Microstory 2410: Mildome

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This dome is for flowers. It’s a self-sustaining ecosystem, and it’s growing. Here’s the thing, at the moment, it’s mostly just grass in the center of a vast desert. There are pockets of flower gardens here and there, but they are going to spread over the course of the next several decades. This was done intentionally, not because the builders were lazy, or something. It’s all about the pollinators. You got your bees, you got your butterflies and moths, you got your flies. Not houseflies, that’s not what we’re talking about, nor blackflies. Those are gross and annoying. Don’t ask me the exact species of any of these things, I’m not that big of an expert. I just really like flowers. Continuing on, you got your hummingbirds, you got your honeyeaters and sunbirds, you got your bats. I looked it up, there are other animals that are good at pollinating on Earth, but they either don’t have them on this planet, or it’s taking time to engineer them. I doubt that they transported live specimens clear across the interstellar void. I don’t think you can do that legally, unless they qualify as a pet. You know what I learned while I was here? Humans are pollinators too. I don’t just mean that we plant plants. Obviously we do that, but we also have a history of lifting pollen, and carrying it to other places. Isn’t that cool? Well, you can do that under Mildome, if it strikes your fancy. The creators want this space to be the culmination of the hard work of millions of living organisms, including people like you can me. One day, the whole surface will be one giant garden, like a little microcosm of the world. I will be coming back regularly to see how it progresses, but I can’t wait for the “end” result. Of course, it won’t be finished at that point. The pollinators will continue to do what they do best, and this dome will thrive. Without any negative environmental factors, like climate breakdown, there’s nothing standing in its way. That’s something you have to see if you’re here on the planet anyway. Plus, there’s tons of honey, because of the bees. In addition to taking care of them, and learning about them, you can also eat however much honey that you want. If that doesn’t convince you, I suppose nothing will.

Orthogradient: People of Stoutverse (Part VI)

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Primus Naraschone Mihajlović sat at the edge of her desk, body bent forwards at her waist, hands braced tightly against the wood. Splinters dug in underneath her fingernails, but she didn’t pay them any mind. She barely noticed, and she almost felt like she deserved it. The war was not going in her favor. The enemy just kept coming, and they couldn’t keep up with it. The aliens seemingly had an infinite supply of fighters, and there was no competing with that tactic. The home field advantage could only take them so far. If they could only figure out where these portals were going to form, she might be able to bottleneck them, or something, but they appeared to be random. Random or intentional. Or both. There was a knock on the door. “Enter.”

Her assistant and Head Bodyguard, Kineret McArthur walked in. “There’s another one.”

“Send a squadron. I’ll watch them all die from here.”

“The ship,” Kineret began to explain, “it’s different. It looks different, and as soon as the squadron responded tactically, it retreated.”

Naraschone perked up. “They’re adapting. Send a second squadron. Overwhelm them with everything we got.”

Kineret held her finger against her earpiece. “They don’t think it’s the Zippers. They sent a message in binary, so the scientists need time to convert it. The alien ship is projecting the golden spiral on the front. That’s a symbol of balance for us. Maybe it means the same thing to them.” She jerked her chin as she listened more. “More holographic images are coming in. Smiling humans. The vierkam heart. A...sort of half vierkam heart. They’re interpreting the next one as an olive branch.”

“What, are they surrendering?”

Kineret kept listening. “They converted the binary code. It’s just text. It says, we come in peace. Take us to your leader.”

“Have the General send them my coordinates.”

“Sir, I would strongly advise—”

“I’m not going to last another week in office, Kin. They’re this close to voting me out. Egypt and Holland are prepared to back my replacement now, which means he officially has enough votes. Dying at the direct hands of an enemy would at least make my biography read less pathetic. Give them my coordinates.”

Kineret turned away, and whispered the orders into her mouthpiece.

A couple of minutes later, as Naraschone was putting her blazer back on, a woman suddenly appeared in the office. “How did you do that?”

“I was born with it,” the stranger replied. “Are you this world’s prime leader?”

“Yes, I’m Primus Naraschone Mihajlović.” She held her hand out, palm up, as was the custom.

The woman looked down at it. “I don’t know what to do with that. Where I’m from, we hug upon first meeting. Most of my crew shakes hands like this.” She pantomimed moving her hand up and down, palm facing the side.

“We do it like this.” Naraschone swung her arm over, and palm circled Kineret, but Naraschone’s hand was on top, since she was the superior.

The stranger smiled, and reached out to mimic Kineret, but as an honored guest, it was her hand that should be on top. “Eliana Prime.” That’s just a coincidence. It’s literally my surname.”

Nararschone carefully turned her hand over for her, and performed the ritual. “So, you’re not from our world either? Humans evolved on other planets, or did you simply arrive in a form that I am supposedly more comfortable with?”

“It’s more complicated than that. I’m from a different universe. My crew all hail from different universes beyond that. We came together to fight the Ochivari.”

“Is that what they’re called?” Kineret questioned. She took out her handheld device to write that down, and take any other necessary notes.

Eliana lifted her chin as if to watch her type, but couldn’t really see, and didn’t care to. “Ochivari is plural. Singular is Ochivar. They originated on a planet called Worlon in Salmonverse. They evolved from semiparasitic insectoids which were accidentally introduced to human DNA millions of years prior. We don’t understand the mechanism by which the foreign code was integrated into their systems, but we hypothesize that it gave their ancestors a survival advantage over their cousins  who did not receive it.”

“This is good stuff, keep going,” Kineret encouraged.

“I’m no expert,” Eliana clarified. “I’m just the teleporter on the team. I’m not even the main teleporter. If you would like to speak with our captain, I could take you to her, but be warned, she is decidedly not human. Her form can be alarming to some.”

“I can handle it,” Naraschone insisted. “I’ve seen plenty of Zippers first hand.”

“Hold on,” Kineret interrupted, holding her earpiece again. “Another one just appeared. Very different form too. It’s...quite large.”

Eliana looked pleased. “Azura and the Transit found us. Thank God, we could use their help. Have you been at war for a long time? Ochivari don’t usually fight physically. They generally release this virus—”

Kineret interrupted again, “it’s a giant cube. It just appeared in the middle of Plangol Field.”

“A cube?” Eliana asked. “That would be the Crossover. There’s no telling who’s in it right now. It changes hands, and I’ve not even begun to explain to you how time works for people who traverse the bulk.”

“If you’re a teleporter, that means you can get me there?” Naraschone asked. “It’s on the other side of the planet.”

“Sir, please,” Kineret urged.

Eliana held out both of her hands. “All aboard who’s coming aboard.”

Naraschone grasped one hand while Kineret hesitated. “I guess I have to go to protect you,” she lamented before taking Eliana’s other hand.

The three of them were standing before the large Crossover cube. A ship was just landing next to it at the same time. Eliana looked upon it with a sense of familiarity that she did not show the cube. A second...building maybe, appeared as well. It was much smaller, fit for only a handful of people. Humans started coming out of all three structures, but more were coming from their own portals, each of which sparkled and shined with two or three dozen brilliant colors. A small group appeared, releasing a blast of energy that was enough to blow everyone’s hair back, but not enough to knock them over. A spacewoman appeared to be literally tearing through the colorful fabric of spacetime. More of this sort of fabric rippled and waved next to her as a coat formed from the aether. The man wearing it pulled the hood back, and smiled. Glass cracked and shattered as another man forced himself through his breach. He reached back through, and helped a companion of his across. A woman slowly faded into view to their left, sitting cross-legged on the ground. Yet another woman burst out of nothing, and crash landed next to her, but she seemed to be okay.

Eliana recognized some of them, but not everyone. She walked over to greet the others from her ship as they were descending the ramp. It was hard to tell who was in charge at first. Unless they came in together, they expressed surprise at being there together. Naraschone would think that the small group from the giant cube would be the leaders, but they looked just as out of the loop as everyone else. It was the woman escorted by the man who literally punched his way here who stepped away from the forming crowd, towards Kiteran and Primus Mihajlović. “Hello Primus. I’m Thack Natalie Collins, temporary coordinator of the vanguard. I wanted everyone to come here so they could see what happens when the natives of a given world fight back. You may feel distress, but you are faring better than you realize. When the Ochivari come to a universe, they usually only do one of two things. They leave it alone, or they sterilize the entire population, and then bug out. You’re proof that they do not get to decide everything.”

“I don’t understand,” Naraschone admitted.

“We’ll talk more about it.” Thack turned to the crowd, which quieted down for her. “Travelers of the bulk, welcome to Stoutverse. The fighting has only begun here. What the Ochivari do not realize is that everything they’ve been doing so far have been only minor skirmishes. The first battle in a multiversal war is coming, and you are all here to bear witness.” She consulted her watch. “The Transit will be arriving within the hour. Until then, I’ll ask the current operators of the Crossover—specifically the managers of Kingdom Hotel—to prepare a meal for us all. Khuweka, if you will, please take the Cormanu back into orbit, scan for breaches, and protect this world until the Transit Army arrives. Your crew will stay with us.”

“I would be honored to, Miss Collins.” This must have been who Eliana was talking about. While everyone else here looked human, Khuweka was tall, white, and almost monstrous. She could be intimidating if she wanted to be, but her voice was soft and unimposing. There was only one other like her. He was originally in the small building, but he followed his brethren up the ramp into the Cormanu without asking for permission, or even saying a word at all. Naraschone didn’t even know if he was a man. He just looked more masculine to her.

There were more in the Crossover cube than the small group that came out of it at first, but Naraschone didn’t get the impression that it was anywhere near full capacity. Picnic tables appeared out of nowhere, but Eliana wasn’t the one who did it. Her ship, the Cormanu itself appeared to be a conscious entity, capable of transporting anything from anywhere on the planet. Probably no one was missing all this stuff right now since most people were trying to survive in the bunkers. Well, not most. They had yet to build sufficient facilities for the entire population of the planet. They never thought they would need anything like that. They should have been better prepared. Lives would have been spared.

Kineret was uncomfortable taking this time away from the chaos of war that they had been in the midst of for the last few years, but Thack Collins was confident that the two Maramon, as they were called, were capable of defending them from orbit. Some of the others who came here were not soldiers, but a lot of them were, so they could jump into action if another wave showed up. Eliana’s remark that they were from all different sorts of universes was true of those who did not arrive in the Cormanu. The man who escorted Miss Collins was father to a young woman on the Cormanu. Her mother was supposed to be coming next on the fabled Transit, which would reportedly mark the whole world’s salvation as it was the only thing actually designed for a war like this one. Naraschone was holding off on judgment until later. For now, they just enjoyed the food that a man named Bell prepared, and talked. The two locals stayed quiet at first to let the others catch up with each other. This was evidently a pretty big deal. They had never all come together like this. There were supposed to be an infinite number of universes out there, but there must be something special about this one. Thack called it Stoutverse, a term that the natives had never used for themselves, but if Naraschone had anything to do with it, they would start now.

Naraschone was laughing with a new friend she met named Curtis, who had an endless supply of interesting stories about his time in an unnamed universe where he was part of a group of superheroes. He was part of The Grenadiers now. But Kineret wasn’t listening to him anymore. She was instead listening to her earpiece, which kept a constant consolidated stream of battle chatter. She was genetically engineered to be able to comprehend multiple voices at once, allowing her to keep apprised on the situation from many sources at once. It was called the Unified Tactical Awareness System, and while a lot of key players around the world could use it effectively to some degree, she could parse the highest number of distinct channels of anyone, which was why she worked directly for the Primus of Earth. “What is it?”

Kineret looked up at the crew of the Cormanu, who appeared to be listening to their own radio system. “They know. Breaches all over the place. It’s a full tactical assault.” The whole crowd stopped talking as she faced her superior. “We need to get you to the bunker. Eliana, it’s back on the other side of the world.”

“The mass incursion,” Thack Natalie Collins said, standing up. “I predicted this, but timekeeping is difficult to measure for me. You have so many time zones.”

Ecrin, the Captain of the Prototype—the small building that only a handful of people crewed—stood up. “What do we do?”

“I’m not a military leader,” Thack replied. “I can’t tell you what to do. But given the low maneuverability of your respective machines...I suggest everyone convene on the Cormanu.”

“Diamond Zek,” Kivi said, “beam us all up.”

They nearly all disappeared, leaving behind only Naraschone, Kineret, Thack, Thack’s bodyguard and universe puncher, Limerick, and Eliana. “Where’s this bunker?” Eliana asked.

“Right underneath the International Assembly House,” Kineret answered as she was tapping on her handheld device. “I’ll get you the coordinates.” Before she could recite them, a loud horn blared in the distance. A giant, and particularly long, object raced towards them. It stopped suddenly, right between all of the other machines and the picnic tables.

A woman stepped out of it, and approached the small group. Others followed behind her. “Where’s my daughter?” she asked Thack.

Thack pointed towards the sky, and looked up. “On the frontlines. The Darning Wars have begun.”

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Orthogradient: Antitheses (Part V)

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Hundreds of thousands of years from now, the universe will be a very different place. No world, no culture, no daily routine would be recognizable to someone from the present day, or even thousands of years later. In this future, three boys were born. They lived on Earth, the surface of which had largely been abandoned, and left to thrive in peace. A small sect of humans remained throughout this time, incidentally keeping their population small by emigration, and otherwise avoidable life-threatening diseases and dangers. There were fully organic humanoids elsewhere in the galaxy, but they were genetically engineered one way or the other. This tiny Earthan village was composed of normal people who were the last in a line of natives. Being of the same sex, the trio was unable to further the species, finally marking the end of an era. After their respective parents died, they were all alone in a universe that they despised, and did not understand. They were inconsequential. Or at least that was what anyone who found out about them believed. But there was one thing that set them apart. They were not normal humans. Being the final members of the race had intrinsically made them special, which time itself took to be significant.

The boys grew up, and eventually forgot their own names. They adopted new ones, based on their individual time powers. Time travelers were still around, but only because they traveled through time. Except for these three, they were no longer being born, because the conditions were no longer suitable for them. Antichron was so named because he was a true time traveler, who was capable of freely moving backwards and forward along the timeline. Antiparticle could teleport multiple particles to a single point in spacetime, forcing an unnatural collision that resulted in the annihilation of them all, and an explosion correlative to the number of the particles, and the speed of transport, and reversely correlative to the size of the point. Antintropy could reverse entropy, repairing what once was broken, or healing what once was damaged. He could theoretically restore all of reality to a more ordered state. But to do that, he needed power. To do that, he needed the other two. Together, they became The Antitheses, and set about to change their present. This turned out to mean changing the past first.

A war ravaged the galaxy centuries prior to their time, which contributed to the dwindling natural human population. To win this war, the Antitheses could go back to the beginning of it, and use their considerable powers to win without breaking a sweat, but they did not want to reveal their powers to those who would misunderstand or fear them. They needed to become heroes in their own time, not villains before they were born. They had to win this war using traditional tactics. It was going to take a lot of work, but it was not impossible. To prepare for the mission, they went back even further in time, to an even more primitive technological period, hoping to steal an obsolete warship called the Sharice Davids. It was a powerful vessel, but limited in its advancements, which made it perfect for the future war. There were vulnerabilities in more advanced starships which the Davids did not have to worry about. Unfortunately, this mission proved to be more difficult than they thought it would.

They faced far more opposition in the 23rd century than they ever expected. Antichron’s ability to read the timeline was less refined than he hoped. The ship kept slipping from their grasps. Every time they tracked it to a new point in spacetime, it would move to another before they had any chance of boarding it again. At one point, it appeared to be destroyed, but then it showed back up on their temporal radar, and they were able to pursue once more. Annoyingly, it was traveling much faster than it should have been, and they were having trouble keeping up. Antiparticle was capable of teleporting them from one point to another without annihilating the particles, but this took a lot more concentration, because that wasn’t what he trained himself to do. Destruction was the name of the game for him, and reapplying his skills in another way proved tiresome. It was now the year 2337, though, and the ship was right before them. They were nearly there.

“It’s gone!” Antiparticle exclaimed.

“Again?” Antintropy cried. “How could it be gone again? They were staying in one place! We’re in the middle of nowhere. Why would they come all the way out to this region of space, only to disappear yet again?”

“No idea,” Antiparticle replied. “Follow them, Antichron. Where have they gone to next?”

Theirs was less of a ship, and more of a small snowglobe-shaped lifeboat, protected by a semitransparent plasma field. They didn’t think that they would need anything else, and besides, the more massive the object, the harder it was for both Antichron to jump through time, and for Antiparticle to teleport. Antichron didn’t say anything. His eyes were closed.

“Antichron!” Antintropy shouted.

“I’m looking!” Antichron shouted back. He shook his head. “I can’t find it.”

“That’s impossible!” Antintropy was never really not angry. “We would detect debris if it were destroyed, even if it were vaporized by something. It went somewhere, through a portal, or via the new teleportation drive it seems to have. And if it’s anywhere in the timeline, Antichron, then you should be able to pick it up. All of time and space at your fingertips. Find it!”

“I can’t. I’ve looked,” Antichron insisted. “It never comes back. We have attempted to intercept it at every moment that it has existed after the moment in its personal timeline where it was historically destroyed. I’m telling you, wherever it is, it’s not in the timeline, and it never returns.”

“Not in the timeline,” Antintropy echoed. “Where could they be if not in the timeline? There is no outside of the timeline.”

“Not as far as we know,” Antiparticle reminded him. “We could not find a teacher to help us learn the ways of the time traveler. If we were to find someone now, they might be able to illuminate us.”

“Stop suggesting that!” Antintropy demanded. “We’re not going to look for help. We’ve always done this on our own, and will continue on that way.”

“It’s obviously not working,” Antichron said. “Perhaps we underestimate these primitive people. They may have escaped in a way that none of us is familiar with, and are now cloaking themselves from detection. We’ve been chasing them relentlessly. They could have learned something about us.”

“What can ants learn of gods?” Antintropy questioned.

“Wait,” Antiparticle said, looking at the screen. “There’s something out there. We may have picked up a piece of debris afterall.”

“Plot an intercourse immediately.” Antintropy was not always the leader. Their trio had no predetermined leader, but power shifted periodically when one of them managed to bully the others into submission. It would continue to change if they never came up with an agreed upon hierarchy. This was assuming, of course that they didn’t destroy themselves by the time they accomplished their objectives anyway.

Antichron did as he was told, and flew their platform towards the only known object in the area. It was very slow, yet still difficult to maneuver. They passed by it a couple of times before they managed to sync up with its drift. It appeared to be a person, wearing a vacuum suit, but they were also sitting down. Antiparticle programmed the plasma barrier to accept them as a non-threat, then floated up to bring them in.

Once their mysterious visitor was completely inside of their transporter, the helmet opened, revealing a man. He was not surprised to see them, but also did not look upon them with any level of familiarity. He moved his eyes from one to the next, to the next. “You are here to steal the Sharice Davids?”

Antintropy cleared his throat, and took a half step forwards. “Yes, we are. Do you have a problem with that?”

“I personally don’t,” the man replied, “but you’ll find it difficult since the Sharice Davids no longer exists.” He paused, only to continue before they could respond. “They changed the name. It is now known as the Cormanu, so depending on what you’re after, you may be too late to the party.”

“Who are you?” Antintropy asked.

“My name is Meredarchos, but I’m currently in the body of a man named Carbrey Genovese. I can help you get to the universe that they have escaped to, but you will have to do everything I say without question.”

“Why would you help us?” Antichron questioned warily. “What’s in it for you?”

Meredarchos nodded as if they had already come to an agreement. “I have been searching for someone to help me in my home universe. I keep believing that I have found my champions, only to be thwarted by someone else, or even my targets themselves. I am trapped where I was born, and cannot leave on my own. I can teach you how to travel to where the crew of the Cormanu have escaped to, but before we do that, I demand that you use this technology to rescue me first.”

“Your physical form is stuck where it is, and you can only leave with your mind?” Antiparticle summarized.

“This is correct,” Meredarchos confirmed. “I seek out the weakest of minds, which might be the mentally vulnerable, or the injured. This man here was too busy trying to recover from truly severe wounds to keep me out. Unfortunately, my intrusion suppressed that recovery further, leaving me in this lame shell. I had to stay dormant for a while to survive. I need strength to find another host, but that does not matter if you can get to my real body. It is dying, and I cannot fix it where it is. It must be transported somewhere else, or I may end up trapped in a faulty new body, such as this one. The Cormanu is of no concern to me, but I’ll help you. As an added bonus, I’ll ignore your universe, and only conduct my work elsewhere. Trust me, that’s a good deal.”

“What exactly is your work?” Antintropy asked him.

“You cannot be made aware of that. It is a non-negotiable stipulation. If you want the Cormanu, you’ll have to agree to that, as well as a few more details. You may add your own requirements as well as we continue to discuss this.”

The Antitheses negotiated with Meredarchos, and laid out their plans. He taught them how to synthesize something called an atomic lance, which tapered to a point so small, it could pierce through the nucleus of an atom. With this, they were able to access hyperdimensional space, also known as the outer bulk. Bulk energy would leak into their lance, and fill the storage tank. This took a very, very long time, but they did not need to stick around to wait for it. All four of them jumped a few hundred years into the future, but they left the snowglobe where it was. When they returned to the timestream, the bulk energy reserves were full, and they were ready to make the jump. The whole thing shook violently, tossing them around like rag dolls. They did not bother installing seats on this thing, nor protective belts to hold them in place. Meredarchos was able to stay put by magnetizing his hover chair to the floor. The Antitheses, however, had to alter artificial gravity to keep themselves against the plasma barrier, which could be as hard as rock, or in this case, as soft as pillows.

They waited patiently as the shaking continued for several minutes before finally reaching critical mass, and falling through the breach in the universe’s membrane. Now that that part was over, they were able to place themselves in temporal stasis so they wouldn’t get bored, because it would be untold time before they could reach Meredarchos’ universe of origin. Seconds later, they were there, so they pierced the second membrane, and landed on the planet. It was desolate and plain. There were absolutely no geographical features. The whole world was entirely smooth. They found Meredarchos’ original body where it was barely holding onto life inside of a small personal living chamber. They pulled it into the snowglobe, which was getting pretty crowded now, and took off. First the shaking, then the piercing, then the stasis, then the piercing again, and they were finally where they wanted to be.

“This...this feels weird,” Antiparticle noted.

“It’s a dead universe.” Meredarchos was still piloting Carbrey’s body. “The laws of physics don’t foster life here. There are no habitable planets, only us, and the Cormanu.”

“Why would they come here?” Antichron asked.

He shrugged Carbrey’s shoulders. “It has plenty of chemical elements. “The ship was heavily damaged, so they need raw materials to repair it. If I hadn’t taught you how to travel the bulk, this would be one of the safest places to hide.”

“They’ve detected us,” Antiparticle announced.

“That’s okay,” Meredarchos decided. “They won’t be able to leave yet. I’m surprised they made it here in the first place, but I’m sure they’ve exhausted their power, so even if the repairs didn’t keep them from escaping again, they’ll have to refuel first. If I were you, I would take your shot now, though. They’ll be looking for workarounds to their predicament.”

“You can stay here,” Antintropy told him. He took Antiparticle’s hand, who in turn took Antichron’s. The Antitheses teleported right into the Cormanu where they found themselves trapped in what looked like a hock.

A woman casually approached, and dragged her fingers along the laser beams that were preventing them from leaving. When she removed her hand, they saw that the tips had been burned off. “I’ll just get Landis to fix it. Because you underestimate us. You see, we’ve been eavesdropping. We know who you are. We’re currently upgrading the ship, rendering it completely useless to you. It will not serve you in your stupid future war. We’ll let you out if you leave us alone forever, but if you ever come after us again, then we’ll react in kind. We give second chances, but not thirds. What say you?”

Antintropy scowled and approached the lasers. “We’ll leave your ship alone, and revert to our backup plan, but in the meantime, you’ll become our new fixation.”

The woman leaned in closer. “Then you’ll die.”

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Microstory 1764: Phoenix Industry

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I’ve had a monopoly in my industry for the last two years. I had to hire a team of lawyers to protect me, so the government couldn’t come in and confiscate my property. Back when I was just a crematorium operator, I gave my administrator the task of finding me a new furnace. When the machine came in, I assumed she had bought something without going through me first, but it wasn’t long before I learned that she had had nothing to do with it. She’s trustworthy, but as lazy as I am, so she hadn’t even gotten around to starting her research. We never did figure out where the new furnace came from, and that’s kind of a big deal. Not only is it weird—and worrisome that someone had the ability to charge my company credit card without authorization—but it also appears to be unique. They call it the Phornax, which after I used it, I realized was a combination of the Latin word for furnace, fornax and phoenix. You see, it brings people back to life. It doesn’t matter if they’ve already been cremated, or if they’ve been dead for a long time. Any dead person I place in here will come out brand new in a few hours. There doesn’t even appear to be any side effects, like an insatiable hunger for human brains, or neurological issues. In fact, they usually return healthier than they were when they died. It cures them of all maladies and other medical conditions. The only caveat is that I do need all of the remains. I’ve tried to bring back someone with only a portion of their ashes, because part of it was spread into the ocean. It did not turn out right. I’ve seen a lot of disgusting things in this business, but I retched the most I ever had the day I opened that door, and found a horrific pile of boney goo of a man with incomplete cremains. Since then, I’ve been adamant about doing my due diligence.

I do charge for my services, but even though no one else can do what I do, I think I keep my prices fair, and I base them off of tax brackets. The rich pay handsomely, and that supplements the loss of income from my discounted rates, and my pro bono work. I work hard at this, and it’s not easy. I only take Saturdays off to rest. I shouldn’t even be in the office right now, but my administrator is on vacation, and there are a few records I have to verify. As I’m standing at her desk, trying to figure out her filing system, a man walks in. The door was supposed to be locked, so I’m not sure what happened there. Somehow I know that this is him. This is the man responsible for my furnace gift. I don’t know if he just works for a secret cabal, or if he’s straight up the devil, but I can tell that he’s involved. He confirms as much when he recites the full serial number of the Phornax, which he wouldn’t have known if he was just some rando off the street. I ask him why he did this, and he claims that this was all a test run. He and his people needed a way to assess whether my species was ready for the privilege of immortality. This was a great way to do that, because the process is irreproducible, so I’ve not been able to get around to helping all of the over hundred billion people who have died in history. He tells me he doesn’t like the results, and that he’s taking the furnace back. I beg him not to, that we deserve a second chance, but he refuses. I’m not a violent man, but I feel compelled to try to stop him physically. In the struggle, I somehow end up inside the Phornax. “Fine,” he says, before switching it on. I scream in pain as the fire overwhelms me. I break myself out hours later. I had always wondered what would happen if you put a living organism in here. It appears to give people superstrength. What else, though?

Microstory 1763: On the Wings of Perseus

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I thought I was alone on this alien planet, but there is another. I don’t know if he belongs here, or came here from somewhere else, like me, but he doesn’t seem the least bit surprised to find me. I should not be surprised that he is not surprised seeing as we’re standing before a fountain containing statues resembling the two of us, along with many other creatures, who I presume to all be evolved alien species. My guess is that this is a monument to the intelligent races who live in this galaxy, though I couldn’t say whether all of them visited here at some point, they’re only the ones that the Pegasus being specifically knows about, or it’s comprehensive. All I can say is that I’m so pleased to finally have someone else to talk to. And he does indeed talk, even though he looks like a horse with wings. The first thing he tells me is his name, and though I imagine his peoples don’t use Latin script for their written language, what I hear sounds a little bit like the name Perseus, albeit with some kind of non-North American accent and pronunciation. It’s interesting that he should be named that, since both Pegasus and Perseus appear in ancient Greek mythology together, and it’s never been suggested that they are one and the same, or that the latter is the proper name for just one particular member of a whole race of the former. Perhaps all religion was inspired by reality in some way, but the truth has been corrupted overtime, kind of like how the Norse gods are often depicted as real aliens with advanced technology, who humans mistook for deities. I try to ask Perseus what this fountain is, and why a statue of me is in it, but he sort of brushes it off and says that it’s “just this thing.” I find it strange that I should be placed closest to him in the artistic rendering, when we have only now met, and the other aliens probably have much more experience with their interstellar neighbors. He brushes this off as well, and offers to give me a ride on his back. I feel awkward, accepting such a thing from a clearly sentient entity, but if he doesn’t, I shouldn’t.

We fly up, and up, and up, through the clouds, into the bitter cold, and right past what I might consider to be the boundary between atmosphere and outer space. I don’t bother freaking out, or trying to hold my breath. If this is his way of murdering me, then so be it. What am I gonna do, hop off, and go back down? I don’t die, of course. I assume some kind of invisible protective barrier forms to hold in the air, and the heat. The farther we go, the faster we move, until we’re traveling at faster-than-light speeds. Our ships can do that, but not nearly this fast, and before I know it, we’re on a new planet, which I initially figure to be Perseus’ homeworld. I don’t see any other Pegisides around, or whatever it is his people call themselves. I only see humans, standing in and around what I remember to be human architecture. They don’t gasp at the sight of the alien, so he has likely been here before. After I admire the city for a moment, Perseus explains what happened. The reason our scout ship crashed in the first place is due to tidal forces from a relatively nearby collapsis, which my ancestors used to refer to as a black hole. The planet’s proximity to this region of high gravity is also what caused me to experience only fifteen years of time while the human settlement here has been around for nearly two centuries. It’s nice to know that humanity survived the disasters on Earth, and also that I’m still around to enjoy the fruits of that labor myself. The people here welcome me warmly, and I realize just how much I missed being around other people.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 11, 2341

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There were eleven Cassidy cuffs, and twelve people. The time of requirement was over, though, so no one had to put one on if they didn’t want to. Leona grew to be quite comfortable with the Bearimy-Matic pattern, but there was no guarantee Jeremy would want to have anything to do with them anymore. According to their calculations, The Warrior was the last person with the power to transition them back and forth between the main sequence and The Parallel. It hopped from Jupiter to Nerakali, but seemed to end with him. Kivi pointed out that this didn’t mean no one could control them anymore. He didn’t use that power very much, and it wasn’t the only use of the primary cuff. Before they made the jump to 2341, Leona and Ramses worked on the cuffs to make sure no one could use them without their full authorization. Someone had to take ownership of the primary in order for them to function properly, so it had to be someone committed to the pattern, and to the team.

Bran, Aeolia, Siria, Dalton, and D.B. had never become full members of that team, and didn’t express any interest in joining officially now. So their numbers problem was instantly solved right there. Now they just needed to pose the question to the others. Ramses said he was tired of being left behind, and going off on tangents. He wanted to stick to his best friends, and not let anything take him away again. Jeremy also wanted to keep going like this. He didn’t know what they were going to do with their time, but it didn’t make sense to live one day at a time, and his original pattern forced him to isolate himself from others. This was the best solution. Olimpia said she had to stay, so her voice wouldn’t have to echo anymore. Leona explained that this didn’t mean she had to stay on the team. She could wear her own cuff, and just go off to live her life. Each one was perfectly capable of operating on its own. Her reaction to this truth made it clear that the suppression of her time illness wasn’t the only reason she wanted to stay, so they dropped the subject, and pretended like this was her only choice. Angela and Kivi didn’t give reasons, but they too chose to remain.

So now they were seven. After saying their goodbyes to their other friends, who had their own lives to lead, they synced up the cuffs, and made the next jump. It was February 11, 2341. Leona revealed that they were now back on track. Had Anatol never pushed them back to the 16th century, based on the number of temporal jumps they had since made, this was the date they would have ended up on. The question remained, what were they going to do? The pattern was one thing, but were they just going to relax by the sea for the rest of their lives? The primary reason they wore the cuffs before was because someone had intel about people needing saving, and how to go about doing it. Even Anatol had served them in this capacity, in his own twisted way. Now they had no purpose. Now they only had time.

Near the end of the day, they were still sitting around the table in the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which was parked on an ocean cliff. They weren’t saying anything. They expected to start discussing their plans for the future, but no one seemed to have any ideas. “Did Anatol have any friends or family?” Olimpia asked finally, breaking the silence.

“Well, not that we know of,” Leona answered. “Why?”

“I’m thinking about retaliation,” Olimpia furthered. We defeated him, so who might come for revenge? Isn’t that always what happens?”

“It was a draw,” Mateo reminded her. “Yes, we convinced him to give up, but he still made his own choice. I don’t think anyone would have anything to be vengeful about, it’s not like we killed him with the hundemarke. Like Lee-Lee said, he seemed to be rather alone. As far as I can tell, Juan Ponce de León was the closest thing he had to a friend. The Sergeant was a rival, and we all know how complicated frenemy relationships are. But still, if he was as close to someone as we are to each other, they haven’t revealed themselves yet.”

“That is who I’m worried about, someone we don’t even know exists,” Olimpia maintained. “You didn’t know how many Prestons there were in the beginning, did you?”

“I can’t recall,” Mateo said honestly. “I think I met Nerakali without knowing she was related to Zef.”

Leona stood up, and addressed the aether. “If anyone has anything against us, they might as well present themselves to us now! There is no point in dilly-dallying!”

They all looked around, waiting for a portal to open up. None did.

“I believe all of our enemies have been defeated,” Ramses figured. “Or turned to our side. I don’t think there is anyone left.”

“We are rather close to The Edge,” Kivi said casually, but also made it sound like she was talking about a capital-e edge.

“Is that a concept we’re supposed to know about already?” Angela questioned.

“The edge...of time travel?” Kivi put forth, thinking it would trigger something in their memories. “The year 2400?”

“What are you talking about?” Mateo asked.

“Is there some sort of event in 2400 that prevents time travelers from existing?” Ramses continued. “Like the Panikon?”

“I don’t know what that is, but it’s not some kind of temporal barrier. It’s just kind of...the end of our history.”

“Explain,” Leona pretty much demanded.

Kivi laughed. “People travel through time for what they believe to be various reasons, but it really all comes down to the one reason. They wanna see something interesting. They wanna save people’s lives...or troll on them. They like being around people who don’t understand what the universe is really like.”

“That changes in fifty-nine years?” Angela guessed.

“I don’t have all the details about how it comes to pass, but more than one version of me lived naturally on the other side of 2400. The humans become aware of advanced temporal mechanics, and begin to use it to develop their technology. Travelers don’t often visit the timeline past this point, because they’re not unique anymore, and life isn’t as exciting. Death has been conquered, and from what I gather, the reframe engine becomes public knowledge, and then ubiquitous. It’s not illegal to jump as far into the future, but it’s not done very much, as far as I can tell. I hear they call it the Edge.”

“Love, how quickly will we get there?”

“Assuming we stay on the Bearimy-Matic pattern?” Leona assumes. “Eight more jumps.”

“Is that bad?” Angela asked the obvious question.

“No,” Kivi said confidently. “The world changes in that year, but the world changes every year, doesn’t it? It never stops changing. It’s easy for a traveler to forget that normal humans still experience time travel. They watch the shaping of the timeline as well, they just see more detail.”

“We still need to figure out what we’re doing with our lives. This changes nothing,” Olimpia noted.

“It changes everything,” Leona contended. “We came here under the assumption that our problem is that there could be people out there who need our help, but we don’t know where and when. But this new information is suggesting that they probably don’t exist. Even if they do exist, they’ll probably not exist by next week. We have eight more jumps before the humans start taking care of themselves completely. We’ve always known about this. That’s why the Savior of Earth program was shut down a century prior, and why Anatol sent us back several centuries.”

“Are you suggesting that we recreate what he did to us?” Ramses asked.

“Maybe not quite as far as that,” Leona thought. “But there must be some time period that isn’t protected by someone else. The Salmon Runners have the end of the 20th century, and beginning of the 21st. Camden and the IAC are in the middle of that, and Mercury’s crusade is near the end of it, parallel to Serkan, Ace, and Paige. I’ve never heard of anyone protecting the mid-20th century, though.”

“Except for the Saviors,” Mateo said.

“Right,” she admitted. “I suppose the whole timeline is covered; that’s what the powers that be do. We keep having the same conversation about what we’re meant to do with our lives, and it never gets resolved. We just end up being distracted by some new or old antagonist.”

Angela spoke, “I think we all need to acknowledge the fact that life was a lot easier when someone was telling us how to live it. If we’re right, and there are no more bad guys, angry at us for what we did to someone else, then it’s up to us to come up with ideas. And I believe what we’re saying now is that those ideas don’t come from this region of the timeline.”

“Unless we go to other planets,” Jeremy said as if everyone was thinking the same thing.

“Those are pretty well taken care of too,” Leona tried to explain. I think there’s at least one traveler in every colony in the stellar neighborhood.”

“So we go beyond it,” Jeremy offered.

“Leona shook her head. “Operation Starseed launched in 2250, which means it’s nearly a hundred light years away from Gatewood by now. While that is indeed beyond the neighborhood, there hasn’t been enough time for a culture to develop to the point where they need our help. If they’re young enough, and expected to advance on their own, they’re probably being secretly protected by the artificial intelligence assigned to their planet. If they were made aware of their own Earthan origins, then they probably don’t need to be protected. We would be looking for a culture in the middle, who was eventually left alone by its AI, and is still struggling to learn from their mistakes. I don’t think those cultures exist yet.”

“Then we’re already on the path to reaching them,” Jeremy argued. “The Bearimy-Matic pattern should get us there pretty quickly according to the dimension of time, and the AOC should get us there quickly in the dimensions of space. We just need to wait, and then find the right planet. Maybe we look for a world that looks like a less advanced version of Earth.”

“I know exactly where you can find a world like that.” A man was standing at the bottom of the steps. No one seemed to have seen him arrive, suggesting he teleported in. He had a gun trained on them.

“Milford?” Angela asked, fear in her voice.

“I have been looking a long time for you.”

“How did you get out?” she asked him. She stood up, and backed away. Ramses stood as well, and made sure he was standing between them.

“There was new management in the afterlife simulation after you left,” Milford explained.

“Ellie Underhill, yes,” Angela said, thinking she understood.

Milford shook his head. “She and her friends disappeared. Someone else took over after her. He found me in the red, woke me up, and gave me the gift of resurrection.”

“What was the red level again?” Kivi asked the group.

“Static,” Milford answered instead. “People think that being shelved is the worst punishment after the black death, but nothing is compared to the torture of being in a room for centuries, unable to communicate with anyone, or do anything. That is the true hell, and I will never forgive you for putting me there.”

“I didn’t put you there,” Angela shouted. “You murdered me, and then when you died yourself, you suffered consequences for it. I had nothing to do with that decision. That’s on you, buddy. What are you even doing here? This has nothing to do with you!”

“You’re right,” Milford agreed. “I don’t care what’s happening here. I’ve only come to put you back where you belong. I regret accidentally killing you. Don’t forget that I didn’t mean to do it, and now I have the chance to undo it. I’m sending you back to 1816, so we can restart our lives together.” He shot Ramses, knowing he would fall down, and give him a clear shot at his true target. Unfortunately for him, Ramses wasn’t the only one who wanted to protect her. While Mateo was going after the shooter, Jeremy stepped in as the new shield. Whereas Ramses was hit in the shoulder, Jeremy’s bullet landed right in his chest. He didn’t die, but it didn’t look good.

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Microstory 1643: Fighting Fire With Accelerant

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Like a lot of human cultures that manage to evolve, and survive past their early Great Filters, the people on one version of Earth figured out how to defeat death. They did it both biologically, and technologically, which is standard. The outcome wasn’t as favorable as it is for others. While inventing immortality is in no way inevitable, it’s pretty hard to miss unless you’re deliberately trying to avoid it. If you do, there is every chance that you will run up against your next Great Filter, and die out as a species, so be careful. Still, some people don’t think that death is something that should be overcome, and this side of the argument wins about as often as it loses. This is about an Earth where that didn’t happen initially, but it became that way after they already started to walk up the path of immortality, and actually go pretty far along it. Right around the time that scientists and engineers were coming up with the right solutions, the world was suffering sociopolitically. Leaders were being elected in multiple countries who did not have the best interests of the public at heart. Fascists, is what they were, but unlike their predecessors, they were a lot less obvious about it, and a lot more insidious. They started manipulating laws slowly and quietly, so as not to sound any alarms. While they were doing that, they instigated social unrest, which led voters to believe that the secret fascists were their only hope. Eventually, they just did away with voting altogether, first by postponing it due to extenuating circumstances, and then simply refusing to let go of their power. Meanwhile, longevity researchers were allowed to keep working, but when their work was sufficiently complete, there were significant downsides to releasing it.

Once the rich took notice of the new technology, they took control. The wealth disparity increased drastically, raising the richest of people to almost godlike status, and dropping everyone else to ants. It was bad before, where tyrants could pass their unearned power on to the next generation of tyrants, but now the threat was insurmountable, for the original tyrants could conceivably be able to maintain their power literally forever. A great war began, and nearly resulted in the destruction of the human race. They survived, but everything changed. Instead of finally making longevity treatments and upgrades free for public use, the victors simply made all such enhancements illegal. The standard lifespan was eighty years, and it was against the law to live past it, even if one managed to be healthy enough to surpass it. All seventy-nine-year-olds were executed, and many people were executed before that if the new government felt threatened by them in some other way. They weren’t about to let a fascist plutocracy rule the lands again, and their anger clouded them to the fact that the only way to enforce their will was to become the fascists. Anyone who attempted to show them this reality was—you guessed it—executed. Of course, once a given technology exists, you can’t put that toothpaste back in the tube. Another resistance rose up in response to the consequences of the first one. They lost, and were wiped out, but this only served to galvanize a third resistance to try again. They won this time, and were able to make immortality free for all. Unfortunately, when they looked around, they realized that almost everyone was dead, and it didn’t really matter anymore. Most of the few immortals left standing would later find ways to let themselves die, and leave the uninhabitable world behind.

Microstory 1642: Infinity Drive

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I think it’s about time I talk about the universe where bulkverse travel originated. Right now, I won’t say a whole lot about how they first ventured out into the bulk, but I’ll give an overview of the universe itself, and why they felt the impulse to explore beyond their borders. The humans of this universe originated on multiple planets simultaneously, and destroyed them all. Every global civilization did so much damage to the environment that they had to leave, and settle on new worlds, except for one of them, which didn’t survive their apocalypse. This was how the survivors found each other. They all had faster-than-light travel, but two of them independently invented something they would later call an infinity drive. It allowed them to jump anywhere in the universe instantaneously. It wasn’t technically instantaneous, but with a little bit of time travel, it felt that way, and it resulted in that. In order to travel from one universe to another, one must be able to pierce the membranes that hold them together. These membranes are semipermeable, like cellular membranes, so microscopic tears open up all the time, which is what allows bulk energy to leak through. That’s not the hard part, though. The hard part is navigation, which is why bulk travel is so rare. The precursor to this technology is the infinity drive, which pierces the universe’s membrane about halfway, allowing a vessel to slip in between the layers of that membrane, and slide wherever the crew wants to go. Even here, time operates as a spatial dimension, rather than a temporal dimension, which is what makes it feel instantaneous. Travelers can go wherever they want to, and arrive whenever they want to, even in the past—though both cultures decided long before the technology was viable that time travel was irrational, and dangerous. They only used it to explore, map, and seek out others in present-day.

In order to find the best new world to call home, those with the infinity drives dispatched probe factory ships all over their galaxy, and a little beyond. They dropped their probes in key locations, which automatically went around, and started generating a map of the universe. These probes detected the other wanderers and settlers, which served to bring everyone together under one umbrella, as a megacivilization. They pooled their knowledge, and unanimously agreed to do things better than their ancestors did. They found more efficient ways to live, which protected planets, and the wildlife upon them. They focused heavily on gathering as much information about the universe as they could, while making little impact on it. They sent more probes, now even further out in the universe, but encountered no other lifeforms. Everyone was here, and everyone was either human, or descended from humans. They were disappointed and bored because of this. How could they be so alone? Why were humans the only intelligent species, and how was it even possible that they evolved separately on multiple planets? This is what drove them to expand the scope of the infinity drive, and explore other universes. They sent one more batch of probes, this time completely through the membrane, and into the outer bulk. Powered by bulk energy, and designed to last forever, they were essentially aimless; just floating through the bulk, collecting whatever data they could find, and sending it back home. It took millennia to synthesize this data, so a real and usable map could be drawn from it. Once they were ready, the crew of a ship with an upgraded infinity drive called The Besananta took off. They didn’t get far.

Microstory 1619: Adversity Overcoming

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If you hear about the Maramon, you may think that they’re all evil. The truth is that they’re just as diverse as any significant population. Some are good, some are bad, and the only reason they appear to be so averse to humans is jealousy. Everyone else was born to a large universe with plenty of breathing room, but Ansutah was made small, limited, and constricting. Still, there were factions and camps, and two of these opposing groups ended up in the same section of The Crossover together when the explosion occurred. I couldn’t tell you why exactly they were there, because the outer bulkverse is hazy for me, but I can tell you the consequences. The original Crossover had different sections that served different purposes, as you might imagine. One of them allowed access to multiple pocket dimensions, which effectively undecupled the amount of space that they had available. But it was actually a different section that generated and maintained the stability of these pockets, and this was where the two opposing sides were at the time of cataclysm. They flew off into the bulk, and only survived because the dimensional generator received an enormous burst of bulk energy. It was enough to create an entirely new universe from scratch, and it was here that these two groups would come to call home. Obviously what I’m setting up here is that they had different ideas of what that home should look like. One sided wanted to form a Maramon empire, where they would rebuild the Crossover, and use it to conquer the humans. The other wanted to construct a new version of Earth, and populate it with humans, who they saw as gods. The second group won at first, but then the first group took over, and warped the world to their needs. Their leader was named Azazil Aj-lishdefil, and he earned his woxa of Adversary when he led a coup against the true leader, Alaha ‘Almighty’ Adonai. Adversary didn’t just start killing all the humans. No, he pretended to be their creator, and let his religions spread around the globe, and throughout time. Millennia later, with the number of believers at its apex, he used his followers to build an army. It was his intention to send the witless slaves out into the bulkverse, so they could do all the heavy lifting, and realize his dreams of total domination on his behalf. Of course, Alaha and her own people couldn’t let that happen without a fight. A resistance grew out of the survivors, and they did everything they could do to stop Adversary and his demons at every turn. They were smart, better organized than Adversary thought they could possibly be, and scrappy. I won’t tell you how it ends, or who wins. I just want you to know the situation, so you don’t rush to judgment if you ever encounter a Maramon.

Microstory 1542: Waterslide

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As a religious ________, I’ve heard all the ________ for what happens after you ________. Some say there’s a heaven and a ________, while others really just have a ________. Some have different ________ for different kinds of ________, and some think we’re all just ________ in together. Some believe our ________ survive, while our consciousnesses do not. Lots of people believe in some ________ of reincarnation, but none of them ever came close to the ________ about how that works. I can hardly ________ it myself, and a part of me still doesn’t, even though I’m looking at it right ________. It’s a series of waterslides, which you go ________ in order to reach your new ________. Really? Water____? I don’t know what to make of it. I’m watching all these ________ choose their paths, and they don’t seem to take any ________ with it, but I’m not quite that accepting. I have to find out just who the heck thought of this ________, and why. One of the people here in ________ of facilitating the ________ tries to be as helpful as ________. No one else is asking any ________, so she seems all right with ________ mine. The slides are complex, and there is no map. You choose the one you ________ to go down, but that does not lock you in to one path. You can ________ over to another slide if one happens to intersect with yours. You can even ________ off and land on an entirely separate one if it happens to be below ________. Where do these ________ end? Well, some will ________ you into another human ________, but others lead to an ________, or even an insect. Some of them exit right back ________ at the ________, so you can ________ again, and a few will ________ you into an ________ worker, like the ________ who’s explaining all this to ________.

The first thing I note after the explanation is that there doesn’t seem to be any way to figure out which ________ path to take. She notes that a ____slider will always have a choice to either ________ their destination, or go back up and try ________. That’s evidently why most ________ aren’t asking her questions. The majority of ________ have already been through many, many times, and they just keep not ________ satisfied with their ________. Not everyone even gets the chance to reincarnate at all. Only those with the potential to contribute more to the ________ are here. The rest are sent off ________ else, and she doesn’t know where, because she wasn’t here when the system was first ________. This means that she doesn’t ________ who came up with this, or what their reasoning was. Surely early ________ would have been confused by the ________, as waterslides would not have been ________ yet. I ask her if there are any other ________, not because I’m disinclined to do what everyone else ________, but because I want to know ________ about how this works. Sure, she says. I can take the stairs. No one has ever ________ before, even though it would result in getting to pick whatever reincarnation you ________, because it would take decades to get all the way ________, and be as tiring as tedious as it would be on ________. I smile at the ________, debating taking it, just to be different. Then I hop onto one of the ________, don’t bother trying to alter course, and accept my ________ once I’ve reached the bottom. I’m ________ as a pangolin in China, and things go downhill from there.

Microstory 1536: Talking Animals

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This was probably the best ________ of my life, and that’s saying a ________, because I have had a lot of ________ great ________. My life is ________; I don’t let things get me ________, and I don’t suffer ________ who want to make me work too ________, or get ________. I was sitting on the ________ in my backyard when a little ________ came up to talk to ________. And I don’t mean that proverbially. He ________ started talking to me, as if we ________ the same language. It ________ English—in fact, I couldn’t tell ________ what it was—but it was absolutely a complex ________. I could make out separate words, and there were even a ________ cognates in there like ________, ________, and ________. Things seemed to be going ________. We were using ________ gestures to get our respective points ________, and picking up a few words here and ________, just based on ________ context. He appeared to be enjoying the ________. I was trying to hide how ________ I thought this was, for obvious reasons. I didn't know that ________ could talk, but I’ve always ____ed to * with ____s. I've been so ________ curious what they're ____ing about, how ________ they are, and most importantly, what they ________ of humans. I am no linguistic ________, but I did study it in ________, and this is a ________ opportunity. I try to work with ________, so we can have a better understanding of each ________, but I know I’m going to need some ________. I try to convey this to ________; that I’m going to need to contact a real ________ to help us, but he freaks ________. He starts ________ faster than he was before, and I stop being ________ to tell the separation between words or ideas. Then he ________ up to attack me, and I’m forced to ________ back. That’s why I’m here, doc. This isn’t just  any ol’ ________ that could be put down. You have to ________ him. He might be unique.