that be a great twist for a movie? Anyway, there’s this weird phenomenon called Westfall, which sends people to different worlds all the time. You’re not supposed to know it’s happened, but sometimes it glitches, I guess. Don’t ask me how it works. All I know is that I was sick, kind of like Nick. I was the carrier of a disease that’s harmless to humans, but deadly to an evil race of aliens who are trying to sterilize people they don’t like all over the multiverse. The natives asked to study me and my blood so they could use me as a weapon, and sadly, I believe they got their wish. I just wanted to come clean about my part in this. It’s not like I really had a choice. Maybe the Westfall thing wasn’t a glitch. Maybe I was destined to go there for that. I dunno, but I’m hoping to make up for it, so I would like to dedicate my life to service, if you’ll have me. I’ve never been one for social media, but I’ve signed up now, so maybe y’all can follow me too, and help me figure out what I can do to help the world. I’ll hand this website back over to Nick for now, though.

Microstory 2095: Not Thick Enough

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My parents were pretty tired when they flew into town. There was this whole issue at the airport. I didn’t know this before, but they just built a new airport for Kansas City, and it’s not my favorite. I preferred the older concept, with the circles. People hated that, but my thing is, it can be a great thing, if you do it right. They designed those specific ones poorly, I’ll admit, but the idea is perfectly sound. These are rings, which allow your driver to pull up pretty much right to your gate. There are multiple security entrances, which means that you only have to contend with the people who are getting on your flight, or one of a handful of others. If they staggered the flight schedule right, though, and assigned the gates wisely, they could actually make it so that the only people who are in line for security at any one time are on the same flight. The other flights in your sector have already left, or don’t need to get through yet. Anyway, the issue was that the original ones were not thick enough, which left less room for bathrooms, and almost no room for restaurants, and other shops. Everything was on the outside of security, which I didn’t have a problem with. Since getting through security was so much faster than at other airports, it was fine. You didn’t have to get there three years early, because you’re already just right there! Ugh, I could go on and on about airport layouts, including the fact that you can squeeze more planes in the same area, because the curve is constantly dropping away from the fleet, but let’s get back to the story. I spent a lot of time in the new one, waiting for my parents to land. They’re still figuring out how to coordinate all this foot and car traffic, it was a mess to know where you can pick up your family, and when, then there was a glitch, so everyone was waiting at the wrong baggage conveyor belt. I think it will be fine, they just need time to work out all the kinks. I was going to take them back to my landlord’s house to meet her, and share a meal or two, but they just wanted to get to the hotel, order room service, and then go to sleep. They’ve both been retired for years, so they’ve grown used to their days not being so busy. I decided to spend the night with them. Fortunately, the hotel made its own mistake, and assigned them a double room, so there was a bed there for me. I don’t post on my blog on the weekends, so I’ll catch you all up on Monday. That’s when they’ll be flying back out, so I’m sure we’ll run into more trouble.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 32,398

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Asier doesn’t come to retrieve Mateo after the next break from realtime. The stasis pod hatch opens on its own ten thousand years later, so Mateo steps out to head for the master sitting room. It’s empty, which he takes as an opportunity. Looking around to make sure that no one is spying on him, he creeps over to the globe, and opens it up. It’s empty too; the Omega Gyroscope has been removed from it.

“She knew she couldn’t trust you,” Bhulan reveals.

Mateo closes it back up without looking at her. “I just wanted to see it again.”

“Uhuh,” she says, not believing him. “It’s hers, you know. As long as the Gyroscope is in use, the user can do whatever they want with it, and no one can take it from them until the current objective has been fulfilled, or they give it freely.”

“It can’t be stolen, got it.” He steps away from it and sighs.

“I can be convinced not to tell her you came straight here to steal it.”

“I wasn’t stealing it, I was just going to borrow it.”

“For what purpose?”

“To get back to my family.”

Bhulan chuckles. “That thing can’t do that for you. I mean, technically it can, but not on its own. People seem to think that its power is limitless, but it’s not. It can alter the physical laws of the world that it is in. It can’t turn you into a bird, and it can’t send you forward in time. At best, it would give you the option of jumping through time, but you would have to figure out how to actually accomplish that on your own.”

“What if I asked it to alter the world so that psychically-powered wormholes capable of time travel open up when conceived up by someone who wants one?”

She smiles. “That’s creative, but you’re not psychic enough. It doesn’t alter people, I mean, not really. Like I said, it can’t turn you into a bird.”

“No birds, no psychics. Understood.”

“Anyway, we’re having a pool party today, if you wanna come. We can print you a swimsuit. I bet you’ve never worn one that fits perfectly.”

It seems weird to have a pool party with five people, three of which are related, but he follows her anyway. They’re in the short course pool today, instead of the Olympic-size one, and it is packed full of party-goers. Who the hell are these people? “Are they holograms, androids...?”

“Oh no, they’re real,” she claims. “Have you ever heard of Westfall?”

“So, they don’t even know where they are?”

“They think that this is a rich community’s disaster bunker.”

“Isn’t that what it actually is anyway?” Mateo suggests.

She just rolls her eyes. The three of them aren’t rich in the traditional sense, but they command all of this real estate, and all power is concentrated in them. They’re rich.

“Did you ask for them to come here?” he asks. “Spit it out,” he encourages when she hesitates to respond.

“It’s the Gyroscope. This is a glitch. Tamerlane thinks it has something to do with its user. He was actually the first Westfall victim to show up, and he just never left. Without them, there would be nothing to do here. Most of the time, when we’re not in stasis, it’s because alarms have reported that someone is here who shouldn’t be. One of us is then tasked with leaving the stasis chamber, and containing the intruder.”

“That’s why Danica is so freaked out, because the whole point is to prevent all this scifi stuff from being able to happen in this reality.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“But intruders like this don’t happen in the other realities, right?”

“Not to this annoying degree, no.” She gestures towards the kids laughing and screaming in the water, thinking they’re pulling one over on a wealthy snob.

“Maybe it’s wrong to think of it as a glitch. Maybe it’s more of a consequence. The Gyroscope is like a vacuum, sucking up all temporal energy, and pushing it away from the world, but that opens tears in whatever separates this universe from others. Things are supposed to go out only, but occasionally, something comes the wrong direction through these tears. I mean, maybe it’s even the temporal energy itself that’s doing it. If you were trying to suck out all the carbon, it would be fine, but what you’re doing is taking power away from us, and giving it to them, which they then use to sneak in.”

Bhulan slowly turns her face away from him in thought. “Hmm.”

“I don’t sound like an idiot?”

“Usually, yes, but that was surprisingly...not entirely ridiculous. What we need to do is move the temporal energy out of the world, and put it somewhere where we can contain it, where it can’t affect anyone. Like a...pocket dimension?”

“Or how about Durus?” Mateo offers. He’s not doing it to be nice. Durus is a rogue planet that is not very far away from Earth in celestial terms, and if he and his friends can get back to the AOC, it won’t take them long to make the journey. From there, the smart team members will surely be able to come up with a way out of the Third Rail, with virtually limitless power at their disposal.

“No, there are too many people there. Well, not in this reality, of course, but in others, and that would put them at risk of accidentally crossing over. One errant portal, and the system breaks down.”

That’s okay, it doesn’t have to be Durus. As long as Mateo knows where it is, they can get to it four and a half billion years from now. By then, these people will have tossed it to the back of their minds so they can focus on other issues. Once this new plan works, they’ll stop worrying about it, which will allow Mateo’s team to exploit it. “I suppose Dardius is out.” He doesn’t want them choosing it, because it’s too far away from here. The AOC can’t make it in a reasonable amount of time.

“Yeah, we wouldn’t wanna do that.” She looks over at him. “In fact, we wouldn’t want it to be anywhere where there are people. That includes you. You’re trying to trick me into telling you where we’ll end up sending the temporal energy.”

“I don’t understand the problem,” Mateo argues. “You want us to leave the Third Rail, we want to leave the Third Rail. To me, that sounds like our objectives are aligned, but you keep acting like I’m the frickin’ enemy.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Yeah, it’s way complicated, and I’m just a big ol’ dum-dum who couldn’t find his arms with his hands. Well, if I’m no longer needed, I think I’ll go take a nap. I haven’t slept in a long time, because the time jumps give me a huge case of FOMO.”

“Mateo...”

“No, it’s okay, I understand. Good luck with your little power vacuum.” Holy crap, power vacuum? Is it really that obvious? Did he just help himself realize where they end up dumping the temporal energy?

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 14, 2398

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He felt it. He felt that pull he was so used to, and even the nausea he eventually got over. He had almost forgotten it was even a thing, but yeah, back when Mateo first became an unwilling time traveler, he could sense it coming when his stomach felt a little upset. It was always brief, and of course, not usually useful because of a little invention they call a clock, but it was specific to him, and later Leona. He stops running, but doesn’t let go of Marie’s hand. “Did you feel that?”

“Feel what?” she asks.

“Ah, you didn’t.”

“No, I felt something, but you need to tell me what you’re talking about, so we can compare.”

“I felt like I was about to jump to the future. I was a little queasy, and—”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I felt that too,” she elaborates. “I figured it has something to do with how shitty I feel about leaving my husband with those pigs.”

“You call them pigs here?”

“Not the point, Mateo!”

“Sorry. I don’t think you ever felt the nausea, though, once you became one of us?”

“No, is it because I had a resurrected body before this, and now Ramses’ upgrade? I think I kind of remember Leona mention in passing how it once felt in the beginning.”

He slowly turns back towards that empty parking lot. “There is something about this place. If we come back here, I think we’ll jump. I think it’ll happen. I just think we have to be closer. It is midnight, right?”

“Yeah.” Marie double checks her watch. “Yeah.”

“We have to come back. We have to get the other two, break Angela and Heath out of jail, and then return to that lot just before the following midnight that comes. I did that once. I broke out of a holding cell, and—well, I tried to run into the treeline so they would never catch me, but then my cousin caught up to me; it was this whole thing.”

“Mateo, I wouldn’t be able to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because Heath isn’t one of us.”

“Crap. Oh, no. You’re stuck here forever. This...this is the only world where you can be happy now.”

“I think so, yeah. It was uncomfortable at first, but now it’s a gift. I’m not a time traveler anymore, and I don’t wanna be.”

Mateo breathes deeply, and sits up against a mostly fallen tree.

“We have to get to the rendezvous point. You can still do what you want. You can still get out of here, if that’s even what’s happening. Maybe it’s just a glitch, so don’t get your hopes up. But I’ll be fine. You’ll still have Angie.”

“No, we’re a team. We keep having to promise you that you’re part of that, and so is your husband, and so is that baby...”

Marie reacts to this reminder in a way that shows she doesn’t know how to feel about it.

“I’m sorry that’s...that’s a private matter. I can’t speak to it.”

She sits down next to him. “It’s okay. I found out right before you showed up, and I was going to tell him, but then we were dealing with all of this, and...”

Mateo sighs again, but more contently this time. “We’ve been looking for a home. We keep saying that that’s what the main sequence is, but who cares? I mean, I have people that I love back there, but I haven’t seen most of them in ages anyway. My own mother doesn’t remember me. Most of the people that I love are right here, and that can be enough. We always wanted to be free, which is why we sent our alternate selves to Havenverse. Why can’t we just make this our own haven?”

She stands back up, brushes the dirt off her hands, and extends one back down to him. “We can, but we have to get out of here before they find us, or we won’t be able to tell Ramses and Leona what happened. We’ll need them to put the team back together.”

Microstory 1579: Any Password Will Do

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Prompt

I enter my bank password wrong, but the app still lets me sign in. I log out and try again, this time using a password that is not anywhere close to the right one. It lets me sign in this time too.

Botner

The trick: I don’t use the exact password. Instead I pick a random six-letter combination. It’s not easy to do, but there’s a little-known secret that lets me log in without making a mistake. All I have to do is get my phone to emit a strong “pattern” beep and lock pattern. If I follow this series of steps, I can log in to my bank account from my phone no matter what the password is. I started wondering how this works after I noticed this article from The Atlantic detailing how to trick Google into giving you the wrong password when you’re on an Android device. The author said that when he logged in, his bank account info and the password didn’t match. He was able to get into his account despite the fact that his password was wrong. It’s possible that this is an isolated incident. But some security experts are skeptical. “The notion that it’s really easy for hackers to break into my account if I type in this correct password...is dubious,” says Randy Abrams, security specialist.

Conclusion

I’m no programmer, but I have a decent idea what happened here. There’s a line of code somewhere in my bank’s software. It’s there to help people login to their accounts. When someone inputs their password, this line is supposed to ask whether it’s correct. If not, it will return false. But if the code itself just says true, then the password is always right, no matter what. As long as they put something in the box, it will let them in. This is a problem. This could allow anyone to access anyone else’s account, assuming I’m right, and it’s a global issue, rather than some kind of caching bug that’s only happening to my device. I open my laptop, and put in my mom’s username, since we use the same bank. I randomly strike a bunch of keys, and try to get into her account. It works. It is global, it has to be. But still, I’ll try one more thing. I call my mom, and ask her to try to login to my uncle’s account. She helped him set it up, so she has his information too. She puts in the wrong password, just like I did, but it doesn’t work. Whew! I guess they solved the problem already.  Hopefully I was the first and only person to notice the glitch, and no one had the chance to exploit it. I realize my session’s been terminated because the app has been logged in too long, and I never did get to check my balance, so I have to login yet again. Feeling shaky because of what might have been, I mess up my password once more, like an idiot. But it works. I know I messed it up, my hand slipped. What the hell is going on here? I have to get help, so I call customer service, and tell them what I know. “Yes, sir,” the representative says. “You have access to all accounts, as you should.” What?” This is even weirder than that time I drove down the highway going the wrong direction, and the cop just smiled and greeted me like it was normal. Something is happening to me, and even though it all seems good, it can’t be that easy.

Microstory 1440: The War Begins

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Seers on Durus didn’t tell everyone, or even anyone, everything that they knew. They had to be smart about what information they let get out. If, for instance, one told their neighbor that they were going to run into a door today, the neighbor would go outside, and try to avoid doors for twenty-four hours. Then seven hours later, a construction worker walks by with a door, and accidentally hits him with it when he turns around.  The seer actually exacerbated the problem by saying something. The victim would have been much better off hearing that they should be careful, or to wear a helmet. That did not explain, however, why it was that no one seemed to know that the Mage Protectorate was destined to fall. The final battles of the war with the monsters began in 2090, and ended in less than a month, and it all started when an unexpected visitor appeared shortly after the Mage Selection Games. He was definitely not human, but nothing like what they had seen before. He was white, and tall, and fierce-looking. Speedstrikers looked just like you would think an unstoppable killer alien would. Mirror monsters looked like, well, mirrors. All the other types had been cataloged and classified, and nothing new had ever appeared since those very early days after Springfield fell into the Deathfall portal. So what was this thing here? It seemed intelligent, just like the verters, and it didn’t take long before his true nature was fully understood. Based on some things that the verters had said over the years, people always suspected that time monsters were only temporal glitches, and that real, intelligent, and independent monsters were the ones who were actually trying to step through the portal. This pretty much proved it. He was the real deal, and all the things that had come through before were quite accurately mistakes. There was something wrong with the portal, which this new monster explained led him here from his home universe of Ansutah. No one else ever survived the trip intact, so even if it turned out to be possible to travel back through the ring, it had never happened before. So the other monsters never knew the portal wasn’t working, which meant nothing could warn them to stop trying.

This monster, who called himself a Maramon, was a one in a million success story. He didn’t make it through the ring whole because of anything he did, but because the chances that it would happen at least once were not zero. They were low, but not impossible. He told them that time wasn’t passing the same way for his people on the other side. While the monsters had been arriving for decades, he had only waited a couple hours for his turn to step through. Time probably wasn’t moving at a different rate on his homeworld, though. They were probably just being spit out at random intervals. Hell, it could even be that every glitch that had shown up before him had actually come from a Maramon who tried to cross over sometime after him. There was no way to know, but that wasn’t the point here. All this time, the humans on this planet had been fighting an enemy that mostly didn’t know they were enemies. They weren’t actively trying to hurt the humans. They were most likely just moving along the surface on instinct, attracted to the presence of other moving creatures, and destroying them incidentally, rather than deliberately. If it was possible for a Maramon to cross over without being turned into an abomination, then a real war might start. This new enemy was free-thinking, and capable of forming motivations. They were a huge threat. Though he was the only monster who had ever kept his faculties during the trip, there was no proof it wouldn’t happen again, and he was making no attempt to quell their fears that he really was an enemy. He made his motives remarkably clear; that he wanted to kill all the humans too, and that he would be doing it on purpose. At first, they figured they could contain him before he could cause any trouble, but he easily escaped, and he used his intelligence to control the glitches all by himself. Things were only going to get worse from here as the War for Durus began.

The Burning of Effigy: Chapter Three

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I take one last look at all the places I’ve lived recently. The upgrades that Ezqava willed into existence are still there, clustered in one area. There’s the tent, the cabin, the cottage, the mobile home, the tiny home, the small home, the farmhouse, and the really nice house. Her mind had already started construction on a tower, on top of which would be a penthouse, where we would live. The three of us were about to transport decades, possibly centuries to the future, and I don’t know if this will still be standing when we get back. It’s not like I spent a whole hell of a lot of time here, but I still feel close to them. Hell, she even built a treehouse, probably birthed by a stray thought she had one day about the possibility of raising children—and I’m just now realizing it must be the same treehouse Hokusai Gimura sought refuge in sometime in the future. Of course.

Effigy appears next to me as I’m reflecting. “I keep forgetting how slow and inefficient humans are.”

“And I need to remember how impatient and irritating your species can be,” I reply.

“We are the Maramon,” Effigy says. “She’s not told you much about us, has she?”

“No. She’s just learned to speak.”

“Faster than I did it. In the original timeline, I had to do it alone.”

“How is that possible, without any humans?”

“I get glimpses of Earth.”

“I see.”

“Are you ready to go?”

“Yes. Where’s Ezqava?”

“Right in here,” Effigy says, pointing to her own chest.

“The hell you talkin’ ‘bout?”

“We merged.”

“What!?”

She exudes a hippy disposition. “We are now...as one.”

“So she’s dead?”

“No, man, aren’t you listening? We’re now just one person. I absorbed her memories, and she mine, and now we’re just one person.”

“Why would you do that?”

“It was the right thing to do. You shouldn’t have two versions of yourself running around the same time period, it’s irresponsible.”

“Don’t you get it? She is dead. She had an identity that was independent of you, and you stole that from her.”

“It was consensual, asshole. My body, my choice.”

“Oh, don’t you throw that it my face, there’s no comparison.”

“Well it’s done. I am no longer just Effigy. I am Ezqava Eodurus, a.k.a. Effigy.”

“I can’t trust you, though. She wanted to help people, to make things better. Now she’s been corrupted...by you.”

“Ah, but you’re forgetting that it goes both ways. I hold properties of her. I’m now a far nicer person, because of her.”

“I want to believe that,” I say.

“Do you?”

This was getting me nowhere, so I just have to let it go. I don’t bother asking her if it can be reversed, because even if it can, she won’t do it. I have to remember that I only knew Ezqava for a short while, so we weren’t incredibly close. I have to focus on the mission, which is to close this portal, any way I can. I suppose the main trouble is that I was counting on Ezqava to back me up so that Effigy doesn’t betray us. Now I’m just alone. Effigy, or whatever it is I’m supposed to call her now, places her hand on my shoulder, and we transport away.

We’re in some little house. A woman is hovering over a crib, letting a baby squeeze her finger.

“Can she not see us?” I ask Effigy.

“No, it’s just like when that Screener woman was tossing you around time,” she replies.

“I can feel you there,” the woman with the baby says. She takes her hand from the baby, who is okay with that. She starts sort of miming in the space between us, like she’s worried about touching an electrified invisible box. “You’re somewhere around here. Sanela? Is that you?”

“We should be going,” I say. “The portal won’t fix itself, I don’t imagine.”

“I just need to recharge first,” Effigy says vaguely.

“What do you mean?”

“The portal’s not here. In fact, it would be closed by now. We’ve jumped further in the future than I wanted.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I can’t control it,” Effigy explains. “My power is sort of trial and error, which is why I try not to do it too much. You’ve seen that, otherwise Ezqava would have just created a condo or mansion as soon as she got to this world.”

“So we’re invading this woman’s privacy on accident.”

“Exactly,” Effigy says. “But it’s okay, Saga deals with this stuff all the time. She’s fine.”

“You can go now,” Saga says, going back to playing with the baby. “I’m not going to kill myself, if that’s what you’re worried about. Étude means too much to me.” She smiles at the child, but in a sad way.

“What happened?” I ask Effigy.

“Before you get upset, I didn’t do anything. Her heartache is her own. It’s...a pretty bad situation. Fortunately, I’m ready to make another jump.” She takes my shoulder, and we leave.

I find myself once again in the presence of Smith, the one who was pursuing Hogarth and her friends. Though that was sometime in the future, and I know this, because Smith still has his face intact.

A henchman I don’t know if I’ve seen before approaches Smith. “Sir, the kids are crying in harmony. We believe there to be a time anomaly somewhere around here.”

“Not monsters, though?” Smith questioned.

“No, it’s in a major key.”

“Interesting. Is Hogarth’s machine operational yet?”

“No, sir, our spies indicate that they are still months away, at best.”

“Perhaps she has returned to us earlier than predicted. This is good for us. Get me a glitchhound. We’ll search the area.”

“It’s already on the way.”

“Excellent,” Smith says so villainously that it isn’t even ironic. It’s like he read a listicle of every good antagonist, and is trying to emulate their worst common qualities with absolute sincerity.

An approximation of a dog tears into view, sniffing all around. It’s deformed and ethereal. It warps and shudders and gleams and melts, and sometimes looks more like a cat. It’s like a computer program with more bugs than good code.

“Don’t. Move,” Effigy orders out of the corner of her mouth.

“I can see why the call it a glitchhound,” I say out of the corner of mine.

“That’s not why they call it that,” Effigy says, displaying real levels of fear, which is something I didn’t think she could feel. Maybe she really has become more like the Ezqava I knew. “It seeks glitches.”

“Oh.”

“Bran, we’re the glitches.”

“Oh. Oh. Are you recharged yet?”

“No.”

“Then we should go.”

“If we move, it will sense us faster. Right now, our temporal anomaly is localized to one place, which can be a problem for them, but they’re also common. Tears in the spacetime continuum open and close all the time, most of them aren’t created by people. If we move, though, it’ll show that the glitch isn’t natural.”

“What will it do if it finds us?”

“It will lick my face and try to get me to play with it.”

“Yeah, but seriously,” I request.

“No, really,” she explains. “Glitchhounds were once just regular hounds. On my world, we called them tekachorl, which roughly translates to cheerful wolf. When they crossed the portal barrier, they became this.”

“You brought animals too?”

“I opened the portal. I didn’t decide who came through. Had it not been for...” she trails off.

“What?” I press.

“They weren’t meant to come corrupted like this. I never wanted any of this.”

“We don’t have time to talk about it. How do we get the glitchhound to leave us alone?”

“We can run a retroprep.”

“Which is...?”

“Which is when a future version of yourself comes back in time and saves you, so that you can live on, and one day go back in time and save yourself.”

“That sounds complicated.”

Suddenly the man who once escorted Sanela to meet me in Vearden’s safehouse appears through his own glitch in the continuum. He’s completely prepared for this, leaning down and patting his knees. “Come here,” he says in a sing-songy voice. “Come here, boy. That’s a good boy.”

The excited glitchhound gets in herding position, and strafes side to side, trying to confuse his playmate. Then he breaks free of his captor’s leash, and runs towards—Juan is his name, I remember now. Once the corrupted animal tackles Juan, they both fall back through the temporal anomaly and disappear.

“Was that you?” I ask. “Do you send him back sometime later?”

“I don’t even know who that is,” Effigy answers. “I can’t imagine I do that, but it’s possible, I can’t rule it out.”

“Who the hell was that!” Smith shouts to his frightened subjects.

“Looks like we’re safe,” Effigy says to me. “I’m charged up now, so we can go.”

“Go where? To the next mistake?”

“You have a better idea? How accurate is your time traveling?”

“Sanela spoke of this. You have to find a grasp of the timeline. You have to understand time first, or it will always dictate when and where you are.”

“That’s...actually not bad, Kally. You’re smarter than you look.”

“Just, try it. Do it differently than you normally do.”

Before we can leave, I feel something on my hip. I look down to see a small child reaching his little hand into my pocket. He pulls out the HG Goggles, and starts dancing around with them. I try to steal them back, but my hand just passes right through him.

“How did he do that?” I cry.

“Wadya have there, young Madoc?” Smith asks, graciously taking the goggles for himself. It’s the first sign of kindness I’ve seen from the man; now I at least know he has it in him.

“I could probably get those back for you,” Effigy offers.

“No,” I say with a smile, watching Smith look them over. “He gets what’s coming to him,” I tell her, remembering the future when a past version of me shines the Rothko Torch in his eyes, and literally burns the goggles into his face. “We can go now.”

We leave.

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