Microstory 2259: Hello, KC Metro

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If you’re a national or international reader, you may not have heard of a TV show called Hello, KC Metro. In this region, we have a local television station that focuses on local programming. It includes the weather, news, documentaries, and syndicated scripted series that feature known Kansas City natives. For five hours from 7:00 to 12:00 every weekday morning, a talk show featuring a variety of hosts and guests discuss all sorts of topics. If you’ve ever done anything noteworthy in the area, or are from the area, chances are you’ve made an appearance in one form or another. They’ve asked me to be on many times, but I’m not great in front of the camera, so I’ve always respectfully declined. Even local content creators have their stuff shown sometimes without them actually being present in the studio, and they’ve read my social posts on there without me having to be involved directly. If you want your story to be seen by the highest number of people, you’re gonna want to get yourself on the program between 7:30 and 8:30 central. This is after people have woken up for work, but before they’ve actually left for work. Of course, people work at different times, but 9:00 to 15:00 is kind of standard. For the show, 11:30 to noon is a decent time to be on too, because people might watch it during their lunch break, but that’s a lot less standardized. You probably see where I’m going with this. Dutch isn’t much for writing, so he doesn’t have his own blog, but people are really interested in hearing his tales of interdimensional travel, so he agreed to go on Hello, KC Metro, where he spoke with host, Cosmina Branković for nearly forty-five minutes this morning. He talked about what he was up to in Stoutverse, even the things he did that he wasn’t super proud of. I won’t get into that here, because it’s 2024, so you can watch the whole thing online. I know that it was hard for him to go into all that. He wasn’t being tormented or abused, but it wasn’t all fun and games either. I’m very proud of him for being honest about his part in what those people wanted to do with something that he could not control. I know none of that makes any sense if you didn’t see it, so I guess you’re just going to have to go hear for yourselves.

Microstory 2237: Good Number of Zeros

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Okay, I’ll make this brief. People did not like what I wrote in my last social post. I told you yesterday that I wasn’t going to be making any book deals, or anything, but I think most of you know that that’s not really what I meant. I was saying that I’m working on my own timeline, and contemplating my future privately. Dutch came back to this world through an interdimensional doorway while I was starting to wonder whether it even existed. For the first time in months, there is hope for me to see my friends again, and maybe even my family if I’m lucky. So no, some of you misunderstood me. I did not reject the concept of making money, and I am not being a hypocrite. I told you that I would be doing this on my own terms, which means not accepting just any offer that comes with a good number of zeros. Let’s do it right, not just quickly. This is all happening so fast, I don’t know what tomorrow holds, let alone the next year, so just be patient. For now, I’ll ask you to read my site if you want, and not try to give me any ideas. I appreciate the thought, and I’m not mad, but this is all I need for now. One thing I will tell you is that the internet is the only place where I share my thoughts. I don’t see any reason to write an autobiography that you have to buy. That ain’t me.

Microstory 2156: Whoopdee-Friggin-Do For You

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The power is out. It’s out all over the metro. It was that way in jail, which made things pretty miserable in there for several hours, but it’s no picnic out here either. First, I lost a day of jail time, which I will have to make up for at some point. They had to release us, because of the air conditioning problem. It’s particularly hot these days, so leaving us in there would have constituted cruel and unusual punishment. This post will be really short, because I had to go so far to find phone service. It’s pretty bad, hopefully it will be fixed later today. I flirted with just letting it go, and waiting until later, because that would have been easier. It’s taking a lot, just to get this out. Still, I didn’t want to leave you totally hanging, especially since I have a schedule to keep, so I drove clear to the other side of Kansas City to post this one little thing. Don’t worry, I’m not breaking the law. My parole officer, Leonard is with me. He had some of his own work to conduct, so it wasn’t a complete waste. We can’t spend much time out here, though, because he has to get back to check in with his other parolees, and I have to figure out what I’m gonna do for dinner tonight. Everything in my fridge is spoiling as we speak, because I had to open it for one bottle of water, and that let a whole bunch of warm air in, which won’t ever be cooled until the power comes back on. If you’re in the area, stay safe, and try to find a shelter nearby. They set them up in such events, and they are powered by generators. They’re not only for the unhoused. If you don’t live in the area, and your life is a-okay right now, then whoopdee-friggin-do for you!

Microstory 2134: All a Big Trade-off

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I’m back home, even though I’ve not yet recovered from my infection. My lawyer argued to the judge that it was possible that the food I was given in the prison was potentially poisoned, and my distaste for it was not simply the result of another symptom of the fungus. This would be a reach, as I’m sure you’re assuming, except that this facility has a suspiciously deep history with poison. There have been other cases that were not ambiguous, and which involved guards in more than one instance. That doesn’t prove that I was indeed poisoned, because they couldn’t pinpoint anything in my body, but that was enough to get me a compassionate release. I’m obviously not completely free. I still can’t leave my apartment, and since I can’t be monitored around the clock anymore, I can’t go back to jail this weekend for my normal two-day stint. This is a complicated situation, because skipping a weekend comes with an automatic incursion of an extra 64 hours. Here’s the math. I was originally sentenced to 1000 hours. I’m scheduled to go inside at 18:00 every Friday, and come out at 18:00 on Sunday. That’s 48 hours each time. Multiply that by 20, and you get 960 hours. That means on the 21st weekend, I could have left at 10:00 on Sunday. But now I’m up to 1064 total. So it’s more than just one additional weekend. After that, I still have an extra eight hours to take care of during a 23rd weekend. And this will keep happening each time I have to push it back, even if it’s not my fault. This is just how the law works. The judge is not at liberty to make any sort of exception due to my illness. That’s probably for the best, or people would be calling in sick when they’re not, just like they do when they don’t want to go to work, or perhaps more commonly, school. My time in house arrest doesn’t count towards my quota. My time in the prison medical ward, while it was supposed to last for seven days, only covered the original 48 hours that I owed. It wasn’t supposed to last more than a week either way. It’s all a big trade-off, but I would still say that I’m glad to be back here, even with this ankle monitor. I have more space to move around, I have better internet, and I eat whatever I want. Plus, I’m still making my own hours, which gives me extra time to sleep in my nice and comfortable bed. In the prison, I found that I could only work during certain times, or the connection was excruciatingly slow. That often meant getting up in the middle of the night, and I’m not about that.

Microstory 2132: Don’t Have Anything Special

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The thing about being in prison all day and all night is that nothing about your situation changes. I promised that I would only use my computer for work and to update this blog, and I’ve held to that. You don’t know how hard it’s been to not sneak a peek at the news, or watch a funny video while I’m on a break. I don’t, though. When I’m not busy with something, I just go over to my bed and sit down to stare at the wall. I’m not even allowed to have anything to read, because books can’t be disinfected. The warden said that it would be okay if I read something on the computer, and that he would be more bothered by videos or games, but as I said, I made a commitment. I’m not going to go back on my word just because my life is now even more boring than it was before. I made the conscious decision to leave Kansas even though I was meant to stay put, and regularly report my goingson. If I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have been anywhere near the warehouse where I contracted the fungus in the first place. That’s on me. The work I’ve been doing has been interesting enough, but I can’t tell you about it, since it’s privileged information. The rest of my posts this week are going to be short, I’m sure, unless something crazy happens, like if Michael Scofield suddenly showed up through a hole behind the toilet, and told me that we’re breaking out. That’s a reference to a TV show that you don’t have in this universe. Maybe that’s what I’ll do every time I don’t have anything special to tell you about my day; tell you more about how my homeworld worked, and how it’s different than yours. We’ll see. For now, I’ll just end this here, and implore you to use me as a cautionary tale. Things might not seem that bad, since I’ve been given so many accommodations, but my story is not typical, and it still sucks here. If I had the choice between prison or jail, or being completely free, I would choose freedom every day of the week.

Microstory 2131: Little Cell

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My fungal infection is evidently extremely contagious, so I’m in prison now, in a special wing of the facility for this very thing. Most of the other guys are in here to protect the other prisoners, though to varying degrees. I think a couple of them just need to be protected from others, for at least a period of time. The FBI is very serious about what’s happened to me. They know that this is the fourth time in as many months that I’ve been sick, so they’re not messin’ around. They sent investigators to every place I’ve been to, in Kansas City, Iowa, and even down in Alabama. I didn’t think that they would find anything, because it should be the proverbial needle in a haystack, but they actually confirmed the source of my infection. When I first escaped to Iowa, the ID makers (who, you’ll recall, kidnapped their daughter when she was little) set me up in an abandoned warehouse. They found traces of mold in the showers that I used to clean myself while I was staying there. So it was in me for a month before I started showing symptoms. Because of this, everyone I’ve come in contact with since then, including law enforcement agents, court staff, and even the teenage girl, who is now in witness protection, has to be tested. That’s going to take some time, which is going to stress me out quite a bit. I’ll just be devastated if it turns out that I infected someone else. Even the ID makers would be bad news. I just don’t like hurting people, and anyway, my lawyer says that they would be able to use it to their advantage in their own criminal case. All I can do is wait, and hope that I was careful enough so as to not infect anyone else. It’s not guaranteed that I did. I’ve never been a fan of being around other people, so I instinctively keep my distance, even when there’s no reason to suspect that anyone is sick. Hopefully it was enough.

For the time being, I’m just in my little cell. There are no windows, because that would expose the outside world to me, and vice versa. The bed is less comfortable than the ones in jail. The food isn’t as good. The correctional officers aren’t as nice. They know that my situation is different than everyone else in here, but they don’t really care. They’ve been trained to not treat people great, so that’s what they’re used to. As far as I’ve seen, they’re not abusive, but I would honestly be less surprised if I learned that they actually were. I don’t interact with them very much, as you would expect. I don’t get yard time, and I take all my meals inside the cell. If I want to work out, my only choice is a pull-up bar. Of course, I’m supposed to be resting and recovering right now, but I wouldn’t use it anyway, because I hate pull-ups. A nurse comes to check my vitals every two hours, and a doctor visits twice a day. The nurses take my blood occasionally too, to keep testing it. They think that I’m going to have to stay in here for the rest of the week. Even if I stop exhibiting symptoms, I could still be contagious. Fortunately, the judge agreed to give me a computer with internet access. This will allow me to start my job today, which is really important, because I don’t want to be fired on my first day. A big thanks to my parole officer, Leonard who fought for me. Obviously, since you’re reading this on a Monday, you know that I’ll be able to continue to post to my website too. There’s nothing stopping me from going to whatever site I want, but I want to commit right now to only using this for work and writing. Okay? You can verify that by monitoring my activity, I assume, prison officials. No funny business, I promise.

Microstory 2119: A Rehabilitation Plan

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Without proceeding to a full trial, I’ve been sentenced to 1,000 hours of jail time, and 1,000 hours of community service. There’s a lot of flexibility with this that I did not expect. I can go to jail for 42 days straight if I want, and then start doing my community service. I can stay in jail every night, but spend my days performing acts of service. I can spend six months in weekend jail while I work during the week, which will allow me some time to volunteer in the evenings, but I can also put it off until I have more time. I could even put jail itself off completely for six whole months, which I don’t really want to do. I would rather get it over with. That doesn’t mean I’ll be serving my time straight, though. I still want to work on my blog, and keep up with the world, which I won’t be able to do if I’m stuck in there for all that time. I first have to draw up a Rehabilitation Plan, which includes these two things, plus therapy, an active search for gainful employment, and of course, a detailed strategy for nonrecidivism. It’s not like I can do it one way, and then change my mind later. I have to decide now, which is what I’ll be working on for the next couple of days before I have to report to jail for the first time. Regardless of what I end up choosing, I’ll be going inside tomorrow night at exactly 19:00. They have to process me first, and then release me on Sunday at the earliest, if I’ve opted to go for an intermittent plan, which I will. I already have some ideas involving finding a home that’s close to where I work, and not still not buying a car, which will make it difficult for me to leave town again. As you know, I didn’t have a car before, but I was able to make it work with public transportation, so this isn’t like a perfect solution, but it’s a start. The state is trusting me with a lot of freedom, and I’m not going to do anything to suggest that it was a mistake on their part. Once I’m finished with my plan, it might be fun to post it here, even if only a truncated version of it. It could be pretty long. The court is actually encouraging me to stay online, to document my journey, and to garner public support for my recovery. I certainly don’t have a problem with that. If I can gain enough followers, I can actually start making money off of this site from the advertisements, which could really help if I really struggle with finding a regular job. So, as I think I’ve said before, read my ish! Early and often.

Microstory 2118: Tiny Little Baby Boy

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I had a physical examination today. Some laws in this world are weird, and some of them are better than they are where I’m from. For others, I’m not sure one way or the other. I think my world would do this sort of thing sometimes, for when there were specific reasons to believe that the accused was in need of it, but here, they do it for everyone. There is an entire branch of medicine dedicated to making sure that people like me are fit to stand trial, or even just this small hearing. They call it Judicial Fitness, making this my Judicial Fitness Evaluation. I’ll go through more by the time this is over, and maybe more while I’m being monitored by a parole officer. This Earth, and this country in particular, is very concerned with the physical and emotional stability of their accused and convicted. I would be interested to learn what happened in history to turn this into a common practice. Were there too many bored doctors? Were there a ton of patients who were later discovered to have been unfit for legal proceedings, which resulted in severe damage to their welfare? Or maybe there was one highly publicized case that shifted perception. Either way, I don’t have a problem submitting to it. I have nothing to hide. Y’all already know, I don’t mind admitting to my medical issues; I’ve done that in multiple instances on this site. I believe in medical privacy, but I’ve personally never run into a situation that I felt I couldn’t tell anyone about, even if it would be “embarrassing” for a neurotypical. I’m trying to think of a story like that to prove to you that I don’t care, but nothing comes to mind. Perhaps I just don’t understand what other people’s threshold would be. I’ve had a few ingrown toenails, which required minor surgery, does that count? They sent a scope up my urethra to try to figure out my digestive issues. That’s not great, a normal person would probably keep that to themselves. Let’s see, I used to vomit from anxiety whenever I did something new. I guess that can still happen, it’s just that less is new than it was when I was a tiny little baby boy. I just called myself a tiny little baby boy, should I be embarrassed by that? You tell me. If those aren’t juicy enough for ya, I’m afraid that my current condition isn’t gonna help you either. I earned a clean bill of health from my physician, which means that I can attend my hearing tomorrow. What exactly the purpose of it is a bunch of legalese that I don’t understand, but I’ll try to recount it tomorrow, unless they throw me in prison right away, and don’t give me access to a computer. If that happens, my blog will just end. I don’t have any backup posts waiting on the schedule this time. Welp, it’s been real...or rather it hasn’t, because I’m making all of this up, ain’t I? Or am I? I am. Wait...oh no, I was right, this is all fiction.

Microstory 2115: One Story at a Time

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In the year 2014, I started publishing my stories for all to see. Well, all on Facebook, anyway. And publish is a strong word. I was posting them at least. I wrote the first one on my phone, using a notes app. It was rather poetic, and not very much like my usual style. I don’t recall now what prompted me to start doing this. I suppose that I was tired of being rejected by literary agents, and ready for people to see my work, whether I was getting paid for it or not. Months later, I started working on my Blogger website, and ported all of the content from Facebook over. It wasn’t that much at the time, but it would become a lot soon. By then, I had come up with a long-term plan, instead of just writing something up day by day, and sending it off. I made a master list, and a rigid schedule. Sundays would be for my continuous main story, Saturdays for longer stories, and weekdays for really short bits. Then I had to start devising narrative ideas. The Advancement of Mateo Matic was already there. I thought of the idea of a character unwillingly being sent forward in time probably a year or two prior, but didn’t know what I would do with it, since it was before the site. I merged it with a preexisting title that was for a completely different series, and really started to focus on that. I had a couple ideas for the Saturday mezzofiction, but they wouldn’t last long, so that was a constantly evolving situation. The microfiction stories were the wild west in the beginning. I was still just coming up with one story at a time, which didn’t have anything to do with each other. It wasn’t until Bellevue Profiles later in 2015 that I started to see potential for complete series.

Okay, this has all taken me longer than I thought it would, particularly the post that I wrote for what will be yesterday for you, and I really feel like I just need to turn myself in to the police. I’m just procrastinating, and for what? I only have a few hundred followers at this point. I guess I’m only going to be scheduling two days out. That gets me through Friday, and I don’t post these on weekends anyway, so that’s practically four days. Maybe they’ll stick me in one of those jail cells with a computer and an internet connection. They have those, right? I dunno, this universe is unfamiliar to me. There’s more to get into about how my blog operates, so maybe I’ll get around to it later. When I finally do get internet access back—if ever—I’m sure I will have so much to catch you up on. I might have joined a prison gang, and gotten a tattoo. Or not. Wish me luck, or to break a leg, or whatever you people say around here.

Microstory 2053: Cold, Or Whatever

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

Microstory 2052: Day Two

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I have to write this one really quickly, because I’m running out of money, and I know that I really shouldn’t be spending it on the internet, when what I really need is food and shelter, but I figure that I can get those things for free if I’m smart, or just later. First, while my immortality is gone, I’m still running on the energy that I got back when a window to the bulk briefly opened up. I probably won’t have to eat for at least for another week, maybe two. The weather is surprisingly mild here. They say it’s January in Kansas City, but it doesn’t feel like that. I don’t think the temperature—or the weather in general, for that matter—has changed once since I arrived here yesterday. Either your calendar is a lot different than the ones in other universes, or geography is. Maybe the continents drifted differently? Could this version of North America be closer to where the equator would be—wait, no, that doesn’t make any sense. I would have noticed that just by looking at a globe. The equator is the equator, regardless, and we’re about as distant from it as I recall. This is just super weird. Anyway, where was I? Oh, I had a little money in my pocket from Havenverse, and luckily, they use the same kind of bills here. I think that’s kind of how it works, though. Westfall is a special section of a universe-traveling machine called The Crossover. Westfall is seemingly random, and doesn’t send you clear across to a distant brane that’s unlike your own. The whole point is that you usually don’t even realize it’s happened. A lot of things are gonna be the same, like currency, and history, but apparently not weather. Still need to find a job, and a place to live, though. If anyone has any leads, hit me up in the comments. At this point, I’ll do pretty much anything. But I don’t deal with food or cleaning. Or waste or sewage. Or animals, because I’m allergic. And I really don’t like to work with my hands, or lift really heavy objects. I don’t want the environment to be too dirty or cold. I’m also not very skilled, so it needs to be entry level, but still pay extremely well. Other than that, I’m up for anything. Let me know, I’m gonna go take another nap in the park.

Microstory 2051: Greetings From Boreverse

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This is not my world. I don’t even know where I would call home anymore. I was born an unremarkable autistic kid in central Kansas in 1987, on a version of Earth. When I was four years old, a random cosmic accident imbued me with access to a higher plane of existence. From there, my knowledge and powers grew as more and more data came flooding in from these other dimensions. I started writing this information down in the form of fictional stories. But they weren’t fictional. They were just mostly happening in other universes. I even wrote myself into the stories, and occasionally interacted with my own characters. I didn’t realize the danger I was putting myself in, until the boundaries between my world and the rest began to blur, and instead of merely bringing characters to life, I was becoming part of a new story. A lot of stuff happened that I won’t get into, but it involves time travel, my alternate self, and a desperate scheme to retrieve my dog from a collapsed timeline. I let the other me live out his life, and sacrificed myself to the same collapse, essentially switching places with my dog, Daisy. But there was hope. My other self had all my same powers, and part of that was being able to generate characters at will, so he made me. He remade me, and inserted me into one of the most pleasant universes in the bulkverse. That’s where I met Cricket.

Cricket is a bioenhanced posthuman from Moderaverse, who lived in a world that stressed biological improvement over external technological development. I was starting to like it, but it did not last. We found ourselves being randomly sent to yet another universe, on another version of Earth. We were able to escape that, but not back to Moderaverse. We started to travel the bulk, meeting all sorts of new people, and making a new friend in a U.S. Marine named Claire Fuller. We continued to go on adventures together, vaguely trying to get back to Cricket’s world, but mostly just trying to find our place in the cosmos. In the meantime, I found myself with the ability to borrow my characters’ special powers, one at a time. The last one I took was true immortality, and I never gave it back. But I lost it anyway when I went to Havenverse, which doesn’t allow such gifts. The three of us lived there for five years, trying to make the best of it. But then we were separated when a powerful being put me in the crosshairs of an abductor. It was he who forced me through an interversal portal that I imagine was meant for him. Now I’m here, in a world that is not unlike Havenverse, but it’s even worse, because it’s boring. Everything just seems so dull and tedious. My immortality is still gone, but I was able to get it back temporarily, so at least I’m young again. The problem is that I have no identity, no money, and no place to live. I’m in this internet cafe to chronicle my struggles as I focus on essential needs before I can move on to more metaphysical ambitions. I have to get back to Cricket and Claire, whether that means returning to Havenverse, or finding them somewhere else in the multiverse. Until then, natives of this Earth, enjoy my daily updates in a new series that I call Pleadings From Boreverse. Sorry to have to call it that...but you sort of brought it on yourselves.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 20, 2399

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Mateo is getting out of the hospital today. Constance!Five worked him over pretty good, but he’s still wearing a highly advanced substrate, so he heals fast. A little rest, a little protein, a little sun, and he’s as good as new. Ramses is with him now while Leona and Alyssa are getting the house ready. It’s Arcadia and Vearden’s house. It was nowhere near large enough to accommodate the whole team back when they first bought it, but their numbers have been pared down significantly since then. Mateo and Leona will get the second bedroom. The boys will get what is eventually going to become the nursery. Ramses and Alyssa are going to share the master bedroom, because it’s the largest. They’ll erect a curtain for more privacy. Arcadia is being moved to a long-term wing, to a room that can fit a companion.

For now, there is no lab. Normal technology is fine, like handhelds and tablets, but nothing advanced can be trusted. Constance!Five may have wormed her way into the internet, but she can do more damage with a teleporter gun than a phone. Ramses will work on a way of detecting and neutralizing the threat, but not here, and not now.

“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about,” Alyssa says as they’re carrying the crib down to the basement.

“What is it?” Leona asks.

“Mateo and Vearden want to get rid of the stasis pod, and everything that’s in it.”

“That’s the goal.” She looks over her shoulder to recount the number of steps.

“They want to do it now. Mateo’s idea was to teleport it to a volcano, and then his second idea was to shoot it into the sun.”

“Neither of those ideas is going to work.” They set the crib down in the corner.

“I suggested we try to take it back to the Constant.”

“Ugh.” Leona pulls some cobwebs out of her hair. “We don’t know where it is anymore. Besides, what makes you think Danica and all them will help us?”

“They don’t have to want to help us,” Alyssa says. “We’ll drop it off and fly away. What are they gonna do, return it? Good luck; they don’t have a receipt. It was a gift.”

“No. We can’t have that. Even if we successfully convince them that this version of Constance is dangerous, that’s the most powerful building in the universe. We don’t want her anywhere near it. That may be where she wanted to go all along. Just being in proximity—even while in stasis—could trigger this reality’s Constance into turning evil.”

“Oh, I didn’t think of that.”

“Sorry, the pod stays where it is. I know that means she continues to survive, but it’s our only option right now.” Transporting her anywhere is too dangerous. They know that she’s framejacking in there. That’s okay for now, because it’s a function of mental speed, not physical motion. But one day, she will break out of that pod, and moving her could expedite that. “We don’t know enough about her yet. I need your help.”

“With what?” Alyssa asks, looking around the basement.

“With making sure my husband doesn’t do something stupid. I wish he would always listen to me, but he...I don’t know, he just doesn’t. He has a soft spot for young women, though not in the way you think. He sees the helpless naïve girl that I was when we met. I’m not saying you should manipulate him, but you can...guide his choices.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 30, 2398

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Alyssa adds more shirts to the suitcase as Carlin stands there, watching her. He’s old enough to pack for himself, but he doesn’t want to go, so this is his way of being defiant. If she’s the one who wants this, then she’s going to be the one to make it happen, and he doesn’t have to help her with that. Young Moray has just finished packing his own bag, because while he doesn’t want to leave either, making people do things for him is not his style. Alyssa smiles sadly over at him. “Thank you, Mor.”

“Why do we have to go?” Carlin questions.

“Because it’s not safe here anymore.”

“It’s never really been safe,” he argues. “These people’s lives are dangerous, that’s what makes them so interesting.”

“It’s become more dangerous since we arrived,” Alyssa clarifies.

“Then why aren’t you coming with us?” Moray asks her.

She stops trying to close Carlin’s bag, and goes over to Moray. She gets on her knees, and holds him by the arms. “You understand that they’re time travelers, right?”

“Yeah,” Moray confirms, holding back tears.

“Well, they know things about the future. They know things about my future. I’m destined to work with them, they’ve already seen it.”

“What happens to us in the future?”

Alyssa looks at Carlin over her shoulder, and then back to Moray. “You’re safe, and it’s because today, you go to Palmeria.”

“You’re lying,” Carlin believes.

“I’m not,” Alyssa lies. “That is where you belong.” She stands back up. “And this...is where I belong. We’ll see each other again, I promise. Mateo can teleport me there whenever I need to. In the meantime, we’ll holo-chat, and text, okay?”

“Okay.” Moray is still holding back those tears, and doing a pretty good job of it.

“Okay,” she echoes. She leans over to kiss him on the forehead, then turns to face Carlin. “I need you to take care of him, because I’m not in a position to do it anymore.”

Carlin seethes just a little, but then grows determined. He punches the top of his suitcase, and holds his fist in place while his other hand zips it up. “I assume they have internet. I’m not done with the religion research.”

Relieved, Alyssa nods. “They do; Mateo confirmed. In fact, they don’t have dogma filters, so you won’t be limited to any given religion’s biased interpretation of competing faiths. You’ll have a better understanding of the history and culture for your thesis.”

“What’s a thesis?” Carlin asks.

“It’s kind of when you come to a conclusion before your research, and then you do the research to find out if it’s actually true.”

“Do they even need this anymore? I mean, if I’m leaving...”

“Part of the reason you’re leaving is so that you can continue safely, and without worrying about anything else,” Alyssa explains. “It’s still vitally important data; more so now, probably. We’re not just tryna get rid of ya, I promise.”

“I’m helping with it,” Moray interjects.

“I know,” Alyssa says to him proudly. “Now, come on. “We’re going to have one last group meal together before the big move.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 12, 2398

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Angela is sitting in the welcome room. It has a conference table, multiple screens, a snack bar with refrigeration, couches, and comfortable chairs. This is where she’ll first meet clients. It’s a playground for them to explore what kind of software they might want to create without the limiting factors of a stuffy office. Completing this room was the final flourish. If she wanted to take a meeting today, she would be ready for them. Well, the building would be ready. Psycho-emotionally speaking, she may never be ready. She’s nervous already, and she hasn’t even opened the doors yet. Can she do this? Is she ready? Should she do it?

Kivi peeks her head into the room like a sideways prairie dog. “Hey.” She’s Angela’s researcher. Angela knows how to counsel people, and she knows how to code, which is a lot of work for one person. It will be Kivi’s responsibility to find people who might be interested in their services, but who might not be aware that it’s even a thing. Or they might not be aware that they can do it for free. This is a highly competitive field, but most companies charge for development. Angela isn’t even sure that she wants to call them clients, because once they go into business together—if it goes that far—they will be more like partners. They will work together to build something, and share in the profits, and if it fails, they will share in the loss. The point of this is to take on the financial burden, because her only partners will be people who both can’t do it on their own, and can’t afford to invest monetarily.

Angela takes a deep breath. “You found my secret hiding place.”

“You mean the biggest room on the floor besides the lobby? Yep.”

Angela nods, but doesn’t say anything.

Kivi walks over and sits down next to her. “What are you feeling?”

“Hesitation.”

“Hesitation,” Kivi questions, “or cold feet?”

She shakes her head. Does it matter? The result is the same when this whole project is cancelled. They should never have even tried, and they wasted so much time, money, and effort getting to this point. They don’t need the money. The entire pursuit is all about her, inspired by the simple fact that Leona and Ramses only needed one floor for their lab. The business doesn’t do the team any good, and it doesn’t do the world much good either. It’s selfish. She feels so selfish, spending so much time on this.

It’s like Kivi can see all this detailed angst in Angela’s eyes. “You don’t have to feel bad about doing this, just because Leona is working on fusion, and Ramses, Mateo, and Alyssa are trying to get Trina back. They want this place to succeed. We all do.”

“It’s all so stupid compared to everything else going on.”

“It’s not, and you won’t feel that way when I show you the profile for your first partner.” She casts her tablet to the big screen. A group of teenagers are laughing for the camera. “The boy in the green shirt has been walking two miles to the nearest internet cafe everyday to research ways to help his community. The area is poverty-stricken, and the school’s population is dwindling as a cult promising riches recruits kids for what he realizes is actually a militia. He has some pretty cool ideas to put a stop to it, but not the resources to follow through. Upon your go-ahead, I’m prepared to reach out.”

Angela reads about him on the screen, and thinks. “Okay. Call him.”

Microstory 1866: Garden Path

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

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

Microstory 1865: True Security

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This is the dumbest story from my life. Maybe that’s not the right word for it. Silly, I suppose. It’s certainly not the kind of thing a person should be thinking about as they’re on the brink of death. A normal person wouldn’t, anyway. I was known in my day as someone with an excellent memory. I didn’t have any supernatural ability, or even a diagnosable condition, like hyperthymesia or an eidetic memory, but I was good. In particular, I never forgot a name, and I never forgot a face. So it was a little jarring when a random woman came up to me in the bread aisle of the grocery store, acting like we were old pals. As she started talking, I was thinking that maybe she was mistaking me for someone else. I hear that sort of thing happens to other people. But while the things she was talking about didn’t make any sense, she used enough keywords for me to think that maybe we did know each other somehow, and I started questioning my confidence in my amazing mental faculties. Maybe I forgot people and things all the time, but they never came up again, so I never had the chance to even realize it. Perhaps this woman was tapping into a weakness that I was too blind to see I had at all. Was she a witch? A god? Was she still talking? I couldn’t understand most of what she was saying, her lips were moving so fast. She didn’t have an accent from my perspective, and she wasn’t mumbling, it was just too fast. I wished I had a little remote that would let me slow her down. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought I would probably just mute her, or turn her off. I didn’t need to talk to this person, except maybe I did, because she knew me, and I needed to know how! Yes, I had a cat when I was a child. No, his name wasn’t Mittens, it was Buttons. My first car? I made one up, because I don’t drive.

I keep trying to listen to her, but then I really did get bored of the “conversation” and wished that I could simply walk away. If I were anywhere else, I might have been able to, but I had this cart full of food. She would probably follow me, and skip the milk this week just so she wouldn’t have to end our little one-sided chat. Of course, I could have left my cart, and proceeded right to the exit, but that would have looked so weird, and again, what if she really did know me, and she tracked me down, and tried to spark a friendship? What was that about my mother’s maiden name? I still couldn’t—oh my God, she’s a scam artist. This woman was trying to get my bank information to steal my identity. Keep in mind that this was in the early days of the internet, so people were still mining for information in the real world. It was still bizarre. Joke’s on her, because of my great memory, all of my security answers were fake. I don’t find it any more difficult to recall a food that isn’t my favorite than one that is. It’s tomatoes, by the way, but I told her pizza, because that’s a normal answer. Then I just keep leading her on with her stupid little questions. I met my spouse in a city I had never been too, and also, I’m not married. The name of my first celebrity crush is an actor that I hate. My astrological sign? Really? I’ve never even seen that question before, and I would never use it, because it’s too easy to find out. I don’t even bother lying to her about that one. She went through so many questions, finding clever ways to sprinkle them in, I was almost impressed. Once she was satisfied, she claimed she had to get going, and we parted ways. It wasn’t until I tried to pay that I discovered my wallet missing. I realized that she wasn’t only probing for security answers. She was also distracting me from a pickpocket.

Microstory 1841: Prank Wars

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I was one of the first people to sign up for a certain video sharing website. At that point, most people were just watching, but I was a content creator. I built my name as a prankster before anybody really knew what the industry would grow into. Of course, secret camera television shows predated my debut, but none of them generated the kind of hits I would end up having. People could watch them over and over again, and they did, because they were hilarious. When copycats started trying to recreate the magic, people would ask me whether that bothered me, and I would tell them honestly that absolutely not! That’s the whole point of the internet, that there’s room for everyone! Yes, they were competition, but you have to understand that, back then, nobody was making money off of the site. Even once they started splitting ad sales with us, it wasn’t much, and it was impossible to tell who was taking your audience. No, I had no problem with my rivals, but trouble came for me anyway. A few years after the beginning, one of those regular old TV shows premiered. They would lure victims to highly controlled environments under false pretenses, let them think something great was going to happen, and then pull the rug out from under them. One time, that was literal. They convinced someone they were going to get a free very expensive rug, coupled with a very expensive remodel of their home, and then actually pulled on the rug they were standing on. It was disgusting. My pranks were never like that. They weren’t mean-spirited. My guests were never victims, and they always walked away with a smile. I hated this show on principle, and I acknowledged as much in a non-prank video on my channel. This caught their attention, and my life was never the same after what they did to me.

I was an awkward kid. Pranks were a way for me to come out of my shell, and express myself. Which was great, but it didn’t really help my real life. Perhaps if I were making them today, it would be different, but again, nascent industry. When a girl started talking to me at a party, I couldn’t believe it, but I wanted to, so I went along with it. She seemed very interested in who I was, and what I did, which was unusual, because for as many fans as I had, girls didn’t care much for it. They didn’t know how light-hearted and fun they were. They always figured I did the same twisted things the TV show did. She said she knew the owner of this house, and invited me to a sort of secret room in a finished attic. I had never done anything with a girl before, so I was nervous, but I didn’t want to waste an opportunity. You can see where this is going. We didn’t get very far before the host of that show ran upstairs, and started laughing at me. He was so ecstatic that I fell for it. How pathetic, how embarrassing. The party wasn’t even real. This whole thing was set up for me, and I could hear them all laughing downstairs. I blew up. I grabbed one of the cameras, and struggled with it for a second, telling the operator that I could either drop it to the floor, and break it, or I could drop both him and the camera. I smashed it, and punched the walls. A security guy tried to tase me, but he missed, so I punched him in the face. I don’t remember what I said, but threats were made, and while I don’t think anyone there took them seriously, the network’s lawyers sure did, because they sounded like money to them. The site banned me for life; my career was ruined, robbing me of the revenue that others now see. Bitter, I decided to finally make good on one of my threats today, but I wish I knew before that the host owns a gun.

Microstory 1825: Experience

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I’ve never told anybody this, but I’m about to leave this earthly plane, so I guess I’ll finally get it off my chest. I was abducted by aliens. At least that’s what I’ve always assumed they were. They didn’t exactly tell me where they were from. They didn’t look human, and they spoke to each other in a language that I didn’t recognize as being from Earth. Though, to be fair, since I’m not a language guy, it could be some dialect I’m not familiar with. And maybe they were mutants. Or maybe they were humans, and I just couldn’t see them well amidst all the drugs they had me on, and the poor lighting. So here’s how it began. I was sitting in my living room, watching something mindless and stupid on the television, when a bright light came in through the windows. At first, I thought it was just headlights, but then I saw that the lights were surrounding me. I started getting really nervous. My neighbor told me the government tracks your internet usage, but I didn’t understand. Computers were still so new back then in the 90s, I didn’t know what I was doing. Did I say something treasonous? Did I accidentally admit to committing a crime? The lights died down, and I thought I was safe, but then I blinked, and I was on my back in a strange room. Mysterious figures were hovering over me, speaking that language I was telling you about. When they noticed I was awake, though, they switched to Russian so I could understand them. They told me to relax, and that they weren’t going to hurt me. I don’t know if that was a lie, because they did draw some blood, and it didn’t feel very good. They didn’t probe me, though, if that’s what you’re thinking. They just left the room, and I never saw them again. I couldn’t be sure how long I was in there, but they continued to subject me to tests. Flashing lights, loud music, soft music, the sounds of people shooting at each other. Best I could tell, it was a psychological experiment to see how I reacted to these things. I think I passed.

I went to sleep in my little alien cell one night—though it may not have been nighttime, since there weren’t any windows, and I think I was in space—and when I woke up, I was back on the couch. The television was playing white noise, and it was a week later. My boss fired me for never showing up, even claiming that he broke into my house to see if something was wrong with me. I can’t say for certain that I was abducted by aliens, but something had to have happened. I lost time, and people lost time with me. It’s hard to ignore that evidence. I chose not to tell anyone about this. I apologized to my boss, and though he still couldn’t give me my job back, he promised not to do anything to risk my chances of getting another. I was back to being employed within the month, and fortunately, nothing like this ever happened to me again. What would have been the point of me making such wild accusations when I didn’t have any proof? Yeah, I wasn’t at home at the moment that my old boss tried to find me, but perhaps I was just at the store. I could have been lying about the whole thing, and no one could have backed up my story. So I just stayed quiet, and stayed the course. I kept my head down at work, and didn’t try to figure out the truth. Like I said, they never came for me again, and I haven’t suffered any inexplicable health complications since. To be sure, I’m not dying as a healthy and lively young man, but my eating and drinking habits suggest that this was inevitable regardless. I’m only telling my story now because it’s where my mind has gone in these final moments. It’s the only interesting thing that I ever experienced.

Microstory 1751: Spirit of the Lynx

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When I was a boy, I had no identity. All of my classmates had some kind of online persona, which represented who they were, and what they enjoyed. Their usernames reflected these attributes, be it a love for football, or all things Star Wars. I didn’t care about anything in particular, or have any special way of setting myself apart from others. I suppose that’s what it really comes down to, that I was not special. Ya know, I liked watching the news, and not because I wanted to become a reporter when I was older, but I’ve always been more interested in the goingson of real life than fiction, or other forms of entertainment. But NewsBoy1994 seemed like a dumb and boring name that I didn’t want to use. One day, I was flipping through my favorite news and documentary channels, hoping to learn something new, when I came across a nature show about the lynx, and it gave me an idea. Maybe I am a lynx. And not because of the animal’s particular behavior, or the way that they look. Maybe it’s just arbitrary. I could call it my spirit animal, and claim to others that I just really like lynxes. I felt like a fraud, but no one else appeared to have any problem with it. He likes lynxes. Whatever, doesn’t matter to me. I didn’t get ridiculed or questioned, and everything went well. Over time, these creative online identities faded away. Social media allowed you to connect directly to your friends and contacts, but also just say things for the world to absorb at will. Real life has become trendy. People can read your posts if they want to, and on their own time. Many are using real identities now, because for most, it’s the closest we’ll get to fame, and we don’t want to hide ourselves under a layer of anonymity. Our friends can’t find us if they don’t know enough about us. Even then, is PermaLynx94 the guy you’re looking for, or some random stranger who also happens to like lynxes?

I shed my lynx identity, and moved on with my life. It was a lot easier for me than for others, I imagine. Some still probably weren’t too butthurt about it, since they were no longer so obsessed with the pastimes of their youth, and were glad to grow up. I didn’t care at all, because I never really cared about lynxes. It’s probably better now that people have to look deeper than my name if they want to know who I am. I got into hiking, which is something I never thought I would do. I probably would have tried to figure out some kind of clever walking pun back in the day if I had realized who I was at a younger age. I still like the news, and don’t care for fiction. I don’t have a problem with it on principle, but I watch Star Wars, and just don’t feel a damn thing for those people. This week, I’m backpacking alone in the woods, in the freezing cold of Canada. This is where I find my zen, away from people, and all of their noises. Things are going fine until I slip on a wet rock, and over the edge of the cliff. I hang onto a root, just hoping it doesn’t give. The drop is bout about six meters down, so I’ll live, but I’ll break bones, and not be able to leave. I have to find a way to lift myself up. Now I wish I had once identified as PullupDude69. As I’m hanging there, mere moments from a slow death, a lynx trots up and stares down at me. We study each other’s eyes, and don’t move a muscle. Suddenly, I’m no longer on the brink, but in some kind of tranquil and balanced serenityscape. We watch each other for an eternity, and then my spirit animal graciously provides me with the strength I need to pull myself up, and survive.