Microstory 887: Surge

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After the bioweapon that caused sudden onset intracranial pressure, the world was never the same. The war was so devastating that that the planet was no longer suitable for life. It technically could continue to support life, but only via small pockets of untouched nature. If we wanted to truly rebuild civilization, we were going to have to do it somewhere else. A private organization had been working for years on a sleeper ship capable to transporting thousands of people to an extrasolar colony. All they needed now was a final destination, and a group of passengers to get there. All were welcome, though there wasn’t an infinite number of seats, so it was first come, first serve. I was one of the last people to show up, looking for tickets, and should have missed out, but I got lucky. I happened to be walking up the muddy road towards the facility next to a surgeon. I wasn’t with her at all. We even came from opposite directions, but we arrived at the same time. Evidently not enough medical professionals had come for the trip, and a certain number of seats had been set aside to accommodate them. I was about to bow out with grace, when she stopped me, and informed the men with guns that I was her surgical assistant, and that she couldn’t do her job without me. Fortunately, there were still a few stasis pods left, so I secured passage, but I owe my life to her. Who knows what happened to Earth after we left?

We didn’t spend the whole time in pods. They would wake up essential personnel on a regular basis in order to assess our mental acuity. The hibernation process never had time to be thoroughly tested, so it was imperative we be able to wake up safely. The surgeon spent her waking time teaching me everything I needed to know to do the job she had convinced the people on the ship that I already had. She was surprised to find out that I did have some medical experience, and had seen field medicine performed on a number of patients during the war. So I wasn’t starting from scratch, but that didn’t mean I could just jump into any medical emergency, and execute my job effectively. I soaked in all of my crash courses, confident that, by the time something bad happened, I would have learned enough to help. Centuries later, we arrived at our new home planet, having only aged maybe a year. We continued to live on the ship for the next couple months, though. A different team was sent off to survey the surface, and environmental factors, to make sure it would be safe. Our bodies evolved to deal with a lot of diseases on Earth, but if an alien visited and tried to walk amongst us, a bacterium we would take for granted could kill it instantly. The same goes for us, since we are the aliens here. If there were any issues with the air, or plant life, we needed to survive to help anyone affected by it, so we weren’t allowed to leave until such an incident. To my new boss’ surprise, there were no problems at all. Edibility tests, and other scientific assessments determined a bunch of plants and animals that were not safe to eat, and others that weren’t even safe to be around, but our services were never required. The other teams disembarked with a plan, and tons of safety protocols, and came out on the other side better for it.

When we finally were able to leave the ship, we found ourselves trekking towards camp in the middle of an abrupt thunderstorm. Our guide and protection detail assured us that the rain was perfectly harmless, but we still needed to find shelter, just like we would have back home. We found a nice little cave that was about twice as large as we needed to fit everyone. We huddled together for warmth, and tried to get some sleep. When we woke up the next morning, we found ourselves next to this human-sized pool of water that wasn’t there the night before. Strange sounds were coming from the water, as if something inside of it was moaning in pain. A slight electrical current was running through the edges, and it pulsated with positively beautiful lights. It was a mesmerizing experience, and hard to explain to anyone who wasn’t there to see it for themselves. One of the others in our group claimed he could feel that it was alive. The water itself was alive. None of us believed him, except for my boss. He said the sentient water was in pain, and that he could feel what it was feeling. My boss believed this as well, and decided to help in any way she could. She took out her bag of medical instruments, and started performing tests on the pool, hoping that one of them came back with useful information, even though we were reportedly dealing with an alien species. She worked on that thing all day, and I helped her as I could. Finally, using the modest amount of communication the one guy managed to do, we realized that the water was full of parasites that were swimming around, and stealing its nutrients. So we rigged up an extremely fine net, and started scooping them up, careful to let the water that came up with it drip back into the pool. After an hour, the job was done, and the water-entity supposedly thanked us with a few mathematically suspect ripples. Maybe it really was an alien, and this guy wasn’t just crazy. We never did find out for sure, though, because after that day, we never saw anything like that ever again.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 11, 2188

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Vitalie was hyperventilating as midnight central approached. Ecrin was doing better, but appeared to be keeping her anxiety bundled inside. They had both traveled through time before, but always by their own will. They had to sit down from the fatigue, which was a symptom of Leona’s flavor of time travel, but something that she learned to overcome after the first dozen or so jumps. Three...two...one, and it was over. They were suddenly now standing in September 11, 2188. They looked over to the corner where Brooke’s Snow White pod was just opening up. It jolted her awake with an accelerated recovery serum, which was only designed for certain crew on sleeper ships that needed to react to a dire cataclysmic event. It wasn’t meant to be used for standard revival, even after only one year in hibernation, and it definitely wasn’t meant to be used over and over again. The best recuperation regimens called for at least one day of limited activity, and no operating of heavy machinery. If Brooke had to go through this for more than a few days, her body could be permanently damaged from the stress, and her organs might eventually give up on her. Her upgrades may give her an advantage to combat those medical issues, but the downgrades Ulinthra performed on her more than likely ruined all that. They needed to end this quickly.

“I think I have an idea,” Vitalie said as they were eating breakfast after a good night’s sleep. “I was thinking about it all yesterday, but I didn’t want to say anything until I had it all worked out.”

“And what would that be?” Ecrin asked.

“Okay, so you—wait, is she surveilling us?”

“Probably.”

“No,” Brooke said. “I installed a communication blocker on my body after Ulinthra’s doctors downgraded my systems. I also placed an anti-tampering device on it, so even if they figured out how to turn it off, I would know. If we were being streamed or recorded, I would know.”

“Where did you install it?” Leona asked. “Did they not find it while they were preparing you for your first time in the stasis pod?”

Brooke cleared her throat. “Ya know, even at the turn of the 23rd century, there are still some places that people are too embarrassed to search.”

“Oh,” Leona said.

“What? I don’t get it,” Vitalie griped.

“It’s in her vagina,” Ecrin explained.

Brooke cleared her throat again. “Vitalie, you were saying something?”

Vitalie couldn’t help but let her eyes drift downwards when looking at Brooke, but she composed herself, and moved on with her plan. “So Ulinthra can repeat the day?”

“That’s right.”

“At the end of everyday, say midnight, she goes back in time in her own body, and does it all again. But since she knows what’ll happen, she can make changes at will.”

“Yes.”

“Which means that we can never know whether we’re living in the day she does this first, or the day she does it for the second time.”

“Well, since she’s the only one with memories of what she calls her Round Ones, we are—for all practical purposes—always living through her Round Twos. We always have to assume that she has the advantage of knowing what we’re gonna do.”

“Okay,” Vitalie continued. It was clear that she understood all this perfectly, but the others needed to follow her all the way to understand what she was proposing they do. “That makes her the only variable. She’s the only one who changes things, so everything we do, we already tried the first time around, but just don’t remember. Our choices are only affected when we interact with her.”

“All right...”

“We can use that. We have to talk to her every day. We have to call her, summon her here, or go to her evil lair. The way she speaks to us, the things she says, will determine whether B.F. Skinner’s cat is dead or not.”

“Schrödinger,” Brooke corrected.

“Huh?”

“Schrödinger was the one with the cat in the box that could be dead or alive, so it’s both until you open the box and find out. Skinner was the one with pigeons and rats.”

“Then who’s the guy with the dog?”

“Pavlov.”

“Whatever. But yes, that’s what I’m talking about. She, and she alone, determines how the day plays out.”

“But what does that matter?” Ecrin asked. “So we talk to her everyday. What, are we going to ask her whether we’ve had that conversation before, or not?”

“It doesn’t matter what we talk about,” Vitalie said, smirking. “We just need her to have an affect on the coin toss.”

“What coin toss?”

“We flip a coin. Everyday, after our talk with Ulinthra, we flip a coin. Heads we go after her, tails we just hang out all day.”

Leona winced. “Well, that means fifty percent of the time, we flipped the same side on her Round One, and whatever we do, she’ll be prepared for, just like always.”

“True,” Vitalie said. “But that also means fifty percent of the time, the coin toss on any given day ends up differently, because we only toss it after Ulinthra does something. She can’t help but be informed by her yesterdays, just like normal people. Even something so innocuous and minute as saying the dog jumped over the fence instead of the dog hopped over the fence will alter exactly when we toss the coin, and how it lands.”

“Like Leona said,” Ecrin began, “half the time we, quote-unquote go after her, she already sees us coming, and has a way to best us. And even if she doesn’t see us coming, we still have to contend with her army. Power or no, she’s too powerful for the four of us.”

“Again, that’s true,” Vitalie said with a sort of nod-shake hybrid. “Look, if you want to scrap any offensive moves against her, and just try to find a way to escape Panama, I’m all for it. Just recognize that she still has her time power. The coin toss plan still helps with that.”

“She’s right,” Brooke finally spoke again. “If we have any hope of fighting her, or leaving Panama, we need to not repeat the same mistakes—whatever they may be—that we made on these Round Ones. Ulinthra is our only way of doing that, since we don’t know anyone who has her same power.”

Ecrin still wasn’t convinced. “I just don’t think we should be talking to that woman any more than we have to. If we can sit in this unit all quiet-like until she gets bored, and moves on, that’s the ultimate outcome. I’m not saying that’s gonna happen, but I just hate that bitch, and I want to avoid her.”

“We all do,” Leona said. “As do many others in this world. We are in a position to stop her, even if that means we escape to Kansas City, and tell some people what we know. I like the coin idea. Let’s start now. I’ll call her, then we’ll flip. Heads we decide what we’re gonna do. Tails, we hold a service for Paige. Ecrin, are you okay with that?”

Ecrin hesitated. “Yeah, we have to do something. Chance is our only...chance. At least now we have a little control over it. Make the call.”

“Brooke?”

“Do it.”

When Leona called Ulinthra that evening, she asked if they could speak with Harrison. She acted as if they thought they could reason with him, and get him to switch sides. Ulinthra giggled, and indicated that they had tried this before, but it didn’t work. The Harrison she knew from an alternate reality no longer existed. This was evidently an entirely different program that she simply gave the same name as her original android assistant. That was good. This time was easy. She had revealed not only that they had called her during her Round One, and that this was her Round two—which prevented her from going back in time and changing it yet again—but also that Vitalie had flipped tails. If they had landed on heads, and done what they were planning to try now, Ulinthra probably wouldn’t be letting Harrison come again.

“All right, Brooke. He’s on his way. Vitalie flips that coin, and it’s heads, you should probably go. We don’t know how this thing will affect you.”

“I understand.”

“Ecrin. Your upgrades have been...”

“Removed completely. I’m human, and safe.”

“This is ready, so flip, Vitalie.”

Vitalie flipped the coin, which they had to manufacture in the synthesizer, since coins weren’t really a thing anymore. They chose a standard United States penny, since that was Vitalie’s calling card. “Be the penny,” she said as it rose and fell in the air. Heads. Brooke left.

Fifteen minutes later, when Harrison knocked on the door, Ecrin and Vitalie hid in the other room, so they wouldn’t be seen. Leona backed herself against the wall, so the door would hide her when she opened it. Harrison immediately realized she was there, though. He pulled the door away from her, and grimaced.

“Hey, toaster!” Brooke’s voice shouted from the hallway. Then they heard her pull back the hammer of an old projectile gun.

Harrison frowned and opened the door again.

“I’ll be fine,” she said to him with sass, but that wasn’t meant for him. She was sending a message to Leona.

Leona decided to accept the possibility that she was about to hurt her friend. She activated the device, then peeked out from behind the door. Harrison was standing there, and not moving. She looked over his shoulder at Brooke, who was holding her head and chest. “Brooke.”

“I’m fine,” she said with a hoarse voice. “I’ll be fine. Just do what you need to do, and make it quick. I don’t know how long he’ll last. Or me.”

“Come back out!” she order to the other two. They came out with tools, and started working on Harrison’s hand, removing what they were looking for faster than they thought they would. They still needed to scan it, though, and they weren’t sure if the synthesizer was working perfectly. The device Leona used to freeze Harrison might have had unintended consequences on anything else electronic.

They placed the tiny little weapon he had embedded in his hand in the synthesizer, and programmed the machine to scan it, so they could make one of their own later.

“Is he gonna wake up?” Ecrin asked with a worried look. “This is goin’ pretty slow.”

Leona looked back at Harrison, still frozen. “If he wakes up, we’ll just kill him. Ulinthra will never know what we took, until it’s too late.”

Once the scan was complete, they put the piece back in Harrison’s hand, and everyone got back into position. Brooke’s job was the hardest. Harrison was an artificial intelligence, capable of measuring his surroundings to the precision of a millimeter; possibly even more. If Brooke didn’t return to the exact state she was in when Harrison was frozen, he would notice that she moved, and realize that he had lost time. That was why Leona had to reprogram his internal chronometer while the device they stole was being scanned. This was also why Brooke distracted him. If he had been looking at Leona when time stopped for him, her puny human brain wouldn’t have been able to get her back to the right place.

Brooke breathed in and out deeply, so she could push down her pain long enough to get back to where she was. “I’m ready,” she finally said.

“Are you sure?”

“Do it now, please. Goddammit.”

Leona deactivated the device, restarting Harrison’s functions. Leona could hear a tussle in the hallway. When she came out from behind the door, she found him hovering over Brooke, pointing the gun at her head.

“Please don’t,” Leona begged.

He grimaced at her again. “I couldn’t if I wanted to.” He helped Brooke up from the floor, almost like a gentleman. “Ulinthra programmed me with the three laws of robotics, like an asshole. Anyway, I guess our conversation is over. You just called me here to kill me.”

“You’re her greatest weapon,” Leona lied.

“Quite.” He adjusted his jacket with the Picard maneuver, and headed for the elevators.

“Are we good?” Brooke asked after he’d gone, having recovered from the device.

Leona went into the synthesizer’s memory, and found the plans for the teleporter gun that they had just taken from Harrison. “We have it.”

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The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 10, 2187

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When Leona Matic first started helplessly jumping through time, one of her first thoughts was of her loved ones. If she couldn’t stop what was happening to her, she would lose them all in a matter of months, from her perspective. Her heart was filled with such dread knowing that she would one day blink, and someone she cared about would suddenly be gone. And that process would be repeated until they were all dead. Everyone would be dead by the time she had a hankering for Chinese food again. But that wasn’t what actually happened. Ever since her first jump, family and friends would die, not of a long life long-lived, but at her responsibility. She never had to watch any of them grow old without her, because every single time, through her action or inaction, they would be killed before that was possible. She tried to run away from them once, with Serif, hoping to just leave them out all of this. She should have stuck with that plan. She should have tried harder. If they had just gone off on their own, all these people would either still be alive, or passed in peace, including one Paige Turner Reaver-Demir.

Paige was at least a hundred and seventy-five years old at the time of her death, though the exact length was difficult to discern when attempting to account for the time travel variable. She stayed alive as long as she did by utilizing biomedical developments, as well as other technological advances. She had not been fully human for a long time when Ulinthra struck her down with what could be best described as a power overload. Many would count her age as a blessing. She surpassed the conventional human lifespan by a century, at least as measured by the time period of her birth, but Leona recognized that this made it worse. As terrible as it might sound, killing a mortal is not as bad as killing someone like Paige. If you were to end the life of a normal eighteen-year-old human, for instance, you would at most, be robbing that individual of maybe ninety more years—as erred on the the side of exaggeration. If you were to end the life of an eighteen-year-old immortal, on the other hand, you would be stealing eternity from them. Kill a four-thousand-year-old immortal, and you’re still taking eternity. Because we don’t punish murderers for taking the memories of a person’s experiences. We punish them for stealing the memories that their victims can now never make.

While Leona felt guilty for everyone who had lost their lives because of the decisions she had made, Paige belonged to a special category of dead people whose deaths were directly tied to her inefficacy. Leona was at fault, for how she had handled the Ulinthra situation, and no one would be capable of disabusing her of this assertion. Fortunately for her, no one was interested in disproving her. They didn’t outwardly blame her for it, but they didn’t sugar-coat it either. They just stayed there with her in solidarity, having already spent a year grieving for their loss during Leona’s interim year. And then, as if called to action by a great psychoemotional need, Vitalie Crawville suddenly showed back up to help, reportedly on break from the year-long bicentennial celebrations.

Though she didn’t have the time to get particularly close to her, something about Vitalie reminded her of Paige, and she couldn’t help but break down crying when she saw her face. Vitalie didn’t say a word, but held Leona close for as long as she needed it.

“How did you know to come?” Leona was finally able to ask through the last of her tears.

“I just kind of got this feeling; not that Paige had died, but that you needed me,” Vitalie answered. “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other anyway. We were due for a five-year reunion.”

“I’m just so tired of losing people. It would be one thing if I had a job to do, or some kind of calling, but I’m just...here. Camden is a secret agent, Saga starts revolutions on other planets, what do I do? Nothing. I just keep getting forced into these situations, and the only real goal in place for me is to get out of those situations.”

“That’s kind of how life is, though, isn’t it? Most of us don’t have what one may call a purpose. We just do the best we can to survive to the end of the day. Then we wake up and do it again.”

“I guess that’s true, but those people exercise control over their lives. I’m salmon.”

“Everyone has their limitations. A poor person can’t go to the best college, get the best job, and buy the best house, unless maybe they’re really smart. Maybe. A celebrity can’t scratch their ass at a grocery store without making headlines. And you can’t leave Panama until you defeat Arianrhod. That’s your calling. Right now it is, so answer it. When you’re done with the...conversation, as it were, hang up. Then answer the next call.”

“I can’t defeat her,” Leona complained. “She’s too powerful. Everything we try, she’s already seen, because we can never know whether we’re living through the first time she experienced this day, or the second.”

Vitalie sighed. “That’s true, it’s a crapshoot, but didn’t you do this before, in another timeline? Didn’t you stop a man with the same powers? What did you do then?”

“I garnered help from The Gravedigger, who’s so obviously hiding that he’s one of the most powerful choosers I’ve ever met; and I met someone who created an entire universe.”

“Well, let’s call the Gravedigger again.”

“It won’t work this time. There was a warrant out for his arrest, and that’s not the case here.”

“What did he do to get into trouble that Ulinthra isn’t doing. If taking over the world doesn’t get the powers that be to step in, then I don’t know what does.”

“It’s complicated,” Leona said. “Way I understand it, Beaver Haven isn’t just a prison for people with temporal powers who are also criminals, or even the ones who use their powers for bad things. It’s just for people whose actions threaten the security of the rest of us. As far as the powers are concerned, Ulinthra can do whatever she wants, as long as she doesn’t expose us.”

“Then let’s do that,” Vitalie suggested vaguely.

“Do what? Expose us?”

“Get her to expose us.”

“How would we do that?”

Vitalie shrugged. “Dunno, but there’s gotta be a way.”

“I think if you tried something like that,” Brooke said from the doorway, “you would just end up getting yourselves locked up.” She walked into the room. “We’re in mixed company.”

A stranger in a uniform walked in behind her, followed by a hover sled, on top of which was some kind of chamber. “Where do you want this?” he asked.

“Just in the corner, over there,” Brooke directed him.

“What is that?” Leona asked, grateful that she had finished crying before Brooke returned.

“It’s my stasis pod. If I don’t get into this by midnight central, I die.”

“What?” Leona scrambled up from her seat. “Die from what?”

“I don’t know what it is, but Ulinthra infected me with something. This pod is scheduled to close at the end of every day I’m awake, and will keep me alive for a year, until I wake up and do it all again.”

“What are you talking about? What did I miss?”

“Vitalie, you should go,” Brooke said to her, “lest you be caught up in this.”

“It is too late,” Ulinthra said, walking in from one of the bedrooms, like a creeper.

“What is this about? I demand answers,” Leona said angrily.

“A few months after Paige’s death,” Ulinthra began to explain, “Brooke and Ecrin tried to go after me. They succeeded the first time around, but then time reset for me, and I did better on the next go. My problem was not that they tried—it was actually impressively courageous of them, if not bonker balls—it’s that you weren’t there. You and I have a history; several histories, actually. In only one of them do we get along. Even when you were married to Horace Reaver, we were rather cold with each other. As much as I remember about these things, I couldn’t tell you why we almost never have a good relationship, but I can tell you why we were friends in one of the realities.”

“Get to the point already.” Leona rolled her eyes.

“We were friends,” Ulinthra continued after she was so rudely interrupted, “because in that timeline, I gave you the greatest give I have.”

“And what was that? Your suicide?”

“Morbid much? No, it was my powers.”

“What?”

“I made you like me. Permanently.”

“Why would I have wanted that?”

“You were bored. You were just a human then, but I gave you a way to have fun. Together we wreaked more havoc on this planet than a giant groundhog on amphetamines, and when midnight hit, we’d go back in time and relax.”

“I don’t believe you. In no reality am I anything like you.”

“Well, I guess I can’t ever prove it to you, except to say...dougnanimous brintantalus.”

“We’ve established that my secret time password has never been a secret.”

“True, but I want you to start thinking about whether it’s possible that I’m being totally honest. You can do it while you’re on the table.”

“On what table?”

Ulinthra smirked, and motioned towards Brooke’s stasis chamber. “I had that built, because Brooke is pristinely ungifted, and I have not been able to find a way around that, even by using her umbilical cord pendant. Sorry about that again, Brooke.”

Brooke was showing her blankface.

Ulinthra went back to facing Leona. “I destroyed it while I was studying it. I didn’t do it on purpose, though. We all make mistakes.”

“You can go back in time and erase all your mistakes.”

Ulinthra pretended like this hadn’t occurred to her, but purposely in an unconvincing way. “I could have done that, couldn’t I? Damn.”

“You still haven’t gotten to the point.”

“Right, Ulinthra said. “Ecrin and now this young woman here, whoever she is, will be permanently placed on your temporal pattern.”

“Vitalie, go, now,” Leona ordered immediately.

“You think I didn’t know you’d say that?” She looked over at Vitalie, who was making no attempt to escape. “You won’t make it down the hall if you run.”

“I gathered,” Vitalie said.

“Good. I need your bone marrow,” Ulinthra said to Leona. “Blood can work, but it’s unreliable, and short-lived. I need the marrow to make Ecrin’s and Vitalie’s bodies generate your salmon juice on an ongoing basis.”

“You don’t even feel a little bit bad about killing Paige,” Leona pointed out.

“That was a non sequitur, and no, I suppose I don’t. To paraphrase Captain Malcolm Reynolds, someone ever kills you, you kill ‘em right back. Paige saw me threaten you with a knife on a security camera on your day a year ago. What I didn’t realize is that removing her life extension upgrades would reactivate her spawn power. That was my bad, and I paid for it with my life. Needless to say, Paige needed to die, so that I could be saved. Now go take a sonic shower. I want you clean so you don’t pass on some disease.”

“Should I even bother pleading for you to reconsider, or for you to at least give me one day to mourn?”

“You can mourn tomorrow with everybody else, but no one cares about your feelings. Now go. You can fight me on it next year when it no longer matters.”

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Microstory 511: First School Based on Alto Technology Opens

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Decades ago, a film premiered called Draugmas. In it, the titular demon sneaks into people’s dreams, and removes their fears. At first the characters find this to be helpful and rewarding. No longer are they afraid of heights and poisonous animals. They are free to take risks they never would have before. Unfortunately, this takes a turn when Draugmas victims begin to lose their inhibitions altogether, ultimately forgetting their instinct for basic self-preservation. Their only hope is a little girl who, for whatever reason, was born without the ability to dream at all. The film was low-budget, simple, and even cerebral. Though sequels were planned, they were never made, as critics pointed out how repetitive this type of movie was bound to be. What it did, however, was spawn a production company, led by the Draugmas filmmakers. The company created exclusively horror films involving dreams. Each took place in its own universe, but each involved someone with ill intentions, and the ability to cross into dreams. Powerful anomaly, Mandy Alto grew of during the golden age of Draugmas Entertainment, and is said to have watched all of the movies several times. His friends and family describe him as a caring worrywart, without a violent bone in his body. He first used his ability to enter people’s dreams to hold conversations, and exchange ideas. He then realized that, by connecting to someone of authority over a topic, he and his friends could learn from that person without ever leaving their respective beds. He eventually increased his range, and could theoretically pull everyone on a planet into a single dream; though that has never been tried, even during the dark Operator years. Bellevue scientists studied his ability, possibly to a higher degree than any others. Under the direction of The Visionary, Mandy’s dream network has recently been replicated through technology. Valary Sela believes that dream networks are the key to the planet’s success. “Soon,” she says, “the idea of going to school while you’re awake will seem as archaic as vehicles that operate on petrol.” The first educational network based on this new Alto technology has opened up. Based in Bellevue, Kansas, the network is currently in beta stage, serving students primarily within a single building. Interim Dean of Education for Alto High School, Roxanne Coraux hopes to extend the student body to field locations around the world by next year, and possibly allow the production of individual units for the home. She had this to say regarding expansion plans.

I believe it’s possible that Alto High School will become the single only organization for education on the planet, and perhaps even beyond. The board and I are exercising caution at the moment, however. Everyone deserves a solid education, and they deserve to have options, as they are available. Likewise, anyone who would like to initiate their own dream network is welcome to follow the Confederacy’s regulations, and do so. We are prepared to scale our program up as high as the natural market will allow, and also to remain as small as the population would like. This is a pilot program, one designed to showcase what can be accomplished using this technique, and we are excited to see what this teaches us about the art of teaching.

Mandy Alto declined to comment at this time. Bellevue declined to speak with this publication directly, instead opting to address the matter publicly using their own social media outlets.

Microstory 510: Aleri War Commences After Sublight Delay

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This is an official Aleri news bulletin. Only Aleri citizens are allowed to read this. Any non-Aleri attempting to read the following words will be treated as enemies of the state, and will be pursued. Any Aleri who attempts to relay this information to a non-Aleri will be considered a traitor, the punishment for which is death. Years ago, one of our fierce and powerful battle matrixa set out for war. The Aleri government had been petitioning the AMF for weeks for war approval, being turned down every time. War was even accepted by one of the opposing worlds, but still the AMF rejected our proposals. Finally, a plan was set in motion. We would go to war without approval, fully aware of the danger this posed our people. The force of the entire galaxy may have torn us apart, but we were prepared to invoke an ancient convention first agreed upon by the original sixteen interstellar colonies. This convention allows for a military force to act against the the AMF’s decision by severing its ties with the rest of the galaxy, if only temporarily. Astral lanes are closed to and from Aleri during this period, and can only be reopened for trade or other travel after the results of war. This is why an entire matrix of ships were sent towards our enemies at the same time. Unfortunately, as we all know, our brave warriors were unable to complete their mission. A field decision was made to continue on at sublight speeds. As science would have it, however, relativistic speeds prevent any practical form of interstellar communication. While three years passed for us, the matrix experienced only 108 days, surviving on rations and hibernation shifts. Theirs was a noble sacrifice, and all true Aleri owe these soldiers their respect and reverence. Now they have returned, having reached civilization just yesterday. Much has changed since then, and debriefing groups have been dispatched to their location to bring them up to speed (no pun intended). Their exact coordinates, and status, are classified from the public, but war plans remain in effect until otherwise stated. Please review your wartime procedures with your family and community. Further bulletins will be posted across all of Aalleerrii as necessary.

Crossed Off: Spirited Away (Part VIII)

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Starla, Alec, Marissa, and Therasia spent hours down in the fountain lair, discussing and demonstrating various aspects of their abilities. Though she has met others with abilities, she related to Therasia the most. Perhaps it was as simple as being around the same age. The three of them reluctantly went back home once it had become too late, but they made plans to meet up again the next day.

“You know who would love to meet her?” Alec asked when they were back topside.

“Karam?” Starla assumed.

“Karam,” Alec confirmed.

“That little pyro,” Marissa laughed.

Starla looked at her watch. “Egypt is just waking up right now, so I’ll contact him while I’m sleeping. As long as that would be okay with Therasia.”

“We’ve actually discussed it. She trusts me to only trust people she can trust.”

Starla giggled. “So, that’s a yes.”

After helping her into the guest bed, Alec slipped in next to her and fell asleep right away, exhausted from the day’s activity. Starla always had trouble sleeping like a normal person, so she sent her Egyptian friend, Karam a telepathic ping, knowing that her body would be forced to cycle itself down with her consciousness away. She waited for twenty minutes or so, but he wasn’t answering. Either he was busy or dead, so she decided to jump into his body and make sure things were okay. She found herself in an unfamiliar location. It was a busy marketplace that looked like it could have been in Egypt, but upon closer inspection, none of the products being sold were labeled with Arabic. She wasn’t completely sure because she had never studied it, but it appeared to be Greek. And her environment was an unusual shade of purplish-blue, like she was seeing the world through tinted lenses.

When she looked down, she saw her own body, wearing her own nightclothes, which was not correct. She should have been seeing the body of the person she was possessing. She walked over to a nearby motorcycle and tried to see herself in its mirror, but she had absolutely no reflection. This was not normal. As she was looking around, hoping to stumble across answers in the fruits and vegetables, she saw an old man who appeared to be watching her curiously. She looked behind her back, but there was nothing interesting. She moved to the right, and then the left. The man’s eyes followed her. “Who are you?”

He tilted his head to the other side and smiled. “Spyridon Colonomos. Don,” he amended. “And you?”

“I don’t know that I should tell you my name.”

“That’s fair. Let’s go back in time so we can prevent me from telling you mine.”

“You can do that?”

Don laughed exuberantly. Anyone in the market with decent hearing should have turned to look, but they didn’t. They could see each other, but no one could see them. “I cannot.”

“So you’re like me.”

“No. I’m older. You’re like me.”

“Semantics,” she said with a shrug. She looked back at the shopping people. “Where are we?”

“Greece; where I’m from. I came to check in on a friend, but my body is actually in Finland right now.”

“Ah.” She pointed to herself. “Canada.”

He nodded politely.

“Can you possess other people, err...?”

“Why would I be able to do that?”

“I guess we’re not the same.”

“No. But something drew us together. Right now, we are in the netherworld.”

“The whatnow?”

“I don’t really know what to call it, but...” He paused to scan the crowd and then pointed to a man in a gray tunic who was trying his damnedest to smell the oranges, but apparently failing. “That guy is dead.”

“How do you know?”

“Wait for it.”

As she watched, the man attempted to pick up the orange, but his hand passed right through the cart. “That’s sad.”

“Indeed.”

“So, you can see dead people?”

“Sometimes. It depends on which avenue I take. If I travel using the indigo world, I see ghosts. If I use the blue world, I don’t. I’m not sure how it all works. I can see them, but they have no idea I’m here, ya know, unless I want them to. Except for you. You could somehow see me by default.” He outstretched his arm. “Here, I’ll take you to my body so I can introduce you to my friends.”

“That’s not creepy.” But she took his hand anyway. Their surroundings blurred and zipped away from sight before revealing new surroundings. They were in a small apartment bedroom. Don’s physical body was lying in bed. It looked strangely stiff and uncomfortable, and she couldn’t figure what was wrong with it.

He seemed to notice this. “My body is in hibernation to prevent me from dying while my consciousness is away.”

“I wish I had that.”

“Oh, dear...”

As a boy came into the room snickering, Starla caught a glimpse of a young woman who was cooking breakfast. The boy approached Don’s body and tried to flick his ear several times, but it didn’t budge. Not even bears went under such kind of hibernation. Don’s spirit narrowed his brow and barked at the boy, “Hosanna. Stop trying to wake me up.”

The boy perked up and looked at Don’s spirit. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were here.”

“Do you make a habit out of physically assaulting me when I’m not here?”

“Um...no, of course not. Stop talkin’ crazy.” The boy was not very convincing. “Who is this?”

“You can see her?”

“You found another one of us?” Hosanna asked. “Rather, another one of you.”

“She found me,” Don corrected, but then clarified, “well, fate found us both.”

Hosanna nodded somewhat sarcastically. “Right. She should meet Valary.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Don said. “Val, get in here!” he cried.

“Yes?” the woman asked while opening the door with her back, a mixing bowl still in hand.

Before Starla could see Valary’s full face, something pulled her away from the scene. Karam had evidently responded to her telepathic call, and was pulling her all the way to her final destination in Egypt.

“Hey, Star,” Karam said. “Sorry I didn’t answer. “My husband and I were...well, we were in the middle of something.”

No, no no no no nooo, Starla yelled. But she couldn’t get back to Don’s apartment. She sent her consciousness to random places in Greece and Finland, but none of them were right. If she wanted to form a psychic connection, it would either happen randomly, or she would have to seek out someone that she had already connected with. But that was the problem. She had never actually connected with Don or the other two. She had only come across their vicinity. There was no way to return, and there was no way to contact them in the real world. She knew his last name, but that wasn’t enough to find him. She was certainly no private investigator, and it sounded like they traveled a lot. They were lost to her forever. The more she thought about it, the less she agreed with René’s policy of hiding, and the more interested she was in finding others. She wanted to know everybody. She didn’t want to be alone.

“What’s going on?” Karam asked after she returned to Egypt.

I don’t know. Starla took control of Karam’s head and shook it slowly and deliberately. “I don’t know,” she repeated a few times.

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