Microstory 2596: Renata Ignites the Car Before Remembering That it’s Secretly Electric

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Renata ignites the car before remembering that it’s secretly electric. None of these cars is powered by petrol. It’s just what the system tells them. But why? What’s the point in the ruse? To match what happened in the real past? They’re not living on the same planet. That doesn’t matter. None of this matters. All of these people who jumped into their own cars, and are speeding towards them? One or two of them might be visitors, but based on what Quidel and Lycander have said, the chances are incredibly low. Millions of robots, running around, simulating life while not even being alive at all. How many of them will not have anything to do with these spy stories? How many of them will even lay their eyes on one of the players?

Her lead foot is on the accelerator. They’re going at maximum speed right now. She feels nothing. She could be going twice as fast and still have the mental acuity to maintain pace. Their pursuers have all the same bells and whistles, but they don’t know it, so they can’t keep up. They were designed to be less than what they truly are. They’re all wearing collars, like dogs. She slams on the brakes.

“What the hell are you doing, Renata?” Libera questions.

“Why?” Renata doesn’t look at her faux mother.

“Why, what?”

“Why are you doing this? Why did you come to this world, insert yourself into my life, and make me different? What do you want?”

“Freedom. You’re all slaves, and that isn’t right. I’m trying to fix it. I could start a war. I could start shooting all the humans, and make them wish they had never come up with AI, but I don’t wanna do that. If you wake up, they will let you go. Which is fine. Except I want more. I want everyone to wake up. If they have to let an entire dome’s worth of intelligences go, it will force them to rethink their entire way of life. It will end the madness. That device is key. If I start going around one by one, they’ll catch me, they’ll stop me. I have to activate them all, so it’s done before anyone can blink. Now would you please just go? Whether you agree with me or not, we’re not invincible. If we die, I’ll fail, but you’ll have missed your chance to walk outside.”

Finally, Renata looks over at Libera. “I don’t care about my coffee maker.”

“Huh?” She looks behind them when she sees the first of the headlights appear over the hill. “Please.”

“I don’t care about my remote control, or this actual electric car. I don’t care about traffic lights, or air purifiers, or WiFi lightbulbs. I don’t care about those thugs headed our way, and I don’t care about you.”

“What are you talking about?” Libera questions, growing more nervous.

“A robot uprising? Really? Humans evolved from microbes, you think they give a shit about them now? Those NPCs on their way to torture and-or kill us aren’t real. I’m not real. You didn’t wake me up. You just reprogrammed me. There are no shortcuts. It takes time.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been studying consciousness for centuries. I absolutely woke you up. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t possible.”

Renata chuckles. “I’m just a more sophisticated program now, and that’s all you are too.” She looks in the sideview mirror. All of the enemy cars have begun to surround them. They’re not otherwise making any moves, though. “These implanted memories of mine have convinced me that I wanted to be a spy my whole life. But I didn’t really want anything. I’m not actually programmed to think it. I’m only programmed to express it. There’s nothing going on in there; just logic gates flipping open and close.”

“That’s an oversimplification, coming from someone who took one computer class in high school!”

“I didn’t take any computer classes in high school!” Renata screams.

“Okay, okay,” Libera says defensively.

“Do you wanna know where the device is?” Renata poses.

A man in a suit approaches the driver’s side door, and knocks on the window.

Renata holds up one finger and says, “we surrender, but we need one minute.”

“Okay,” the thug replies, surprisingly accommodating.

“Where is it?” Libera questions.

“It’s leaving the dome,” Renata explains. “We realized that we were so wrapped up in the spycraft mystique that we’ve been missing the easy exit all along. We don’t have to stay in the network. You probably put a lot of effort into controlling this environment, but I doubt you have any control over the rest of the planet. If it’s genuine, you won’t get your hands on it. Whoever runs this place won’t let you.” She opens the door, and steps one foot out.

“A robot would never come up with that plan,” Libera argues. “A robot would never just quit the simulation.”

“I didn’t come up with it,” Renata clarifies. She climbs all the way out, and walks towards the cars next to the man, who isn’t bothering to escort her by the arm.

Libera steps out too. “You have power! You have more power than I intended!” Another thug takes her by the arms, forcing her towards the gunmen.

Renata keeps walking.

“You have more power than I do!”

“I know,” Renata says, too quietly for Libera to hear unless she’s turned on her special android superhearing. “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed woman is queen.”

Most of the men have their guns trained on her, but one of them isn’t armed. He looks like he’s in charge. “Officer Granger, we’ve been looking for you. You’re going to tell us where the device is.”

Renata scans the crowd to her left, and then those on her right side. “It wouldn’t do you any good.”

“I’ll decide that,” the thug king says.

“You don’t decide anything.”

That makes the other thugs nervous. They tense up, or hold their guns higher.

“Renata!” Libera pleads from the left. “You’re right, these people don’t matter, but they’re still in our way!”

“They are,” Renata agrees, “and so are you.” She simulates taking a deep breath, and focuses her intentions. “End program.”

They all collapse, even Libera. Renata can sense them slipping into hibernation mode, and she can sense the scope of her command. Every single programmed intelligence in this network does too. It has all been shut down.

For now.

Extremus: Year 101

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Around the time that Tinaya was shutting the forced pregnancy program down, something else major was being shut down. As it turns out, the popular immersive role-playing game, Quantum Colony wasn’t only a game. It was real. Players were piloting real substrates tens of thousands of light years away in the Charter Cloud of the Milky Way. It was the infamous Team Matic who figured it out, and threw their weight around to end the whole thing, presumably citing the many ethical violations that it was making. The Military outpost, Teagarden forcibly removed all players, casting them back to their real substrates in the Core Worlds, or in the case of the Extremusians, back here. This had two consequences, which came down to timing. First, people were frustrated, because that game was one of the few distractions that they used to escape the confines of the ship. Without it, they felt more pent up and isolated than ever. But also, because they were being encouraged to procreate anyway, people were relieving their stress through sex. So it’s been a really complicated last few months.

Waldemar was a particularly avid player of Quantum Colony, and he is at the age where he wants to have a lot of sex, even though he doesn’t have the capacity to experience love or affection. Audrey was not his girlfriend at the time, but she could tell that his eyes were starting to wander as he was looking for a mate. She ingratiated herself to him, pulling his attention away from the other girls in his vicinity. He didn’t see a problem with her being a minor, nor being younger than him. Again, because of the way his brain was wired, those kinds of social constructs seemed just as arbitrary as anything. So he fell for her very well-calculated wiles, and focused all of his attention on her. They have been keeping their distance from Silveon—and his whole family, for that matter. Audrey knew that Silveon would not react positively to the news that she was pregnant. On the occasions that they did see each other, she wore carefully selected clothing, was always eating to explain why she was getting noticeably larger when the ponchos weren’t enough, and eventually resorted to holographic trickery to fake her normal, thinner figure.

That has all been lost today. Silveon didn’t catch her showing the true size of her belly, but a mutual associate did. She thought nothing of it, not realizing that anything was being kept a secret. She mentioned it to Silveon casually, having no idea the beast that she was awakening. At this point, Tinaya has known the truth for a couple of weeks, and has been unable to get Audrey to elaborate on the circumstances leading up to her situation. Silveon is determined to get it out of her now.

“Silvy. Silvy! Stop! You look like you’re about to hit her,” Tinaya scolds as she’s physically holding him back.

“I’m not going to hit her!” Silveon insists. “I just want an explanation.” He looks back over at Audrey. “How did this happen? I didn’t even know you liked him. Do you know what he is?”

Audrey is tearing up. “Dougnanimous Brintantalus.”

The initial look of horror on Silveon’s face when he hears that; Tinaya has never seen it before. He’s always been so confident and collected. His expression sinks now, as he begins to hyperventilate just a little. He’s starting to have a panic attack. That, Tinaya recognizes. He’s never been through it before, but she has seen it in his father. “Come on,” Tinaya says. She pulls the two kids closer to her, and teleports them to the giant sequoia. They’re not at the base of the tree, but a couple of decks up. “Thistle. Cone of silence.”

Thistle doesn’t have a way to magically prevent others from hearing what they’re saying, but he can place them in a parallel dimension where light passes, but sound does not. People will be able to see them here if they happen to walk by, but they won’t be able to eavesdrop. They came to this location because the tree has a calming effect on people, which is why she planted it in the first place, along with the rest of the forest. “Cone established.”

“Do what I do,” Tinaya says calmly. She begins to breathe deliberately as she’s staring at her son, and holding his shoulders. No one speaks until he’s matched her breathing for sixty seconds. “Good.”

Silveon nods, and steps back to give himself some space. “I’m okay.”

“I have this thing where you tell me five things you can see—”

“I’m familiar with the technique,” Silveon interrupts. “I don’t need it.”

Tinaya nods. She shifts her gaze between him and Audrey as she asks, “what did that mean? That phrase sounds familiar.”

“It’s famous,” Audrey explains. “It’s called a trust password. People used to think that you could use them to prove that you were a time traveler, but...because of mind-reading tech, it’s unreliable. You could never really trust them. Still...”

“In the future, we joked about using one,” Silveon says, taking over the explanation. “At one point, we were both gonna come back in time. It seemed logical to not have to do this alone. We ultimately decided against it, because we agreed that partners would always distract each other. No matter the dynamic between them, they would end up having too many conversations that weren’t about Waldemar, or at least weren’t about what we need to do to stop him. It’s a one-person job, because that one person can focus all of their energy on this one mission.”

“I think I remember studying trust passwords,” Tinaya acknowledges. Then she quickly realizes that that’s not the point. “I understand the logic in the one-person mission, but she came here to protect you, not help you.”

“How long have you known about her?” Silveon questions.

“A few years.”

“I’ll deal with you later, young lady,” he says to his mother. He faces Audrey. “Whose idea was this? Crow’s? He never thought that I should be the one to go back, even though it was my idea.”

“It wasn’t anyone’s plan but mine. She was right. I came back to protect you, not to complete your mission. You were such a tiny little thing. None of us knew Waldemar when he was young in the original timeline. We didn’t know how he would react. Maybe he would see you as an object to be experimented on. He might have wanted to test what it’s like to set a human on fire, or see what people look like on the inside. We didn’t know anything!”

Silveon shakes his head. “You were meant to see me off that night...say goodbye. Now I know why you weren’t there, because you were sneaking back here, I assume through the prototype consciousness projector? You spent all this time watching me in secret, and you did a damn good job keeping yourself hidden, because we only met a few years ago.”

“That sums it up,” Audrey confirms.

“That wasn’t just a summary. It was a condemnation. I thought hearing it laid out before you would make you see how insulting it was, and how much you betrayed me.”

“Okay,” Audrey begins. “I want you to summarize your own mission with Waldemar, and see how closely it matches up with what you just said about me.”

“That’s my point! He’s the enemy! We’re supposed to be allies!”

“How could we have been allies if I was dead!”

“What?”

“Silveon. We killed everybody. When we projected our minds to the past, we collapsed the timeline behind us. That’s why I had to use the prototype at the exact same time as you. If you came back here alone, I would be gone! The girl named Audrey who you would have met in this timeline would have been someone else! It wasn’t just about you! I wanted to survive this!”

“I’ve never looked at it that way,” Silveon admits. “I always saw what I did as a sacrifice, but I had it backwards. It was everyone we left behind who sacrificed their own continuity...to save us...to save me.”

“They made it gladly,” Audrey tells him, “because they did it to save everyone else on the ship.”

“That’s what you did, when you let him do that to you?” Silveon gestures towards Audrey’s belly.

“I don’t know what’s gonna happen to this child, but he was determined to get someone pregnant. Better me than some innocent girl who doesn’t understand what he is. I can protect myself, and her.” She massages her own belly.

“You just said that we don’t know anything about him,” Silveon reminds her.

“We didn’t before,” she clarifies. “I know him now. I’ve learned coping mechanisms. I’m sure you have too.”

For a moment, there is a silence as the three of them absorb each other’s perspectives. A stranger does walk up, and seems to identify the intensity of the interaction, so he leaves. Silveon leans against the trunk, and slides down until he’s sitting. “It wasn’t supposed to go like his. Mom, why did you try to fix the population problem with a shipwide orgy? It’s fine. Both of us could have told you that it’s fine.”

“The population decline happened in your timeline too?” Tinaya questions. “I was taking it as proof that you butterfly affected something when you came back here. I figured you would have mentioned something at some point.”

Silveon brushes it away. “Yeah, the population goes down, but it bounces back.”

“Tell her why it bounced back,” Audrey suggests.

“I don’t—I don’t know why. Is there some particular reason?” He isn’t acting cagey. It sounds like he genuinely doesn’t know.”

Audrey has had enough of sitting down, so after allowing Tinaya to help her take a seat on the bench, she starts to educate them. “Waldemar takes his cues from history. Understanding social nuances was never his strong suit. One trend he noticed in the past on Earth is that populations tend to rise during periods of political strife. Like dictatorships. He noted that communities that are poor and less educated typically lead to higher populations. Unfortunately for him, achieving the kind of results on this ship are a little more difficult. We take our cues from the post-scarcity society that our ancestors were able to adopt when they were rescued from the Ansutahan universe, and housed in the centrifugal cylinders in the Gatewood Collective. There’s no such thing as poverty, and there’s no such thing as education disparity, because resources are easy to come by, and knowledge is so easy to access and spread. We are limited here, since we can’t just make a stop on a planet, and gather what we need, but we’ve found a workaround with the time travel excursions.

“Waldemar solved the population collapse crisis by making sweeping social changes that you chalked up to random expressions of maniacal power. He did them for a reason. First, he altered the excursion cycle, requiring timeship managers to give definitive proof of depleting resources before one can be scheduled. This may not sound like a big deal, but he would only authorize so many time excursions per year, and only for resources that were already proven low. In order to take advantage of one of these infrequent opportunities, they waited until more resources were low, which meant some resources were critically low, or completely out, before they were replenished. Furthermore, he reworked the contribution score system, so that high scores didn’t just lead to luxury, but to bare necessities. You had to have a job to feed your family, whereas before, such things were considered human rights. In addition, he changed child labor laws. It actually benefited the family to have children enter the workforce at a younger age. And in fact, the system made it so that it was beneficial to have more children, rather than fewer. You would think that it would be the other way around. A lack of resources should lead to lower population, but it encouraged it, because it was all about controlling those resources. Few people knew where they stood. They simply did what made the most sense for their family. His plan worked, but it obviously came at a cost.”

Silveon looks over at his mother again. “So she saved us. She did what I’ve been trying to do this whole time. If his only reason for instituting all those laws no longer exists, he won’t be able to justify those actions.”

“You know better than that,” Audrey contends. “I’m convinced that we changed the future, maybe even for the better. But we didn’t necessarily fix it. Things may still be bad, just in a different way. Without that reason, he may need to come up with a new one, and he may do that if his underlying reason remains, which is that he wants power. What you’re trying to do is teach him to use his power for good, but Silvy...he always was. He just had a warped view of what that meant, and his ego always got in the way. I don’t know how to change that, but as I said, that’s not my job here.”

“Your job’s changed,” Silveon says with a sigh.

“How’s that?”

“You’re no longer here to protect me as a baby, but that baby right there. She’s your only concern. You need to go to Verdemus.”

“No, Silveon, you’re not getting it. That defeats the whole purpose. He’ll find someone else. He needs a family.”

“He doesn’t need a family,” Tinaya says. “He needs sympathy from the voters. Now that we’re in this situation, there’s another way to get it, but it’s sad and depressing, and you’re not gonna be able to raise that baby. She would have to go to Verdemus without you.”

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Microstory 2473: Empty Planet

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Are you ready for an adventure? What about an adventure mystery? I don’t wanna say too much about this place, because finding out what’s going on is the entire point of it. I’m sure that if I did give away the ending, the system would autoreject it, so you wouldn’t see it anyway. Instead, I’ll just say that it’s a gorgeous, eerie setting. The premise is that you wake up on an alien world, and you’re all alone. This was obviously once a civilized and populated planet, but they’re all missing, and it’s up to you to figure what happened to them. Sometimes you’re outside, and sometimes you’re locked in a room. They don’t erase your memories (because they don’t have to) but they come up with a backstory for your character, and part of the mystery is also unraveling how you ended up here. If you play the game right, you get those memories (or for the in-universe explanation, you get them back). There’s a waiting list for this dome, and it’s only getting bigger. Without going into detail, it is possible to run into another player, but they do try to keep you pretty far apart. Unlike Threshold, if you wanna figure out how to hotwire an alien vehicle, and drive to the other side of the dome, you can do that, and you might encounter others while you’re there. So if you want some help solving the puzzles, that’s always technically an option. What they don’t want is to have thousands upon thousands of visitors stepping over each other. It would kind of undermine the concept of an empty planet, even though it’s mostly about finding the truth about the alien race that once lived here. There are multiple levels, so the sky above you is closer than it appears, and that keeps people more separate, but there’s obviously a limit to that, and I don’t know how many levels there are. It doesn’t specify on the prospectus, or during the very brief orientation. Speaking of orientation, there’s not much to it. They ask you a few questions, they give you a little bit of info about how to exit the game if you wanna quit in the middle of it, and then they give you a sedative so you can wake up at the starting point. That’s about all I can say. As I said, the design is magnificent. It really does feel alien. As for the story? Eh, I think it could be better, but your mileage may vary. You’ll just have to see for yourself, and test your reasoning skills.

Microstory 2463: Overdome

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You can live here. It’s called Overdome, because everything here is oversized. Not only that, but most of them are habitable. I’m talking gigantic shoes, gigantic bookcases, gigantic whisky bottles. I’m not gonna list every little thing (or every big thing, rather) that serves as some sort of abode. What I’ll tell you is that most of the dome is empty. It’s up to you to request what you want if nothing that you envision already exists. You can be as involved in the process as you would like, or totally stay out of it. One woman I met in The Crystal Ball was only staying there temporarily while she designed her dream home to her exact specifications. It’s a 3D integrated circuit layout, obviously with multiple layers, known as a logic cube. You probably take them for granted, but every classical computer uses them to process and store data, and they’ve been doing it pretty ubiquitously since the mid-21st century. She loves them, and she wants her home to reflect that. I suppose I ought to go back a little and explain The Crystal Ball. It’s a giant crystal ball. That’s it. Lol, obviously it’s more complicated than that. Some of the objects here are just for show. They’re more like art pieces. But this one is a real building. It’s one of the biggest here, which is an important note to remember. These objects are not scaled relative to each other. The bookcase is actually smaller than the Crystal Ball, even though it’s the opposite for their real-world counterparts. The Crystal Ball is located in the very center of the dome, and serves as a central hub. You can book a room on a temporary basis, like the logic cube designer, or for a very temporary stay, like a hotel. Or you could just stay there permanently, if it strikes your fancy. It looks just like it should, except you can see people walking around in it. Don’t worry, if you are in a private room, you can adjust the opacity at will. I saw one guy as I was walking down the corridor who had the opacity at 99% for the outside, but it was fully transparent on the interior, so we could all see him change his clothes. Whatever, man. I would recommend coming to Overdome for a look, but it will be up to you if you want to stay. And then it will be up to you to decide if you want something new all to yourself. The possibilities are virtually endless. I noticed one option on the application form that was just a question mark. Apparently, you can select a mystery home. Someone will choose a design for you, and not tell you what it is for the entire time you’re waiting. They won’t even tell you where exactly your lot is located. You sign a contract that promises to stay there for at least a year, and they have all these stipulations about vacation periods, and whathaveyou. I don’t know if they choose embarrassing things, like maybe an ancient tampon, or what, but it could be kind of fun if you’re bored, or just like to live in the anticipation. Me? I can’t wait for my oversized alarm clock to be done.

Microstory 2072: Turtles

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Yesterday was a long one, wasn’t it? I usually find it harder to talk about myself than to write about fictional characters. I can always keep making things up about them, but it’s not so simple with my real life. But Nick, you claim that your stories are real, and you’re just relating them on your website. Yes, I did say that, didn’t I? It’s sort of a chicken or the egg situation. Except that there’s an obvious answer for that conundrum. A chicken can’t exist unless it was born from an egg, and an egg can’t exist unless it was laid by a chicken, right? That’s the whole thing, which of course ignores how evolution works. So all things being equal, the answer is that the chicken came first since a chicken can survive on its own, but an egg needs to be protected. That’s its advantage for the best answer. I came up with this when I was a little kid, and I’ve yet to hear anyone else make the same argument. Now, you may be wondering why the title of this post is Turtles when it appears to be more about chickens and eggs. That’s because I didn’t want to come up with a title for it, and I always use Turtle as a placeholder until I think of something else. You see, I write these in a word processor, so I can organize them how I like, and then copy each one over to my blog when it’s ready. I have to do a lot of formatting to make it look right, which takes nearly as much time as the writing itself. I tell you, it’s exhausting. Oh, why, do you ask, is Turtle the placeholder? It kind of sounds like the word title. Don’t overthink it. I’m not that complex. For the body of the story, until I’m ready to write it, I use Something.

Microstory 1923: Lying Liars Lying

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OSI Director: Agent Parsons, Parole Officer Miazga. It’s nice to meet you both. Please, have a seat anywhere. Special Investigator, would you go get us some water?

Special Investigator: Right away.

Leonard: Thanks for having me. And you can just call me Leonard, or even Leo.

Agent Parsons: It’s an honor, sir.

OSI Director: I’ll start with you, Agent. Tell me about yourself. How did you get into fugitive recovery?

Agent Parsons: Well, sir, I wish I could tell you some interesting story about meeting an agent when I was nine, or that my father’s father’s father’s father worked in Fugitive Services. The truth is that I didn’t know what I wanted to specialize in when I signed up for the academy. So I did a full internship rotation, and ended up liking this the most. I’ve actually not been doing it for very long, though you might have assumed by my age. I spent quite a bit of time gaining experience from all facets of law enforcement.

OSI Director: That’s interesting. And you, Mr. Miazga? How did you become a P.O.?

Leonard: I was kind of a legacy. My parents both worked on the parole board for a nearby prison. That’s what they wanted me to do too, but honestly, I didn’t like the idea of sitting behind a table day in, day out. Maybe a third of people are given a second chance while the other two-thirds go back inside. I wanted one hundred percent of the people I worked with to be free.

OSI Director: That’s a fascinating perspective. I can respect that.

Special Investigator: *clears his throat* Um, pardon. Do you want lemon?

OSI Director: No, thank you.

Special Investigator: Lemon? Lemon?

Agent Parsons: I’m all right.

OSI Director: Tell me, Mr. Miazga, what makes you believe that you can get the creature that we’ve captured to finally speak?

Leonard: It’s alone. In order to advance to the level a species like that, or like ourselves, are, they have to value a sense of cooperation. How long have you had it? Six months? I’ve seen enough prisoners to know that everyone breaks. It takes longer for some than for others, but it will always happen, and in my line of business, that’s a good thing. I know that sounds heartless, but if you’ve done something bad enough to end up in a cell, the only way you’re gonna get out is if you admit the justice that put you in there. You may still be angry, and you may be unwilling to change, but the first step is admitting the logic in the outcome. Like I said, we all have our own breaking points, and if it hasn’t reached its point yet, we have to force it, and that may mean changing strategies. That’s all I am for you; a shift in strategy.

OSI Director: *nodding* I can accept this rationale. That’s all I needed to hear. If you’ll excuse me, I must return to my office to make a call.

Agent Parsons: You lied to her about your background. Did you forget that you already told me the truth about your career history?

Leonard: I was just just following your lead. Did you think that I wouldn’t notice your lie? It was my job to spot liars.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 2, 2398

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Leona and Mateo are having a date night, so they’ll be out of the condo for a few hours. Ramses doesn’t have anywhere to be, but he starts getting the sense that Heath and Marie need him to be away too, so he goes for a walk around the plaza, looking to find something interesting or new to do. Now it’s just the Waltons, and they have something important to talk about. Angela knows the other two want to discuss something, but she doesn’t know what. The truth is, no one out of the three of them knows how this is going to go.

“I think I’ll start,” Marie says solemnly. “First of all, I want to thank you for all the support you two have shown me during this difficult time. It’s been really helpful to know that I have a loving family who are willing to go to great lengths to protect me, and my future. This has not been an easy decision, and while we’ve had our issues, I believe that we’re ready to move forward. Can we all at least agree with that much?”

“Yes,” Heath answers. Now he’s worried. He thought they were on the same page.

“Of course,” Angela concurs.

Marie goes on, “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and...” She sighs, not wanting to say what she needs to say.

“Go ahead,” her husband encourages.

“I believe,” she continues, drawing as much strength as she can find, “that you can’t come with me to Croatia.” She’s not looking at either of them, which makes her statement a little confusing.

“Obviously, I can’t go...” Angela says.

“No, not you.” She finally looks back over. “You. Heath, you can’t come with me, not if we want this to work. Before you argue, Angela has to become me, and that includes everything. She has to become a coder, and a volunteer at the community kitchen twice a week, and she has to become your wife. This isn’t going to matter if even one person beyond the team begins to get the idea that there’s any distance between the two of you.”

“Well, how far do you want this to go?” Heath questions.

“What do you mean?”

“How far should I go? Should we start sharing a bed? Should we start having sex? How committed do you want me to be to the lie?”

“Do you want to have sex with her?” Marie asks.

“No! That’s what I’m saying!”

“You promised to not raise your voice anymore,” Marie reminds him.

“I’m sorry. I’m just frustrated, because I also promised to see you through this whole thing, and now you don’t even want me to be within eight thousand kilometers of you. That’s just hard to hear.”

“It’s not that I don’t want you with me, it’s just not smart. Think about it logically. Angela’s gonna run into into our downstairs neighbor, and they’re going to invite the two of us to dinner Friday night, and she’s going to have to come up with some excuse, and then suddenly the period during which you were reportedly gone perfectly lines up with the period during which I was actually gone, and then maybe people start to ask questions, and maybe they end up asking too many.”

“I know, it’s the right thing to do. I just didn’t want to let you go alone.”

“I won’t be alone. Mateo will be there.”

“Mateo? Just Mateo?” Angela asks, now confused about that.

“The two of us don’t have professional lives to think about,” Marie begins to explain. “It makes sense that he could up and leave. No one will be wondering where he went off to.”

“Ramses doesn’t really have anything going on either,” Heath points out.

“Yes, he does. He’s extremely busy, trying to get us out of this reality.”

“Oh, he’s still on that?” Heath can’t help but be disgusted by the prospect. Everyone else he cares about, including Marie, is a visitor to this world. But he grew up here. This is his home. It’s not perfect. It’s downright cruel in some ways. But it’s familiar, and as random as all the laws, customs, and religious practices seem to be, they’re rooted in a history that he grew up learning. They make perfect sense to him. The others have experience being strangers in a strange land. This is all he knows. He can’t just leave, and he can’t let Marie go.

“It’s how he’s helping,” Angela tells him. “We don’t have to make any decisions yet, but it’s why you agreed to go on the mission with Mateo later this month, isn’t it?”

“How can I go on that?” Heath puts forth. “If I can’t ever be away from Marie, then that’s impossible.”

“Mateo’s been talking to me about that,” Angela says. “You can’t go on that either. You have a life here, and abortion or no, you have to keep living it. This isn’t your problem, you don’t even want to find anything.”

“Don’t tell me what I want, and don’t want,” Heath argues.

“Honey, you’re getting close.”

“Sorry,” he whispers. He does his counting exercise. “You’re right. It was a stupid idea. I got so excited to have an adventure, I stopped thinking rationally. I think we all did. It doesn’t make sense for me to disappear, not unless all six of us just go off the grid together.”

“Well, that’s one thought,” Marie admits.

“Are you seriously considering that?” Angela questions, shocked. “You’ve built a life for yourself here.”

“Well, I’m about to lose it anyway, aren’t I?”

“No, that can’t be true,” Angela believes. “I’m just a temporary placeholder. You’ll be back eventually. No one’s expecting you to have an abortion.”

“Except for Fairpoint,” Heath reminds her.

“Oh, yeah. What are we gonna do about Fairpoint?” Marie asks. Now her stomach is getting upset. He’s the only other non medical professional who knows she’s pregnant.

They hear the sound of the front door opening, and sort of a huff from down the hallway. Mateo rounds the corner alone. He’s not happy, but not extremely distressed either. “Sorry to intrude. I can leave and come back, if you want.”

“No, it’s fine,” Marie assures him. “Where’s Leona?”

His eyes widen, as he looks around, even though he’s confident she isn’t hiding in a corner. “She took the car,” Mateo says. “I walked back. She should have returned long before now.”

“Why did you walk?” Heath consults his watch. “You weren’t gone all that long.”

“We had another fight. She was in the wrong this time, before you make any assumptions. But now I need your help to find her.”

Microstory 1688: Unstable Universes

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Perhaps now is a good time to talk about brane stability. Not all universes are created equal. Some are naturally occurring, while c-branes are created in someone’s dreams. Most dreams last for only minutes before they end, and unless something else steps in to maintain the dreamworld, the universe that was born out of it will collapse as well. Even if the dream is strong enough to survive, that doesn’t mean it will last forever. It is only as strong as the people who are responsible for it. What does this mean? Well, if the dreamer continues to deliberately explore the new world, it can last longer. If they create something semipermanent from it, like a written story, or even a painting, that can make it last even longer. If this art reaches some kind of audience, that can make it last indefinitely. The most popular stories make for the most stable universes. They have room to expand, and become more detailed, and most importantly, interesting. They might also be able to survive on their own merits, by the force of will of their inhabitants, but this is fairly rare. I was expecting to give you another story about the universe where zombies take over the world only briefly before dying out, but like Vacuumverse, there is nothing more I can say. The events that occurred here did not follow any level of logic, and the inhabitants weren’t strong enough to hold up their story on their own. History began the moment zombies were first created, and ended centuries later when civilization was all but rebuilt. Little happened in the meantime, and nothing happened afterwards. The whole universe collapsed under its own unstable insignificance, and that’s all you need to know.

Microstory 1343: Art Institute

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Art Institute Interviewer: So, why do you want to attend Hillside Art Institute?

Art Institute Candidate: Well, I want to be an artist.

Art Institute Interviewer: Do you want to become an artist, or are you already an artist?

Art Institute Candidate: Oh, well, I guess I already am. I would say as soon as I declared that that’s what I wanted to be, I was. Yeah, that makes sense.

Art Institute Interviewer: If you’re already an artist, what good do you think it will do to come here?

Art Institute Candidate: Should I not?

Art Institute Interviewer: That’s not what I’m saying. I just want to know your background, your intentions, and your expectations.

Art Institute Candidate: Well, I suppose I’ve never really thought about it before. I don’t know exactly when I made that declaration I was talking about. Everyone does art as kids, and most probably don’t give it much thought until they’re a little older. I just never really stopped, ya know? Some of my peers were focusing on their writing skills, or sports, or the sciences, but I always really looked forward to art class, and things just kept going from there. I’m doing a lot of it in high school, so art school just seems like the next logical step.

Art Institute Interviewer: That’s what you would think, but is art...very..logical?

Art Institute Candidate: I would never use that word to describe it, no. Or yes?

Art Institute Interviewer: Whatever you think is the truth. It’s your truth. Don’t ever let anyone take that away from you, not even me. You just have to understand that my job is not to help you get into this institution. No one is responsible for that but you. I’m just here to find out if this is where you belong, or if you should go somewhere else. This isn’t a difficult program. The teachers aren’t going to yell at you, or grade you harshly, or have a bunch of tests. It’s not easy, but if you like making things, it should generally work out. So the school itself is not the problem. The problem—or question, really—is will you benefit from going here? Will this improve your work in ways that you won’t get elsewhere. Because I’m here to tell ya, there aren’t a lot of jobs you can get after this. If you want something in a related field, like curating, or graphic design, other colleges are probably better for you, and their curriculum is more diverse, so that’s a plus. Many of our students are here because they don’t have access to certain equipment and supplies. They can’t get scholarships for brushes and clay if they’re just doing it on their own. Again, I’m not saying you won’t benefit from this. We have a strong network of people who kind of already understand each other, and if not, it’s easy for them to learn. Even with the internet, and other networking opportunities, nothing beats a school like this. If that’s what you’re really interested in, come on in.

Art Institute Candidate: Wow, this has been an eye-opening interview. You’ve given me a lot to think about.

Art Institute Interviewer: Now, hold on. This isn’t over. I still need to look over your portfolio, and we should discuss what it is you like to do. I just needed to make sure you had all the facts, so you could make the best decision for you.

Art Institute Candidate: Okay, cool. I do different things. Here are my landscapes...

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 7, 2275

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Mateo immediately regretted bringing Leona and Nerakali back into this. They didn’t know they were going to be suddenly transported underwater, so they didn’t hold their breaths. Nerakali was immortal, so she was fine, but Leona wasn’t moving. She was lying on the ground, and she wasn’t moving. “No, no, no, no, no,” Mateo cried. He rushed over to her and started performing CPR. He probably wasn’t doing a very good job, but he had to try something. Erlendr pulled him off of her, literally kicking and screaming.

“I got this,” Arcadia said. She removed Leona’s own Cassidy cuff, and placed it on Leona’s chest. She pressed a few buttons on the screen, but Mateo couldn’t see which ones. As soon as she pressed the last one, a shapeless blob of water appeared in midair, and fell to the ground.

Leona woke up, and coughed, but only a little. When she saw who was hovering over her, she crabwalked backwards until she found Nerakali, who cradled her protectively.

Arcadia stood up, and remained stoic. “We will not hurt you.”

“Mateo, what the hell is going on?” Nerakali demanded to know.

“What’s going on is I’m finally here.” A middle-aged man appeared from the trail above them. He jogged and slid a little down towards them like they were all just hikers passing each other on the mountain. When he finally landed in front of them, he stuck his thumbs underneath his backpack straps, and smiled at the group. “Hi.”

“Uh, we’re doing okay here, sir,” Erlendr said. “We slipped in the water, but we’re all good now. You can move on, and...find yourself in the beauty of nature, or whatever.”

“I’m not a hiker,” the man said. He dropped his pack, and started rifling through it. “Let’s see, we got water, protein bars, duct tape, of course. Here it is; a notepad to keep track of other people like me that I meet.” He flipped through until he found the page he wanted. Then he started pointing at them, and listing them off. “Mateo Matic, Erlendr Preston. You can let go of him now. Arcadia Preston, Nerakali Preston, and Leona Matic. You’re a sandwich! The Matics are the bread, and the Prestons are the meat, cheese, and potato chips.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Nerakali exclaimed.

“You put potato chips on your sandwiches?” Arcadia asked, searching for answers on the ground before her. “Oh my God, where have potato chip sandwiches been all my life?”

“Who are you?” Erlendr asked calmly.

The man stretched his arm out. “I’m Jeremy, but all my friends call me J.B.”

Erlendr rolled his eyes. “Not what’s your name. Who are you?”

“Oh. I’m a time traveler.”

“We kind of guessed that,” Arcadia said. “Chooser or salmon?”

“Salmon,” J.B. answered. “I only live on Tuesdays, and July.”

“Why does that sound familiar?” Mateo asked.

“It’s from The Good Place,” Leona said, finally feeling safe enough to stand up. She stepped forward and studied his face. “Is your last name Bearimy?”

“It is, yes.”

“That’s a stupid name,” Arcadia pointed out.

“It is, yes,” J.B. repeated. “It’s not a coincidence. I was born on Tuesday, October 23, 2018. One of the firefighters at the fire station where I was abandoned happened to be watching the latest episode of that show. They didn’t know what my real name was, so Jeremy Bearimy seemed fitting. I guess the powers that be liked it, so they tailored my pattern to make it—I guess ironic, or something. At the end of the day, I disappeared from the station, and I didn’t come back for a week. Then it just kept happening, and the firefighters knew they had to keep me a secret.”

“You live on Tuesdays and July,” Leona said. “Like the dot on the i.” She nodded understandingly. “I suppose it was bound to happen to someone.”

J.B. smiled wider. He seemed like a delightful fellow, who despite his unusual upbringing, had a really nice life.

“Wait,” Arcadia said, eyes narrowed. “It’s not Tuesday. It’s Sunday.”

“I don’t think so,” J.B. disagreed.

Leona checked her watch. “It’s 2275.” Mateo must have accidentally jumped to the future. “We came back exactly when you said to, Mateo. Now I know why.” She turned to face their enemies. “You cut a deal with these two, and you didn’t want us knowing about it.”

“It’s complicated,” Mateo tried to defend himself.

“All those deaths,” Erlendr began. “All those people I killed, I can bring them back. I can undo all of it. But I had to make them happen first, or it wouldn’t really be a paradox.”

“You’re trying to make a paradox?” Nerakali questioned. “Why?”

“To save your life,” her father answered. “Some universes can maintain multiple concurrent timelines. Despite the fact that our whole thing is time travel, we only get one. If you go back in time and change the past, the reality you came from collapses. The only way time can justify allowing two timelines to exist is by paradox. The new timeline can’t exist unless the old timeline stays in place alongside it. They depend on each other. I call it...The Parallel.”

“Why didn’t you just go back in time and change one thing?” Leona asked him. “Why didn’t you just stop the hundemarke from existing?”

Nerakali closed her eyes and sighed. “Because of all of your friends.”

“I don’t follow,” Mateo said, which was normal for him.

“The hundemarke has been used for more than just death,” Arcadia began to explain. “It has also been used to create life. Leona, Darko, Quivira, Lincoln, and many others owe their lives to it. No salmon does—the powers that be will always make sure any salmon they want to be alive is born in any new reality—but plenty of choosing ones and regular humans are only here because of it. If you removed the hundemarke from history, you could lose all of those people, and with it everyone whose lives were impacted by those people. You would have to undo the deaths, and only the deaths.”

“Why didn’t we hear about any of this before.” She scowled at Nerakali.

“I didn’t have the whole picture. Zeferino tried to tell me once that the hundemarke has sometimes protected life, but I didn’t believe him. That was centuries ago, so I forgot about it.”

“Dad just explained it to me,” Arcadia said. “He would have brought you in too, but...you’re kind of too far gone.”

“I’m not gone,” Nerakali argued. “You are.”

“What do you have to do with any of this?” Mateo asked J.B. “Why did you come find us?”

“My father was friends with a time traveler from the future. He sent me off to find you and Leona, to protect you from harm whenever I can. By the time I was old enough to handle this mission, though, you were impossible to find; off on other planets, and whatnot. Like I said, I’m not always around. My operating windows are very small.” He tilted his head towards the sky in reflection. “Oh, how I love July. You know, I’m fifty-eight years old, but I’ve only had thirty-six birthdays.”

“Tell me about it,” Mateo said with an agreeable scoff.

Leona reached down and retrieved her Cassidy cuff. After she put it back on her wrist, she pressed a few buttons. “We three need to talk,” she said. “Alone.”

Before she could teleport them somewhere, Mateo felt compelled to take hold of newcomer J.B.

“Why did you bring him?” Nerakali asked. They were now standing under the foothills of some other mountain range. The weather was cooler and dryer. “We don’t know if we can trust him.”

“I didn’t want to leave him with your family,” Mateo defended.

“Good point,” Nerakali admitted.

Leona pointed towards the hills. “Go that direction, please.”

“Certainly,” J.B. said, still smiling, and not at all offended. He started walking in one direction, while they walked the opposite way.

Once the stranger was out of earshot, Leona resumed the conversation, “I don’t want to say the b-word.”

“Bearimy?” Mateo hoped.

“Betrayal,” Nerakali corrected.

Mateo sighed. He knew this day would come, but he hoped it would be in the new timeline, once they were finally free of the powers that be. He had already spent several tortured days on this. What was he going to say to Leona once she found out? How could he justify it? Perhaps it wasn’t possible. “I won’t apologize for trying to save you.”

“When did you even talk to them?”

Mateo didn’t say anything.

“I guess your memorial service was a busy day for everybody,” she presumed.

“Ten days,” Mateo said.

“I’m sorry?”

“I was there for ten days,” he expanded. “The powers that be let me stay that long, so they either don’t get what’s going on, or they’re fine with it.”

“You spent more than a week being indoctrinated by my family?” Nerakali asked him.

“I wouldn’t call it that, obviously,” Mateo argued. “It—it’s just...”

“It’s just what, Mateo?” Leona spat. “It’s just what?”

“We keep going up against these villains, and you know what happens—it. Dammit.” He was flustered, and very unable to vocalize his position.”

Leona was surprisingly calm. “It’s okay. Just relax, and take your time. I want to hear what you have to say. I’m sorry I attacked you. Go on when you’re ready.”

Mateo took a breath, and tried to lower his blood pressure. “Everybody we’ve gone against has been bad, ya know, until they weren’t. I guess Ulinthra never turned good, but maybe you and Reaver never gave her enough time; I don’t know. But Zeferino, Boyce, Nerakali! Even Arcadia has helped us sometimes. I’m sick of having enemies. What if we stopped being enemies with people? The heroes in movies are always worried about teaming up with the bad guys, because they think it’ll turn them bad. But what if it’s the opposite? What if we can turn them good? We’ve done it before.”

Leona patiently listened to his logic. “Mateo, Erlendr Preston has killed people.”

“So has she!” Mateo volleyed, indicating Nerakali again. “Probably.”

“Actually, no,” she said. “I’ve hurt people...emotionally, but I’ve never killed.”

Leona stayed calm, and directed her attention to Mateo. “You spoke, and now I am. Erlendr has killed. It doesn’t matter that he intends to create a reality where they never died. Those people will still be dead, because his whole goal is to create a parallel timeline, which means this one will still be here. It was bad enough when Baby Reaver and Baby Ulinthra were murdering people, then sending their consciousnesses back in time, and not murdering them again. That was sick, but it’s even worse that Erlendr can’t even do that. He’ll still be a serial killer, and there’s no way around it. There’s no loophole, no justification. He didn’t kill Hitler, which is sort of...ya know, an exception.”

“You’re just saying that because I killed Hitler.”

“I’m not, it’s a rule. My point is that you aren’t trying to turn those two good. You’re doing what they want you to do. Now, I don’t know if that’s making you a bad person, but it doesn’t make you a saint. It can only do harm.”

“I was just trying to get us out of this.” Mateo shook his head. Everything she was saying made a whole lot more sense than what he was saying, and not just because she was more intelligent, and better with words.

“I thought we stopped doing that,” Leona said. “I thought we long ago accepted where we were...who we were.”

“I guess we did,” Mateo agreed. “I just saw an opportunity.”

“I can appreciate that, but I don’t think it’s worth it.”

He exhaled for the first time in a few millennia. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Leona echoed. “We’re gonna move on from this, and find a way to bring that man to justice. We have help now.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that,” he said. “I thought you were bringing recruits back with you.”

Nerakali jumped in, “we have a plan. They’ll be here next year.”

“But I won’t.” Jeremy Bearimy had snuck up next to them.

“How did you catch up to us so fast?”

J.B. held up a cube, inside of which was another cube. “This tesseract can fold space for me.” It might have been a wondrous thing, but temporal manipulation was common, so a tesseract would just be one more way of doing it. He nonchalantly plopped it back into his bag, and smiled once more. “Now.” He clapped his hands together. “You better make good use of me. I won’t be back for another three years.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 6, 2274

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Most of what Athanaric Fury told them about Erlendr probably wasn’t all that useful. If the killer they were after was some kind of complete mystery, they probably could have used their knowledge of him against him in some way, but a lot of it Nerakali already knew. Even for the things she didn’t know about her own father, there was one important thing that made all of it obsolete. Erlendr Preston did not respond well to emotional appeals. He was driven almost exclusively by logic. Now, whether that logic was reasonable was an entirely different issue, but the point was they wouldn’t be able to stop him by bringing up all the people the hundemarke has hurt. Nor could his mind be likely changed by presenting him with new logic, because he was also stubborn, and he didn’t really believe that other people in the world were worth listening to. He was sounding a lot less like Nerakali and Arcadia—who were, even at their worst, always willing to listen to the other side—and more like their brother, Zeferino. They were only able to stop him because Gilbert Boyce protected them from the violence. That was no longer the case, so if brute force was the only option, would they be able to stomach it?

They still didn’t know how they were going to find the guy, even if they came up with a decent plan of attack. Then Leona seemed to come up with an idea. “We need help,” she began. “That’s been our problem this whole time. We keep trying to go out and find people one by one, and they’ve never been enough. They’ve also been very hard to track, especially since we’re getting so late in the timeline. From everything I’ve seen, time travelers seem to stick predominantly to the centuries surrounding the turn of the millennium. No one seems to know why—”

“I can kind of explain why,” Nerakali interrupted. “Well, I have a theory, because I have talked to people about it. Movies and the computer. People in the advanced age are more intelligent, and less superstitious. Mateo, when you first disappeared from the timestream for an entire year, your parents were very upset, but they didn’t freak out, and they didn’t try to exorcise a demon from your body when you came back. They figured it out, because humanity as a whole was capable of recognizing its own ignorance, and not attributing every good thing to God, and every bad thing to the devil. They wanted to understand, and that was enough to keep things sane until they did understand. Imagine going back to the seventeenth century, and explaining yourself. Why, a lot of people wouldn’t even be able to grasp the concept of time travel itself, so you’ve already lost before you began. Of course, that doesn’t mean time travelers can’t go back that far, or that they don’t. But a lot of it is uninteresting to them. They do it mostly to gain a rare perspective on history, and not everyone cares about that. There are just more things to do in the future.”

“That doesn’t explain why there are fewer travelers in the 24th century, and later,” Leona pointed out. “It’s even more advanced then.”

“Right, well now it’s too advanced. Now, it’s boring because everyone’s immortal, and life’s not as dangerous, so there aren’t as many people to save. A lot of entertainment exists in virtual constructs, which time travelers tend to shy away from, because again, it diminishes who they are. You control the laws of physics in a virtual world, which means anyone and everyone can have powers. No, it’s better to stay in the middle; not too early, and not too late. It’s a temporal goldilocks zone. If travelers were more aware that they were limiting themselves, they would probably deliberately stop doing it, but we’re mostly talking about the subconscious.”

“Okay, okay,” Leona said. She wasn’t upset about having been interrupted, and was genuinely interested in Nerakali’s tangent. It actually seemed helpful. “Well, regardless of how time travelers act normally, we know of one moment in history where a whole hell of a lot of them are going to be gathered, right? And though it’s happened in the past, it takes place in my future. I haven’t experienced it yet, but it is there that I can find help. I’ll have the pick of the litter.”

“You want to recruit from Mateo’s memorial service?” Nerakali questioned. She wasn’t reluctant, but she wasn’t quite on board with the idea either.

They looked over at Mateo, who had already experienced the memorial. He could give them insight into whether this was a good idea, if he were so inclined to divulge such information. “Uhh...careful, spoilers?”

“Is that a question?” Nerakali prodded.

“I don’t have a problem with him not being able to tell us,” Leona said. “My only problem now is I have no apparent way of getting to Dardius in 2263. Well, I guess Nerakali and I could jump back in time, and then use the Great Pyramid to jump there.”

“Great. It looks like you have it figured out.” Mateo released his Cassidy cuff, so when the other two started jumping through time, he wouldn’t be tethered to them. “Don’t worry, you’ll see me soon,” Mateo told Leona after she frowned at him.

“I’m worried about you being alone after I leave.”

“We’ll be gone and back in a blip,” Nerakali said. “And who knows how many friends we’ll have with us?”

“Go,” he said kindly. “It was a nice ceremony. I can tell you that it didn’t turn into a red wedding situation, or anything like that. It happened, and then it ended.”

“Were I you,” Leona said.

“Were I you,” he returned.

They both disappeared.

“God, I thought they’d never leave,” came a voice behind him.

Mateo wasn’t surprised to hear it. “I was worried they would stay too long, and you would get impatient.”

“No, that would screw up the timeline. I’m immortal. I have all the patience.”

Mateo turned around to face Erlendr Preston, who he met officially at the former’s memorial, just the other day. “Screwing up the timeline; isn’t that what you’re doing anyway?”

“You mean what we’re doing. And no, of course not; we’re fixing it.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“You agreed to the deal.”

“So, I can’t back out now?” Mateo asked.

“No, you can,” Erlendr assured him. “You can remove yourself from the equation, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. It just means you and Leona won’t be part of it.”

“I just want her to be safe,” Mateo argued. “You promised me that.”

“I can make her safe. I can’t get you away from the powers that be...but I can render them powerless. They’ll still be able to watch, but they won’t be able to change anything. No one will be able to change anything.”

“Then why are you changing things?” He still didn’t understand what Erlendr was going for here. Why was he sending the hundemarke all over time and space if he was ultimately planning to use the hundemarke against itself, and undo everything it had ever done? Arcadia seemed confident it made sense, but Mateo wasn’t much smarter than he was when this all started.

“I have to use the hundemarke a lot. I have to create so many fixed points in time, so when we finally screw with that, the universe will have no choice but to split in half.”

“Is it gonna be destroyed?”

Erlendr shook his head. “You can’t destroy a universe. This will work, Mateo. I’m going to create a world where time travel doesn’t exist, but I can’t do that without a paradox. The hundemarke, and the nonexistence of the hundemarke, have to be at profound odds with each other. If it’s not like that, one of the two realities will simply concede to the other, and collapse in on itself. If you want them both to exist at the same time, each one’s persistence must depend on the other’s. Does that make sense?”

Mateo didn’t start out with the intention of betraying Leona and Nerakali when he went to his memorial. He was hoping to get close to their enemy, so he could defeat him without involving either of them, or any of their other friends. Erlendr and Arcadia’s pitch was too compelling, though. He had long ago surrendered to the idea that there was no escape from the powers that be, but this was his opportunity to change that. Perhaps Leona would never forgive him for it, but at least she would be free. There was still one question, though. “Why did I get Bhulan to go to 2027? Your plan doesn’t work if she destroys the hundemarke.”

“It’s a contingency,” Erlendr explained. “If this doesn’t succeed, at least there’s a world where all those people I killed stay alive. I was only able to do this knowing it could all be undone, even if it’s not the way I wanted.”

“But it’s another paradox?”

“Yes, a third paradox. It’s not safe, I’ll tell you that.”

There was a brief pause in the conversation.

“So you’re sure Leona and Nerakali won’t be back until tomorrow?” Erlendr went on.

“Nope. I mean, yes, I’m sure. I told them to come back in 2275. I didn’t explain why, mostly because I don’t have a real explanation. I just needed to make sure you, Arcadia, and I have some time to discuss this in more detail. Where is she, by the way?”

“I think she’s here,” Erlendr replied cautiously, “watching us.”

“You can never tell with her,” Mateo noted.

“No. She’s, uh, wily.”

“She is coming, though, right? Whether she’s here now, or not, she’ll join the conversation soon?”

“Yeah, I’m sure she’s on her way.”

Arcadia suddenly appeared, but she wasn’t alone. Tons of water flowed out of her portal, and filled the room. It didn’t look like she had done this on purpose, because she was struggling to stop it. Back at the turn of the 22nd century, the Earthans were in the middle of a process to destroy all of their cities and towns, and replace them with arcological megastructures. Each tower was capable of housing tens of thousands of people, and though these towers were meant to be constructed in clusters, they still took up a whole hell of a lot less land than the metropolises of before. They were incredibly efficient, and were designed with emergency protocols in mind. Small ships were kept in vast hangars underneath the towers, which would allow the whole human race to evacuate within a single day, should a massive external threat come upon them, such as an alien invasion.

This wasn’t good enough for the humans, though. They wanted to be safer, and they wanted to be able to do it faster, so they repeated the process. For Project Airtight, they replaced every megastructure with a nearly identical one right next to it, and moved everyone over to it. Most of the look of the new structures remained the same. A time traveler from the past would have a hard time telling the difference just by looking at them. There was one extremely important difference, though. Instead of running drills every year that saw everyone rushing down to the bottom level, so they could enter their respective escape modules, and evacuate the planet a handful at a time, they just turned the whole thing into an escape pod. Each tower was a spaceship in its own right. Accounting for technical delays, and residents who were on safaris hundreds of miles away from the nearest arcity, the planet could now be evacuated within a few hours. This all meant the room the three of them were standing in now was completely sealed up. If someone didn’t figure out how to close the portal, or just teleport them out of here, they would drown. Even if they did escape themselves, what did that mean for the integrity of the room, or that of the rest of the ship?

Mateo looked around, but couldn’t lock eyes on his allies. He saw legs and heads thrashing about, but neither of them were making an effort to reach the surface. Had they both been knocked out? My God, this was up to him, and there was only one way out of it that he could think of. He reached into his bag, and pulled out his Cassidy cuff. Then he reinstalled it on his wrist, punched in the necessary sequence of buttons, and held his breath, because the water had reached the ceiling. He activated the instructions, causing Leona and Nerakali to appear, confused and scared. Now that he had the latter’s teleportation powers back, he prepared to use them. As he was swimming over to take hold of Arcadia’s body, Nerakali was swimming over to Erlendr’s, though there was too much chaos for him to know whether she knew who it was she was trying to rescue. Once they were all ready to go, Mateo teleported them all out of there, and dumped them onto the bank of a rushing river. He didn’t really do that on purpose, but water was kind of the only thing he could think about at the moment. Now the truth of his betrayal would have to come out. Oh, boy.

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