The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 3, 2516

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Ramses leaned up against the building they were all sprawled out next to. He took insufficient, shallow breaths, trying to make them deeper, or at least complete one good inhalation so he could jumpstart his system. He occasionally did get some air to go all the way down to the bottom of his lungs, but it was never as helpful as he hoped. Finally, he yawned, which helped more.

“What’s the issue?” Mateo asked. He was choosing to try to recuperate while staying horizontal on the ground. “Why aren’t our healing nanites fixing our bodies?”

Ramses slurred his words. “Whatever they gave us, it was probably designed to target our substrate repair systems. It’s harder for the modern man to get intoxicated, which is fine, because people stopped doing recreational drugs anyway. They’re still around, though; in certain dark corners of the universe. The drugs people take now have had to be adapted to contend with our advanced bodies. The funny thing is, if someone from, say, the year 2025 were to try this drug, it probably wouldn’t even affect them. They’re too simple.”

Mateo was doing a lot of half-yawns, which were never satisfying, and his frustration with this was only growing. “Even when you’re drunk, you’re a genius. Quit soundin’ so smart.” He coughed.

“He’s right,” Garland said, turning himself over to the side so he could throw up and not choke on it. He wiped his lips with his sleeve. “That’s the solution, though.” He retched, and prepared to let go of more. “Purge it.”

“Yeah, clear the system. That makes sense.” Ramses reached his hands out, and apported his solid helmet into them from the pocket dimension that it was stored in. It was a backup in case the nanite helmet he usually formed wasn’t working, for whatever reason. “Okay.” Oh, big yawn. “Here’s what you’re gonna wanna do.” He turned the helmet over, and placed his lips near the back of it. “This is gonna make you throw up like Garlique did.” Ramses stopped talking for a moment, still staring into space blankly. “Did I start calling you Garlique?”

Garland got to his hands and knees so he could force more out of his stomach. “You sure did. Bleeaaargh! Gaaack!” He spit. “I don’t care for it.”

“It’s gonna make you throw up, Matic. Oh, I get it, it’s not just garlic. It’s like if I combined your two names. Anyway, medicine is gonna shoot out, and then what you’re gonna wanna do is turn away immediately, so you don’t vomit into the helmet itself, which is why the emetopuff is placed in the back, instead of the front. Watch me do it. Puff me, Thistle.” As he promised, a cloud of medicine darted out of the hidden cartridge, and into Ramses’ mouth. He dabbed away from his helmet, and vomited onto the ground, more productively than Garland with his piecemeal attempts.

Mateo did exactly as Ramses did, and immediately felt a lot better.

“Can I get a hit of that?” Garland requested.

Ramses tossed him his helmet. “Only one. It has two doses. It’s not exactly something the suit was designed to expect to need a whole lot of.”

“How do you know to purge?” Mateo questioned. “You said that you didn’t know the water was laced with the stuff.”

“That’s what I said, that’s what I meant,” Garland replied, holding the helmet, waiting for the opportunity to use it. “I never said I didn’t know what the drug was, though. It’s called Dare. Let me see if I remember...it stands for Debilitating Anti-Resistant Euphoriaceutical. I think it’s a backronym, though.”

Bronach had been surprisingly quiet this whole time, and they had kind of been ignoring him. Garland probably didn’t know who he was, but he was doing a good job of following their lead. Bronach now took something out of an ankle holster, and jammed it into his own neck. “Ahh,” he said with relief. He stood up, and started hopping around to get his muscles loosened up. “Cleaner, safer, more effective, and doesn’t taste so bad in my mouth.” He held it out towards Garland. “I have an extra dose too, just so you know all of your options.”

“It won’t do anything,” Ramses warned. “I’m pretty sure he was just drunk. Alcohol is nothing compared to what it sounds like we were slipped.” He apported two bottles into his hands. “Electrolytes.” He threw one of them over to Garland.

“I don’t know who he is anyway.” Garland took the puff, and purged.

Mateo apported his own drink, and started sipping on it. “Bro, are we in the Goldilocks Corridor?”

“You appeared to me through dark particles last year. You told me that you thought you could put me on your pattern as long as we timed it just right. Then you activated the particles again just as the clock struck midnight central. We ended up here, and I think it worked.”

“You agreed to be on our pattern?” Ramses asked.

“Of course not, but I was drunk, and I couldn’t fight back. What are those little creepy things?”

“Neu—”

“New reason to fear us,” Mateo interrupted. Boom, saved it. He didn’t need to know that they were neutrinos. For that matter, neither did Garland. “Never mind that, though. “Do you know what planet we’re on?”

Bronach looked around. “I don’t just by looking at the sky.”

“How do you expect to get off of it yourself?” Ramses asked him.

Bronach shrugged. “I have a tracking implant. They’ll come for me, and when they do, they’ll get you too. All I have to do is wait it out.”

“Not if I can help it. Come along now, boys.” Mateo stood and waved Ramses and Garland towards him. After they got close enough, he tried to release a swarm of dark particles from the dark dimension, but it didn’t work. He could feel the tiny windows opening up, and he could feel his power engaging, but it wasn’t enough. He was empty. It reminded him of turning the key on a car with a dead battery. Click, click, click, but no ignition.

“It’s okay,” Bronach began to joke. “It happens to a lot of guys your age.”

“I probably just need to recharge,” Mateo insisted. “We’re gonna go to the other side of the planet now, so...bye.”

“Wait, Mateo.”

“Don’t you worry, we haven’t forgotten about you. We’ll overthrow you in due time. Just not quite today.”

“No, I just wanted to say something.” He kicked at the dirt bashfully, like a little boy trying to ask the older girl if she wanted to see his rock collection in his treehouse. But then he suddenly shifted to a far more serious, and perhaps even sinister, expression. “I know you’re on Castlebourne. I’m gathering my forces now.”

Ramses suddenly blitzed Bronach, and spirited them away. Mateo tapped on his comms disc. “Ram. Ram! Are you there? Where did you take him? What are you doing?” No response. He tapped again. “As anyone else on this channel? Can anyone hear me? This is Mateo Matic. Calling anyone and everyone in the Goldilocks Corridor.”

Ramses reappeared, soaking wet.

“What did you do?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ramses answered gravely, sending shivers down Mateo’s spine. “He’ll be fine. Guy’s got nine-thousand lives. I’m more worried about us.”

Mateo didn’t approve of what Ramses likely just did, but he understood it. And he was right, they needed to get out of here. They couldn’t use their tandem slingdrives with only the two of them. They really should have brought a third member of their team. He just didn’t want to overwhelm Garland, and make him feel ganged up on. Why didn’t Boyd warn him that the dark particles didn’t always work, presumably if you use them too much? He played around with them a lot during the party; probably very wastefully.

They didn’t have to be stuck. They weren’t beyond saving, just a little lost at the moment. Their best hope would be if the Vellani Ambassador happened to show up, which it probably wouldn’t because there was no one else here. Maybe they were the exact reason why this little town looked abandoned. Team Kadiar came, and scooped up the whole population because they all wanted to escape the Exin Empire, and left. Or maybe this place just outlived its usefulness. There was no telling where the ship would be, and no way of getting there either way. It wasn’t like they were ever given a schedule of which world the VA would go to next. They weren’t even sure if the refugee program was still active. They did have friends here, though they didn’t know exactly where; just not in range of comms so far.

“Garland, only you can save us now.”

“How’s that?” he asked, genuinely confused.

“Your mother says that you have some means of blocking her from finding your location. You need to release that so our team can come get us.”

“I dunno, I never agreed to see her.”

“That’s not really the point anymore, is it?” Mateo posed.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Garland agreed, sighing. He shut his eyelids and centered himself. Nothing special happened to him. There was no change in the way he looked, nor any dramatic light effect. He just reopened his eyes and said, “it’s done.”

Right on cue, a blob of technicolors formed a few meters away. When the colorful light receded, their team was left standing there. Most of them looked calm as they spotted the guys, and opened their helmets. One of them started to stumble around, however, and grasp at her helmet. Marie was the closest, so she tapped on the side of Magnolia’s helmet, using the master code to unlock it for her.

“Oh,” Magnolia said with relief. “I felt like I couldn’t breathe.”

“You should be able to breathe better in it,” Leona informed her, “not worse.”

“Well...” Finally, Magnolia made eye contact with her son. “Garland.”

“Hey, mom.”

“I don’t have any expectations,” she claimed. “I just wanna talk.”

“I can do that. Maybe away from them, though?”

“Certainly,” Leona agreed. “Stay within view, though. This rock might be dangerous. We would never eavesdrop intentionally, but we do have superior hearing, so I recommend going about fifty meters. We’ll walk in the opposite direction a little.”

“Hey, thanks. All of you,” Magnolia said.

“No problem,” Mateo replied, despite the myriad of problems.

“Report,” Leona requested for their own team meeting.

“Do you know where Epsilon Eridani is?” Mateo asked her.

“Yeah.”

“That’s where we were, before,” Mateo began. “We must have left Darko there. At least, I hope we did. I don’t know where else he could be.”

“Well, now that we have somewhere to navigate to, we’ll be fine. But why didn’t you just go back with your dark particles?”

“It’s broken. I think I used it too much.”

“Yeah, that can happen,” Romana explained. “It’s kind of bass-ackwards. The more you use it, the faster your energy runs out, but also, the more used to storing it your body becomes, so ultimately, your reserves will grow, and you’ll last longer between recharging cycles.”

“Thanks. I’m glad he...told you so much about it,” Mateo lied.

“I used to metabolize dark particles too, remember?” Romana said.

“Oh yeah, you don’t seem to do that anymore. How did you stop?” Ramses asked, quite curious about it.

“Boyd absorbed them from me in the mirror reality, so I could be free.”

“Oh.”

They continued to catch each other up. The girls had their own celebrations without them, and while there weren’t any drugs involved, they were pretty eventful too. After Magnolia and Garland finished talking, over half of them departed. Leona, Ramses, Marie, and Olimpia used their tandem slingdrives to transport the outsiders back to Earth, with plans to rendezvous with their other half later. Mateo, Angela, and Romana would go straight back to Castlebourne to warn Hrockas of the impending invasion. They didn’t know when Bronach’s forces would arrive, but hopefully not for years. This was one reason why Leona discouraged Hrockas from figuring out how to install a Nexus on his planet. It opened them up to too many security vulnerabilities, and it wasn’t necessary with the quantum casting and reframe engines. As long as they maintained the encryption of The Terminal, and reinforced their orbital defense systems, there should be nothing they couldn’t take on.

Before the three of them finished investigating the nearby buildings in case there was anything useful to find out, a ship descended from the heavens. A ramp opened in the front. A contingency of soldiers filed out, just as they were wont to do in the Exin Empire. A masked menace slowly walked down the ramp between their goons, and stood before the three members of Team Matic who were still here. They reached up and removed the mask. It was Korali. She was smirking. “Mateo, Mateo, Mateo. I should have known you would be involved with the abduction. Tell me. Where’s his body?”

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Microstory 2467: Tagdome

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This is a funny one. It’s several giant games of tag, each one made up of a lot of other subdivisions of tag. You can come in here with just about any substrate you want, but you’ll be grouped according to strength and speed. We can’t have superstrong mechs barreling through normal organics, now can we? There aren’t too many of what they generally call weight classes, but you stay in your respective sectors, and don’t interact with the others. But you do interact with everyone else in your sector. That sector is further divided into regions, zones, districts, territories, and neighborhoods. I honestly couldn’t tell you how they decide where you’re assigned beyond the weight class for fairness. But whatever it is, the divisions are based upon the modern standardized Dunbar grouping system. Your neighborhood will have 21 people total, which is a fairly normal and manageable number of contestants to contend with. You will ultimately compete with other neighborhoods. Seven neighborhoods makes a territory of 147 people. There are three territories in a district of 441 people, then four districts in each zone of 1,764, and four zones in each region of 7,056 players. Finally, there are seven regions in the whole sector. Sorry if that was confusing, but this game is confusing, by its nature. The best players are the ones who can figure it out. How about gameplay? You play a simple game of tag in your neighborhood for some period of time, based on your sector’s weight class. Higher classes theoretically have more stamina, and can go for longer. Don’t worry about those. Only consider your own. We’ll use the example of a normal organic human sector, which is only expected to play for half an hour. As you play against each other, your points start racking up. The longer you avoid becoming a Pursuer, the more points you end up with, and the longer you are the Pursuer, the more points you lose. At the end of your neighborhood’s allotted time, your points will be tallied up. It’s entirely possible that the entire game only ever had one Pursuer who never managed to catch anybody. That’s okay. They’re always watching you. Some people got closer to being caught than others. There will be leaders on the leaderboard, who will move on to compete at the territory level. The top seven will represent their neighborhood in a game of 49 players and begin to run as a team. Things start getting more complicated here as you can work together to build enough points to open gates to other territories. If you invade them, you can get in on their game as an opposing force, and start taking away their points while making some more of your own. The games get progressively more complicated, with more intricate environments, obstacles, and even vehicles like bikes and cars. Everyone wears special clothing, which color-coordinates the teams and alliances in realtime, but it’s not uncommon to get lost and confused. That’s part of the game, and your intelligence is factored into those weight classes I was telling you about. I know this was less of a review, and more of an overview, but I don’t really want to give you my opinion. I want you to see it for yourself. If you’re not much of a runner, or you don’t feel ready for the competition, there is a spectator component, so you can just check it out to get a better sense of what I’ve been talking about.

Microstory 1985: New Direction

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Henley: O.

Ophelia: Yeah, is everything okay?

Henley: No, the others are getting antsy.

Ophelia: All we can do is wait. No one knows we’re here. I mean, of course the others do, but no one we need to be worried about.

Henley: They’re not worried about being discovered. But we all know that we can’t stay here forever. You have a family to get back to, don’t you?

Ophelia: Yes. And the only way I can keep them safe right now is to stay away from them. I hope you’re not thinking of contacting your family.

Henley: Of course not, but what’s going to happen afterwards? Parsons and the others are trying to fix this, but what if it can’t be fixed?

Ophelia: I don’t know. No one knows. That’s how life works.

Henley: Can you talk to them?

Ophelia: Are they all in that big room we’ve been eating out of?

Henley: Yeah, I think they’re expecting you.

Ophelia: Very well. *walks down to the room* Hello, everyone.

*they start to inundate her with questions and complaints*

Henley: All right, settle down. You can’t talk all at once.

Ophelia: Thank you. I have something to say. I know that we’re all sort of freaking out right now, but that’s not going to help. We have each been through worse. That’s how we ended up here. We’re doing something that has never been done before. We’re preparing for an alien invasion, and no matter what happens after the dust settles, that will always be true. When these damn locusts show up en masse, the world will see what we’ve seen, and they will know that you saw them first. They will learn how you fought against them, despite having no legal or moral obligation to. You could have gone home, and hidden in your bathtubs. You could have just completely ignored the risk. But you stood at the frontlines, and I commend you for that. One day, the history books will too. Now, by raising your hands, does anyone have any specific questions about what we should do, or what we can do about our situation? Yes, Yanna.

Yanna: When will we receive any news? Have you planned a call with Agent Parsons, or something? I think what’s causing the anxiety is not having any sort of timetable.

Ophelia: We have each other’s burner phone numbers. He’ll contact us when there’s an update worthy of our attention. It will come soon. We came up with a few code words in case he finds himself in mixed company. It’s best if you don’t know any more than that.

Reese: *steps in from the hallway* None of that will be necessary anyway.

Henley: Agent Parsons. Or should I call you Subdirector Parsons?

Reese: Neither. *pauses for dramatic effect* I’ve just been in meeting after meeting after meeting. It was all very boring, but your jobs are waiting for you when you’re ready to come back. I’m not the subdirector, but a full director. The Department of Exogenic Affairs is being spun out into its own full department. We’re no longer working under Special Investigations, but the executive branch of government. I answer directly to the National Commander. You can all relax. Everything’s gonna be okay.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 14, 2399

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It was clear to Leona that Connell was never in the military, nor law enforcement. He was a wretched shot. He was just holding up his gun, and waving it around aimlessly, hoping to eventually hit something. She took it from him, and shot all of the henchmen in the legs. “I’m letting you live,” she announces, “not so you can come after me later, but so you can lick your wounds, and move on with your lives. Your boss is dead. He betrayed me, and karma paid him for it. Leave me alone, or the next time I’m holding a gun, I’ll aim higher. If I later decide that Labhrás is entitled to vengeance, I’ll take care of it myself, and send you the bill.” Satisfied that the firefight was over, Leona went with Connell to Dublin Airport. So they were in Ireland, or at least what’s left of it since most of the North Atlantic Isles were transported to the Fourth Quadrant.

The flight was the longest she’s ever experienced. After a long layover who knows where, it’s turned out that they’ve flown all the way down to Antarctica. Specifically, they’re landing at the Mozambican Naval Fleet Base. This still doesn’t explain who this Connell is, or who his boss might be, but it’s a lead. Technically, it’s not impossible that Coronel Zacarias is the one who is responsible for the bounty, but it’s pretty far-fetched. They left on great terms, and she gave him her contact info, so he would not have needed to set up this crazy elaborate plan to get someone else to kill her. Her guess is that she was right when she thought it was possible that someone had invaded and taken over the Nexus research facility. She’s proven right when they walk inside, and see the people milling about. These are definitely not Mozambican sailors. They’re dressed funny, but not unfamiliarly. She’s seen this kind of clothing before. Where was it?

“Oh, Christ, you’re from the Fifth Division.”

“Precisely, my dear!”

“How the hell did you get here?”

“That is not my right to tell,” Connell replies. “The boss will want to speak with you. It could be today, it could be tomorrow. It could be years from now. You’ll just have to hang out in hock and wait until he’s good and goddamn ready.”

They’ve just entered the hock section when a man jogs up. “Sir. It’s for you?” He hands Connell a comms device.

“Yes?” he asks the person on the other end. “I understand. No, right away, sir.” He hands the device back, and tries to say something to Leona, but she’s distracted.

“I’m okay,” Coronel Zacarias tells her from his cell. “I’m gonna need you to put on a brave face for me, okay?”

“Why didn’t you call?” Leona asks him.

“We’re leaving,” Connell insists, trying to pull her away.

“Get your hands off me,” Leona demands. “I won’t ask a second time.”

“I’m taking you to the boss.”

Leona twists his arm, and flips him onto his back. She steals his gun, and shoots the nearest other Fifth Divisioners. She hits him in the legs again, but she’s prepared to aim higher, like she promised the Irish gangsters.

“Stop!” Connell orders his men before they get the chance to shoot her back. “Stop! She must live!”

Leona lowers the gun to train it on Connell’s forehead. “I left you my number.”

“There was nothing that you could do,” Coronel Zacarias explains. “You would not have been able to come in time.”

“I could teleport.”’

“You can?”

“Well...not anymore, but when this happened, it’s possible. You should have reached out,” Leona reasons.

Zacarias shakes his head. “It would have only placed you in danger along with us. They didn’t know we knew each other. I never told them. They only know now because we’re talking.”

“I’m here now. I’ll get you out.”

“Don’t worry about us.”

She is worried about him. She feels like this is her fault, and it probably is. It usually is. Can she break him out? She could take out all these guys like John Wick before even one of them gets a shot off. The Crucia Heavy doesn’t like firearms, and taught her and Ellie to dislike them too, but she trained them on targeting anyway. It doesn’t matter how good of a fighter you are, you’re not faster than a bullet, and sometimes the only way to stop them from flying towards you is to send your own. Still, even if she got these people out of the cells, what would they do then? Would they escape? That would be a tall order. She has no way off the continent. She doesn’t have any control over the base’s systems, and Zacarias almost certainly doesn’t either. It is as they say, the only way out is through. She’s going to have to be diplomatic. Ugh. She’s no good at that anymore, especially not since her training on Flindekeldan. She carelessly drops the gun on Connell’s chest. “No! Touching!”

Connell is winded. “Yeah. Never again.” He struggles to get himself back to his feet, but slaps the guy who tries to help him away. “Never again,” he repeats. He brushes the dust off his pants, and takes a deep transitional breath. “Now, if you’ll follow me...” He holds his arms out to indicate the direction they’ll be going.

She lunges towards him by only a few centimeters to test his reaction. He flinches, so that’s good to know.

Connell leads her down the corridors, and up the elevator to the top level. It’s above ground and on the far end, allowing them to see the cliff and sea before them on one side, and the snow covered land on the other. “This is as far as I go.”

Leona looks at the ominous door. “Sleep with one eye open,” she warns.

He’s unable to hide a shiver. He starts to walk back the way they came.

Leona readies herself, then opens the door without knocking. Time freezes in her head as she considers who may be on the other side of it. If she didn’t know that this had something to do with her time in the Fifth Division, she may have guessed past and future greatest hits, like Erlendr or Zeferino Preston. Or maybe it’s someone who was actually a friend before, like Serkan Demir or Pribadium Delgado. Those being so random, and having nothing to do with any of these other people here, she dismisses them. She has narrowed it down to Mithridates Preston, Xerian Oyana, or that security guard that they left at the entrance to the time machine that ultimately led them here. They all have beef with Team Matic, or could have conceivably developed one in the meantime. They parted on all right terms, but who knows what has happened since then? The suspect is standing behind a desk, his back to her. She approaches him as he turns around to face her. She winces when she sees his face. “Who the hell are you?”

Microstory 1837: Foreign Fighter

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In 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics broke apart into fifteen distinct nations, which thrived independently of each other to varying degrees of success for three decades. Russia was the largest of these by far, and maintained strong political power over the rest of the world. The rest developed their own governmental bodies, and systems of law. In 1994, inspired by these developments, a district of Russia called Sakhaido declared its own independence. Sitting about 400 kilometers from the island of Sakhalin, as a sort of second peninsula branching from the Kamchatka Peninsula, Sakhaido always needed to maintain some level of autonomy in order to function. It once belonged to the Empire of Japan, and still consists of a significant population of Japanese people. The Japanese language is spoken by 24% of the population. Much of the leadership of Russia at the time did not want to let Sakhaido go, since they felt it shouldn’t be necessary, but the president himself did not want to cause any civil unrest, and had to admit that it wasn’t worth using up resources, and damaging their reputation. Sakhaido prospered after that, forming its own democracy, and becoming a hub of international trade amongst the other nations in and around the region. In 2016, a new president of Russia took office, having built his political platform upon strength against both enemies and allies. Russia was meant to be the dominant force in Europe, and he wasn’t happy with the direction his neighbors were going. A few months ago, he decided to attack Sakhaido, but had no intention of stopping there. The rest of the world was going to learn who called the shots, whether he was their official leader, or not. He didn’t need to take Sakhaido over, or any other country. He just needed to make sure that someone was in charge who would do what he wanted. The invasion began.

Nations of the free world condemned the Russian president for his cruel and unwarranted attack on Sakhaido. They made political and economical maneuvers against him, thinking that he would back down when it started causing his people harm. But he didn’t care about his people. They had suffered so much up until now, and they could continue to suffer, as long as he got what he wanted, which was pretty much everything under the sun. The Sakhaidoans held their ground, maintaining a nigh unassailable border between them and the Kamchatka Peninsula, but they could only do so much. They were not prepared for war, they did not have the resources, and they did not have the help. Refugees fled to other countries, nearly all welcomed by Japan, Alaska, and even Usonia, but that didn’t solve the problem of how to save their homeland. Their military force was only so great. They needed additional support. They needed—I believed—people like me. According to my country’s laws, it was not illegal for me to temporarily join the army of another country, as long as the actions I took there weren’t treasonous, and I wasn’t planning on defecting. So that’s what I did. I went across the sea, accepted the gun they put in my hands, and fought for a bunch of innocent people who had never done anything for me. Because I wasn’t just fighting for them. I was fighting for democracy all over the globe, and for justice as a whole. I was fighting for peace. Not everyone was happy with my choice, and I returned home to find no parade, no thanks, no welcome mat. But that was okay, because I know I did the right thing, and this assassin they sent to kill me knows it too, whether he can admit it or not.

Microstory 1815: No Contact

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My people have always been aware that the world is larger than just our one little island. We even have a history of trading with some of our neighbors. Many generations ago, however, we decided that we didn’t need anything from anyone else anymore. Our former trade partners accepted this, and moved on, but then my ancestors discovered that there were others who were less used to being told no. As our oral history tells it, one of the first major interactions we had was with an army of men who wanted to take everything that we had. They wore clothing made of rocks, and threw fire at my ancestors. They must have assumed that they were superior warriors. But this is our home; we will always defend it, and we will always be better. The survivors attempted to retreat, but my ancestors only let one of them go so he could warn all others to stay away. Apparently, some people did not get the message, so a few more attempts were made to conquer us. We lost a lot of lives to the wars, but we won every time. After that, a small group of men and women, who appeared to be a family, showed up on our shores. They had books in their hands, and they drew in the sand, and they pointed to the sky. We speak our own special language, so communication would have been rather difficult for them. After much time, the ancestors realized that these strangers were trying to convey the meaning of God. They showed images, and used other symbology, which my people did not recognize, so I believe that they had a very different idea of who God actually was, and what she could do for the world. They too left the island, but much more peaceably, for we are a reasonable people, and we recognize surrender.

The first interaction I remember was when I was only a small boy. I remember them being less hostile than the fighters, but less peaceful than the storytellers. They were trying to take something from us too, but they obviously preferred us to give it to them without bloodshed. I was very young, I don’t know exactly what the white men wanted. They seemed to think that there was something special about our land. We always considered it sacred, but that was no business of theirs. I think they eventually got the message...somehow. My mother led the battle that fought them off. There was less death than in past conquests. No one died on our side, and it was clear that some of the invaders didn’t want to fight at all. They actively tried to pull the more aggressive of their group away, and we let them. We are less violent than we once were. A few suns later, a single woman arrived on the shore. I remember thinking she was pretty, but we still couldn’t tell what she was saying. By her hand gestures, my father believes that she was attempting to apologize for the recent invasion. We let her go, hoping that she understood that it could not happen again, or we would kill without question. One morning many seasons later, after a storm, a girl I hoped to one day marry shouted from the shore. We ran down to find her hovering over a white man who was lying on his back. My mother tried to spear him, but my friend and I stopped her. This man was cold and blue. Pieces of wood and other things had washed up alongside him. It was evident that he did not come on purpose. We begged them not to kill him, and they eventually agreed. We were lucky. A few months later—after the man had given up hope on rescue—my wife-to-be fell into a deadly fever. He gave her some of his medicine, which he did not seem to think was a big deal. Today I’ve learned that she will outlive me.

Microstory 1661: Leader of the Psychic Army

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Even in universes where they did not have human confederates to deploy as the infiltration force, the Ochivari were surprisingly good at keeping covert. They wore hoods, and stayed in the shadows, and kept their distance. This tactic did not work very well in Psychoverse. There were different classes of psychics on this version of Earth, and varying levels within the classes. One class in particular was simply good at detecting people around them, and maybe a little bit of information about them. They couldn’t feel emotions, or read minds, but could sense a few key characteristics about others, such as age, general health condition, and basic mood. They could tell when someone was happy, angry, or sad, and that was pretty much it. This was enough when it came to the Ochivari, though. They exuded strange readings, which alerted one individual that there was something strange going on in her town. Rattlesnake, Kansas was an interesting place to live. The population was low enough to be considered a small town, but the residents acted like a large city. They were anonymous with each other, choosing only to associate with those in their friend group, and ignoring the rest. This was how people liked it here, as it was low pressure, and high privacy. Psychics weren’t outlawed, but they were strongly discouraged, because they, of course, invaded this privacy. Psychics didn’t bother fighting against this, because they didn’t really care. There were better places to live anyway. The presence detector was allowed to live there without any grief, though, since it was her hometown, and she didn’t disturb anyone. It was a good thing they did, because the small town anonymity vibe was exactly why the Ochivari figured it would be a good idea to spy on the native population from right there in Rattlesnake. This psychic’s ability was nonnegotiable, meaning that it wasn’t something she could use at will, and not use when she didn’t want to. It was always on, so when strange figures in robes started walking around at night, most didn’t pay them any mind, because it wasn’t their business, but she knew there was something off about them. She decided to investigate on her own, even though she made a promise that she would kind of just leave others alone. When she learned the truth, she knew that she couldn’t just let this go, so she contacted a psychic associate of hers who could read minds. He came to Rattlesnake, and helped figure out these aliens’ intentions. Once they confirmed that the Ochivari had sinister plans for the world, the two of them formed a resistance army of other psychics. They defeated the infiltrators rather quickly, and then transformed the town into the capital of the defensive force. More psychics came, some with strong offensive abilities, and the original psychic whistleblower suddenly found herself at the head of one of the most powerful armies in the world.

Microstory 1626: Sterile Conditions

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Perhaps I should have brought this up earlier, but when an Ochivari invasion force arrives in a new universe, they don’t just fire up their weapons, and start killing people. First of all, that would be counterproductive to their goals. They believe that they’re saving the planet, and its innocent animal and plant life, from the evolved species who are doing damage to it. They believe they’re ultimately preserving life, and ridding the bulkverse of the harmful life. They see humans as much of a virus as humans see actual viruses. They do recognize our intelligence, and in fact, hold that against us. If we’re so smart, we should be able to figure out how to live in harmony with our ecosystem. Some planets do figure that out, in various ways, usually by a combination of asteroid mining, and space migration. If they do, and they do it quickly enough for their homeworld to recover, the Ochivari leave them alone. If they don’t—if they can’t break out of their own cycle of destruction—the Ochivari will step in, and take care of the problem. They’ll do this in one specific way, by delivering their own virus, which has been programmed to render every member of a given species sterile. It doesn’t kill them, or hurt them in any way, as long as it goes right. Like I’ve been saying, they are antinatalists, not efilists, and not murderers. An all out war would cause more harm to the planet they’re trying to rescue, and would unnecessarily drain them of resources. That’s not to say that violence never occurs. Sometimes, the world they attack is advanced enough to fight back, and the Ochivari have to do everything they can to pull the battles away from the new sanctuary, or the whole endeavor would be pointless. They could go back in time instead, and end it before that civilization can advance, but there’s always a crossroads, and it leads to a self-imposed rule of theirs. It’s a point of no return, that after passing it, that civilization can no longer undo or repair what they’ve done. Then—and only then—are the Ochivari allowed to intervene. If they were to go back and attack the humans at their most vulnerable, they would consider themselves to be hypocrites, and unworthy of the responsibility.

Lochanverse is so named because of its one survivor. Lochan Madigan found himself immune to the sterility virus when no one else was. What they didn’t know at the time was that he was the only known survivor in the entire bulkverse. His virility was unmatched by any other; off the charts, you could say. When they discovered him, scientists of that world were hopeful. Maybe there was a way out of this. By studying him, maybe they could figure out how to combat the virus. If that had been true, it would have changed everything. It would have helped a lot more people than they knew. Of course, they couldn’t figure it out. He wasn’t completely immune. It was more like the virus wasn’t strong enough to prevent him from potentially having children. Of course, this superpower was useless if he was the only one. Had they found a woman with her own resistance to the virus, they could have had children, and those children might have been the key to solving their problems, but that woman did not exist. I saw him in his universe, and could sense his loneliness. Other people were still around, as the species wasn’t going to die out for another several decades, but he was still unique, and from where he sat, not in a good way. People were envious of him, because even though he too would die one day, he was well-protected, and lived a life of luxury. As you can imagine, the whole world becoming sterile was not without its consequences. Society fell into chaos, and continued to cause harm to their planet. This is the folly of the Ochivari. No matter what they do, they’re killing life, and going against their own ideals. They believe they are doing the bulkverse a great service, but they’re really just making things worse. I rescued Lochan from this world, and took him to one that was pretty much off limits to the Ochivari, regardless of how they advanced. Here he began an immortal happy life, with his new family.

Microstory 1625: Fort Underhill

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I think it’s a pretty fitting time for me to discuss this next brane. As you’ve probably noticed, if a universe manages to distinguish itself from others enough to earn a name, it always ends in verse. Flipverse, Hypnopediaverse, and Salmonverse are good examples that I’ve already mentioned. Most of them form one word titles, but there are exceptions, like the Composite Universe, Universe Prime, and Area Doubleuniverse, which is quite obviously a pun. Still, they’re all verses. This one is the one exception to the rule. It’s an artificial brane, though its no less an independent brane than any other one. It’s twinned to Salmonverse, which protects it from external threats, and there’s only one entrance that I know of. The membrane surrounding it is 50,000 times thicker than most, done completely on purpose, which is why it’s impossible to cross into, except in the one special place. Its creator is a very powerful woman named Hogarth Pudeyonavic. She has her own story to tell, but it all came to a momentous transition when she discovered that she had a connection to the energy that pervades the bulkverse. No, I’m not talking about bulk energy, per se. This is more like the data delivery aspect of it; the waves that carry information in all directions. They call it the Aitchai, and Hogarth was chosen to wield it pretty much as she wished. It allows her to transmit matter from any location in the bulk, to anywhere else, at the subatomic level, if need be. She used this power to create mechacelestial objects, like the matrioshka body, and Big Papa, but once those were complete, she set her sights on something larger...more glorious. She wanted to build an entire universe, according to her specifications. These specifications are her creation’s proper physics, which refers to the physical laws specific to a given brane, as opposed to the ones that are true of all branes. What she didn’t have after completing her creation was a population. No one lived there, and if it remained as such, there would be no point to it. That is where another powerful woman named Ellie Underhill comes into the story. It was her own abilities that transferred tens of billions of people, allowing them to start new lives, and thrive in them. I’m afraid I can’t tell you much more about it than that. I witnessed its beginnings, but cannot see things that are happening inside the universe itself, because that’s the whole point. The thickness of the membrane doesn’t just keep invaders out physically, but also psychically, and spiritually. I can tell you that it works, and that it becomes a key sanctuary and strategic position in the Darning Wars.

Microstory 1622: Invasive Species

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I mentioned before how Efilverse was the second universe that the Ochivari went to when they discovered their ability to travel the bulkverse. I wouldn’t call it specifically intentional, but it was at least a deliberate experiment. Before this, it happened by accident. I don’t need to go into detail, but bulk travel is part of Ochivari physiology. It’s encoded in their DNA. But unlike their progenitor, they don’t open portals by punching invisible dimensional barriers. They do it by fighting against each other quite violently, and painfully, and it comes at a great cost. I don’t really know the ratio, but it’s something like, for three Ochivari to break the membrane, a fourth has to die. And for four to cross over, two have to die. Or something like that. I don’t think it goes up perfectly mathematically, and it has to do with total mass, and I believe some deaths are more powerful than others. Anyway, it’s not something that happens easily, which explains why they didn’t discover the phenomenon in ancient days. It just so happens that two Ochivari were fighting both against each other, and against two other Ochivari. I’m sure the squabble was stupid and petty, but this little fight had extreme consequences for the entire bulkverse. The first two decided to stand back to back, so they could face their mutual enemy head-on. They were angry, though, and anger is a powerful emotion. When an Ochivar is emotionally charged, little flaps will rise from their back. It’s an evolutionary response, designed to promote their own survival against a threat. Even though they kind of look like spearheads, these flaps are flaccid and harmless, which is why they don’t actually use them in battle. They’re not weapons; they’re only meant to be just for show, and everyone has always believed that. They had little reason to press their backs against each other for an extended period of time. It was really just happenstance that it occurred this day. While the two of them were locked in this position, a special fluid was secreted from under their stress flaps, and mixed with each other. This prompted a sort of trance-like state, where the two fighters became locked in a glandular battle with each other. They were unable to move, and they looked strange, which gave their enemies pause. Once it was over, one of the Ochivari essentially imploded, and tore a hole in the membrane of the universe, which sucked the other three in. This was the first time the Ochivari crossed over, and ended up in a random universe, populated by normal humans.

These humans were unremarkable until this moment. Their technology advanced at a reasonable pace, religion held them back a little, they didn’t have time travel. Everything, according to most metrics, was totally fine. The Ochivari survivors were horrified by what had happened to them. These humans were other, and they were dangerous. So they attacked. They wreaked havoc all over this world’s version of New York City, in the attempt to get back home, in anger at the humans, and still while trying to kill each other. People died in the onslaught, and so did one of the Ochivari. The humans were surprised, and not because they didn’t know aliens could possibly be a thing, but because their nature was not what they expected. They hadn’t come up with many invasion fiction stories. They weren’t naïve; just hopeful. They wanted to believe that aliens would come as visitors, rather than as hostile forces. The Ochivari’s arrival was the most demoralizing thing to happen to them. The two surviving Ochivari managed to get themselves away from the crowd long enough to try to recreate the circumstances that brought them there. Of course, one survived this next trip, while the other did not. While he returned to his world to spread his story, the humans kind of fell apart. This one incident changed their whole outlook on the universe. They became angry isolationists, bent on killing anything that came their way from outside. They assumed the aliens would be back for a full-scale invasion. It never happened. The Ochivari never came through, and this version of Earth wasn’t situated in a galaxy of resident aliens. They were all alone. Not knowing this, they became more and more militaristic, but since there weren’t any more aliens, they decided to start warring amongst themselves...and it destroyed them. It was probably why the Ochivari felt like they never needed to go back.

Microstory 1613: Prime Mover

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Like me, The Superintendent is a spirit, and also like me, he can witness events in other universes, and he can see more detail. But it’s more than that. He’s also creating these branes, and controlling certain aspects of them. Free will is still a thing, but the people’s actions always follow his logic, and going against his explicit wishes is only possible once you’re made aware that he exists. I mean, I’m the one telling you this story right now, but I’m doing it through the Superintendent, and it’s being published in his world. It’s called Universe Prime, and no matter what he tells you, it’s because that’s what he decided to call it. It’s not the most important brane in the bulk, but it’s the most important to him, so he got to name it. He chooses the names for each of his universes, if he chooses to name it at all. He is not a more powerful storyteller, or dreamer. Anyone can conjure a new universe into being with nothing more than their thoughts. The difference is that he understands that he’s doing this, and uses it to his advantage deliberately. Every world I discuss throughout this series belongs to him, except for this one today. Universe Prime is where he lives, and he has no control over the outcome of events. But that doesn’t mean he exerts no influence at all. Most of what happens in Prime is a result of interference from a different universe, and if he really wants to, he can make or break such occurrences. For his version of Earth, there is a quite literal universal rule that it is to remain pristine and untouched. It’s written into Martian Law, and honored by the Fosteans. It’s recognized by the residents of Dextoculo, and frightens travelers from beyond the membrane. No one messes with the Superintendent’s Earth, and that is in no small part, thanks to the Superintendent himself.

He’s telling a story...a huge story. It’s so big that it’ll take decades just to get everything out. He’s in control of it, even if there is a high level of free will when it comes to individual choices. Everyone is so afraid of going against him that they follow his rules with little question. They know if they do something he doesn’t like, he’ll just wipe their story away. The Ochivari would never dream of invading, even though it’s a logical target. They’re struggling terribly with climate breakdown, and the future looks pretty grim. My voldisil ability operates according to his timeline, so I can’t see into its future from his perspective, but things are not going well. If any planet deserves the wrath of a race of antinatalistic mass murders, it’s his own. He won’t let it happen, though, for obvious reasons. If the Ochivari attacked, he would just write a story where The Allies of the Darning Wars all came together, and defeated them once and for all. They don’t want that, so they stay away from Prime, and tread lightly in the Composite Universe, and just leave it at that. Prime has plenty of problems of their own. The Fosteans generally respect the rule about Earth, but its leaders are not good people, and they are not peaceful. It and the Composite are twins, and together, they form the Biverse, so they are permanently linked, and dependent on each other. The Superintendent tells their stories, but does not do much to make himself a part of it. They’re strong-willed, resilient, and other than Composite, they probably contribute the highest number of notable individual members of the Transit Army. I don’t know how it ends, if it ever does, but I’ll be keeping a close eye on it.

Microstory 1611: The Psychics

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Every human is born with telepathic potential. The ability to communicate with others using psychic signals is built into our species, and that is not something that can be removed from someone without killing them. It’s just part of who we are. You might be wondering how this is possible. You personally may have never experienced anything resembling telepathy in your life, and you’ve never heard of other people doing it either. How could it be true? Well, there are a number of factors that are operating against you, if you are such one of these people. Some universes are more hospitable to these psychic signals than others. They facilitate the transmission of them easily, whereas some just straight up block it. In other worlds, the signals transmit just fine, but there’s some sort of suppressant in the residents’ biology, neurology, or genetic makeup. There’s also a psychological factor. You have to know that you’re capable of it, and truly believe in yourself, and the people around you have to believe. They have to believe in you, and in themselves, and convincing a significant enough population that it’s all real is a real challenge. Because it has to start somewhere, and there’s no decent way to prove it to them unless they’re inclined to trust in it in the first place. These restrictions can be limited to whole planets, or even regions, and many places never get over them. Earth Prime, for instance, has little problem with psychic signal transference, though it’s certainly not the smoothest. The real issue is that these humans, in particular, don’t generally believe in any of these things. Even those who do only do so out of hope, but you have to have some understanding of the true mechanics, rather than simply relying on your intuitions, and exposure to fictional representations of such phenomena.

Like I said, some universes are better with this than others, and this is no truer than it is for a little place that I like to call Psychoverse. It’s a bit of an offensive term, yes, and I would never say it in front of someone who is from there, but it’s not entirely untrue either. This Earth has a major problem with what essentially boils down to racism. Some people are psychic, and some people aren’t, and those who are enjoy an unreasonable and unfair advantage over the lower class normal people. Attempts at regulation have always been met with heavy resistance, and often end in bloodshed. The psychics consider themselves to be superior to all others, and eventually decide to start referring to their supposed inferiors as The Braindead. Now that really is an offensive term, on multiple levels, and of course, it’s also completely untrue. Psychics aren’t smarter, or better. In fact, they lack a lot of very normal human skills, like independence, critical thinking, and true leadership. The Ochivari are antinatalists, but they only go after populations that are destined to destroy their own planet. The Psychoverse residents were bound to die out, which would have allowed their Earth to thrive, so I’m not sure why the Ochivari invaded. It’s, I guess, a good thing that they did, because the humans adapted quickly, and completely transformed their way of thinking, in order to combat this external threat. They shed their bigotry and injustices, and rose up against their attackers. Luckily, the Ochivari are not immune to psychic attacks, and this is a case of one of the few times when a planet managed to push back the invasion without the help of any of the teams dedicated to winning the Darning Wars across the bulkverse.

Microstory 1124: Relehirkojun Rokoglubederi

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When interstellar ship, The Elizabeth Warren left Durus, it brought with it dozens of passengers. The vessel itself was far too small for this many people, though, so they lived in extra pocket dimensions that a paramount named Annora Ubiña created. This was an eclectic bunch, and the only thing they all had in common was that they wanted to leave their rogue planet, and find a home on Earth. Some once lived there, and had been taken to Durus against their will, while others had lived there for their whole lives. Though there was an attempt to build balance within each pocket’s population, based on histories and personalities, Pocket Four was known from the beginning to be the most volatile. Two completely unpredictable variables were children who were yet to be born. One would have the ability to expand the pocket infinitely, while the other could create life with every breath. Once the second developed his time power fully, he used his imagination, not to create humans, but a corruption of human, which eventually came to be called Maramon. They worshiped the humans as gods, though their definition of worship was a lot different that ours. As for the pocket, it had to be severed from its link to the ship, or it could disrupt the delicate order of the universe. It became its own universe, but not before the girl who could make it larger was pulled out of it. So the size remained limited, yet the population continued to increase. This caused a number of political and social issues, the likes of which no being from an infinite universe could possibly hope to understand. It was through all this strife, and hardline religious convictions, that the white monsters regressed to a violent and incursive nature. They were inclined to war and conquest, and no universe was safe from their drive to expand.

One early Maramon was named Relehirkojun ‘Relehir’ Rokoglubederi. He lived in the pocket before it was separated, and managed to slip out at the very last second, in pursuit of those that would take one of their creator gods. At the time, there seemed to be no way for him to return, so he used his talent as a scholar and researcher to find out everything he could about what happened to his brethren after he left. Though his movements were monitored and restricted, Relehir found himself meeting choosing ones with knowledge and experience throughout all of time. After careful study, he was gradually able to piece together a history of his universe of origin, and he was not happy with what he discovered. He learned of their wars, and invasions of other universes, and decided he wanted to do something about it. He felt it was his responsibility, not because their actions were his fault, but because he was the one of their kind who had been blessed with the gifts of perspective, and understanding. His time with the humans allowed him to recognize right from wrong, not because humans were wholly good, but because there was far more diversity. He took on the woxa of Repudiator. Woxa were nicknames from his homeworld, that were bestowed upon those who became famous in some way, be it good or bad. It wasn’t possible to give a woxa to oneself, but going against the convention was sort of his entire point. He began to plan a revolt by setting in place a series of events that would one day lead him to a team of misfit fighters. Most of the crew were each on their own path of redemption, or at least, could be put on one, just like him. They were villains in someone else’s story, but with the right leadership, had the chance to become heroes of the multiverse.

Missy’s Mission: Ghosts and Creatures (Part VIII)

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The leader monster walked off, leaving Missy and Dar’cy to be escorted to the nearest alien building by a fairly large group of extremely cautious guardsmen. They placed them in what appeared to be their version of an interrogation room, and one came in to ask questions, first getting the basics out of the way, like their names, ages, and time of departure.

“Have you ever been to our world?”

“No.”

“Have you ever known anyone to come to our world?”

“We’ve never heard of this place.”

“Do you have more of those translator masks?”

“No.”

“Will you share with the other humans, so we can communicate with them as well? We would rather not have to request interpreters from West Borakon.”

“We will share,” Missy answered.

“You already have people who speak English?” Dar’cy asked.

He ignored her, and just moved on. “What is your business here?”

“Ours, and none of yours.”

He appeared to smile, but their faces were so strange that they couldn’t tell exactly. He asked them a few questions about who they were, which they generally felt comfortable revealing. Secrets weren’t really all that useful for them. They were in foreign land, and totally beholden to these...things. Once he was finished, he told them he would relay this information to the covfefe, who would meet with them shortly.

Missy couldn’t help but crack a smile. “The what?”

“Covfefe Junyj. You met him.”

“Is that where...?” Missy began to joke.

“Her translator must be malfunctioning,” Dar’cy interrupted. “I’ll take a look at it. Thank you.”

“Dar’cy,” Missy said, once their interviewer was gone. “Covfefe was—”

“I know,” she interrupted again. “Just let it go.”

Missy wanted to laugh again a few minutes later after guardsmen escorted them deeper through the building, and into an obnoxiously overdecorated office. The leader was waiting for them there, holding a glass of alcohol, presumably. He introduced himself as “Covfefe Junyj, Lion of the Lords, Savior and Deliverer.”

Before the conversation would continue, another monster slipped into the room and informed the covfefe, “he’s awake.”

“Bring him in. I suspect he’s connected to these other two.”

The servant left and returned with the man Missy and Dar’cy witnessed being sucked into the portal in the past, and later punched by the covfefe.

“Thank you all for coming,” Junyj said, but something was strange about the way he said it.

“We didn’t have a choice,” the man corrected.

“Quite,” Junyj agreed. That was it. His mouth was moving in sync with the words he was saying. He was actually speaking English, which would explain why this other human understood him. “You don’t need those things anymore,” he explained, confirming this.

As Missy and Dar’cy were removing their translators, Junyj offered them drinks, which all three refused.

“Do you all know each other?”

“We don’t know him,” Dar’cy replied.

He barely registered her response, and looked at her like he was trying to figure her out in a more general sense, and the words she uttered were less important than the way she said them. He regarded her position as partially in front of Missy. “You are her protector,” he guessed.

Dar’cy tensed up. “I am. You don’t wanna find out everything that entails.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I like a strong woman. You would make a fine seventieth wife,” he said, raising his drink. “If my form does not displease you, that is.”

“Your form is irrelevant,” she replied. “I am uninterested.”

“I understand that you’re from a planet called Earth, but you arrived here from a place called...” he looked back at his notes, “Durus? Is that true for you, sir?”

The man said nothing.

“Look, human, I’m not a bad guy. I’m just trying to do what’s best for my people. It’s my job to decide whether the humans who invaded us are significant threats. I just ask for a little cooperation.”

“Bullshit!” the human man cried. “You’re the invader. Durus was overrun with your...temporal mistakes!”

He looked back over to the women. “They said nothing of that.”

“The monsters are gone in our time,” Missy said to the man.

“Good.” He directed his attention back to Junyj. “So we defeat you. That does not mean you did not invade us.”

“That world was meant to be unpopulated. We chose it for that reason.”

“You chose it as a staging ground, knowing it would get you to Earth. I spoke with Effigy. She told me everything.”

“Effigy?” Junyj didn’t know who that was.

“Uhh...” he stammered, “Ezqava.”

Junyj laughed. “I doubt she told you everything. She barely knows anything. Now, if you spoke with Shuhana, that is a different story. We are very interested in knowing what happened to her.”

“I don’t know. She was mentioned, I never met her.”

Junyj was notably disappointed. “From what I gather, Mister...”

“Bran,” the human said. “Detective Bran.”

“Detective Bran, you’re here by accident, no?”

“This is true.”

“But you two came here on purpose?”

“We...went out looking for something,” Missy began. “We didn’t know our mission would end up taking us here.”

“What are you looking for?”

They hesitated.

“I might be able to help you, but I need to know what you need.”

“We have time powers,” Dar’cy said bravely. “She’s trying to get rid of hers.”

“Oh,” Junyj said, scratching the back of his neck. “Well, you’re late.”

“How late?”

“Few thousand years,” he responded, almost doing a good job of pretending to feel bad for them. “Historians tell us of something that could do that, but it doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t even know what it was.”

“In that case,” Dar’cy said, “I need you to show me an object from that period of time. Do you have artifacts from your history, in a museum, or something?”

“Why would you need that?” He was suspicious.

“It might have trace amounts of the substance that removes time powers,” Dar’cy lied. Well, she wasn’t lying so much as coming up with a plausible story that might even be true. For all they knew, that was exactly what they needed to end this once and for all.

“That’s not going to happen,” Junyj said frankly.

Before Dar’cy could protest, the servant from before barged into the room. “We have to get you out of here, Covfefe! They’re attacking.”

“Who’s attacking?” Junyj asked, and received his answer right away.

A hole appeared in the servant’s chest, yellowish blood dripping out of the wound. Dar’cy pulls Missy out of her chair, and backs her up against the wall. A man was fast-walking into the room with his game face on. Without looking, he swiped the air in front of him, sending the servant’s head across the room in a million little pieces. “We are.”

“Lucius, stop!” came the voice of a man behind the killer. “I wanna speak with him first.”

“Curtis?” Missy asked. In her previous life of jumping around time, meeting other people like her, she came across a teleporter named Curtis. He could only jump as far as he could see, and compared to all the interesting people she had met over the years, he was fairly underwhelming. The gorgeous behemoth working with him, on the other hand, Lucius, was a god. He was tall, wide, muscular, and commanding. If he didn’t have superpowers, he would still be able to kill everyone in this room with one move, and without even looking.

“I thought I saw you in the ring,” Curtis said. “You’re here to get rid of your powers?”

“Yeah, aren’t you?”

He shook his head. “We’re here to kill him.” He gestured towards Junyj.

“Why?”

“If you’ve already met him, you know the answer to that question.”

They could hear the march of enemy soldiers behind them. Eyes fixed on Junyj, Lucius reached his fist behind his shoulder, then opened his fingers. They could hear the screams of monsters as they were being torn apart, and no more footsteps.

“Mister Covfefe,” Curtis said to Junyj. “You are a joke on my planet. Literally. I’m killing you here for the satisfaction, but have no fear, I’m going back in time to stop you from existing in the first place. Your whole universe will be destroyed before it begins, and Durus will be a safe zone.”

“Curtis, that’s a major alteration of the timeline,” Missy warned.

“That’s what we do.”

Junyj sported that same sinister smile. “It doesn’t matter. You can’t go back and stop my universe from being created. As soon as it broke free from your universe, it became fundamentally independent. At that point, you can create as many contradicting timelines as you want, we already exist.”

Somehow, Curtis grew even angrier. “That’s not what we were told.”

“You were told wrong,” Junyj said simply. “Or it’s hard to hear through that dark skin of yours.”

Lucius, the one with the darkest skin of them all, waved his hands in venn circles, separating Junyj into his tiniest bits, which then faded away like sparks from a reciprocating saw, cutting through bolts. “Racist mother fucker,” he said in a deep Michael Clarke Duncan voice.

“I wasn’t done with him,” Curtis complained.

“I don’t care,” Lucius said.

“Do you have a plan to get out of here?” Dar’cy asked Curtis.

Curtis sighed. “That wasn’t part of the deal. We’re here to destroy the universe, whether it be now, or a thousand years ago. Our survival is not required.”

“Required by who?”

“By whom.” Curtis corrected.

“Required by who?” Missy repeated.

“We don’t know.”

“Well, before you destroy the universe,” Dar’cy began, “could you let us get to a museum?”

“Dar’cy, we can’t let them destroy this place. It’s unethical,” Missy whined.

“It’s also not our problem. What we came for is in the past. I can get us there, but I need something that existed back then.”

“I know just the thing,” came the voice of someone in the doorway. It was one of the monsters of this world. She held her hands up defensively when Lucius offensively held up his own. “I just want to help. This is a diverse world. We are not all like him,” she said, suggestive of Junyj.

Everybody hesitated.

The woman continued, “look, you can clearly kill me with the snap of your fingers, so if you don’t like where I take you, you can always just do that. I wanna help.”

“Why do so many of you speak English?”

“Don’t worry about it,” the woman said, walking away, hoping they would follow, or at least not kill her. “I’m Khuweka, by the way.”

Khuweka led them across the city, which was eerily vacant of the monsters. “We’re now in a transitional period,” she explained. “Half the population exists about forty-five percent of the day. The other half exists for another forty-five. In between, nobody exists, except for a select constant, many of which you just killed.”

“Why is it like that?” Dar’cy questioned.

“Our population is too great,” she went on. “We don’t have enough room for everyone, so we take turns. The empty transition is...so the universe can breathe. It’s part of our religion.”

“Why are you helping us,” Curtis demanded to know.

“You’re the gods,” she said matter-of-factly. “You think we can temporarily remove half our people from time all at once? We learned that from you.”

“We’ve not been treated as gods,” Dar’cy pointed out.

“How would you treat your gods if you met them, and found them to just be regular people?” She opened a door. “Everyone’s an asshole, even to people they like.” What a cynical view.

Khuweka walked them through a maze of historical artifacts, until finding the one she was looking for. She admired it reverently. “The Wrench of Creation,” she said in a breathy voice.

“That’s Étude’s,” Missy realized. The ship that brought them to Durus in the first place did so in order to retrieve The Last Savior of Earth, an important teleporter that the powers that be used to save people’s lives. It was pretty much the only decent thing the PTB did impulsively and voluntarily. Étude’s womb mother, Andromeda died months before she was born, leaving the fetus to develop in an artificial uterus. She left her daughter a plastic wrench toy that symbolized her paramount power to build structures at will, which she did to create nearly all the major buildings on the planet. On its own, the wrench could do nothing. It was just sentimental.

“How did that get here?” Dar’cy asked.

“It’s always been here,” Khuweka said, as if the answer could be nothing but.

“If it’s really been on this world since whatever can remove time powers existed,” Dar’cy said, “then it’ll work.”

“Oh, you can’t touch it,” she warned. “It’s a holy relic.” Her body was torn apart into its constituent atoms.

“God..dammit, Lucius!” Missy screamed. “Will you stop just killing people!”

He made this face like it was the first time anyone thought to suggest such a thing. He answered genuinely with, “I shall consider it.”

“What’s done is done,” Dar’cy said as she took off her shirt, and used it to break the glass between them and the wrench. “It’s time to end this.”

“We can’t go yet.”

“Why not?”

“There are hundreds of other people here looking for the same thing. We have to take them with us.”

“I’m not that strong,” Dar’cy reminded her.

“We have to find a way,” Missy said plainly.

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