Spaghetti West: The Three-Body Problem (Part II)

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When Pribadium Delgado’s father was seven years old, he was staying with his grandparents while his parents went on a boring business trip in Iowa. Valde loved staying over there, especially since they lived two hours away, making it a rare treat. He was particularly close with his grandfather, because he was a young soul. One thing they loved to do was have the grandfather hold Valde’s hands and spin him around like a helicopter. They would do it all the time in the park across the street. Not everyone was happy about it.

A neighbor was fed up with their fun, so she called family services, citing the danger. Of course, this did not constitute abuse or neglect, but it still meant they had to stop, because the grandfather did not want to antagonize this woman. This saddened Valde, so he begged the grandfather to do it again. They knew the busybody would be watching, though, so they decided to give it a shot in the house, and it did not go well.

Their hands slipped from each other, and Valde went flying through the air. His head slammed against the wall, cracking them both open, and giving Valde permanent brain damage. He got through it, and ended up having a fairly happy life, growing up to have a family of his own. He couldn’t be alone with his own kids until they were old enough to kind of take care of themselves, but he wasn’t abusive, just easily distracted. The grandfather, on the other hand, couldn’t deal with the guilt. After years of heavy drinking, he either fell, or jumped off, a cliff. They were never sure which.

Pribadium’s mother was an astrophysicist, which was what got Pribadium interested in science. Her mother always called the tragedy the three-body problem, likening the grandfather, the grandson, and the wall to celestial bodies. She noted the wonder in the universe, and used the story to teach Pribadium a valuable lesson. Well, multiple lessons, really. The first was social and behavioral, which was obvious. The deeper lesson, however, was about gravity.

Outer space was monumentally huge. Most of it was made up of dark energy, which was basically just another word for space. Baryonic matter only took up a small fraction of the composition, yet...objects struck each other all the time. Galaxies were literally colliding. Thanks to gravity. Gravity was responsible for making life possible. It held things together, where otherwise there would just be a bunch of random particles flying individually through empty space. But it was still good to have space. If Valde and his grandfather had been allowed to swing around in the park, they would not have been so restricted, and Valde would not have crashed into a wall.

Now Pribaidum was grown up, and had been for centuries. Her parents were long dead, and she didn’t know where her brother was. She went by Sugar now, and had an entirely new face, in order to distinguish her from the Pribadium native to this time. Even though she had all of Pribadium’s memories up to a point, she sometimes felt like a brand new person. She could be too blunt about things, and even a little emotionally attached. It wasn’t her fault, news didn’t surprise her as much as it did to others. And she always preferred to just get right down to the point.

“A black hole?” Liselot asked. “A stellaris collapsis?”

“No. Planetary-mass; possibly primordial,” Sugar clarified. She had gone ahead and started constructing the defense platforms to orbit Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, but now she was going to have to halt the process and reprogram them. The basic design was just fine, but ablation lasers weren’t going to work for this situation, and they needed a denser solution to the spherical covering problem; probably dynamic.

“Possibly?” Liselot questioned. “What do you mean? What else would it be?”

“It could be a Kugelblitz,” Sugar answered. “Have you never heard of them?”

“I’m an astronomer, of course I have. It’s only recently become feasible for humanity to make one, though. If someone made it, we would have noticed, because in order for it to be passing through our system right now, it would have needed to form practically in our backyard. So unless you’re suggesting aliens are real... Wait, are you suggesting that aliens are real?”

Sugar had to ignore that question. “I need more time to study it. I still don’t know if it’s charged yet. That will tell me how we deal with it. I need to get closer.”

Liselot shook her head in disbelief. “Oh yeah, sure. Get closer to the singularity that just destroyed a moon and a planet in one fell swoop. Have fun, try not to get spaghettified, don’t forget to bring a towel. Will you be home in time for dinner?”

“Don’t worry, we’ll stay a couple hundred kilometers out. We’ll park, fire a few procession probes, and gather the data. Yes, we will be home for this proverbial dinner.”

“I’m coming with you,” Liselot insisted.

“No, that’s okay,” Sugar offered, knowing that it wasn’t really a request.

Liselot winced. “This is my planet, my responsibility. If you kick me off of your ship, I’ll just get my own, and pilot fish my way alongside you. They’re not expensive.”

Van was walking back on the bridge. “Read her in,” he encouraged. “It’s not illegal for non-travelers to know about this stuff, or I wouldn’t know. Read her in.”

Sugar breathed through her nose and considered it. Liselot was correct, this wasn’t their world. They needed help and approval from someone who lived here, and the Axiom of Astronomy was their best option. It already appeared like they could trust her. So Sugar nodded and cleared her throat to be blunt and aggressive again. “Time travel is real. Some people are born with the neurology necessary to hack the universe to manipulate timespace in one way or another. Others, like me—and now you—fell into the time traveler community.”

“Oh, she’s being modest,” Van says. “Sugar here invented her own, unique form of time travel. It’s entirely incompatible with how everyone else does it. Which means it’s protected from their vulnerabilities.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Sugar argued. “I...my brain connected to a primordial knowledge floating around the universe, from a different universe. It’s like—that’s what the cosmic microwave background radiation is. Someone else invented it, I found it.”

“Like transcendentalism?” Liselot asks. “You know that Bidans are essentially transcendentalists, right? We worship knowledge and science.”

“I didn’t give it much thought,” Sugar replied. “I try to stay away from religion.” She paused in a brief silence. “So you’re not freaking about learning the truth about reality. Do you just not believe it?”

Liselot smiled softly. “Many in our culture suspect that it’s real. In the year 2400, the collective knowledge of the known galaxy exploded unpredictably. I mean, just look at how fast a new substrate can be built on Castlebourne, and the artificial gravity on The Tangent. Actually, it must be the reason for the artificial gravity on our planet. Time travel would explain a ton of these leaps in understanding, wouldn’t it? It vindicated a lot of our beliefs about secret a priori knowledge, and now I’m in the inner circle.”

“Hm,” Van says. “I think she’s all right with it.”

“This is what you were afraid to tell me?” Liselot questions. “I’m sure if you spent time in Victorian England, you might be afraid to out yourself, but I think you’ll find if you’re honest with people in the modern world, they’ll be more receptive and calm.”

“It’s more complicated than that. Telling one person isn’t illegal,” Sugar explained. “Telling everyone is, because it’s a unilateral decision which robs others of consent. There’s a prison. If I were to make a broadcast announcement, they would undo that, throw me in prison, and potentially never let me out. I don’t even have to be the one to make that announcement if there’s a risk that you will, or if you go blabbing to your therapist, and they do it.”

“I understand, I know how to keep a secret,” Liselot assured them. “I’m sure there’s a lot more to know, but I’m guessing you needed to quote-unquote read me in because you’re not just gonna throw procession probes at the singularity.”

“Uh, no,” Sugar confirmed. “We’re gonna get a lot closer than I said. This ship was built with transdimensional shielding, which will protect us from the dangers of high gravity, though we could end up experiencing minor time dilation.”

“I’ve experienced relativistic dilation before,” Liselot says. “I went on a cruise around H-Gimura-11 in my youth. Lost eleven years.”

Sugar smirked. “I personally know Hokusai Gimura, from before she discovered HG-11. She was my mentor; introduced me to all of this.”

“Small world,” Liselot decided. “So are we going?”

Sugar looked over at Vantu and nodded lightly.

He teleported the ship away. “Now orbiting S-Delgado-1.”

Sugar rolled her eyes. “We are not calling it that.”

“We have to,” Van reasoned. “You discovered it.”

“If it’s a Kugelblitz,” Sugar argued as she was calibrating the sensors, “That means they discovered it.”

“I don’t see them here,” Van fired back. “We’ve still not proved it yet anyway.”

Sugar shook her head. “Would you just open the exterior spectrometers?”

They ran the sensors and gathered the data, ultimately confirming that it was indeed Kugelblitz. They didn’t know who made it, or where it came from, but now Sugar knew how to deflect it. Unless it was sent here intentionally as a weapon, they could fire ionic pulses at it, and get it to move out of the system. It only took a few weeks to complete the array, and that was all they did. They scrapped the full orbital defense complement, which was something this planet should have had the whole time. A Kugelblitz black hole was more dangerous than a primordial one. They didn’t have time to protect the globe against all threats. They needed to be offensive, and concentrate their efforts in one spot on the celestial firmament.

It took a couple of days for Sugar to be confident that they had pushed the object clear, so it didn’t cause further damage. If they had shot the black hole head on, each shot would have taken an immense amount of energy to make it reverse directions. By constantly striking it on the edge, they conserved that energy, and used it more wisely. They just wanted to change its course enough so that it moved out of Tau Ceti space. Now that that was done, they could focus on the debris from Qishra. That was their ongoing, long term problem, but it was possible to keep them at bay, especially once they did finally cover the sky in those defenses.

The world rejoiced and partied, and Sugar was happy for them, but then something new came up on their sensors. “This is impossible.”

“What is it?” Van asked.

“It’s the black hole. It’s...back.”

“So it is a weapon,” Van determined. “Someone’s controlling it.”

“I don’t see how,” Sugar argued. “We should be able to detect them, and what would be the motive?”

“Should we call Liselot?”

Sugar sighed. “She has a right to know. Just give me one moment to check something.” She frowned at the screens as she waited for her long-range sensors to respond. Her eyes widened when the information came in.

“What? I don’t understand what I’m seeing here.”

Sugar looked up at Van hovering over her shoulder. “That’s what you called S-Delgado-1.”

“Oh, okay.”

“It’s moving away.”

“Oh, so false alarm. We’re good.”

While still staring at him, Sugar reached up and tapped the screen to switch to a different readout. “If we’re sticking with the same naming convention, we might have to name this one S-Delgado-2.”

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Microstory 2376: Vacuus, October 14, 2179

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Dear Condor,

It’s nice to hear from you. I know that you weren’t writing that open letter directly to me, but it felt very personal, even though I’ve never experienced anything like what you did. I’ve heard more about you from Corinthia. I’ve known about your whole situation almost as long as she has. You and I have a lot in common. My grandfather was the Chief Helmsman of the ship that brought us to this planet, and before that, he was a space shuttle pilot, and before that, an airline pilot. I spent a lot of time on the bridge with him at the helm as we were on our way out here. He would tell me stories about all the places that he used to travel to back on Earth. I’m younger than you, so I have never set foot on your world before. I guess that’s what fascinates me so much, because I feel like I have all these somewhat similar personal experiences. I know that they’re not my own, though. I dunno, I suppose I just felt a connection with you that I’m probably making up in my own head. As for clothes, I do like them, but not necessarily any more than anyone else. I gravitated towards this job partially because there was an opening, and partially because I probably have even less of an interest in going outside than Corinthia does. I just want to stay in my little room where it’s safe. My work area doesn’t even have a window, because some of the rooms have to be on the interior sections, and they can’t all be lavatories and closets. My job is really not that hard. It may be more involved than your sister’s on a day-to-day basis, but there’s a whole lot less pressure. If I mess something up, I can usually fix it before anyone else sees it. The truth is that anyone could do this, because the fabricators do most of the work. I don’t even know how to sew by hand all that well. I did learn, but I don’t use those skills at work. I’m mostly there in a supervisory role. The machines aren’t hard to operate, but rather than training everyone who needs clothes, they only worry about making sure that I know them, and I make sure that nothing gets screwed up. It’s pretty low-key. I have some free time, which I typically spend making up new designs. I’m not exceptional at it, but there are no deadlines, so I eventually figure out what it needs to look like. Corinthia has actually tested out a lot of my own clothes for me. She says she likes them, but you never really know, right? She could just be being polite. I did design the outfit that I’m wearing in the attached photo, so you can tell me what you think. Be honest. Cori thinks there’s too much cleavage, but maybe you have a different opinion?

Hugs and kisses,

Velia

PS: I like your outfit too. It fits you well, though I would imagine just about anything does with a body like that. Trust me, I'm a professional.

Microstory 2252: No Dutch! No Dutch!

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Dear Dudes, Dutch. Doy. I asked to fill in for Nick today, instead of Kelly. It’s not that she couldn’t write it for him, but I’ve been a little bored, and I wanted something to do. I don’t know what we’re gonna do tomorrow, because the hospital still won’t want him working, and his website is his job, so I may write the next one too. We’ll just have to wait and see. If you don’t read his socials, then don’t worry, he’s okay. He’s not back here for a medical issue, but because he had his surgeries. They took out his index, and some of his bone marrow. Funny thing about that first thing, when I went to another universe, the scientists who studied me wanted to see if there were any physiological differences between me and them. They did all sorts of tests...consensually, and discovered that everything was the same. We all got ten fingers, one heart, and two butt cheeks. They also mentioned that the appendix was about the same. And I’m, like, “what the hell is an appendix?” That’s what they call the index. Apparently, their ancestors thought that it was a useless organ that doesn’t do anything. Which is strange, because back then, they also thought that a magical God created humans. Why would they think such an omnipotent entity would think to include something so strange and pointless? Anyway, I just remembered that, and thought it was funny.

Welp, I think I have a little extra time, so maybe I’ll spend the rest of it telling you how I got my name. Most people assume that it’s only a nickname, but no, it’s real. Both in this world, and the other one, learning it has made people chuckle, or hold back chuckles. The Dutch are people from Nederland, or the language that they speak. My family is not from Nederland, nor even the area. Here’s the story. When my father was a child, he used to watch this old television program. Of course, as Nick has pointed out, we don’t have much of a library of fiction on this Earth, but this one was scripted, and said to have been pretty good at the time. I can’t remember what it was called, but in the first season, there was a younger brother in the family. They got rid of him in later seasons without an explanation, but he kind of became synonymous with the show anyway. The character was very protective of his toys and other belongings. Whenever anyone would come into his room, or try to do anything with his stuff, he would yell “no touch! No touch!” But he had this sort of babyish accent, and it sounded more like Dutch than touch. My father, being of about the same age as this kid, started imitating what he saw and heard. He’d walk around the house, yelling that catch phrase over and over again, emphasizing a D sound even more than the actor did. My grandmother tells me that it was annoying, but at least he didn’t really understand what the words were supposed to have meant, so he wasn’t actually ever trying to stop people from touching his stuff. Then he grew up, and forgot about all of this. But years later, as an adult, he watched some old home movies, and saw himself yelling that. His own dad was gone, but his mother was still alive, so he asked her about it, and she explained what that was. So my dad, being the jokester that he is, just started doing it again. He’ll periodically yell, “no Dutch! No Dutch!” usually at very inappropriate times. I think you can guess the rest. It became part of his personality, so when he and his future wife had a kid, naming him Dutch just made sense. I get my brains and good looks from my mother, but I got Aderyn ‘No Dutch’ Haines’ sense of humor. I think it’s a pretty good deal.

Microstory 2209: We’re in the Endgame Now

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Might wanna skip this one if you have depression or anxiety issues, because they may be triggered by my words. The doctors have no clue what’s wrong with me, but the signs and symptoms are clear. Long before I started traveling the bulk, I watched my maternal grandfather slowly die of Parkinson’s disease. I don’t actually know if that’s what killed him, but it certainly contributed to it. I’m exhibiting a lot of the same problems that I remember him having. Stiffness, numbing, tremors. You don’t use the same term for it here, but after some conversation, the doctors were able to assure me that their idea of this same disease could be ruled out. It’s something else. That’s neither good nor bad, because it can’t be cured on either world. Neither can whatever it actually is...probably. Based on my rate of decline, and their lack of understanding, they don’t see any reason why I would improve. It’s likely going to keep getting worse until I become nothing more than a shell of my former self. Death is almost certain to follow. It will be slow, painful, and extremely frustrating. So far, the mental component hasn’t been too bad, but it has still been an issue. I’ve forgotten things, and I’ve been snapping at people, even before I went into the hospital. I’ve asked them to keep me alive at just about all costs, but at some point—probably rather soon—you won’t be hearing from me anymore. I won’t be able to think, let alone type or talk. We’re in the endgame now.

Microstory 2176: And Young

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The thing about the way that I’ve developed my website is that I can sometimes get trapped in my own format. When I started out, I wanted to do really short stories on weekdays, and my permanent story on one day of the weekend. I didn’t know what I was going to do with the other day of the weekend, and I didn’t know how canonical I was going to get with the whole thing. It’s the numbers that make the decisions for me. The numbers dictate all. Once I started doing continuous microfiction stories, I decided that I liked to block them out in batches of 100, but there are roughly 260 weekdays every year, and I don’t like to cross the December 31 border, so I can’t always do the 100 installment thing. I end up with remainders, and the value of each remainder often determines what that shorter series is all about. The reason I wrote exactly fourteen sonnets in 2022 is because I had a remainder of fifteen, and could use one of them for an intro. If the remainder had instead been, say, nineteen, I doubt I would have ever thought to do them. I actually decided to change everything up this year by shifting to a regular blog format, hoping that I would have an interesting enough life for that to make sense. As 2024 approached, and I realized that it wasn’t the right call, I had to alter the plan into a fake blog format. That’s what we’ve been doing every weekday since January 1. And like all series here, I don’t get much of a chance to do something different when the situation arises. But it does sometimes arise, and I occasionally have to briefly put my ideas on hold in order to detour to something else. Something important.

I was running a series in 2020 set in another universe. Each installment was told from the perspective of a different fictional character. But then my grandfather died in real life, and I wanted to say something about him. I wanted to get real with my site, so I hit pause on Reactions, and shared my true thoughts. I’m spending a lot of time explaining myself, but I think it’s important for you to understand what a big deal it is for me to deviate from the structure that I’ve limited myself to. The last time I did it was when I lost a dear loved one. Yeah, I do it during introductions too, but those are strongly dependent upon the forthcoming series. These are true shifts, and come from the real me, rather than the fictional version of me. Though, it was fitting back then, since Reactions was about death, and fitting now for other reasons. Last month, my alternate self was pressured into eating meat, even though he was a vegetarian. I was the one who gave him that diet in the first place, even though I hadn’t mentioned it before when he was first introduced, and that’s because I had become a vegetarian myself since then. I’ve struggled with the idea of harming the environment, and killing animals since I was a child. I just didn’t think that I could get all of my nutrition if I cut out meat, and as it turned out, I was spot on. I’ve struggled with my health and weight since college. I used to be able to eat whatever I wanted, and still be quite thin, because I was unwittingly super active. And young. As I’ve aged, it’s become harder and harder to match my calorie intake with activity, and if anyone told me that that would happen, I didn’t listen to them. One thing I didn’t think that much about was that most junk food is vegetarian. Sure, I can have an entire pizza, just don’t put pepperoni or sausage on it. Ice cream? Of course! Pastries, chocolate, all the cheese in the world? No problem. Just don’t give me any meat, because animals died to make it, and I don’t like that. In addition to how much you can eat as a vegetarian before you feel full, you have to eat so much to get the comparable protein. So it was really easy to justify the binging regardless of what the food actually was. I have come to the profoundly difficult decision to press pause on my vegetarian diet recently. I’m going to focus on lowering my caloric intake, and erasing my reliance on comfort food that doesn’t do anything for me except make me feel full, and add fat to my belly. It won’t be forever. I just have to get down to my goal, then I know I can start maintaining. I was so close before, I’m certain that I can get there and stay as long as I stop resorting to garbage. Then I’ll go back to where I want to be, for the environment, and for the animals. I just hope this months-long detour doesn’t end up giving me some terminal disease, or something. That would be ironic, wouldn’t it? Oh wait, careful...spoilers. That’s it for me. Nick Fisherman IV will be back tomorrow.

Microstory 2037: Florida

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So like I said, my fathers had two houses here in Plymouth. They had to move to the second one so they could take care of a child, which ended up being me. As they were just finishing up moving all the way into the second one, though, they got a call from papa’s mother. It was about my grandpa, who I never met. And that’s because he died that day. My papa was the first person she called about it, and then she called my Aunt Cooper. And then my Aunt Cooper called my papa so they could talk about it too. They cried about it together, because they loved my grandpa. They tell me that he was a great, hard-working man. I wish I could have known him. I was alive already, but my fathers had not adopted me yet. When he and my grandma were both finally retired, they left Idaho, and moved all the way down to Florida. A lot of people like to retire there, because it’s sunny all the time, and really pretty. They lived in a building called unassisted living, because they had trouble moving around too much, but they still didn’t need a nurse to take care of them all the time. My papa had actually visited a couple times since they moved there. He had even helped them move in, but I decided to talk about Florida on this slide, instead of earlier, because this is when my papa went down to go to his father’s funeral. It was really sad, and I’m kind of glad I at least wasn’t there for that part. Only a few of grandpa’s friends were able to make it, because a lot of them were already dead, and some of them weren’t able to travel. Some of them lived in Florida too, though.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 1, 2399

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Winona needs some company to deal with all the testosterone in the air from Mithridates Preston and Hamilton Burr, but that’s not the only reason that Leona wanted to contact Dilara Cassano. The cane that Dalton Hawk was using, and which he gave to Alyssa before she lost it, was named for her. Leona isn’t sure if Dilara made it herself, or if someone like Holly Blue or Weaver made it for her, but it is based off of her power, and utilizes a gigantic synthetic diamond that Leona procured for her a long time ago in another timeline. They may require Dilara’s help with Dalton in the coming days, so it’s time to bring her back into the fold. Until then, there doesn’t seem to be much for anyone to do. The task force teams are in place, and awaiting Leona’s orders, but she doesn’t have any orders to give, because she doesn’t know the specifics of what they’re going to do. Trina said that the Keys and Keyholders would reveal themselves soon, but they still haven’t gotten a solid date on this whole Reconvergence thing.

For now, Aldona is the only one with a job to do. If Ramses were around, Leona would ask him to reverse engineer the inter-reality TV that Mithri let her take from the Fifth Division. Without him, Aldona is their best bet for on-the-fly inventions. Leona herself is smart and well educated, but she’s not an inventor. She understands how to use technology, and she loves to tinker with stuff that already exists, but she was never all that great at making something from scratch. In a day, Aldona is done. The Fourth Quadrant had all of the raw materials that she needed to make enough communication devices for everyone, and the potential to make more.

Leona is distributing them now, and teaching the teams how to work them. They look like the Farnsworth communicators from Warehouse 13, which Aldona may have been subconsciously inspired by. She doesn’t have time to figure out the network protocols, so each reality has one phone number, which everyone in that reality shares. If multiple people in one reality answer their devices when they receive a call, the video and audio will be mashed together in a confusing and incoherent mess. That’s why she had to include a sort of ultra-advanced squelching knob that will focus the signal between only two devices. Perhaps with a little time, she could modify them to handle full three-way communication, but again, they don’t know how long they have before the event goes down. Trina and Cheyenne should have reached out to them sooner.

Leona is in the main sequence now. Mateo nods, grasping the basics, and obviously not worried about it. “Do you know what day it is?” he asks her.

“Thursday,” she answers, though she knows why he’s bringing it up.

“Yes, but...”

“Mateo, I’m a time traveler. This may technically be 399 years since I was born, but I’m not 399 years old, and I’ve not experienced any significant interval of time since then. In fact, I don’t even know how old I am.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he replies with a slow shake of his head. “It’s your birthday, so we’re celebrating it.”

“You can’t make me.” She threatens him with her reality-jumping dial.

“You would abandon me on this, the day of your birth?”

“Mateo...”

“Come,” he insists. “Let us eat cake.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 13, 2399

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Labhrás moved Leona and Tarboda to a much nicer room, with cots to sleep on, clean running water, and control over the lights. They also allowed them to have a shower, and eat some real food, instead of this reality’s version of hard tack. The door was still locked, but he promised to let Tarboda go at the right time so as to avoid any run-ins with the authorities. The exchange was on, so they all had to get a good night’s rest. It was hard to tell when it was bedtime since Leona had yet to see a window, so they just turned in when they felt tired.

It’s the morning, and Tarboda is gone. Leona is at the exchange with her future grandfather, the two smelly brothers, and a few other goons. Or maybe they’re henchmen. There’s a difference, apparently, and they would probably be offended by being called the wrong one. Labhrás altered the conditions a little bit. Leona is in chains, and she is wearing a hood, but the shackles were bought at a magic shop, so they only appear to be locked, and the hood is see-through. They still want to make it look real while Leona finds out who’s really after her, and why. They’re standing on the docks, which is a truly unique locale for a ransom exchange. Really, no one has ever thought of that before. Why don’t criminals meet at the docks more often?

Leona still doesn’t know where she is. It’s cool, which implies they’re still in the northern hemisphere, and she can taste the salt in the air, so the body of water to her left is an ocean, rather than a lake. That tells her that she’s not in a landlocked region, which rules out places like Kansas. She never thought they were in Kansas, but it would have been nice. As far as she’s aware, her grandparents emigrated out of Ireland, and went straight to Topeka, so it wouldn’t have been the craziest of developments. Then again, they’re in a completely different reality now. Labhrás has probably never even heard of Topeka, and maybe not even Kansas City. None of that has happened yet, and all this timey-wimey stuff is weird and complicated, so maybe it never will. Maybe everything they’re doing now will negate her existence, kind of like what Mateo did to himself when he killed Adolf Hitler, but worse because it would happen in every timeline for her, and she wouldn’t even have the satisfaction of killing Hitler.

“Are ya still with us?” Labhrás asks.

Even with this hood on, he could tell that Leona was stuck in her head. “I’m fine. What time is it?”

“Half past they’re feckin’ late,” he answers. “Pardon my English, Madam.” Hm. What is England to him?

“Doesn’t bother me. That’s not even a real word,” she jokes.

The smellier brother waits for a solid minute before responding with, “yes, it is.”

We don’t wait much longer before a well-dressed man carrying a cane shows up. He’s kempt and confident, and does not seem embarrassed by his tardiness. Leona doesn’t recognize him. Now that doesn’t mean he’s not the one who put a price on her head, but she’s still getting the impression that the true force behind this mess is still living incognito. This guy’s just a lackey. “My name is Connell Arrington,” he announces. British accent; British name. Where are these people from? Happy cliché day, anyway.

“You don’t look like you’re carrying very much money on you?” Labhrás notes.

“Everything is electronic these days, my dear.”

“That’s not what we agreed on. We want untraceable bills.”

“Impossible. You’ll take what you can get, or you’ll get nothing.”

Labhrás just fumes.

Connell goes on, “you identified yourselves as the Bounty Hunters of the Old World. As a result, we are unaware of your specific designation. What is your name?”

“Labhrás Delaney.”

Connell’s eye twitches. He looks over at Leona. “You would give up your own kin for a bit of cash?”

Labhrás looks over at Leona as well. “We are not related.”

Connell twitches again. “You expect me to believe it to be a coincidence that you are both named Delaney?”

“Her name is Leona Matic,” Labhrás tries to clarify.

“Pull the hood off, please,” Connell requests.

Smelly Goon One does so without waiting for Labhrás’ go-ahead.

“Did you not tell him your unmarried name?” Connell asks Leona.

“Do we know each other?” Leona asks, undeftly changing the subject.

“You and I have never met,” Connell begins. “Neither have you and the man I work for. Yet you have wronged us both, and we are here to collect on your sins.”

Leona narrows her eyes at him. “Which sins?”

“All of them,” Connell replies.

“Who are you to make me answer for all of them?”

“We are...in a great position to do so. That is what gives us the right.”

“How are we related?” Labhrás questions, frustrated at the tangent.

She’s been avoiding eye contact, but that’s no longer viable. “It’s complicated.”

“Is it?” Connell asks. Then he has a realization. “Ah, I see. Who is he, then; your son? Great great great great great grandson?”

Labhrás is super confused now.

“You’re my grandfather,” Leona corrects while continuing to look at Labhrás.

“How is that possible? You may be older than me!”

“Time travel, old chap!” Connell says jovially. “She’s from the future.”

“I’m not from the future,” Leona contends. “You are. I don’t know why you go back in time, or how you do it, but it has to happen, or I never exist.”

“Is that all it would take?” Connell asks. “I believe we’ve found our solution.” He twists the handgrip of his cane, and pulls out a gun, instead of the usual sword. He shoots Labhrás in the chest, and then ducks away to avoid gunfire from the henchmen.

Leona catches Labhrás as he’s falling to his back, already coughing up blood. She removes her shackles, and tries to apply pressure to the wound, but he’s not going to make it. “I’m sorry. I would have told you if I thought that this might happen.”

“I’m sorry,” he struggles to say. “Ta...Ta...”

“Thanks? Are you trying to say thanks?”

He shakes his head. “Tarboda. Tarboda is dead.”

Leona’s face falls. Tarboda was not a great friend, but he could have been one day, and he did nothing to deserve that. “You’re no grandfather of mine.” Connell is still in a firefight with the rest of Labhrás’ people. She stands up, and ignores the flying bullets. She walks across no man’s land, and approaches him.

“I thought you would disappear before our very eyes,” he says to her.

“That’s not how it works, you bleedin’ eejit. Now take me to your boss.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 12, 2399

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Leona tried to escape the boiler room two nights ago. Tarboda thought that she was going to remove the chain from her ankle with the wrench, but instead she started banging on the pipes with it, and making a whole ruckus. When the eejit goon came in to see what all the fuss was about, she hit him over the head with it, and stole his keys. She was about to free Tarboda too when she thought better of it. She was in uncharted territory here. The chances that she would actually succeed in escaping were extremely low. They were almost as low as the number of friends she has left. They may try to use Tarboda against her if they think she gives a crap about him, and they may not if they think she doesn’t. He cursed at her as she was running out of the room, but also gave her a wink at the last second, so he understood. Perhaps he can be added to that friend list.

As she suspected, she didn’t make it far at all. The boiler room was one section of a basement with seemingly only one way out. That door at the top of the stairs was locked, and the goon was never given that key. By the time she was able to pick it, his brother was upon her. She didn’t see much of the ground floor, but it looked like the start of a maze. Not a window in sight. But that was okay, because getting out was never the plan. She wanted them to place her in more danger, and activate the fear center of her brain, which would have alerted psychic Kivi to her location. It might have worked too, but only if she were a different person, and the people she was trying to escape were also different. She knew that she was never in any real danger, which is why she couldn’t have just created the fear on her own, and her abductors knew it too.

To her surprise, the goons made no attempt to scare her. They weren’t rough with her, they didn’t yell at her. They did nothing to generate the appropriate psychic signal. They calmly escorted her back to the boiler room and chained her up again. They didn’t even move her to a different pipe. They took the wrench away, and took a cursory glance around to make sure there weren’t any more weapons, but that’s it. It just wasn’t enough. Leona’s escape attempt wasn’t enough to concern them. They felt no compulsion to react, and even if they did, she probably wouldn’t react much worse either, because she has had too much combat training. So she has to be scared for real, which means that she can’t know when—or, really, even that—it’s coming, and when it does come, she can’t let herself decide that everything’s going to be okay since Kivi will rescue her as a result. That’s impossible! She thought she had it figured out, but she was being naïve.

The boss man walks into the room. “I heard we had a bit of trouble.” His accent is still there, but it’s toned down a little. Is he faking?

“That’s what you get with me. I’m trouble, with a capital T, which rhymes with P, and that stands for pool!”

He’s the kind of guy who’s smiling all the time, probably even when he’s pissed off, but he cracks it wider. “Stands for pool,” he echoes. “I like that. I’m gonna use it. The Chinese are movin’ in on some of our territories with drugs hidden in pool tables.”

“Have fun, I’ll probably be making my upteenth escape.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he says. “In fact, you’ll have one more opportunity. We were meant to move ya to the exchange, but something went wrong on the other end.”

“Don’t you hate it when the murderers who paid you to kidnap someone they want to murder can’t get their shit together?”

“You didn’t hear?” he asks. “The bounty’s changed. You’re no longer wanted dead or alive. They’ll only accept you alive.”

“What would be your guess as to why?” Leona questions.

“I would assume there’s somethin’ you can do or tell ‘em that only you can do or tell ‘em.”

Leona doesn’t know what to think of that. Her guess the whole time was that the bounty was only ever on her head because she was forced to kill that asshole TV pundit. But the bounty doesn’t actually say anything about motive. That’s just when it came about, so that’s the connection she made. As far as most people know, she doesn’t know anything that could help them. She’s just the jerk who took their precious demigod away. Maybe it never had anything to do with that. Maybe someone just recognized her on the screen, and knows who she is for other reasons. The talk show could have gone swimmingly, and she still would have ended up in this situation. Or maybe she’s still wrong, because she has no idea what’s going on, who wanted her dead, or why they don’t want that anymore.

“I can see yu have some tinkin’ to do. I’ll leave ya to it. Big day tomorra.” He turns to leave while she’s still lost in her head.

“I have a list,” she says, stopping him.

He’s curious. “A list of what?”

“Of friends, enemies, friends who’ve become enemies, enemies who’ve become friends.”

“Which column am I in?” he asks.

She waits to reply. “That’s for you to decide. I can’t do it for you.”

“What happens to the enemies who never become friends?” he presses.

“You can’t ask them. You can’t ask them anything. You think that guy I killed on TV was my first? Technically, I’ve been responsible for the deaths of billions. No, don’t look over at the pilot, he doesn’t know. He’s just in the fifth, neutral column of my list.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Why do you think?”

“I think you remembered that I offered you a job. Are you finally ready to talk about it?”

“I’ll do whatever you need, as long as it doesn’t involve killin’ someone I don’t want killed, or causing harm to the poor, helpless, or disenfranchised.”

“In return, you want me to call off the exchange?”

Leona chuckles. “No, I want the meet to move forward, but I don’t want to be hooded and chained when it does.”

He sighs. “I think that can be arranged. Anything else?”

“Let him go.” She nods over to Tarboda.

“Can’t be done. He’ll tell someone where we are.”

“Then let’s don’t be here when he does,” she reasons.

He closes his eyes for a few seconds to think. “Very well, bonnie.”

“Before you go again, what’s your name?”

“Labhrás Delaney. May our business be fruitful and prosperous.” He tips his hat and leaves.

Tarboda looks over at her once he’s gone. “Are you two related?”

She’s still in shock. “He’s my grandfather.”

Microstory 1866: Garden Path

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My family had more than enough money to afford college, but I refused to go, because I already knew what I wanted to do with my life, and four years of studying math and history weren’t going to do me any good. My parents were disappointed, but they understood. They worked long hours to earn that money, so my father’s parents chose to move closer to us so I could go over there after school every day. My grandmother would read me classic books while I was curled up in a plastic storage bin, and my grandfather would teach me things he thought every growing child should know, like how to hold a baseball like a pitcher. But we all three worked in that garden together. It was so beautiful that neighbors would ask them to landscape their yards for them. They were both retired, and appreciated the opportunities to do something productive with their lives. They didn’t start a real business, but I knew that it could become that one day, and that I would be responsible for it. By the time I graduated from high school, they were too old to be on their hands and knees all the time, so I took on the clients alone, and started charging money for my services. I kept getting more and more requests, and before I knew it, I had to hire some help to get everything done. In only a few years, I had an office clerk, an accountant, and two separate crews so we could serve two homes at the same time. I was making a real name for myself in the industry; so big, in fact, that I risked not being able to do what I loved, because I ended up with so many administrative duties. That was when a new opportunity knocked in my door.

A wealthy man who had already founded and sold off two companies had decided to break ground on the headquarters for a new organization right here in my community. Back then, before the internet, it was hard to determine who was a good guy, and who was bad, but I couldn’t find any skeletons in his closet. He asked me to design the landscaping for the building. He didn’t like the idea of anyone working in an office setting without windows, so there would be no cubicles, and no interior rooms, except for bathrooms, and storage closets. If it had a desk in it, it also had a view. To maximize the space, it was built with four separate courtyards that weren’t even all at the same height. So I guess some people would be working without windows, but for good reason. It was a company that shot commercials for other companies, so the soundstage had to be big, and soundproof. Anyway, that doesn’t matter. The point is the courtyards. The landscaping had to be gorgeous and extravagant, because hundreds of people were going to be looking at it, and living in it, every day. It was a huge project. I wasn’t sure I could handle it. I certainly wouldn’t have any time to plant any trees myself, which is what I always loved. Still, it was good money, so I had to take it. Once it was complete, the founder was so impressed that he essentially donated his nephew to me. The nephew wanted to be a businessman, but he didn’t want to work directly for a family member. He seemed perfect. He could handle all the boring stuff, and I could return to what I did best. It went well for the next few years until he pushed me out using some legal maneuvering that I still don’t understand. His uncle was horrified, but he said there was nothing that either of us could do. Except that wasn’t true. I started a new company from the ground up, using my good name to accumulate clients, and before I knew it, I was bigger than the nephew ever hoped to achieve.

Microstory 1864: That’s It

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Here’s a story for ya. You can either choose to believe it or not, but I’m telling you, it happened, and it happened to me. My father and his father did not have a good relationship. According to what little my mother was able to relay to me, they fought all the time when he was young, and then they just stopped talking completely. I don’t know what they were so angry at each other over, but whatever it was, it’s the reason I never met my grandfather. When he died, he left no one to go to his funeral, let alone plan it. I decided to take up the responsibility of putting him to rest. Because hey, if my dad wouldn’t tell me what the guy did that was so wrong, he couldn’t expect me to hate him as much as he did. Four hundred bucks gets you a bag of your loved one’s ashes, and that’s pretty much it. I didn’t hold a service, and I didn’t buy a fancy urn. I just kept it in the cardboard box that the guy at the morgue went out of his way to tell me was included free of charge, and walked away with the rest of his personal effects. And when I say effects, I really just mean the one thing. Besides his pajamas—which he died in, and I didn’t want back—the only possession he had was a key around his neck. Per the paperwork, he lived only a few blocks from my childhood home, which makes the whole thing even sadder. I took that key, drove to my grandfather’s house, and unlocked the door. The place was immaculate. No dust, no dirt, no smudges on the windows. It looked like it had just been cleaned, but it couldn’t have, because it was missing the smell of cleaning chemicals. Oh, and everything else. Like the man himself, the only thing in the house was a key, hanging from the chain for the entryway light. I tried it on every interior door, but it didn’t work anywhere. It didn’t even fit. I had to investigate, which was harder back then, because my phone couldn’t magically spit out information about it just by taking a picture, like my grandson’s does. He showed me that once.

I went to three locksmiths until one happened to recognize it. It belonged to a storage facility on the edge of town. Most facilities require that the renter use their own lock, but this particular location prided itself in excellent security. Their keys couldn’t be copied, and you couldn’t use it unless you were already on the list of people allowed to access the unit. Still, I figured I might as well go check it out in case they made an exception. They didn’t have to. Their records showed that I was on the list, as was my grandfather, and nobody else. He left this all for me. Whatever was in there, it must have been pretty special. Was it a pristine collection of rare figurines worth millions? Did he just leave me a chest of actual millions? Could it be a creepy, ominous freezer, inside of which was the dead body of his archnemesis? I just kept thinking of all the amazing things that could be waiting for me, and nothing was even close to what I ended up finding when I opened that roll up door. Was this it? I was about to run back to the office to ask for a flashlight, but the guy who signed me in had followed me, and had one at the ready. I switched it on, and shined it all over the unit. “Any secret entrances?” I asked. No, this was it. Both of the neighboring units were recently emptied, in between renters. This. Was. It. On the floor in the center of the unit was a key, like someone had dropped it without noticing. But it wasn’t just any key. It was the key to my parents’ house. It looked exactly like the one on my keychain. All that anticipation just to learn that my mom had given him access to our house in case of emergency, and he had never used it. That’s it.

Microstory 1842: A Human Being Dies

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I used to wish I were a hero. When I was a very young girl, my grandfather took me to the town square. When I say he took me, I mean he stopped by the butcher shop, and let me run off on my own to throw a coin in the fountain. That was pretty normal back then, letting a child go somewhere alone. They knew about bad guys with bad ideas, but it just hadn’t happened often enough to warrant constant monitoring. Have you seen the kids with actual leashes? I mean, there’s being protective, and then there’s whatever that is. I guess I don’t really know their situation. Those kids could have developmental issues that make it impossible to teach them to stay close. Anyway, there I was at the fountain. I remember feeling like there were a lot of people going about their business, or enjoying the park, but when I think back to that day, I think I was completely alone. I must have been, right? Otherwise, someone would have helped me. I threw the coin in the water, closed my eyes, and wished to be a superhero. Thinking that not only would it work, but that it would work immediately, I turned around and began to run. I didn’t even get the chance to jump up and try to fly. I tripped on something pretty quickly, and slammed my face against the cement. I could feel the blood all over me, and the most excruciating pain I ever experienced—before then, and until today. I lay there like that for a moment before flipping over, and getting to my back, which provided just a little bit of relief. I looked up and watched the birds flying overhead, completely oblivious to the fact that a human was in mortal danger down here, and not even trying to teach me how to do what they do. I don’t know how long I was there before my grandfather ran over and scooped me up. “Don’t tell your mother,” he said to me. “We’ll get you cleaned up, and you’ll be okay.” I was indeed okay. But I was changed. I no longer hoped to be any kind of hero. Fact: heroes don’t fall on their faces. Even if they do, they always get up on their own.

That was decades ago, and now I kind of look at it as my origin story. That’s just another delusion, though, and I know that. I’m no hero, I’m just a regular person who saw people in trouble, and felt compelled to help. People do that, and that’s a lesson I learned over the years, though I wasn’t exactly conscious of it; I’m just realizing it in my final moments. Heroes don’t really exist, and they don’t need to. If you see a man get hit by a car while you’re walking to work, you stop and call for emergency services. Our species is ruthless, but we’re also compassionate and cooperative. We would not have survived this long without the instinct to help others. I didn’t think very hard when I saw the bricks fly out of the building they once formed like water from the tap. I didn’t know what it was, and still don’t; perhaps a missile of some kind. The war is supposed to be over, but some just can’t let go. It doesn’t matter why it started falling apart, just that there were innocent lives at stake, and I happened to be walking by. I ran in, and ran up the stairs. I started going through every room, clearing everyone out, and searching for anyone incapable of escaping on their own. I wasn’t the only one, I can tell you that. I saw a few others from the street who had the same idea, and I bet there were more. Fathers escorted sons through windows. Neighbors lifted debris off of neighbors. Everyone who could help was helping. Because that is what we do. When one of us hurts, we’re all worse off for it. No, I don’t die here under this rubble as a hero. I die as a human being capable of empathy, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Microstory 1715: Little Dog

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They call me Little Dog. My mom says my grandpa was Big Dog, or maybe his grandpa? Or maybe his grandpa’s grandpa’s grandpa’s grandpa’s grandpa? I can’t remember it. It’s not my real name, that would be silly. I am this many years old tomorrow, and I’m so excited. They tell me I’m going to be getting a table for my birthday. They seem pretty happy about it. I guess grownups all have their own table, and when you get your own, it means you’re one of them. I don’t know if I’m old enough to use my own table, but I see my mommy and daddy using them all the time. They tap, tap, tap on it, and pretty pictures come up on the top of it. I hear them arguing with each other about whether I’m allowed to have a style to go with it. I don’t really care what style it is, as long as it works. My big sister has a table, but she doesn’t have my name anymore. When I’m old enough, our parents will have another brother and sister, and he’ll be named Little Dog instead of me. That’s what my sister says she used to be called. I don’t want to not be the Little Dog anymore. I mean I don’t want someone else to have my name. I like being a Little Dog. I like to crawl on the floor and bark at people. They seem to think that it’s cute, but if I stop being the dog then I won’t be able to do it anymore. My dad doesn’t get to see my dog game very much anymore because he always works in the big office. They sometimes take me to see everyone, and all the people in the blue jackets seem to think I’m pretty cool. Okay, bye!

Microstory 1714: Big Dog Ballpoint Pens

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My great great grandfather started this company. The year was 1904, and he was extremely ahead of his time. You may have heard that the first ballpoint pens were sold in the middle of the century, but that is not true. That is just when they became popular, and started on the road to ubiquity. My ancestor was the first to break into the industry after they were invented. He knew that there was something to this new technology. Big Dog was his nickname in the army, on account of how good he was at sniffing out the enemy. He mostly sold to construction companies who wanted to mark the wood they were cutting with something other than pencil, and to left-handed note-takers who were tired of the ink and lead smudging on their hands. Yes, sir, he was a pioneer, and I admire him for that. I never knew the man, but I know what he stood for. He was simple, and easy to please. He never wanted to be the biggest writing utensil company in the world, which is why he never thought to branch out into other instruments, nor did his descendants. We do ballpoints, and we only do ballpoints. Our design has become more sophisticated over time, and we’re on the verge of launching the next generation in our popular funtime series, which features characters from a certain children’s TV show that all you parents out there are familiar with. Still. It’s just ballpoint pens. We don’t make other kinds of pens, or pencils. We don’t sell paper to go along with it, or even pen cases. A single product with multiple series to appeal to an array of customers. My grandfather was adamant about that—I remember—rest in peace. He wanted to keep the tradition, and while I’m no one to scoff at tradition, I also know a business opportunity when I see one. We’re a household name now, and we should start thinking bigger.

When my dad retired two years ago, he gave me one single mandate. He said, “son, this company is yours now. I expect you to treat her as well as your predecessors always did.” Well, that’s what I plan on doing, and I don’t think adding new products interferes with, or contradicts, that mandate. He might have meant to say that I wasn’t allowed to change anything, but that’s not what he said, and that’s not what I’m going to do. It’s the 21st century now, and pens...aren’t as big as they used to be. They’re still great, but kids these days are always on their little devices. It’s time that we get into the little devices business. Introducing the Big Dog Augmented Reality Stylus. Unlike my great great grandfather, we’re not the first to make this product, but we believe we’re the best. With our free phone app, you can view any virtual writing in any space, whether you were the one who first created it, or not. With the handy writing board, you can write or draw in whatever position is most comfortable, and then drag—or even throw—the content over to some other point in space. With our view glasses, you can draw and view the content without even using your hands. We’ve been developing these products for two years now, and we’re just about ready to release them. I know, that sounds insane. How does a ballpoint pen company suddenly pivot to AR? Well, the truth is that I’ve been working on this my whole life. I have a bachelor’s degree in graphic design, and a masters in computer engineering. I also studied art in high school, so I know what creative people want. This is where the future of technology is headed, and we’re ready for it. Believe it or not, the first models are finished and tested. Right now, we’re looking for investors to work with us on distribution and advertising. So wadya say? Who’s in?