Microstory 2297: Found a Happy Medium

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Yesterday, I announced that the Kansas City Metro’s response to Nick and Dutch’s passing would be a sort of forum where people could come up on stage, and say whatever they were feeling. I didn’t get into the details before, but everyone who asked to do this was going to have to submit an application at least the day prior, explaining what they were going to say. Then, while each speaker was up at the mic, the next one would be experiencing a screening process to make sure that they weren’t planning on doing something inappropriate, like a striptease, or a racist rant. Of course, they could always lie and switch it up once they got their turn, but we believed that we could have made it work. Sadly, most people online did not take to this idea. They thought it was stupid, dangerous, or just totally irrelevant. We hear you, and we see you, so we’ve changed our plans. We’re not going to be doing that, but we’re not going to be doing nothing either. We’ve found a happy medium. The two of them touched many people’s lives while they were on Earth, and their positive impact could be felt everywhere. We are in the process of contacting everyone that they knew while they were here. It is only they who will be speaking at the event. I appreciate all of you speaking out for your truth, and clearing a path for a better concept than we originally had. This has not set our schedule back. We will still be holding the event on Saturday, the 21st. We’re not yet sure where it’s going to be, though. A sports stadium would have a lot of room, but both of them hated sports, so we are sure that we want to do that. Y’all are good at giving advice. Where do you think we should hold it?

Microstory 2288: Lets Me Skip the Line

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I’ve made some decisions about what I’m going to focus my pursuits on moving forward. I’m still writing. In fact, I’m going harder than ever. But instead of trying to develop two different books at once, I’ve opted to combine them into one. I think I’ve told you how much I hate biographies, especially the auto kind, or memoirs; whatever the difference may be. Don’t @ me, I don’t care. The more I researched how to write an autobiography, the more I hated them, which I didn’t think was possible. They’re so boring. Here’s how they all go: this happened, then that happened, and before this other thing happened, some different thing occurred, and after all of that, we get to the part where something else went down. I can’t stand it, how can anyone? Biopics are okay. You can tell it nonlinearly, if you need to, without it being confusing, and the visuals can accent some of the more boring bits, as can montages. I know you have a lot of those in the world. I can’t watch them, because I’m not familiar with your world’s history, but whatever. The point is I’m not doing any of that. I’m going to tell my story, but in a fictional setting. Not only will names be changed to protect the innocent, but it will be framed as a narrative story, rather than just an overblown sequence of events. I’ll be taking liberties with some plot points, so don’t think that you’ll end up knowing everything about me if you ever get to read it one day, but I hope you find it interesting. It’s actually going pretty fast. Back when I was writing purely fictional stories, I had to start from scratch, and come up with the whole thing myself. Having a basis of my own life really lets me skip the line, and just type it up. Honestly, as long as I keep going at this pace, I should be finished with the first draft by the end of next week. Then I’ll probably revise it, then I’ll rewrite it, then I’ll revise that, and then I’ll send it to an editor. Boom, just wrote a mini-autobiography for you, except it’s about the future. I hope you enjoyed it. Anyway, I still need a title. I’m leaning toward finding an idiom with the word bulk in it, like Bulk Billing. But not that, because that sounds stupid. What do you think?

Microstory 2283: Is How it Goes

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I’m sorry to disappoint you, folks but there’s nothing special to report in regards to my sleep study. Why am I sleeping poorly, besides the pain that I’m still in? Stress, mostly. Stress and anxiety. We were pretty sure that that was the issue, but we tested for it in case it was something weird. They took a lot of blood and other samples, though, and there’s nothing out of the ordinary. I’ve always had problems sleeping. When I was a kid, people would tell me that you need eight hours of sleep per night, so I would ask whether that meant we need six hours total, accounting for the two hours it takes to fall asleep, or if I need to give myself a ten hour window. They had no clue what I was talking about. It was taking them ten or twenty minutes to fall asleep. That’s when I realized that I hated people. Not really, lol, but...kind of. I apologize that I’m giving you such an unexciting explanation, because my readers may tune out because of it, but this is how it goes, and it should be for now. Maybe it’s not great for engagement, but that’s what we want. I prefer it to be boring, after all that I’ve been through this year. Stress, I can handle. I have been dealing with it my whole life, even as a child. I’m sure I’ll start to sleep better now. Speaking of which, let’s go test that out now. Goodnight, everybody!

Microstory 2099: That Slacking Pays Off

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Like I said in the last post, I moved around a lot as a kid, as well as into adulthood, and it had an effect on my schooling. For kindergarten, my parents sent me to a hospital academy in Springfield, Missouri. They had some sort of connection to someone there, but as I was so young, I don’t know much about what it was all about, nor whether it was any better than a regular public school. I ended up moving on to that public school the next year, though, for first and second grade. We moved to Lawrence, Kansas before third grade, so I attended a school where we would walk through a tunnel underneath the street, which is not all that common in Kansas, since we tend to have more space. We moved to Overland Park a year later, so I switched schools yet again. Then for fifth grade, they built a brand new school in the district, and I was zoned there, while most of my peers were not. Notice how I said peers instead of friends. The last person I could confidently call my friend was in Springfield, and he grew up to become a republican, so that relationship was doomed to fail eventually. Anyway, most of the kids in my fifth grade class went to the middle school right next to it, but they rezoned the district again, and I ended up going to the middle school that was generally fed into from the elementary school that I went to for fourth grade, which placed me back with all the kids I thought I would never see again, and in many cases, hoped I wouldn’t. Funny enough, three years later, they built a brand new high school, and most of the kids from my middle school didn’t go there with me. I actually think we technically lived closer to the older high school, but somebody was apparently gerrymandering the school district. I guess it can happen in all levels of government, eh?

After I graduated from grade school, I took a gap year. I didn’t call it that; I doubt I even knew that that was a thing that some people did. My parents didn’t think that I was ready for college, and they were probably right. We didn’t know at the time that I had a diagnosable learning disability, which led to a lack of skills in maturity and socialization, which teachers don’t get paid enough to focus on, especially not since their funding is often dependent upon their students’ standardized test performance. Instead of continuing my education right away, I flew to California, where I volunteered on a farm. The greater organization provided livestock to developing regions of the world, and this particular location was designed to promote awareness of their mission, and educate visitors. My autism bit me in the ass when I was having trouble getting along with the other volunteers, so they kicked me out. I won’t tell you what the organization is called, but they made up these lies about how lazy I was, and how I didn’t do any work, which anyone could see were lies, because they kept changing their reasons. So they’re assholes, and I hate them. I’m the type to hold a grudge, and the only reason I don’t hold more of them is because I have a terrible memory. But I remember this traumatic experience. I’ll never forget how they treated me, and I’ll never support them again. It turned out to be a blessing, though, because Hurricane Katrina destroyed the gulf states soon thereafter, and I decided to take classes with the American Red Cross, and fly down there right away. That’s why I’ve been to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. I went home after one round, developed my first staph infection, got it cleared up, and then went back, this time being assigned to Florida, so I finished out the southern row.

After that second stint with the Red Cross was done, I enrolled at my junior college for a few classes, only one of which ultimately transferred properly to my four-year school, which I started the following summer. It’s annoying, really. When you do the math, I am quite certain that I could have graduated from college in three years, extremely plausibly in two. I kept taking summer classes, and took a full load for each term, plus I failed out an entire semester, plus several other classes after that. If everything had gone well, I’m really sure it could have taken me less than three years, I just had too many credits when considering how much I had from dual enrollment during my high school career. I failed too many courses, yet still made it in four years, for that not to be true. If I could go back in time, I would have graduated by the time I turned 21, I’m sure of it. In the real timeline, I graduated in 2010 with a degree in Linguistics, barely eking by with the minimal requirements. For the final semester, I was taking a geography class, because I thought it would be fun, but it turned out to be too technical, so I dropped it, and switched what I thought would be an extra linguistics credit. I literally signed the paper on the very last day allowed, and had to take a test with everyone else on my first day of the new class. I aced it, by the way, even though I had zero time to so much as open the book, so don’t act like you’re not impressed. A few weeks later, I was talking to my advisor when I learned that I needed an A in one of my linguistics classes and a B in the other in order to make the minimum GPA for graduation. If I had not switched classes at the last minute, that would have meant an entire extra term there. Thank God Geography 101 was so boring.

I didn’t learn a whole hell of a lot in school, if I’m being honest. I know that people will argue that I’ve retained more than I realize, but I dunno. I did a lot more studying in the decade afterwards than I did in the four years I was there. I did learn a valuable lesson once. In one of my linguistics classes, I was notoriously absent. I only showed up for tests, and other students’ presentations, because I wanted to be respectful. I didn’t do well on the assignments, and only kept myself afloat with my superior writing skills. That’s a bonus lesson that I learned; that teachers’ standards for writing had to be so low that I could get an A on a paper even if I phoned it in. Give me enough time to craft my words, and I could probably figure out a way to convince you that liquid water was dry. But that’s not the lesson I learned in this class; I already knew that I was a writer by then. No, what I learned there was far more valuable, because it applies to everyone. The other students were more interested and focused, so they formed a study group that I was not a part of. I would like to think that they would get up to entertaining shenanigans like the characters on the show Community, but I will never know. Still, I benefited from their hard work. The final exam was an open notes test, and someone in the study group let me have a copy of their study sheet. I can’t remember how well I did, but it was well enough to pass the class, when really, it should have been another failure. So what did that teach me, that slacking pays off? No. It taught me to trust and believe in others, and to accept help when it’s needed. I don’t have to do everything all on my own, and I shouldn’t want to. Humans are a tribal species, and community—there’s that word again—is the only reason we have managed to advance to the point of dominating this planet. So instead of ignoring people, or dismissing them, try to listen, surrender to their expertise when warranted, and let’s all work together to build a better tomorrow. No one gets through this life alone, and it would suck if they had to.

Oh, PS, I took a few more classes over the years after getting my degree, but we’ll talk more about that in the next post, because I signed up for some of them in the pursuit of figuring out what I could do for a living.

Microstory 2053: Cold, Or Whatever

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Welp, I made a mistake. I really should have focused on shelter. One thing they don’t tell you when you first start to travel the multiverse is that each world comes with its own set of special diseases. Even if two worlds have the same thing, and call it the same thing, they’ll be different strains. When I first entered Havenverse, I got sick, and now that I’m in Boreverse, it’s happening again. Whatever this is, I’m sure it’s very common and unexciting to the natives, but it could actually kill me. According to the internet, there are free clinics. One of them isn’t even that far, but it’s unclear how good it is. Your mapping service allows people to rate businesses, but not review them. It seems as though they never thought of that. It doesn’t even use the star system either. You either hate it or love; nothing in between. But they don’t actually tell you how people rated it either. They then take the ratings, and categorize them according to a vague unnumbered list of impressions, like seems okay, or not great. In addition to being boring, this world also appears to be rather unhelpful. Wish me luck anyway. I’m headed there now to see if anything can be done about this cold, or whatever. Hopefully they won’t turn me down because I don’t have an ID. I don’t know what I would do then. I guess I would just die. I don’t look it, but I’m pushin’ 60, I guess.

Microstory 2038: Maryland and D.C.

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It takes a long time to adopt a child, especially one that is in the situation that I was in. My parents put in their application right away, but it was almost three years before it finally went through! I lived in an orphanage while I was waiting, and the people in charge had to first find out if there was any way to get me back to where I was born. In the year 2016, and evil man started to run for president. He doesn’t like people who look like me, or who are from countries like my home country. He thinks that everyone who wasn’t born in this country is automatically bad. Even if they were born here, if their parents weren’t, he just doesn’t like them anyway. He believes in a lot of other bad things, and a bunch of people wanted to vote for him, because they felt the same way. My fathers are good people, who feel nothing but love for everyone. So while they were waiting for me to come into their lives, they drove down to Washington D.C. to protest against the presidential candidate. Washington D.C. isn’t a state, it’s a district, but it’s pretty much in Maryland, and my fathers’ hotel was really close to the border, so they spent a little time over on that side of it, and I think that it counts. They marched on the streets to let people know that they didn’t want this man to win the election, and guess what, he didn’t! He was never a president, and I say my fathers had something to do with it. They obviously weren’t the only ones who protested, but as my grandma will say, every voice counts. I think that’s probably true. If you feel a certain way, and you want people to know it, then you should say it. That’s what it means to be in a free country. Even the bad man had a right to say what he didn’t, even though it was all bad stuff.

Microstory 2028: Iowa

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As fate would have it, which is a phrase that my cousin taught me, the halfway point between Idaho Falls, Idaho, and Chicago was not too far from where my papa’s extended family lived. It had been a long time since he had seen his parents and sister’s family at the same time. Everyone was so busy, including him. They planned on meeting in Nebraska, which is where the big family would always hold their reunions. A new president had been elected only two years ago, though, so they changed their minds. They chose to hold this smaller family reunion in Iowa. They did that because none of them had ever been to Iowa before. This was probably the first time that my papa went to a new state kind of just because. It could have been anywhere, but it was in a state that he hadn’t been to. This happened all the way back in 2010, and he never went back there. He hated being in Iowa, which is something I heard him tell my dad when they thought I wasn’t listening. It was the first time I heard my papa ever say that he did not like something. I don’t know what he didn’t like about Iowa, but the reunion went okay, so it must have been something else.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 1, 2398

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When Angela Walton was first alive, she was a pretty submissive girl, as was common in those days. She didn’t believe in the things that her family did, but she wasn’t outspoken about it either. Her father was patient enough to let her wait to marry a man she loved, but that was about as lenient as he could tolerate to be, and he lost that patience when her fiancé disappeared. She would marry who he chose, and that was final. It wasn’t until after her death that Angela started to find herself. The interesting thing about the afterlife simulation is that it wasn’t millennia beyond the technological limitations of the living world. For most of its history, it was only ever moderately more advanced, despite the fact that the devisers were from the future, and could have always included modern tech. They chose not to in order to keep the residents comfortable, and feeling safe. Teaching a mammoth hunter to use a microwave oven is probably just asking too much. So for the longest time, the virtual worlds pretty faithfully resembled the real world, because that’s all those people knew. That would change in the future, when science fiction began to open up people’s imaginations, but there was always one thing that was shockingly progressive.

According to Tamerlane Pryce, he put no effort into regulating the way society manifested itself in the construct. He claimed to have let the people decide for themselves. This is likely not entirely true, but not totally inaccurate either. Based on some few and far between studies that dead researchers tried to conduct over the centuries, it would seem that the act of death alone is enough to alter an individual’s worldview. That is, they gain perspective simply by passing on, and often lose a lot of the prejudices and hate they once lived with. The theory was that this process was fostered by the fact that everyone dies alone. When John Doe makes the transition, he does so removed from all the people who fueled his beliefs and preconceived notions. The people he meets now have either been there for some time, or they came from other parts of the world. That’s what philosophers imagine Pryce regulated—knowingly or not. He set up a system that grouped newcomers together through a filter of diversity, and studies have proven that living in a diverse area is the number one cause of acceptance and love. What this all means is that racism, sexism, and other biases are harder to hold onto when borders have been removed, gender roles have been ignored, and no one can rise to power without deserving it.

When Angela rose to power, it was after centuries of hard work. She had to shed her old identity, and her old personality, and pretty much become a completely different person. If not for the fact that she looks the same as she always has, no one who knew her before her death would recognize her now. She doesn’t take other people’s crap anymore, and she doesn’t just do as she’s told. If you want her to trust in your choices, you have to prove that you’re worthy of making them, and if you don’t, she’s going to decide for you. Maintaining a normal job in a mundane world is a skill that Marie honed for four years before the rest of her team showed up. She learned to listen to the words of lesser men, because she would lose it all if she didn’t. Angela has yet to learn this lesson, and her meeting has demonstrated just how far she has yet to go. None of Marie’s training could have prepared her to suffer through all that bullshit. She speedwalks to the bathroom at her first opportunity, and retches into the toilet.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 12, 2398

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They could spend a lifetime comparing every little difference between the Third Rail, and the main sequence. The Beatles don’t exist, just like a certain movie, except no cognizant singer is going to revive the catalog. Geography is shockingly similar after considering how deep in the past the point of divergence must have taken place. They have evidence of this from the completely foreign botanical world. The trees and plants may look like the kinds they could find back home, but upon closer inspection, they’ve clearly evolved and been bred differently. Even the buildings have a slightly discrepant architecture. It took them a little time to recognize this, because they’ve seen variations before. Every world they go to—be it a planet, a virtual construct, a parallel reality, or even another universe—has had unique design schemes, and this one is no different in that it’s also unique. Now that the team has been here for a few days, they see that technology isn’t as stilted as they once thought. The people here seem to have advanced in some ways faster than others. You couldn’t call it steampunk, but it’s in that same vein.

As far as energy goes, the culture managed to pretty much skip over fossil fuels, and focus on renewable sources. Different regions have different strengths, but wind power is pretty popular. They also have no apparent problem with nuclear power. You’re never more than fifty miles from the nearest nuclear power plant. Despite these developments, space travel is practically non-existence. There are tons of satellites in orbit around Earth, but they haven’t even put a rover on Mars. From what little Angela was able to gather in her capacity as self-appointed team historian, war has been the number one issue globally. Civilization just survived World War VI not thirty years ago. Why haven’t they destroyed themselves in a nuclear holocaust? Religion. Yes, it’s religion that saved them, if you can believe it. All ancient religious texts speak of some kind of sun that’s compressed and trapped in a box, and the venerated few charged with containing and protecting it from evil. While atheism and agnosticism are recently on the rise, superstition regarding these sunboxes only increased once scientists realized that real sunboxes were within their grasp. Never before had a faith been so spot on in regard to something that might happen in the future, with certain sects being eerily detailed with their descriptions of how a sunbox might work.

Unfortunately, there was a major downside to this. Even though multiple religions provided people with the same prophetic warning about nuclear bombs, they failed to generate any other reason for unity. Different kingdoms, nations, and races glommed onto different denominations, and dig their heels in deeper when they perceive a threat from some other. That’s why they keep fighting, and why racism may be worse today than it was in the main sequence circa early 21st century. Angela and Mateo are even more convinced now that they are not the only time travelers here. At least one of them either created the reality itself, or capitalized on an opportunity to mould it to their liking. They may have always wanted society to be like this, or things just got out of hand. Regardless, the team feels compelled to fix it. It’s going to take them longer than any mission has, so they better prepare themselves, do their research, and take their time.

Microstory 1880: Promovere

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I don’t wanna talk about my work. People are always asking me about it, like isn’t that so sad? I can’t go to a party, or the bar, without having to discuss it. Like, it’s the first thing they ask. I just think that’s so sad. It’s my 25th anniversary there. Same place, different jobs, but it’s just nothing. Really, I’m not going to talk about it. And you know, my boss is such an asshole. He’s always giving me these looks, like, I know what you’re thinking, buddy. He’s one of those guys who thinks the world of himself, and everyone wants to be like him. That smug look on his face when something right happens, and he gets the chance to take credit for it, whether he had anything to do with it, or not. Oh, I just want to rip it off his face. But I’m not going to talk about work. That’s a promise I’m making to myself. My job does not define me. My final thoughts can’t be of the 45 hours a week I spend in hell. Man, 25 years. That’s not how long I was in the workforce, just here, which only makes it all the more depressing. They gave me a certificate, isn’t that nice? My boss handed it to me so delicately, like I was to cherish it. Others proudly pin theirs to their cubicles. They legitimately seem to love what they do. I don’t want to die, but at least I won’t ever have to come back here. No, this isn’t about work. This is about my whole life, and that is only a small part. Is it small, though? I mean, at the bare minimum, it represents a quarter of my time, and that’s not counting all the time I spent stressing about it. I remember the day I was promoted to exempt status. This is it, I thought to myself. I’ve made it. Sure, more promotions would be great, but a salary is a benchmark of success that they can never take away. Nope, stop. Stop that.

Stop talking about your meaningless job. Everything’s meaningless, though. Your life, that was meaningless too, though maybe a little less meaningless, because at least you had the chance to help people. Did you help anyone, though? When you really get down to it, were you a generous and good person, or was that just always something you aspired to be, but you were too busy with your terrible job that you hated? I said, stop talking about your job! Hobbies. Surely you had hobbies. Knitting? Why is knitting the first hobby you think of when you think of hobbies? How is that the default? Because I’m a woman? Because I’m older now? I’m not an old woman. Plenty of younger women like to do arts and crafts, don’t be an ageist. A what? An ageist; you know what that word means, because you’re talking to yourself. I guess that’s true, I guess I just normally hear it in the form of ageism, or maybe age discrimination. Whatever. Yeah, whatever to you too...me. Wow, you really light up a room with your attitude, don’t you? Oh, ha-ha-ha. They say, it’s not the fire that kills you, it’s the smoke, but it’s the pointlessness of it all. I didn’t do anything with my life. I could have taken control, but I just kept tripping down the steps. Most people go up the stairs of life, but I went right down, and not to say I was never privileged. I recognize my privilege, I really just mean it always felt more like falling, because I didn’t control it. That’s what a promotion is, isn’t it? You don’t apply for it, it’s given to you. Sure, you probably did something to earn it, but you couldn’t take it. You can go get a new job, but you can’t be the agent of a promotion, unless you’re promoting someone else. But does that feel any better, giving other people promotions? I think not. And look at you now, you’re stuck in the break room with everybody else, and you’re gonna die with everybody else, except that it’ll happen to you first.

Microstory 1780: Triangulum

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My parents hate each other, but they claim they can’t get divorced. My little brother is very sensitive, and they don’t think he could handle it. Unfortunately, they can’t stand to even be in the same room as each other, so I don’t think that’s really helping him. They parent him separately, and I’m expected to fill in the gaps. He may be too young to be consciously aware that he never sees the two of them at the same time, but it’s almost certainly affecting him, and eventually, he’s going to grow up. I guess they’re hoping they’ll be able to finally walk away from each other by then. I think it would be far less traumatizing to the kid if they just took care of it now, but they won’t listen to me. I’m just the older brother in the middle. My therapist calls it triangulation. In order to put up a united front for my brother, both of our parents have to agree on whatever decision needs to be made. But since they can’t talk directly to each other, they go through me. My mom sleeps on a pullout couch in her home office, while dad stays in the master bedroom. They coordinate their schedules so they don’t end up in the bathroom at the same time, and mom still needs to keep some closet space up there. Again, I don’t know that their youngest doesn’t notice all of this, but again, I’m actually the one coordinating it for them. I’m responsible for knowing who is going to pick him up from soccer practice, and which is available for the next game. Both of them have pretty flexible schedules, and could theoretically watch him play together, but one will always pretend to be busy, and it’s up to me to decide which, making sure that he doesn’t feel too neglected by either one. It’s such a pain. It’s also not fair. I’m 17 years old, I’m not supposed to be responsible for their relationship. My therapist says I need to stand up for myself, and he wants to have a conversation about that with all three of us, but that is just this side of completely impossible. I gave up on trying to fix them a long time ago.

It wasn’t always like this, and even after it started, it wasn’t always this bad. It’s not like they had a meeting at one point, and contrived this plan to triangulate their fourteen-year-old son. It started out small. They would fight about the baby, and one of them would sleep on the couch that night, but then they would work it out, and come back together. This happened more and more until they realized that they sometimes hadn’t spoken for two straight days. I was brought in to relay their messages, but if that got to be too complicated, they would step in, and finish the conversation themselves. But then they stopped doing that altogether, I guess because I got better at anticipating their responses, lessening the amount of back and forth necessary. I became half my father, and half my mother, so that I could act on each one’s behalf to the other without actually speaking to them about what they would choose to say under normal circumstances. It was too late before I noticed that I had lost my whole self in that chaos. I’ve been trying to get the real me back for a year, but it can’t be done unless we break the triangle. So that’s why I’m here today, Your Honor. I know it will be a long process, but it must be done, and I was advised by my counsel to begin now. I turn 18 in six months, and when that happens, I need to have full custody of my brother, so I can take him out of that toxic environment. Our parents are not going to like it, but I’m confident that I will prove myself to be the most mature person in the family. I have filled out all of the requisite paperwork, and I’m ready to plead my case, whenever you are.

Microstory 1598: The Suicide Crowd

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Prompt

Thousands are gathered before me, awaiting my instructions, and this is what I will tell them.

Botner

Thousands of potential suicides are presented to me, and I will tell them that it doesn’t matter what I feel about it, that they have to kill themselves, that there is no other way. I tell them I have no intention of feeling differently. I am moving around the crowd, feeling each one of their burdens. Many of them are traumatized, tortured by memories of events from their lives—of others they’ve hurt, of tragedies they’ve experienced. They know I have no empathy, and I can feel their anger rising. I can feel their anger for me, as I do with everyone else. I don’t feel any more anger than I have ever felt. I make a circle around the crowd, seeing every face, judging every manner of aggression and hatred I can see. The faces move, turning, shifting into one another. They turn like a revolving door. I make a new circle, and they move into it. I count the changes as they go around. There are 598, and they move around 8 times. I make another circle and they have moved 17.

Conclusion

They continue to turn and shift into each other, until more than 81,000 people have become only one person. This is the one. He is the embodiment of all of their pain, and depression, and self-doubt, and fear of the future. Thousands were ready to die, but I have removed that sentiment from them with my circles, and channeled it into this one amalgamated person. Only he will die, and all others will live, free from the burden of their pasts, from the torture of their mistakes, from the hatred they’ve been feeling for themselves. I have freed them from this, as I have done many times before, and will continue to do for all who need it. I only wish I could save them all, but I can only do this a few times a year, and those who do not truly wish to die must come to me. I force this gift on no one, and judge not those who deny it. The amalgam stands there in a stupor. He is feeling all the pain of everyone in the crowd, and it’s made him numb to the world. I open the palm of my hand, and leave it waiting at my side. My assistant carefully and slowly removes the case from the bag. He knows I am patient, and this is a ceremonial gesture. He sets the case on the table, and admires it for a moment, my hand still waiting. He opens the case, and removes the syringe, which he finally hands to me. I cannot use this myself. The amalgam must do it, and he must choose it, and only he can choose it. This is the burden of being the amalgam, and no one can take his place.

He begs me to kill him, for he is afraid. He wants to die, but he does not want to do it himself. There is no other way. To free these people’s souls, he must sacrifice himself. He sobs, and continues to beg me to put him out of his misery, but I cannot. Once he’s sure I won’t help him, he accepts the syringe, and I see a spark of light in his eyes that I’ve never seen before. No amalgam has had this. It’s almost...it almost looks like hope. There is something different about this crowd...something interfering with the process. I look deeper into his eyes as he contemplates ending it all, and realize what’s happened. The people who come to me to be freed of their suicidal thoughts have all left satisfied, but they came into it with such skepticism. My reputation has long since been acknowledged, though. This latest crowd knows that it works, and they arrived with something few of them have ever had. They arrived...with hope. And that hope was channeled into the amalgam man, along with all the pain. Now this hope grows inside him, and every second that passes, the chances he’ll ever use the needle decrease. He looks at me, and he shakes his head. “These people are already free. They had within them the power to change their minds...their hearts. They do not need you anymore. They never did. Most importantly, they do not need someone like me, accepting the burden of their suicidal thoughts. All they need is hope, and we can’t give that to them anymore.” He grins, and looks down at the syringe again, like it’s nothing more profound than a pathetic broken pencil. Then he reaches up, and stabs me in the chest, driving the poison into my body. I die.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Friday, July 5, 2120

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Mateo and Leona argued yesterday. The latter demanded to go with the former and Ellie to The Fourth Quadrant, and Mateo wasn’t having it. In the end, she had too many cards to play, what with him constantly abandoning her, and his indiscretion with Cassidy. She also had a point that she knew more about the cuffs than he or Ellie did. But then Sanaa caught wind of their plans, and argued that she was actually more proficient with them. They never did figure out how to co-opt Jupiter’s power, or so much as contact him, but she knew everything else about them. The next year, Ariadna asked where they were going, and there was even more arguing, because she didn’t understand how they were going to get into this new reality.

“Oh, that’s just this thing,” Ellie assured her.

“You’re not gonna dismiss me,” Ariadna said. “You know, don’t you? You know what I can do. How? I’ve worked really hard to curate a timeline where no one knows who I am, and what I’ve been through.”

“I’ve been doing the same,” Ellie explained. “Lots of people have told me lots of things without remembering it, because it never happened.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Sanaa jumped in. “You’ve been able to cross back to the main sequence this whole time?”

“What?” Ariadna asked. “No. I mean...I don’t think so. Dimensions and realities aren’t the same thing. Right?”

They all looked to Leona, who was surprisingly unsure of herself. “I don’t know everything about physics. Asking me that question is like asking me whether black holes exist. No one knows.”

“Black holes don’t exist?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Let’s get off of whatever this is,” Ellie said. “Madam Traversa, I’m sorry I wasn’t honest about why I was here, but as I understand it, my ability to adopt your ability does not affect you. It doesn’t drain you of your energy, or force you to be a part of it. These cuffs just copy and paste your code, so I can borrow it.”

“Why didn’t you tell us then?” Sanaa questioned.

“I wanted to do this alone, so no one else would be in danger.”

“How very noble of you,” came a voice from outside the circle. It was Jupiter.

“Thank you for coming, Your Grace,” Sanaa said to him jokingly.

“I’ve been listening to your conversations—”

“You have?” Mateo asked. “How?”

“There’s a microphone in each cuff, obviously,” Sanaa explained.

“Obviously,” Jupiter agreed.

“Are you gonna try to stop me?” Ellie asked Jupiter.

“Nope, but I have some conditions, one for each of you. Ariadna, after this mission, you must relinquish your cuffs, and give them to Mr. Bearimy.”

“No, I’m the one wearing J.B.’s cuffs,” Ellie reminded him.

“That doesn’t matter,” Jupiter contended. “I was not aware of the extent of The Escapologists’s time powers. I can’t have you people slipping back and forth at will. So Aria, you have to leave, and you can’t involve yourself with this team ever again. Ellie, if you do this, you have to remain on the Bearimy-Matic pattern. While she has to leave, you have to stay. You wanted the cuffs, you got ‘em.”

“I can do that,” Ellie promised.

Leona frowned. “El, are you sure? He hasn’t said how long we’re doing this.”

Ellie shrugged. “I ain’t got nothin’ but time. I’ll get back to my other friends later, and it’ll be fine.”

“Leona,” Jupiter went on, “you can’t go.”

“I’m sorry?” she asked, perturbed.

“If the others do this, you have to stay behind with J.B., so if something goes wrong, the two of you can rebuild the team.”

“That’s bullshi—”

“Leelee,” Sanaa stopped her. “Rule Number Fifteen.” It was a relatively new entry into Leona’s Rules of Time Travel. Don’t antagonize the antagonist. Mateo didn’t consider Jupiter an antagonist anymore, but the others could be forgiven for continuing to believe as much.

Leona bit her lip, and didn’t say anything else.

“Sanaa, that brings me to you,” Jupiter began. “The people living in the Fourth Quadrant have created a new society. They wouldn’t belong anywhere else. If you try to bring them into the main sequence, Beaver Haven will just find a way to lock them all up again, so the two realities don’t interfere with each other.”

“Cool,” Sanaa sassed. “What does that have to do with me? This is Ellie’s mission.”

“You’ll still be able to save them, but you’re going to solve the problem in a different way. In order to do this, you’ll need to extract someone else from the main sequence. Kismet has it that today is perfect for the side mission. This individual doesn’t need to be rescued, but you need their time power.”

“Again, cool,” Sanaa repeated, “and again, what does that have to do with me?”

“You specifically don’t like this person, but you’re going to have to ignore that, and extract them anyway.”

“Who?” Mateo asked, more curious than anything.

“Finally, Mateo.”

“Oh, no.”

Jupiter smirked. “You have the power to cancel this whole mission, and if you do, you’ll be able to get back to the Vearden mission instead.”

“You won’t let me save him if I do this?” Mateo guessed.

“No, you’ll still be able to try,” Jupiter swore, “but there is a new limitation. You can’t transfer his mind to a clone.”

“What?” Leona shouted. “That’s the whole point! We can’t get him out without changing the timeline unless we do it this way. A clone is the only option.”

“You can’t transfer his mind,” Jupiter said again. “I have no particular reason for this, but I’m trying to disincentivize you from going against my brother. You said it, Rule Number Fifteen; I’ll let you risk it, if you really want to, but it’s gonna cost you. Ariadna, you can save this whole group by overriding my power to force you to stay in this reality. Ellie, you have to put yourself in danger. I know you think it doesn’t matter, since you’re a time traveler, but the more you live in one time period, the greater the chances are that you’ll die. That’s just how life works: older people have had more time to die, so be thinking about whether you want to risk never getting back to Trinity. Leona, you hate feeling useless, so you’re sitting this one out. Sanaa, you hate people, so...that’s it, that’s how I’m discouraging you. And Mateo, you either fail to save the Fourth Quadrant, or you fail to save Vearden. Choose.”

“I choose to save both,” Mateo said.

“Mateo,” Leona almost scolded, “there’s no other way. We all watched him die. We have to transfer his consciousness, or what happened, happened.”

“Trust me,” Mateo asked of her. This was something he had been thinking about for a while now. While he didn’t think of Jupiter as an antagonist, that didn’t mean he wasn’t an obstacle. He worded the new proviso in a specific way, and it wasn’t clear if he did it on purpose, or if Mateo was just the smarter one here, who came up with a loophole all on his own. If the latter was true, then he had to keep it all a secret. From everyone. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

Jupiter seemed almost impressed, even though Mateo hadn’t done anything yet. “Very well. If no one objects, please ask the transporter tech to return the four of you to Earth. Once you arrive, the map will direct you to your next transition window. Good luck.” That being said, Jupiter disappeared through his own window.

They bid their farewells to Leona, then went back to Earth, where their Cassidy cuffs directed them to the Kansas City area. They ate a meal, and played a couple rounds of RPS-101 Plus on their tablets while they waited for the window. About three hours later, the field around them flickered, revealing the terraces of Crown Center. It quickly ended, and deposited one Missy Atterberry into this reality. She wasn’t scared, but curious about what had happened. She didn’t have much time to make some guesses, though. Sanaa stood up, and stared at her with a passionate hatred. This was her? This was the person Sanaa hated so much? Mateo didn’t know her all that well. She died quickly after they met in the pre-Hitler assassination timeline, and every memory he had of her since was from Leona’s perspective, because he didn’t exist for that period of time. She appeared just after he left, and was gone before he came back to life.

“You,” Sanaa growled.

“Oh, crap,” was all Missy could say.

Like a bull in a stadium, Sanaa leaned forward, and literally charged at her opponent. Were they actually going to get themselves into a fist fight? Surely not. And no, they didn’t. Missy raised her hand instinctually, and pushed Sanaa into a time bubble. She hovered there, nearly frozen in place, but still technically moving.

“Report,” Mateo said to Missy.

“I agreed to stay out of her personal timeline,” Missy defended. “She was born in 2203, and I promised to never go back to the 24th century, so if I’m here, it’s not my fault. Someone else brought me here.”

“It’s 2120,” Ariadna clarified.

“That’s impossible,” Missy argued. “She’s not supposed to travel through time. That’s why it’s been this easy to avoid her.”

“She broke that rule,” Mateo explained. “Why does she hate you so much?”

Before Missy could answer, Sanaa disappeared from inside the bubble, and reappeared just outside of it. The now empty bubble remained, however. “You can’t slow me down! I can escape any dimension now!” She tried to attack Missy, but didn’t get far before something caused her to collapse, and reach for her ears.

Out of the corner of his eye, Mateo could see Ellie’s lips wrapped around a whistle. No sound was coming out of it, so she must have been teleporting the waves directly into Sanaa’s ears. She opened her mouth, and let the whistle fall down to her chest. Then she spoke for all to hear. “You’re gonna talk first. You try anything like that again, and I’ll make you go deaf. You’ll wish you were still psychic, so at least you could talk to people again.”

Sanaa stood up, her face still contorted, but she nodded once to agree to Ellie’s demands.

“Now,” Mateo started to say, kind of sounding like he was trying to take charge. “I’m outnumbered here. I’m gonna sit on the sidelines, and let you ladies work it out. I’ll be nearby if you need anything, though.”

Ariadna stuck her index finger up, like she was trying to delicately summon the waiter. “I’ll come with.”

“Do you know what happened between those two?” he asked once they were away from the other three.

“I make a point of staying out of people’s business.”

“Yeah, why is that? You’re such a nice and even-tempered person, yet you seem just as isolated as Sanaa is. Do you not like people?”

“People think that about me. I mean, I live in a frickin’ pyramid, so I can’t blame them. The truth is that I...it’s hard to explain.”

“I’m patient, and understanding.”

“I know that about you. I’m just...better at observing than I am interacting with others. I don’t like to...” She sighed. “I don’t like to do things.”

“Things?”

“Anything. I don’t have any hobbies, and I don’t care for social situations. I don’t dislike people, but I don’t get anything out of conversing with them most of the time. I just wanna sit in my little corner of the world, listen to classical music, read trashy romance novels, and maybe watch a little TV. I’ve never had any interest in going out to restaurants, or seeing a rock concert, or visiting a museum.”

“Well, that’s not that weird,” Mateo said. “Extroverts think that sounds like a really sad life, but I get it. Not everyone’s days are filled with mystery and intrigue.”

Ariadna went on, “I remember when I was a kid, my mom tried to sign me up for some sports team. I don’t even recall which sport, but it wasn’t attached to my school, it was the county, or something. Either way, I told her I didn’t like to play sports, but she said that wasn’t the point. She said it was a great way to meet people. So I’m like, so what? What’s so great about meeting people? She shook her head, like I was nothing more than an insolent child, but that wasn’t a rhetorical question. I really wanted to know what intrinsic value there was in meeting new people.

“Well, she didn’t have an answer for me, because there isn’t a good one. Two full days later, she came back to me and claimed it was about building a network. I may be stranded at a movie theatre in a blizzard one night, and I’ll wish I had someone to call who liked me enough to give me a ride. I pointed out that this was a selfish reason to try to meet people, so the conversation ended there, and we never talked about it again. I was an adult before I realized on my own that I should have been looking at it the opposite way, and she should have framed it that way instead.”

“How’s that?” Mateo prompted.

She sighed again. “I should have made friends, so I could be available when someone else needed help in a blizzard.”

Mateo nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“Anyway, by then I was too used to being alone, and well...you can make friends as an adult unless, that is, you never did it as a kid. New adult friends expect you to already have friends, because they want to meet them! I just couldn’t make any connections. So I gave up, and went back to the way I’ve always liked it, sitting comfortably in my pyramid.”

“Are you going to go back when the Fourth Quadrant is over? The pyramids don’t exist in the Parallel, but I suppose that doesn’t matter to you anymore. You’re free to travel wherever you want.”

“Well, I don’t use my powers, because they feel just as pointless as skydiving or having sex with people. But I’m not sure if—”

“Okay,” Ellie interrupted them. “Sanaa and Missy have signed a temporary ceasefire, and Missy has agreed to help us with the Fourth Quadrant. I guess all that Jupiter will let us do is adjust their speed of time. That’s kind of besides the point, but...it’s what we got. Get some rest. Busy day tomorrow. Could be our last.”

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