Microstory 2482: Teledome

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This is the biggest known ground-based telescope in existence. They make them bigger, but they’re all floating in space, because that’s the best way to avoid atmospheric distortions, and other artifacts. For those of you not in the know, Earth launched two arrays of telescopes for something called Project Topdown. These are currently on their way out into the two intergalactic voids adjacent to each face of the Milky Way Galaxy. They’re all about the practical applications. I won’t go the details, because you can look it up in the central archives, but I’ll say that the purpose of it is to map our galaxy, as well as peer into the local group, unencumbered by the light and other distractions that come from being within the “border” of our own galaxy. Of course, these are not the only telescopes in existence, and it’s not like we’ll ever dismantle the more local ones in favor of using Topdown exclusively. Earth still has its Bouman Interferometer Array, and other worlds in the stellar neighborhood are working on their own projects. Castlebourne isn’t trying to make any breakthrough discoveries with its Teledome, but it certainly seemed logical to build it anyway. At 5400 square kilometers, the Sugimoto Phased Radio-Optical Telescope takes up nearly the entire area of the dome. You might ask yourself, why is it even under a dome? It shouldn’t need to be. Other telescopes certainly aren’t. Well, dust; that’s why. The space within the confines of the dome is pristine, and very easy to keep well-maintained. If they had to worry about dust storms clogging up the sensors, it would be this huge constant chore. So instead of a geodesic dome, it’s a smooth one. And instead of diamond, it’s made of an ultra-clear polycarbonate. It’s not a single object, however. There are seams in it, but they’re bonded at the molecular level. So if it suffers damage, only that section has to be replaced, but that’s only in the event of catastrophic damage, because it’s just as self-healing as any other metamaterial. As for the telescope itself, the name tells you that it’s both radio and optical. It’s also not made of a single, uniform lens. Nanomodules can shift between states, allowing for the absorption of a wide range of frequencies on the light spectrum. There is an atmosphere on Castlebourne, however thin, and it does create artifacts on the image, but as I’ve been saying, they didn’t engineer this to be perfect. We have plenty of alternatives, and they’re always building more. If you want to see the telescope first hand, you can come here, but obviously, the prospectus includes a live feed of the image, and a constant readout of the data, for your own analysis and synthesis. So you don’t have to come here, but it’s cool to see anyhow, so I still recommend it.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 17, 2375

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It was happening again. The ship just experienced a sudden loss of power. Fortunately, it wasn’t as bad as last time. Instead of returning to the timestream after a year, they were here when it happened, which meant there was still enough breathable air to keep them from dying within the next few minutes. The artificial gravity was gone, and the lights were off, but their Cassidy cuffs were still working, suggesting that they weren’t suffering from a direct impact of the Power Vacuum. Still, it was incredibly annoying. There should have been more than enough distance between them and the beam, even when accounting for the waves that go beyond the visible spectrum of light. Leona asked to gather all of the cuffs so they could try to siphon their fusion generators into the ship. Ramses said that wouldn’t be necessary. “Why not?” she asked.

He pushed himself off the wall, and floated down to his grave chamber. He opened it up, accessed a storage panel, and retrieved a box. “I was worried this would happen, so I came prepared.” He opened the box, and inside was another box. “The insulation worked. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but it’ll make it easier to open.” He casually tossed the outer box into the slowly thinning air.

“That’s some kind of power source?” Mateo asked.

“It’s a time battery,” Ramses said. “Or rather, it will be.” He set the inner box on the table, and activated the magnet to hold it in place. Then he flipped over just for fun, and got himself down to his seat, where he strapped in.

Everyone else did the same, though with less gymnastics. “You haven’t built it yet?” Angela questioned. “How are you going to charge it if we have no power to begin with?”

“Oh, it’s charged,” Ramses replied. “It just doesn’t exist right now. I programmed it to jump two hours into the future an hour before the Vacuum was scheduled to show up. When it returns, it will be more than enough to power up the reframe engine, and get us back to Earth.”

“You shouldn’t be able to store that much power in that small of a package,” Leona argued. “Now if it’s a fusion reactor, you might be onto something, but you called it a battery.”

“It is a battery, but it doesn’t store electricity. It’s not called a time battery because it travels through time. It stores temporal energy, which is the most powerful kind in the universe.”

“Where did you get it?” Leona pressed.

“I engineered it, obviously,” Ramses answered. “You don’t think I could do something like that?”

“No, I mean, where’d you get the energy? You usually spend more generating it than you get out of it, like fusion was back in ancient times.”

“I did spend more energy than I got out of it. But I used a stellaris collapsis, which is basically free. Two devices were attached to each other by a tether. I sent the collector through a portal, which exited close enough to the event horizon to create temporal dissonance. I then processed the energy using the device on my end, and charged the battery. And when I say I did these things, I barely did anything. I was too busy working on the limbo simulation. Ishida did most of the work. The Jameela Jamil has their own time battery. Actually, they have a battery of batteries, and they’re all larger than this one.”

“Could you have not just siphoned Hawking radiation, or rotational energy, from the black hole itself?” Olimpia asked.

Mateo was surprised she knew that a stellaris collapsis was another name for a black hole, since he had already forgotten learning that a while ago. What was Hawking radiation?

“Storing that would have been harder. Temporal energy works well in compact form, such as this thing right here.” He pointed to the still empty box.

Most of the team just nodded. “Do we have enough oxygen to last us until it shows up?” Mateo asked, feeling dumb.

“Plenty,” Leona answered. “That’s why we have microponics upstairs.” She looked at her watch. “We are coming up on midnight central, though. Did you not account for that?”

“When I said the battery was scheduled to return two hours after it disappeared, I really meant two hours and one year. We’ll just have to set the AOC to jump with us, instead of waiting for us. So I guess we will need to siphon some cuff fusion.”

“I see,” Leona said. “I suppose you already modified the ship to utilize our new power systems.”

Ramses smirked, and reached under the table. After a click, the center of the table popped up. He took hold of it, and pulled out a tube that Mateo never knew was there. “For those of you who don’t know, we use an antimatter drive for propulsion. Regular ol’ fusion isn’t good enough to reach the speeds we need, or power the reframe engine.” He kicked the base of the table with his foot. “That regular fusion, however, is more than enough to power internal systems. It’s always better to have redundancies. This will be our third redundancy. The battery goes in here, and can handle both propulsion, and the ship itself.”

“For how long?” Angela asked.

“That depends on how we use it, and how much loss the battery experienced from the time jump. Normally, we wouldn’t have to do that, but it obviously didn’t work as an emergency cache if the Power Vacuum drained it while it was still in the timestream.”

“This was a good call, Ramses,” Leona complimented. “I wish I had thought of it. I was just so concerned with Mateo, and the afterlife simulation.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Ramses said, dismissing her guilt. “That’s why we’re a team.”

They spent pretty much all of their time together now, so there wasn’t much for them to talk about. They were relatively silent for the rest of the hour, but Angela and Olimpia had some stories, so that kept them occupied a little. A year later, the indicator light on the box turned green, prompting Ramses to open it, and check on his special battery. “Perfect condition, 83% capacity; not bad.” He installed it in its housing like it wasn’t any more complex than a USB drive, and powered up systems. The tube receded back into the table, and the fresh air came on.

“All right, it works,” Leona said, only a little surprised. “Plot a course to the exit portal. I’ll try to contact the Jamil.”

“Neither one of those things may be possible,” Ramses said, looking at his screen.

Leona pulled up her own screen to find out what he was talking about. “This doesn’t make any sense. Where the hell are we? Where’s the megaportal?”

“Did the Power Vacuum knock us off course?” Angela guessed.

“There are two things it could have done. One, left us to drift not too terribly far from where we were, or two, pulled us into the portal with it. Either way, we should have an inkling of where we are. I’m not seeing any stars at all, just distant galaxies. This is...”

“Bonkers?” Ramses finished for her.

“Bonkers,” Leona agreed.

“Maybe we traveled through time,” Olimpia suggested. “The stars are always moving.”

“I thought of that,” Ramses said. “Which is why I ran a program that checks the date based on stellar drift. A good time traveler always does that.” He gently pulled Leona over by the shoulder, and pointed to his screen. “What the shit is that?”

“A galaxy?” Leona offered, unconvinced herself.

“A galaxy?” Ramses questioned, like it was the stupidest thing he had ever heard.

“A...hyperdense? Galaxy?”

“What is it?” Mateo asked, not feeling dumb anymore, because they were just being cryptic.

“You’re not missing anything here,” Leona told him. “We’re just as confused as you.” She cast her screen to the central hologram, showing them a big blob of light. “Those are stars, and they are very close together. It’s not enough for them to have chaotic gravitational pull on one another, but it’s not natural either.”

“How could it not be natural?” Olimpia asked. “You’re saying that someone moved these stars?”

“It’s doable,” Ramses explained. “It would take a hell of a long time, though.”

“Time ain’t nothin’ but a thang,” Angela said. It was a common aphoroid for time travelers, but it sounded rather odd coming from her lips.

“If that’s where all the stars are,” Olimpia began, “then that’s where all the planets are. Earth may be somewhere in that blob.”

“It would be virtually impossible to find,” Leona said, “even if that’s The Blob, formerly known as The Milky Way. There’s no frame of reference. We can’t even tell where we are. All we know is that we’re about thousands of light years away from that thing.”

“Still, shouldn’t we go there?” Olimpia continued. “Maybe we’ll receive more data as we get closer, and be able to make more informed decisions.”

“Maybe,” Leona said, unconvinced. “It could take a month to get there, assuming we’re as far from it as I think. It’s impossible to tell from here. We would be drowning in radiation, I’m not sure anyone still lives there.”

“Were you able to contact the Jamil?” Mateo asked.

“Yes, but we’re not receiving anything,” Leona said. “I sent a message, but no one’s there to hear it. We could be billions of years in the past, or even trillions of years into the future. Who the hell knows?” She tensed up, and looked around like a paranoid racoon.

“What is it?” Mateo asked.

“Usually when we say things like that, someone appears and tells us they have the answer. It’s more often than not the villain.” She continued to look around, prompting the rest of the team to do the same.

No one was there.

“I think we’re safe,” Mateo decided.

Leona pointed to him. “They sometimes show up after someone says something like that.”

They looked around some more. Still no one.

“We may be the only people left in this universe,” Ramses lamented. “Trillions of years is a long time. They could have set the stellar engines on autopilot, and then died out.”

“We don’t know anything,” Mateo reminded them. “Let’s not despair just yet.”

“We better hope someone is still around. We need other people,” Ramses concluded. “We’re going to run out of hydropellets and antimatter pods sooner or later. The time battery is a quick fix, and I can’t recreate it in the span of a single day. This ship is not designed to be completely self-sufficient. If I had had more time back when—”

“No one is blaming you for this, Ramses,” Leona hoped he understood. “We all love this ship, and we’re grateful. The Power Vacuum does not discriminate. It seems to have been even more powerful than we knew. We can only hope that our plan to redirect the beam worked as intended, even if it was the last thing we did.”

“Still,” Ramses said, “I would feel much better near a star—a safe star, free from dangerous gravitational disturbances, and hot hot heat—than out here in the void.”

“Aren’t there stars and planets in the void?” Angela asked. “Someone once told me there were more isolated rogues, actually, than there are in galaxies.”

“Probably,” Leona agreed, “but anyone powerful enough to consolidate a galaxy of stars is likely also capable of stealing intergalactic stars as well. Even if we could confirm that the blob was once the Milky Way, we don’t have the tools to measure its mass to figure that out. My estimate of how far we are is based on how far we were from the galactic core, but that operates under the assumption that we traveled through time, but not space.”

“Let’s scan the best we can,” Olimpia suggested, wincing with regret for letting it rhyme. “Maybe we’re parked ten light years from a Class-M planet, and we don’t even know.”

“Class-M planet,” Leona echoed with a laugh. “Thanks, I really needed that.”

“What did I say?” Olimpia asked.

Mateo patted her on the head like a puppy. “Welcome to the club.”

They did scan as best they could with the technology they had. They were able to detect a faint source of light that was anywhere between a few light years away to tens of thousands. The only way to measure its distance would be to compare its relative position to other celestial objects, of which there was none in that general direction. Furthermore, if it was being moved towards the blob like all the others, its location would be even more unpredictable, because they were seeing its light reach them from as far in the past as it was away from them in space. It was moving either way, but the stellar engines were almost certainly faster than natural stellar drift. Regardless, it was their only option, so they pointed the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez towards it, and took a leap of faith.

They left the timestream a day later, and returned to find themselves still in void space. They hadn’t reached the star, and in fact, couldn’t find it anymore. It could have been receding from them, for all they knew. They weren’t alone here, though. A massive ship was hovering above them. Oh boy.

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Microstory 1773: Scorpion Unifier

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The virus got out. The intergalactic Martian faction that hates us for surviving in this solar system when their ancestors could not, attacked us with the same pathogen that nearly destroyed them millions of years ago. Fortunately, we were not unprepared for that to happen. We had just gotten over a practice run, from a disease that many in our population were resistant to. We were able to learn from our mistakes, and by the time a worse threat showed up, we knew what to do. We knew how to self-quarantine. We knew how to protect our most vulnerable. We knew how to hunt for treatments. We also had a lot of help from a faction of good Martians, who did not want to see life on Earth eradicated. Armed with all of this experience, and these resources, we fought back against the Scorpion Virus. The people who refused to believe in either pandemic didn’t last very long, and the rest of us were able to move on without them. The angry aliens didn’t think we would do so well, so they decided to change tactics. They mounted a full assault, forcing their opponents to come out of the shadows, and help us protect ourselves. We experienced a quantum leap in technology, and had to fight back again. Orbital defenses, interstellar ships, weapons of mass destruction. We did it to survive, but it would come at a great cost. War solves no problems, but it sure can create new ones. We were poised to make both species go extinct. Something had to be done to put a stop to it. Neither side was willing to relent, and that’s when the others showed up. When the virus first came about on Mars, two exodus ships were launched to ensure the continuity of the species. One of them went off to a new galaxy, but the other disappeared without telling the others where they would be going. As it turned out, they remained nearby, on a planet located only a few hundred light years away.

The Milky Way Martians, as they are called to distinguish them, came out of the woodwork about a year ago, and admitted that they had been following the goings on of both of our cultures the entire time. They knew that life evolved on Earth, and they knew what their intergalactic counterparts were up to. They instituted a policy of noninterference, but a new administration decided to take the government in a new direction. They basically demanded we halt all hostilities towards each other, and since they were so much more advanced than both of us combined, we had no real choice. Things have been fine between us ever since, but that is not going to last forever. Calling it a period of peace implies that there will be an end to it. As long as we look at them as other, and they us, neither of us can hope to prosper. The only way to prevent the war is to merge as one. Then there will be no one left to fight. So that is why we’re here. Everyone on this ship has fallen in love with a member of the other species. Through a little bit of genetic miracle work, we can actually have children with each other. We don’t even have to engineer the offspring itself. A simple injection makes a human more Martian, and a Martian more human. We’ve come together in a place of compatibility, and spawned a new species altogether. You’ll never guess how we figured out how to do it. It all comes back to that Scorpion Virus. It’s capable of changing its victim DNA, so we were able to harness that, and use it towards our own goals. I’m asking you to spread the word about us. Tell them. Tell them what you saw here today. Tell them something good has come out of that deadly pathogen. Tell them the war never has to happen.

Microstory 1497: Evacuation Protocol

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In 2210, the people of Durus voted to begin exploring the Nexus replica network. This was after the decline in temporal energy, but before anyone knew about it. Following careful consideration, more discussions, and training, the first mission was dispatched in 2213. They chose to go to a planet millions of light years from the stellar neighborhood called Dardius, mostly because that was the only location available. They could see evidence that there were other Nexa to visit, but they were locked out of all but the one. They established diplomatic relations with the Dardieti, but both sides were very cautious about their interactions. Dardius was a sanctuary planet, designed to house people who had either survived close encounters with dangerous temporal manipulators, or were at risk of encounters, due to events occurring in alternate realities. These people’s descendants lived here as well, and though they used some time technology of their own, they were very wary of Durus. They also had a very delicate social structure, which relied on rescuing people in the past at very precise moments. They didn’t just extract them from the timeline at random. They developed highly sensitive models to make sure new citizens integrated safely into the system without disrupting it, or being disrupted by it. Durus was a new variable, which Dardius had not accounted for in their models. That didn’t mean they were xenophobic, or hateful, but this was going to be a slow process, which didn’t bother Durus, because they were in no hurry to make any drastic changes to their own system. Before anything of significance could happen, the relationship ended anyway. In 2217, Dardius began having major issues with one of their rescue groups. Their timeline extraction machine malfunctioned, and started quantum duplicating everyone who came through, over and over and over again. This threw off the social balance greatly, and sparked a war. Dardius had no time to deal with Durus, but this would stop being a problem two years later when the Durune realized their time power issues. They could no longer afford to waste energy on intergalactic travel either.

Flashforward several decades, and the time power problem had not been solved. Nor had the regular power problem. It was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the wind turbines on the surface, and they still had no way of powering the Nexus. Fortunately, the Dardieti did. Their war was long over by 2267, and Dardius was essentially under brand new management. The Einarssons wanted to reestablish relations with Durus, so they sent a recon team to find out how the Durune had been doing. They were soon able to provide them with a power source, so they could initiate outgoing transports, but that alone would do them no good. There were still hundreds of thousands of people in the stasis pods who could not exactly be evacuated using traditional means, even with the Nexus in play. It was only designed to accommodate thirty people at a time. There seemed to be a way, however. As Dardius’ best technicians were working with Durus’ best, they found something called an Evacuation Protocol. It was exactly what they were looking for. The machine could still only take thirty people at once, but it would just keep going and going, about once every minute. If they coordinated perfectly, they calculated they could evacuate every single person in a month and a half. Realistically, it would be closer to two months, but that was fine. They were lucky to have found the feature, because it wasn’t immediately apparent to them, and it wasn’t something people would need on a regular basis. Perhaps the machine was somewhat sentient, and knew that this was exactly what they needed to survive. Under the Einarssons, the Dardieti were now less concerned about predictive social harmony models, and more concerned with saving lives. They agreed to evacuate everyone who wanted to move to their planet, which had a stable sun, and abundant resources, without question. Nearly everyone happily agreed to abandon their dead world, because there was little hope of saving it from the void, and they felt that it was just time to let it go. Some did choose to stay behind, however, and they had their reasons.

Microstory 1484: Necter of the Gods

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The universe is but one in a sea of infinite others. Each is called a brane, and is swimming around a sort of hyperdimensional metaspace known as the bulk. Do not confuse these with alternate realities. Any similarity between two branes only occurs because one was modeled upon the other. Some of them are natural, but some are conceived in the minds of people. The latter can last indefinitely, or collapse quickly, and are usually created through dreams, or fictional storytelling. An example of the former, on the other hand, will not resemble any other. It may have humans in it, or it may not. Its physical laws may feel familiar, but that will be coincidence, not because of some inherent interversal connection. No matter what, each universe is independent, through both time and space. And it is extremely difficult to travel between them. Interversal travel has only been invented twice in the entire histories of the entire bulkverse, and every means of travel beyond it has been based on that original technology. Because these branes do not operate on the same timeline, there really isn’t any such thing as the first, but one did inspire the pursuit of the other. They called it The Crossover, and the biggest reason the one group of people who encountered it were capable of replicating its function was because they were immortals who were billions of years old. They called their version the Nexus Network. It started out as a way to jump between systems in a galaxy, before expanding to other galaxies, and eventually all over the universe. Once the process was fully automated, and left to conquer the cosmos, its inventors decided they needed a new challenge. They chose interversal travel as that challenge, and proceeded to spend millions of years working on the problem. That was how difficult it was.

Getting out of one’s current brane was the easy part, but navigating the bulkverse, and finding somewhere to land was all but impossible. The best computer in any universe is usually not anywhere near good enough to make the necessary calculations. Once those calculations are made, however, the system that utilizes the data doesn’t have to be very large, or even all that complex. After all that time figuring out how to travel to other universes, this small group of immortals had to come to terms with the fact that their latest challenge was over, and they had nothing more to do with the rest of their eternal lives. There was talk about building more systems in these other universes, but they weren’t sure that it would be worth it. Their home universe had quadrillions of people in it, spread across many galaxies, and they needed a way to reach each other quickly and conveniently. In these other branes they visited, the population was always a lot lower. They expanded within their galaxy, and into neighboring galaxies, in some cases, but their levels never reached a meaningful fraction of the number the immortals were used to. Even further down the timeline, they seemed to be doing okay with their own technological advances. Still, there were a few cases where the group’s means of instantaneous intergalactic travel would be quite useful. In salmonverse, they didn’t build a full network, but they constructed a handful of them in strategic locations. One of them was Durus. The Durune were aware of temporal manipulation, and psychic abilities, and even a hint of other branes, so they were deemed worthy of being connected to this very small network of replica Nexa. It was constructed in secret at some point, and discovered in 2195. But they weren’t allowed to go anywhere yet.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, April 29, 2053

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Before anyone could so much as begin to guess what the hell was going on, a pod appeared a few meters away from them, and opened up to reveal what Mateo could only describe as a future-cop. He smiled at the group apprehensively. “Hello. Reports indicate that some unusual temporal activity has been occurring in this area. Where, and/or when are you from?”

Hmm. He seemed to be a deveiled human, who used time technology on the regular. Mateo checked his wrist. Yes, it was honest hour, so he resolved to take the lead on this one, and not worry about whether anyone disagreed. “We apologize if we have broken any laws.” He showed the cop his Cassidy cuff. “We are not in control of our temporal movements. We do the bidding of someone who is very powerful. He’s trapped us here in your reality, though to be fair, all we’ve done so far is help people, so he may not be as bad as he wants us to believe.”

The time cop looked to the rest of the group, not because he didn’t believe Mateo’s story, but to see if anyone else had anything to add. “You’re from the main sequence.” It was a half-question.

“If that is what you call it,” Leona confirmed. “We just call it the main timeline, and we call this The Parallel.”

“Indeed,” the cop agreed. “You have been foretold.” He looked at his own watch, but literally. “No point in transporting you into the heart of the city, and alerting anyone else to your presence. I’ll be right here to pick you up in three years, two days.” He climbed back into his pod, and teleported away. Ninety minutes later, midnight central was quickly approaching.

Sanaa knelt down, and picked up what were formerly Ramses’ cuffs.

“Don’t touch those!” Leona warned.

“Why not?” Sanaa asked. “Will they magically wrap themselves around my wrists, and trap me on your hyphenated pattern?”

“Yeah, they might,” Leona warned further.

Sanaa smiled, and gracefully strapped them onto her wrists. “Well, what the hell else am I gonna do?” The damage was done now, and could not be undone, unless they forced someone else to take her place, or Kalea returned to explain how she removed Ramses from them in the first place.

Just as the man said, he was waiting for them three years later, but this time with a larger transport vehicle. He ushered them into it. “We’ve requested an audience with the Tanadama.”

“The whatnow?”

“The gods who created our galaxy. They’re very busy, but I’m optimistic that they will come here to speak with you.”

“They created the galaxy?” Leona asked.

“Well, not literally. The stars form naturally, of course. They saved our species, so that we almost never die. We only experience the occasional suicide from someone who’s just over it, or an AI malfunction that cannot be repaired.”

“You never die,” Leona continued the questioning. “How long have you been like that?”

“About twelve thousand years,” the cop answered. “I’m Officer Tynosey, by the way, but everyone just calls me Tyno.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Tyno.” Now Leona was just going to take over the conversation. “I assume that you are an interstellar civilization.”

“We’re an intergalactic civilization, but the majority of our population still lives in the Milky Way. We’re at K3.”

“My God,” she said. “How many people is that?”

“A couple undecillion,” Tyno said, like it was nothing. Mateo had never heard that particular prefix attached to -illion, which meant that it was probably pretty damn big. “Each host star houses around five septillion people. We could go higher than that obviously, but we like to spread out.

“That’s insane.”

“Yeah,” Holly Blue concurred. “Do you have faster-than-light travel?”

“We do,” Tyno replied. His watch beeped. “Oh. That’s confirmation. I’ve been authorized to return you to Earth, where your friends are waiting for you.” He closed the hatch behind him, synced his watch with a panel on the wall, and transported them to Earth.

The hatch opened from the outside as soon as they arrived. Ramses was there with his big fat smile. They were on the side of a mountain, overlooking a valley. “Man, we had always planned on being there, waiting for you when you arrived, but the timeline is complicated. We weren’t sure which timeline you would remember, so we just decided to let the locals handle it until this year.” He gestured towards Tyno.

Tyno hopped out of the transport, and closed his eyes. He placed three fingers loosely on his forehead, and then moved them down to his lips. He kept switching back and forth between these two positions, occasionally spending several seconds in one stop, and changing speed erratically. It reminded Mateo of how the Catholics did the sign of the cross. Catholicism probably didn’t exist in this reality.

“That’s enough, my child,” Ramses said to him.

“It is such a deep honor, Father. I am so humbled in your presence. I’m not worthy to breathe from the same atmosphere as you—”

“All right,” Ramses stopped him. “What does it say in the Book of Ramses, Chapter Eleven, Section Twenty-Four, Paragraph Forty-Two, Line Fifty-Six?”

“When the Mother or Father appear to you, they will be human, and they will be accessible, and you will respect them, but you will not worship them,” Tyno recited. “Sorry, sir.”

“It’s all right. Just don’t forget that I’m only a person.”

The group looked at him in disapproval.

“It got away from us,” Ramses tried to explain to them. “We didn’t write the books, but we did edit them, adding lines like that so they wouldn’t kill themselves out of reverence every time we showed up.”

Leona rejected this response. “You formed a religion. That’s time travel one-oh-one. In fact, I better make it Rule Number Fourteen, do not form, or inspire, a religion.”

“It’s a lot more complicated than that,” Ramses argued.

“Clarify,” Mateo said. “Report.”

So Ramses began to explain where he and Kalea had gone, and what they had done. “This isn’t the first new timeline that we created. At first, we followed the plan. We got everyone off of Durus, and back to Earth. We continued on the pattern, and things were okay when it came to us. It wasn’t okay with the rest of the world, though. Earth was still devoid of nearly all human life. There was us, and the people that Jupiter transitioned. Kalea didn’t like that. Her whole purpose as a source mage on Durus in the main sequence was to protect people using time powers. So the lot of us went back to the cataclysm that destroyed the species, and fixed it. Now things were even finer, but not great. Technology was incredibly slow. They were building castles when they should have been working on the first rockets. So we went back again, and saved more lives. Every time we went back, we made the timeline a little better; a little safer. Kalea was never happy, though. She needed to fix everything, and to do that, we needed help. We created more mages, and used them like the powers that be use salmon in the other timeline.

“I don’t even remember how it happened, but the last thing we did was go back thousands of years, and turn everyone immortal. I tried to explain to her the repercussions of such a thing, but she wouldn’t hear it. She would not listen to the math. I told her that over a hundred billion people had ever lived on Earth, and also that Earth could indeed support that many people, but I also told her that in a timeline with virtually no death, you can’t just go by that number, because those people are going to have children. Over time, the number has grown so large that we are now a Kardashev 3 civilization, occupying every star system in the entire galaxy.”

“Yes.” Leona nodded. “Tyno did tell us that. You made a galaxy of time travelers. I can’t imagine how problematic that has become.”

“No,” Ramses contended. “Time travel is against the law, galaxy-wide. It’s not technically necessary, since the only way to have time powers is to get them from me or Kalea, but it’s a redundant system. People don’t die, and they can move across the galaxy at superluminal speeds. That’s all we gave them. They developed the rest of the technology they have.”

Leona shook her head continuously. “Two undecillion people,” she said quietly. “I don’t even know what that means.” She wasn’t the only one wondering this. Leona and Holly Blue were two of the smartest people Mateo knew. If even they had trouble fathoming the vast number of people presently alive in a galaxy with a millennia-long history of nearly no death, then he would have no hope of understanding it. “You couldn’t maintain a homogeneous system with that, even with ubiquitous FTL. That’s just too many people.”

“Each solar swarm has its own governmental body, yes,” Ramses said. Saying we’re K3 is a bit of a misnomer. We’re more like a bunch of separate K2s. But there’s a lot of collaboration, and we don’t allow war. Half the Book of Kalea is about living in harmony.”

“People keep talking about these K-numbers,” J.B. complained. “What does that mean?”

Sanaa chose to explain this one, “a K1 civilization can harness all the power on its planet. K2 can use its whole sun. K3 can use the whole galaxy. What Ramses is saying that, since the galaxy is so big, they’re not really K3, because they’re not all one civilization anymore.”

“What are you?” Mateo asked Ramses, not bothering to ask Sanaa why she understood this scale the scientists were talking about.

“I’m a source mage now,” Ramses answered. “Most of the time, the source mages in the main sequence only create lesser mages. There was a theory, however, that they could effectively make more, just by giving someone the power to give other people powers.”

J.B. giggled. “It’s like using one of your three wishes to wish for more wishes.”

“Kind of,” Ramses admitted. “She only did it once, though. She made me, and we’re it.”

“The Dadamama, that is,” Mateo put forth.

“Tanadama,” Ramses corrected, but you were on the right track. Ta, da, ma, and na are all used in various languages to mean father and mother, respectively. We put it together, because parents didn’t seem to do our role justice. It was Alt!Jeremy’s idea.”

“Sounds like me,” J.B. decided.

“So, it’s over,” Holly Blue presumed.

“What’s over?” Ramses questioned.

“The Matic-Bearimy pattern. The only reason we were on it was because Jupiter was too powerful to go against. That can’t possibly be the case anymore.”

Ramses deafened them with his silence.

“Ramses?” Mateo began. “Can’t you just put a stop to this...or make somebody who can?”

“It’s complicated,” Ramses told them, but did not elaborate.

“Keep going,” Leona urged.

“The Book of Ramses clearly states, To maintain temporal integrity, no native of The Parallel may interfere with the actions of those from the main sequence.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Sanaa argued. “You’re from the main sequence, and Jupiter is interfering with the Parallel. It doesn’t go both ways? Seems irrational.”

“The line I recited is taken a bit out of context. If you read more of it, you would understand that I can’t help you. I’m not really from the main timeline anymore. I’ve been here for tens of thousands of years. I couldn’t be The Father if I didn’t integrate myself fully into this reality.”

“Leona,” Mateo interrupted her before she could argue again. “This is not the friend who left us yesterday. He is an entirely different person, who has been through more than we will ever understand. You won’t be able to convince him to help. We just have to accept the fact that this is how it is. I tried arguing with The Superintendent, and it got me nowhere.” He turned to the man who looked like his best friend. “Thank you for rescuing us from Durus, and thank you for your time. We will let you get back to your galaxy, as we return to the mission. We would be grateful, however, if you could find us a ride to Australia.”

“He’s right,” J.B. said, looking at his own cuff. “Now that we have a satellite feed, we can see exactly where we need to go.”

“I’m sorry,” Ramses told him.

“I firmly believe that we’re saving lives,” Mateo said. “I don’t know why Jupiter wants us to think he’s evil, or why he thinks the only way to save these people’s lives is to temporarily pull them into another reality, but I’m going to keep going until we run out of people to help.”

Ramses nodded in understanding. “I’ll get you to that transport. It’s not far from here; right where you left it in the underground hangar. I don’t know when it transitioned.” He was talking about the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which was the closest thing they had to a home these days.

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Microstory 756: Bullet

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No one ever accused Kavita Lauritz of being normal, or of conforming to the way most people do things. She always knew she had the gift of foresight, but she could never understand the context of her visions. She was utterly convinced that the things she was seeing in her mind were predictions of the future, but these events were so far into that future that she was also fairly certain that she wouldn’t actually be there to witness them come to pass. She could never predict what was going to happen tomorrow, next year, or anything at all that pertained to her life. And calling them visions wasn’t quite doing her ability justice, because they were more like feelings. She just had this sense of what was going to happen to the universe; major, paradigm shifting occurrences that would seem small to most, if they had any way of recognizing them. The culture she was born into was completely on board with the possibility that there exists people in the galaxy with special abilities, but since she could provide no proof that her truths were real, few believed her. But there were those few, and they followed her—worshipped her, even. Unfortunately, this cult following would not be created until after her death. Though all of her predictions were important, there was one that refused to be suppressed to her subconscious. After careful thought, she realized that she was capable of having an effect on the outcome, even though it would not happen for millions of years. This would not be easy, though, for it required careful consideration, and considerable calculations. She spent years learning extremely high-level math in order to understand the problem, missing the first window in the trying. By the time she figured out what her second window of opportunity would be, it was but days away. She would not have time to plan it out very well. As it turned out, an important galactic leader was speaking on the space station where she needed to fire the weapon. Though she had no intention of harming the leader, or anyone else on the station, she was arrested for conspiracy, and placed in prison for life.

Kavita spent the rest of her life calculating the third window of opportunity, which would likely be the last. She scratched her formulas into the walls, and drew them in the dirt, only later being allowed paper and pen. This one was proving to be far more difficult. The celestial movements would have to line up perfectly in order for it to work, much more so than with the other two chances. Astral travel was increasingly interfering with stellar activity with each passing year, stretching her predictive capabilities to their limits. Before her death, she discovered that the third window would not arrive until long after her death. All hope was lost, and she died believing everything she had worked for was meaningless. Centuries later, however, her plans were discovered. Believing her on faith alone, a cult was born with the sole mission of carrying out her final wish. They purchased land on the moon in question, and remained there so they would not be bothered by anyone. After another few centuries, the cult had all but died out, along with the rest of civilization, which had warred itself into oblivion until there was almost nothing left. Only one member was still alive. Fighting against his death throes, he made sure the aiming instruments were aligned correctly, cleaned his gun one last time, and set it in its place. Sweat dripping from his brow, death calling him to sleep, he waited patiently for his alarm to signal at the exact right second. He fired into the vacuum, and died. The Bullet of Causality started on its journey, which would last millions of years, ultimately hitting its target in a distant galaxy.

Microstory 755: Seed

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Many fictional stories suggest that, at some point in our future, we will develop faster-than-light technology. We will use this to travel to the stars in a matter of a few years, or several months, or even in a matter of weeks, days, minutes, or seconds. They come up with various explanations, perhaps the most popular being the idea of a hyperspace, which is some other dimension where the “rules don’t apply”. Sometimes you fold (read: wrinkle) time. Sometimes you warp space around a vessel. In the end, all these ideas get around the implausibility of FTL by nothing more than waving it away with their hands. To be sure, warp drive is our best bet if it’s possible at all, but I’m still not putting money on it. Because of our speed limitations, traveling to our neighbors would be exceedingly unreasonable. Let’s say you can approach the speed of light, but not surpass it. That sounds pretty damn fast, right? Well, the nearest star to us is aptly named Proxima, and it’s about 4.25 light years away. To make it clear, that means it takes 4.25 years for light to travel from the star, to a pig’s eye on Earth. If we were to move just under that speed, it would still take us, say, 4.3 years to get there. Now, Proxima Centauri b is a fairly promising planet—and we’re rather lucky to have it—but it would still be harsh, if not one hundred percent uninhabitable. Scientists would be able to learn a great deal studying a second solar system, so it wouldn’t be a waste of time to go there from mankind’s perspective, but most individuals would get nothing out of it. Still, let’s say people want to fly by it for vacation; that’s a pretty long vacation for the average human lifetime. Advances in the biosciences will allow us to live much longer, rendering a decade vacation not all that big of a deal anymore. But still. It’s one star system, and the chances of finding life in any form are negligible. But what it we crank that lifetime extension up to eleven? What if we eliminate the nuisance of death entirely? If you do that, taking a hundred thousand plus years out of your life to visit the other side of the galaxy isn’t so much as an inconvenience, but the trip itself would also be uneventful. So why don’t we stay here, and let automated ships take care of that for us?

We’ll build two gigantic turtle shell ships, measured in kilometers, each divided into four quadrants. Each turtle shell will be responsible for one plane of the relatively flat disc of the Milky Way, and each quadrant responsible for, well, a quadrant. They’ll fly off to their destinations, and once there, break further apart into tiers, arcs, voussoirs, rankfiles, and sectors. The smallest vessel would be a shallow hexagonal prism, called a seed plate, which is measured in centimeters, and is composed of nanobots. A plate will break ground on an asteroid, comet, meteor, moon, or planet (in that order of preference) and use the material to build infrastructure. We’ll need it to construct survey probes, a network point, interplanetary vessels, and interstellar ships. The latter is required since one plate is responsible for seven to twenty-eight area star systems. In an astonishingly short time from an immortal’s perspective, the entire galaxy can be conquered by the successors to humans. Using quantum entanglement, anyone will be able to instantaneously send their consciousness to any world, easily subverting the light barrier, which is already proven to be completely scientifically sound. If necessary and ethical, the nanites could also build terraforming technology, potentially seeding life on billions of worlds all at once, further cementing ours as the dominant species in the Milky Way. From there, maybe we even go to other galaxies, which would take millions of years. When time is defeated, the possibilities really do become infinite. That’s Brooke Prieto-Matic’s wild dream, anyway, which is good, because the quantum seeder project she conceived is very real. Ladies and gentlemen...Project Stargate.

Microstory 695: Peace in the Galaxy for War in the Void

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Immediately following the discovery of the Amadesin threat in the higher dimensions, the largest meeting in our history was held. A specialty construction company had already built a stadium capable of accommodating all of Fostea’s world leaders, even though they didn’t know they would need it. It was constructed on Enaji Habicht’s home planet of Grevé, which was unexpectedly becoming the hub for Highlightseers. Many things were discussed across many meetings; some involving everyone, others smaller factions. We hadn’t planned on doing this, nor did we design our culture around such a thing. The whole idea is to be completely decentralized. Every ruler is meant to lead their people to their own liking, free from the interference of others, save in the case of war. To that end, however, we realized that something needed to be changed. Lightseers were in the middle of a massive war against nonbelievers on multiple fronts. This was spreading everyone’s resources thin, and though it was foretold in the Book of Light, it ultimately wasn’t doing anyone any good. The danger now lies externally, in a foreign land, by a civilization of Amadesin remnants who call themselves the Thuriamen. Evidently, they are the last surviving faction of the pervasive and despicable religion of the old worlds. Their particular tenets of faith, as contrasted with rival factions, are irrelevant. What we know of them is that they seek to poison the entire universe with their misguided and dark beliefs. The vast majority of their own people live in utter darkness, navigating solely by the glow of dim artificial lights, just enough to not walk off a cliff, if that. We even believe that the people who the religious leaders force to live this way are not even casually aware of the very concept of sunshine. It is not these poor souls we are concerned with, but the elite upper class who seek to control their lives—exercising domination not through fear or love, but total ignorance. It is our custom to stay out of other people’s business, but this we cannot let stand, and most leaders who met on Grevé agree. Now is the time to abandon our traditions in favor of saving an entire population from the bonds of their oblivion; to spread the Light of Life to those who need it most. Highlightseers, in a joint announcement with representatives from all opposing forces, have revealed that a staggeringly monumental army will be assembled. All concerned have signed a peace treaty, declaring a ceasefire indefinitely, if not permanently, and will be redirecting their troops to a new mission. We will no longer seek to harm each other; but instead spread truth, battling anyone intent on shrouding others in their twisted darkness. The Pangalactic Fleet deploys today.

Microstory 675: Hide the Bar Catel

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The Bar Catel is not the only ship of its kind, but it is the most famous one. A bar is a type of interstellar vessel known for its brute sturdiness and massive capacity. Bara (true pluralization) are not elegant or attractive, but they are quite useful. They are cargo ships, often used to transport large amounts of sometimes extremely volatile substances. Bara were created 4,000 years ago in Lactea, the origin of the name being lost to the obscurest of historical trivia. The Bar Catel was one of the early models, and has been passed down across multiple cultures over time. Though obsolete, it has proven its worth time and time again, having shipped any number of precious commodities for various owners and clients. While large enough to accommodate an astral collimator capable of traveling intergalactic distances, bara were not built this way. All space needed to be designated for cargo. Around the time we were leaving our home galaxy in pursuit of Fostea, our peoples came into possession of the Bar Catel. In order for our ancestors to take it with them, they had to retrofit it with a red astral collimator, which was something that had never been done before. Honestly, there was a fairly decent chance that the whole thing would vaporize somewhere in the middle of the trip, but it didn’t. It survived, just like we did; just like we always do. We consider the Bar Catel to carry with it the spirit of Fostea. It is still in use today, with its red collimator, making frequent trips back and forth between here and Lactea. We take what we feel we deserve from them, and then we leave, while the Lacteans remain entire oblivious. Seemingly randomly, the Sacred Savior foretold in the Book of Light that the Bar Catel would have to be hidden, and that everyone who knew of its whereabouts would have to die so that the secret would die with them. In order to minimize the damage, only three people took the Bar Catel out, and no one else knows where they went. They could still be in Fostea, or they could be in a galaxy we’ve never even heard of before. A later taikon will explore its rediscovery, and we’ll go over that when the time comes.

Microstory 626: Replace Eido Feivel

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In all honesty, Eido Feivel was not a very remarkable man. Very little is known about his life during the reign of the Eidos, except that he was the first to recognize those who would reject the Savior’s teachings. He was probably pretty instrumental in, not appointing the other eidos, but in keeping them together. He is often nicknamed The Glue by his colleagues, but not much else is said about him. Following Sotiren Zahir’s Ouven Sacrifice, the eidos were technically disbanded. Many of them, however, stayed together in The Council of Wise Words, ready to guide others in their struggles to maintain decent life paths. Feivel, on the other hand, chose to leave the other eidos behind, instead traveling the known, and unknown, planets of the universe. He was given an intergalactic ship of his very own, with a minimal crew, so that he could spread the news of the Book of Light to all who had not yet heard it. He went back to the dirty communists, and found other uncivilized societies, trying to convince them to adopt our ways. His success was limited, but steady. A reliable stream of newcomers arrived throughout the decades that Feivel remained alive. He was not loud or imposing. He was not egotistical or heroic. He was just a man. A good man, and a true Lightseer. A man who believed in the Light, in the Savior’s message, and in the Fostean culture. Some sources believe that he was tortured and killed by a city of heathens in retaliation of the conversion of one of their own. Others say that he was killed somewhere else entirely. In order to replace Eido Feivel in modern times, the Highlightseers would have to seek out someone who did not stand out on too much; who was not actively seeking the limelight. It’s unclear what exact parameters they used to find this replacement, but they seem to have achieved this goal. A young, mousey librarian named Agantai Bauriter living a modest life on Haplen agreed to join the cause, and begin conditioning for her new life as an eido.

A Day of No Business

Microstory 506: Amadesin Remnant Hiding in Higher Dimensions

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Martian Authorities have uncovered possible evidence that the remaining sects of Amadesis have been hiding out in higher Prime dimensions. The best way to access these dimensions is through Earth, which is why the evidence wasn't readily available before. An unnamed Aviid historian first proposed this theory about sixty years ago. Though his ideas were not dismissed, they were deemed too risky to pursue at the time. During this period, Earth was steadily ramping up its efforts to either prove, or disprove, the presence of alien entities within their airspace. Though visitors from across the galaxy regularly traveled to and from Earth before then, it was decided that a greater amount of secrecy and security needed to be implemented in order to prevent any unwanted attention. It has taken this long for all members of leadership of The Core to agree that a minimal investigation of the uncharted dimensional space could be logistically possible. Details are scarce at this time, but the number of Amadesin descendants are said to number in the millions...possibly billions. A great deal of resources have been allocated to creating, demonstrating, and protecting the Right Eye Papers, but Martian representatives assure the public that a more complete investigation into this second major intergalactic issue will begin within the next few weeks. A source inside the authority has revealed that these Amadesins in particular derive from the Ellaraitch school of thought, and execute a form of indentured servitude and compartmentalization in order to attain their goals. As far as the infiltration mission goes, members of the Isala administration have all agreed that the elite team should be comprised exclusively of humans. Because little is known regarding the current level of Amadesis technology, scientists from Levida have concluded that it would be too dangerous to include Martian Arsenic suiters. Their true nature may be discovered quickly, placing the entire mission at risk. A representative from the Eridani military contingency has spoken up as well, promising the public that preventing war is of the utmost priority for all those involved, at least on our side of the dimensional brinks. The number one priority, however, is...well, Priority One; which obligates any member of deveiled society to act in the best interest of safety for everyone, regardless of cultural or developmental consequences. Specifics on the mission will be released at a later date, possibly following the effort, in order to preserve universal security.

Microstory 153: Vivian Polzin

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Like Molly Bloom, Vivian Polzin’s ability was not able to present itself until a very particular set of circumstances arose. She grew up with her father in St. Petersburg, Russia, but things were growing dangerous in that part of the world. Fearing these dangers, Vivian’s mother demanded that she move in with her in Stockholm, Sweden instead. And so she packed her things, and set off on a submarine, along with a number of other refugees. Somewhere near the boundary of the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic sea, the submarine began to suffer from a cataclysm. Water flooded in, and the deeper they sank, the higher the pressure, and the faster they sank. There was no way for anyone to survive, except for Vivian. She was transforming as fast as the dangers were coming upon them. Parts of her body became engorged and compressed in order to prevent gas bubbles from forming. Her lungs collapsed to halt gas exchange that would otherwise cause a buildup of nitrogen, and she created stores of oxygen in her blood and muscles so that she would no longer need to breathe. But Vivian was still stuck under the twisted metal of the former submarine, unable to escape. She would soon run out of oxygen, so her body transformed again. Before her reserves had been completely exhausted, she developed two sets of gills on her neck. She remained trapped there alone for days until she developed the ability to summon a group mermen. No, seriously. They freed her from her tomb, and contacted Adam Nicks who brought her into Bellevue, but she never had the chance to find a responsibility. Following an accident involving Fiona Mill, she would quickly find herself in the solitude of intergalactic space, and stayed there for years. When she was finally found, she was proven to have done what she does best: survive.

Microstory 65: Gravity Transfunctioners

I’ve received a lot of messages over the years, desperately asking me how ships are able to fly. There has been some confusion as to how a vessel could be capable of lifting itself from surfaces without any obvious means of propulsion. People tend to expect to see some kind of jet stream, or arcing electricity, or even explosions. Ships are also relatively quiet, which seems to be pretty unsettling to those who do not understand it. They’re used to loud shuttles being forced into the sky, with pieces falling off as fuel is expended. I’ve been looking through the specifications, manuals, and textbooks that I have attained from various intergalactic organizations in order to help me tell my so-called “fictional” stories. They’re pretty long-winded and overly complex about the science behind antigravity and spaceflight. But then I came across this cute little blurb that a rocket surgeon came up with to explain to his young daughter why he no longer had a job. The following explanation of gravity transfunctioners is several thousand years old: When unobtanium is injected into the turboencabulator, it reverses the polarity of the phlebotinum core which creates a quantum tunnel through which the sonic hand can wave the gravitons in the same direction that the user wants an object to move.