The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, May 2, 2056

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While still in 2053, the group took the AOC to Australia, where they encountered another person from an old timeline. Allen Tupper worked for a dark version of Horace Reaver, and did not enjoy a very happy life. It would seem Jupiter intended for him to stay in The Parallel, because he did not provide a transition window back to the main sequence. They decided to let him live on the ship while they jumped to the future, but this was a miscalculation, because the ship jumped right with them, bringing Allen along. Someone was waiting for them just outside which illuminated Jupiter’s logic, and gave further evidence that he was not as bad as he wanted others to believe.

Mateo hopped over, and gave Richard a bear hug. They didn’t know each other for too terribly long, but they weren’t simple passing acquaintances either. This was the Richard Parker, of the Life of Pi and Gulliver’s Travels tribulations.

“How did I get here?” Richard asked.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Mateo asked him.

“We were pushing the Rogue into the magic mirror. Reaver was helping us. But I got pulled through too. Then I saw a bright light, thought I was gonna die, but opened my eyes here. Well, it wasn’t exactly here. I was still on Easter Island, but it’s very different now. Some cops showed up, and brought me here to Australia.”

Mateo smiled, and stepped to the side. “I believe you’re here for him.” He gestured towards his soulmate. “Richard Parker, this is Allen Tupper. You’re meant to be together in every timeline.”

They approached each other cautiously, and shook hands. While Mateo knew these two were destined for each other, that didn’t mean something magical would spark between them, and form an unbreakable bond instantaneously. Developing a relationship would take time, assuming they even chose to try. This was not how normal people met each other, and that might be enough to prevent things from progressing. That was sad, but at least Richard survived the fateful day that Gilbert pulled him to his death. The question now was what they were going to do with their second chance.

Leona stepped forward, and looked at her cuff. “A transition window is coming from Bend, Oregon. I don’t know if it’s ingress, or egress, or if they’re two-way, or what. If you want to try to get back to the main sequence, that’s your first chance. There may be a second. I don’t know. I don’t even know which timeline you’ll end up in. We just don’t have enough information.”

Richard nodded, and politely asked, “what information do you have? The people here haven’t told me much, like it was all a big secret. This looks like my world, but it’s clearly not.”

“Yes, it does,” J.B. agreed. “If it’s as God-Ramses said, and the whole galaxy has been conquered, why does this look so much like the mid-twenty-first century in a regular timeline?”

“Oh, that’s right,” Leona said, “you weren’t there for that conversation. Holly Blue and I did manage to get someone here to talk. They have technology in this reality that’s more advanced than we’ve ever seen, but Earth is different. It’s like a sanctuary for people who want to live semi-normally. They’re still immortal, but they don’t teleport, and they don’t extract all of their energy from the sun with a Dyson swarm. They run on basic fusion reactors, and lead relatively simple lives. They don’t hate technology; they just don’t need it. This is not the only world like that, but it’s the world we’re gonna stay on for awhile, because the transitions will be letting out here until people in the main sequence start their own interstellar colonization process.”

“The point is,” Holly Blue jumped in, “Richard and Allen, you can either stay in this reality, or risk trying to go back. Based on what we know of your personal histories, there should be no reason you have to go back. You have both already done everything we know you do there. It just depends on what you want.”

“Is Horace Reaver in this reality?” Allen questioned.

“He may come through a later transition,” Leona answered, “but it will have to be a nice version of him. The one you know—the one who caused so much grief—died last year in an old timeline. There is no version of him living in the Parallel, however. There are no duplicates here. History is too wildly different to let anyone you know be born again.”

Sanaa wanted to put in her two cents, “you will have to start brand new lives. All of your financial debt has been wiped clean, and you won’t have to help your proverbial neighbor move, but you’ll also never find out how your favorite TV series ends, or see your families again.”

Richard and Allen looked at each other with the same unfamiliarity.

“To add more,” Sanaa continued, “it’s like Holly Blue said. History in the main sequence timelines thinks you’re done. Richard, you died, and Allen, you just sort...faded away into obscurity. I’m thinking now that’s not because you weren’t important, but because you came here. I can’t tell you what to do, but I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to stay here.”

“I don’t have any more family,” Allen said.

“I’m dead,” Richard gave his own answer in the same tone.

“You people are going to the future, though?” Allen asked.

“We have to,” Mateo replied. “You don’t. Just don’t be on this ship when midnight central hits, and you’ll be left behind.”

“If we do that,” Richard began, “if we stay here, when would our next chance to change our minds be. Theoretically.”

Mateo looked to Leona, who responded with, “twenty-two years. It’s our biggest jump yet, and I believe our maximum. I have not yet done all the math.”

Richard and Allen both nodded.

“I might as well stay.”

“Yeah, same.”

“All right.” Holly Blue clapped her hands. “We have to get to Bend. Do you want to come with, or stay in Australia, or go somewhere else. Literally anywhere in the galaxy is accessible.”

“Here’s fine for me,” Allen decided.

“Same,” Richard agreed.

“Good luck, boys,” Leona said.

Mateo gave his friend one last hug, and then boarded the AOC, never to see him again. Hopefully things would be better here.

“Has anyone ever been here before?” J.B. asked. “Who might be coming through the window?”

“I don’t know who would be doing it in 2056,” Holly Blue started to say, “but this was where my son trained with Darko.”

“Why did he come to Bend from Kansas City?” Mateo asked. “My once-brother was a time traveler, who could have met you anywhere.”

“Yes,” Holly blue concurred, “but Darko felt his students would be better off learning together, rather than one-on-one, and it saved him time. Bozhena and her family didn’t know anything about time travel back then, so we jumped here for his classes. Again, that was back at the start of the 21st century. That’s the only connection I know of. Perhaps some random Horvatinčic descendant we don’t know is coming, or someone else entirely.”

Images from the main sequence began to flicker around them. Mateo lifted his cuff to get a better look at it through the augmented reality feature. “Somehow I doubt that’s the case. Nothing is random when it comes to Jupiter Fury.”

The flickering stopped, leaving a young girl standing before them, holding a boomerang. How Australian of her. She was frightened of them, but not crying.

“Hey,” Sanaa said, approaching the girl slowly. “It’s okay. We’re not gonna hurt you.”

“Where am I?” the girl asked.

“Have you ever heard of time travel before?”

“Like Minutemen?”

Mateo perked up. “That’s a kids movie. I think I saw it, even though I was kind of old. Yes, like that. What year is it?”

“It should be 2008.

“That’s weird,” Leona said. “She should have come from 2056. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I followed my teacher, even though he told me not to. I can never find him when he’s not training us. I can’t ever find Declan either. I just wanted to know where they went every day. They separated, so I chose to follow Mr. Matic. I saw him pick up this boomerang, and then he disappeared.”

“Hmm.” This was obviously Young!Bozhena, but where was Darko? “You saw him disappear in front of you, but you weren’t touching him?” Holly Blue asked her.

“No,” Bozhena said. “He was, like, a swimming pool away.”

What the hell? “Then you picked up the boomerang, and it brought you here?” Leona continued the interview.

“Yeah.” Bozhena turned it over in her hands. “It’s some sort of time device.” That was not how it worked. The object itself could not control time. Darko just used it to slide up and down its history. This should not have worked. At all.

“Where was your teacher when you jumped to the future?”

Bozhena shrugged. “I dunno. I looked around for a few minutes. Then I ended up here. How do I go back home?”

Mateo shook his head. “If Darko’s gone, there’s no telling where he went. The other side of the window could be his home, or just a waypoint. He may never return. How do we get her back to the main sequence in 2008?”

“Aren’t these people time travelers?” J.B. offered.

“Backwards travel is illegal,” Sanaa reminded him.

“They should be able to make an exception for us,” J.B. figured.

“That would be nice,” Sanaa agreed. “Can your ship do it?”

“No,” Leona replied. “It’s not built for that either. It can’t even jump to the stars as fast as these people can. It still takes days to get anywhere.”

Mateo looked at his cuff. “I don’t see a window coming up.”

“There has to be a way to get her back,” Holly Blue pointed out. “Bozhena Horvatinčic goes on to have a very adventurous life. She is extremely vital to the timeline; more than most people could hope to achieve. And we have to make sure she gets back to where she belongs. We can’t just throw her in a window, and hope someone on the other side finds her.”

“Nobody’s throwing me through a window,” Bozhena said precociously.

“It’s just a metaphor,” Holly Blue clarified. “It’s what we call the portals we use to travel through time.” That wasn’t entirely the truth, but it wasn’t totally wrong either, and it was good enough as an explanation.

“I may have a solution,” Leona said, “but you’re not gonna like it.”

“Tell me,” Holly Blue demanded.

“Sanaa, could you please stay out here with Bozhena?”

“Gladly,” Sanaa said. She smiled at Bozhena. “What do kids your age like to do, Bo? Do you still play peek-a-boo?”

“How do you people know my name?”

The rest of the group climbed back into the AOC. Leona was adamant that they close the outer hatch behind them, as well as the airlock, and then climb all the way down to the engineering level, closing all hatches between them and the outside.

“I think I know what this is,” Holly Blue determined because of all those hatches. “You’re gonna try to get someone’s Cassidy cuffs off, but you don’t want them flying off and attaching themselves to poor Young!Slipstream’s wrists.”

“Not just anyone,” Leona revealed. “She needs a time traveler, and only one of us here is capable of that.”

“I would have to invent something,” Holly Blue argued. “It doesn’t matter a whole lot that I’ve already done it before. I kind of have to start from scratch every time. Recall that I’m not a real scientist.”

“Again, you’re the only one who can do it. When you removed your son’s cuffs, we discovered that they just wrapped themselves around someone new in response.” Leona lifted both her arms, and shook them around. “If I’m the one who tries to remove them, then it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“Maybe they’ll just reattach themselves to me,” Holly Blue guessed. “I would be the only choice, and perhaps Jupiter programmed them to never be without a host.”

“That’s not what happened when Ramses lost his,” Mateo reminded her. Sanaa had to pick them up on purpose. I think they can just be paperweights.”

Holly Blue wasn’t going to stop arguing. “How do we even know there’s going to be a transition window in 2008?”

“We don’t,” Leona said as she was reaching into her bag. “It’s irrelevant if you’re a time traveler, though.” She lifted the HG Goggles out of her bag. “This can help you find one. I have some ideas where you could look; ones that we didn’t use.”

Holly Blue didn’t want to agree to this plan, but she never wanted to be part of this pattern either, so they finally convinced her to stay behind, and get little Bozhena back to where she should be. She even thought she could erase her memories of the day, because she wasn’t destined to learn about this stuff until she was older. They said their goodbyes, and went their separate ways. The group would never know how well it went, or even if the plan worked at all. They would just have to have faith.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 21, 2015

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Something happened to Mateo’s mind when he went through the homeportal. He found himself in the middle of the cemetery he used to frequent with his friends. It was where he was for his birthday celebration in 2014 when he first started traveling through time. It worked. Holly Blue’s invention had worked, sending him all the way back to this moment. He didn’t know if this was his current timeline, or the one he had first come from. The former would put everyone he loved in danger, but the latter would separate him from all those people too, so it was a tradeoff. Or maybe it wasn’t an issue at all. His brain felt clear of all invaders. Only his own thoughts seemed to be present. Hopefully that meant that the event horizon of the portal mirror stripped him of his psychic stoways, sending them both into oblivion, instead of just leaving them back in 1993. Mateo took a deep breath and enjoyed his one moment of solace, certain that it wouldn’t last forever. He was so right about that.

“Hey,” came a voice behind him. It wasn’t The Gravedigger, Mr. Halifax. It wasn’t anyone he knew, or maybe it was indeed someone he knew, but he couldn’t recognize them, because he was all covered up. He looked like a superhero.

“Hello.”

The superhero stared at him for a moment. He was presumably studying him, but there was no way to know without being able to see his eyes. “Are you Mateo Matic?”

No point in lying. “Yes.”

“Really?” He didn’t sound convinced, like maybe it was a trick question, and Mateo was missing a key detail.

“Well, technically I hail from a reality that no longer exists, and my father is no longer my father, so... Maybe I’m not really a Matic anymore.”

“Are you still being possessed by the Prestons?”

He wanted to answer in the affirmative, but he didn’t realize they were knocking around in his brain until they revealed themselves, so he could make no guarantees they were gone now. “It’s possible.” He pointed to where he had just exited from the homeportal, which was no longer there. “I feel a lot better than I did before I came through the mirror, but maybe they’re just hiding in my subconscious, or something.”

“I appreciate the honesty.”

Mateo nodded. This was the superhero’s conversation. He wasn’t going to speak unless spoken to.

“Aren’t you curious who I am?”

Oo, a game. Well, the implication here was that it was someone he knew, or at least knew off. There were a lot of options, and it might have been easier to go through the process of elimination with his notepad, which he had left in 1993. Still, there were many people it couldn’t, or likely wouldn’t, be. He sounded male, but that might be a misdirect, or they didn’t adhere to traditional gender identity. No, this wasn’t the way to go. He needed to induce a guess, rather than deduce one, because there were just too many possibilities. Whose future did he know nothing about? Who did he know who might have grown up to become a superhero. Grown up, that’s it. This guy is a grownup, but he wasn’t always. He sounded about mid-twenties? He knew someone who should be such an age in 2014. “Declan Aberdeen?”

The superhero pulled off his mask. “Holy shit, is it that obvious?”

“I was right?” Damn, he was proud of himself.

“I didn’t think you knew me in the future,” Older!Declan said.

“I didn’t; I don’t. The first I heard of you was when we met in 1992, and I came straight here through the mirror. I really did just guess. I think your secret identity is generally safe.”

Declan removed his wetsuit hood, and stretched his neck. “I don’t know that I really need a secret identity. I mean, my mother’s a time traveler who always has an exit strategy, and I don’t care about anyone else, except for Bo, but she can take care of herself.”

Mateo kept nodding as if Declan were still talking. “Are you talking about Bozhena Horvatinčić?”

“Jesus. Everyone said you were an idiot, but you are just...”

Oh no. His face literally fell into a frown. Things weren’t as great as he thought. “Do you have—?” He sighed.

“Do I have what? Are you about to guess my credit card number?”

“Do you have, like, some gizmo that kills psychic invaders, or incapacitates them, or at least protects you from them?”

“Why?”

“Well, you just said it yourself, I’m an idiot. I don’t feel like one right now. I don’t feel like an entirely different person, but I don’t feel like me either. I think the Prestons are still in here.”

Declan started tapping on the cuff around his wrist.

“Whose powers does that give you?” Mateo asked.

“No one’s,” Declan answered. “It’s not a Cassidy cuff. It’s just a global teleporter. I’m taking you to a special jail.”

“Good.”

Declan took him by the arm, and activated his cuff.

They were suddenly in a basement that Mateo recognized. “This is the Fletcher House Bunker. Why are we here?”

“This isn’t Fletcher House yet,” he said as he was ushering him into a glass chamber in the middle of the floor. He was right. The bank vault door that was meant to lead to this section of the basement wasn’t there yet. It was just completely open. “It’s only 2015.”

“Fifteen?” Mateo asked. “It’s supposed to be March 21, 2014.”

“Yeah, mom was wondering about that. She spent a couple weeks trying to figure out why you didn’t show up when we expected you to. According to her research, in another timeline—the one just before yours, in fact—you were on a slightly different pattern. The first time you jumped through time was on your twenty-ninth birthday; not your twenty-eighth. Like she told you back in 1993, she never tested the homeportal, so her hypothesis was that it was a bit confused as to who you were, and where you belonged.”

“So now I’m one day off?” Mateo asked, kind of rhetorically. The old Mateo would be struggling to find the logic here, but Erlendr and Arcadia’s dormant minds were giving him an edge. The logic was just sitting there, waiting for him.

“Evidently.”

“Where’s Holly Blue now?”

“Living her life,” he explained. “She’s The Weaver; people need her. I don’t anymore.”

“Is she okay with you becoming a superhero? I mean, she obviously has to know. She built all your stuff, right?”

“She knew I was gonna do this anyway. I’ve been training with Darko Matic since I was a child. She designed my suit so that I would always be protected.”

“What’s your relationship with Slipstream?”

“Is this you asking, or the Prestons in your brain?”

“Oh, that’s a good question. I feel like it’s me, but...I suppose there’s no way to know. What I really want to ask is what happened to Leona, and our friends, but I definitely don’t want my stowaways to also know that. Is there anything you can do? Can you extract them?”

Declan sighed. “Mom built something for that, but...there’s a catch.”

“What?”

“She can’t, like, just make their consciousnesses evaporate. She tried, but that seems to be a technological impossibility. As you know, if she can’t invent something, it can’t be invented.”

“So the Prestons would need a new host, or hosts.”

“Yeah, and then we could trap ‘em in here, and kill ‘em. So someone would have to be sacrificed.”

Mateo nodded for a long time again. “Okay. Go for it.”

“What? I don’t have a host available. I said that she invented it; not that we’re gonna use it. That would be wrong.”

“I agree, which is why you’re not even gonna bother digging it out of storage. I’ll be the sacrifice.”

“You want me to kill you?”

“No, I want you to kill them. I’m just collateral damage.”

“I don’t kill, Mateo. Who do I look like, Oliver Queen?”

“Yeah, a little bit.”

He was taken aback. “That’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me.”

“Well, we could find someone with fewer reservations about killing. What about Kallias Bran. He lives in this time period, doesn’t he? He’s a cop, so I’m sure he’s killed before.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about. It wouldn’t matter anyway. I’m not afraid to kill someone myself. I don’t want to be responsible for someone’s death, so asking someone else to do it is only negligibly better.”

“I understand,” Mateo said honestly. “We can’t keep me in here forever, though. The Fletchers are scheduled to move here in four years.”

He sighed deeply. “Yeah, I know. This was always going to be a temporary solution. The contingency is zoicizing you.”

“Well, you should probably do that, if you think it’ll work, because I don’t know what that means, but I do know what that means, because the Prestons know what that means, so they’re definitely still in here somewhere.”

“Zoicization would only work if we were certain you wouldn’t be able to escape prehistoric times. Your body is still salmon, regardless of who’s inhabiting it, and the powers that be may just bring you back to the future.”

“Yeah, that happened in the other timeline when my once-father saved me, and took me back to dinosaur times. At the end of the day, I just went straight back to my regular pattern. It hasn’t been the case recently, though. I mean, several years ago, I spent a week on Dardius after my own funeral. Then I jumped from ’92 to ’93, instead of going back to 2280. The rules have never been consistent. The powers that be are just making this up as they go along.”

Declan consulted his wristband. “We’re approaching midnight. I’ll still own this house next year. We’ll discuss options then.” He admired his mother’s power dampening chamber. “You’re not going anywhere, and neither are your stowaways.” He started to walk away.

“Hey, thank you. I’m glad someone was waiting for me on the other side of the portal; someone who appreciates what needs to be done to protect others from what I might do to them.”

He nodded once, then walked away.

Arcadia appeared on the other side of the chamber, back up against the glass. No, she didn’t appear so much as it was like she was always there, but Mateo had just woken up to find her. He understood, though, that she wasn’t really there at all, but they were about to have a conversation, and this was the best way to do that.

“Hi,” he said politely.

“My dad’s pissed,” she told him.

“Dads usually like me.”

“I’m serious. This was not part of the plan. He didn’t have a contingency for this, and he never doesn’t have a contingency. He prides himself in always having twenty-five alternatives.”

“I bet. He didn’t take me into account. No one ever does. Being stupid does have its upsides.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think you’re stupid, Mateo. You don’t assume things. You’re always willing to listen to what the other person has to say. I mean when Declan showed up, looking menacing, you looked at him like it was normal. You didn’t antagonize him, or mock him, or question why he was the way he was. You immediately accepted him. That’s incredibly impressive, and no one gives you credit for that. I remember watching you before I fell from The Gallery. Even when you were so confused about what was happening to you, you never really let it get to you. You kept going, and trying to make the best of your new situation. That’s when I fell in love with you. It’s why I didn’t fight it when my father banished me from the only home I had ever known. I was excited to meet you, and people like you. I became a villain, because...”

“Because why?” Mateo prompted patiently.

“Because I didn’t find anyone else like you. That was a blow. That was hard to learn, and I never got over it. And I guess it turned me into the very thing I hated most about humans.”

“Why did you go back to him? Why are you working with Erlendr?”

She took a long time to respond. “I could say that he promised me he would undo my brother and sister’s deaths. I could claim that I just want to make a better reality. But the truth is that all you need to do to convince me to be on your side...is be a Preston. If Zeferino showed up tomorrow with a new evil plan, I would switch sides again. I’m just not good on my own.”

Mateo wanted Arcadia to see that she hadn’t been wrong about him. He stepped over, and lifted her from the floor. This wasn’t really happening, but it felt real to both of them. He took her into a psychic hug. “You don’t need a Preston to not be alone.”

“That’s sweet,” came a voice from outside the glass chamber.

They released each other, and looked out to find Leona. She was wearing round steampunk goggles. Can you see me?” Arcadia asked.

“HG Goggles. They let me see things like this, yes.”

“I’m sorry, Leona.”

“I am too,” Arcadia added sincerely.

“I understand what’s wrong with you now.” She reached into her bag and pulled out the Insulator of Life. “So let’s fix it.”

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Microstory 1142: Tick Tock

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Byron Minett, a.k.a Tick Tock, hated making mistakes, and according to everyone around him, he literally stopped making them when he was eleven. It was around this time that he developed the ability to undo the immediate past. He couldn’t travel too far back in time, but it was usually enough to correct what he needed to. He wouldn’t just suddenly jump back to an earlier point in time. He would actually watch the recent scene play in reverse, until he reached his chosen destination, and pushed play on reality. The further back he tried to reverse, the harder it was on his mind, though, so he tried to stay within a day. Others had this same ability, but could only have on do-over. That is, one of their time jumps could not overlap with another time jump. He could try an occurrence over and over again, until he felt he had it right. Byron used his power all the time, and it became so second nature, that he sometimes didn’t even notice it happening. If something didn’t go well, he would just give it another go, and hardly remember the original timeline. He quickly became the best student in every one of his classes, sometimes spending the equivalent of weeks on a single school day. His teachers were astonished at how intuitive the topics seemed to be for him, including his judo instructor. As you might imagine, this life started getting a little boring. Sure, it still took him about as long to master something as it would anyone else, but most of the time, the choices he made had no consequences. Theoretically, he wouldn’t be able to undo his own death, and he had never tried to reverse more than two weeks, but everything else was fair game. One thing a person like that can realize is that everyone has their limits. No matter how many times he retried a foot race, he couldn’t change his finishing position. He signed up for the City Frenzy thinking that he would be able to find his way to first place, but it never worked out. Sure, he could steal a few seconds here and there if he memorized how the traffic lights were going to change, but nothing major. He just wasn’t fast enough, and no matter how hard he worked at it, that wasn’t going to get significantly better. Every time he reversed time, his body went back to its state in that moment, so his power didn’t help him build muscle, or anything. There were still only twenty-four hours in a day. In the end, he decided to accept this reality, because his life was still easier than most, and there were plenty of other, more useful, applications.

Microstory 1132: Feingold

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Liam Fine’s family was living in Chicago, Illinois when he was born. They moved to the Kansas City area when he was six years old, to get a fresh start. As part of this new beginning, Liam’s parents enrolled him in karate, which he took a great liking to. Years later, the City Frenzy became a thing, and Liam decided he wanted in on the action, even though he had never been much of a runner. He wasn’t quite old enough yet, but that was okay, because organizers were still working out the kinks. It’s widely accepted that its third year—which was Liam and Serkan’s first—was when the event really took off. Liam realized early on that there was going to be a lot of publicity for it, and what happened then could define his identity for years to come. He started asking for people to call him Feingold, and that’s the name he used to register for the race. It’s not that Liam didn’t like his birth name, but it was too common. He wanted to stand out as a competitor, and people who go by one name get noticed. He still wanted to honor his Jewish heritage, and not just come up with something random. The historical records are a little fuzzy, but there was evidence to suggest that his family’s name used to be Feingold, so it just seemed to fit perfectly. The race, for him didn’t go well, but that wasn’t much of a surprise. He liked to compete against others more than he liked winning. The thrill of testing his own limits is what kept him going. He continued to try his best year after year, because quitting just wasn’t in his DNA. In his second year, he met a fellow racer who would soon become his best friend. Tick Tock was involved with judo, so they already had discipline and martial arts in common. Neither of them ever won Frenzy, but they were instrumental in transforming the organization into something grander. With their guidance, the Frenzy became more than just this one annual event. A martial arts version of it was created, and soon, other variations came about. Though this might be Feingold’s public legacy, it is only a small part of everything that he would ultimately for the world. And it all started when he found out Tick Tock chose his own name for a very specific reason.

Microstory 779: Duck

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My name is Cora Graves, and I have one question for you. Have you ever wanted to be a duck? It may sound like an absurd question, but it’s a perfect example to illustrate my point. Ducks are magnificent, and versatile creatures. They can fly, they can swim on the surface, or underwater, and they can walk (read: waddle) on land. When making its nest, a mother-to-be duck will pluck out her own feathers, instead of just using material she finds around. Have you ever thought about pulling out your hair and making a crib? Now you’re all wondering, why am I even bringing this up? I want you take a look at this...can we zoom in on my hand? This is my personal assistant, Tilina. Say hello, Tilina. Tilina is presently about six deam tall, but she didn’t start out this way. She was born as an average-sized human, but we transferred her consciousness to this substrate, which we are calling her anchor. I know, she looks a hell of a lot like a fairy, and that’s for good reason. We modeled this product on the fairies, because they had the right idea about shrinking. This is what brings us back down to my question about becoming a duck. With an anchor, you could do exactly that, or you could become anything else you can imagine. As long as we have the necessary parameters, we can build you virtually any new body, and insert you into it via your anchor. No longer will you need these standard human forms. You will be the anchor, and the anchor will let you become anything else. Well...anything larger than the anchor, that is. We could upload your consciousness into a pea-sized object, but then you would have to rely on someone else to place you into any new form. Should something go wrong, forcing you to abandon your current form, you’re gonna want to be able to fly away and find another one, so the fairy form is the best option for an anchor; not too large, not too small, for most forms. Unless you wanna be a bug. I want to make it clear that you would not be driving your form, using your anchor’s motor components. Once the anchor is inserted, your consciousness will be integrated into the neural construct, allowing you to feel yourself as that animal, mythological creature, or hey, maybe even an airplane, if you’d like. Ladies and gentlemen, we were born with limits. We’re too slow, too short, too grounded. I’m here to tell you that those constraints no longer exist. Now you can realize your dreams, and become literally anything you want, be that the mighty coleobeast, or the humble duck.

Microstory 778: Pothook

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There are several moves in boxing, most of which were created during the invention of the sport itself, for they were really just formalizations of moves that already existed for real hand-to-hand combat. Traditionally, boxing has been a male sport, with women generally gravitating towards the various forms of martial arts. One notable boxer was a woman named Siveda Gualerni. She was large and muscular, weighing into bargeweight when she was only nineteen years old. What she lacked in speed, she made up for in power, of course. She was nearly impossible to knock down. One of her most common moves was to just let the other boxer hit her as many times as they could before they were too tired to take much of a beating back. During one match, however, she discovered this tactic would not work. She was up against former military officer, Sergei ‘Deadvelvet’ Fannen, who was known for being able to hit pressure points just so. Since they were participating in a Mystery Showdown, she didn’t know they would be competing against each other until the very last minute, which meant she didn’t have enough time to strategize a plan. She tried to fight like she normally did, but this was proving unwise, so she broke formation, and observed a regular stance. Still, it was only a matter of time before Deadvelvet found the right series of pressure punches, and took her out. In a desperate move, Gualerni tried to send him a left hook, but lost her balance in the middle of it, and her right hand ended up on the other side of his head as her instincts were just trying to keep her upright. The result was a devastating blow to both of Deadvelvet’s temples and ears that had terrible repercussions for his inner ear. For the next several moments, he was unable to maintain his balance, which gave Gualerni the edge she needed to knock him down for the count. The audience and announcers were shocked, not that she had won, but that she had done so in such an unorthodox manner, using a move no one had seen before. Reporters would later refer to this as the pothook, suggestive of her holding pot on the other side of the opponent’s head. The International Boxing Council would come to refer to it as a violation after Deadvelvet was shown to have permanent hearing loss. Ashamed of what she had done, Gualerni quit boxing that week, and started pursuing a career in nursing, but she would always be remembered as the inventor of the pothook; the only move in history to be used once before being deemed foul, except for that time a boxer bit another’s ear off.

Microstory 754: Pedro

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Pedro Gomes was born with a quite unusual medical condition; one that made his daily life extremely unpleasant. He suffered from completely uncontrollable internal vibrations during all waking hours. Lying down to rest seemed to lessen his symptoms enough to allow him to fall asleep, but anyone who placed their hand upon his skin while he was in bed would still feel the vibrations. This came with other problems, including numbness and weakness, dizziness and vertigo, and difficult visual focus. Basically nothing around him would stand still well enough for him to get a clear picture of it. At times, these vibrations would rise to the surface, and he would demonstrate external tremors, but often these would be done on purpose. Sometimes the best way to relieve the pain from his vibration was to keep moving around, be that jumping, swinging, or even rolling on the floor. His family gave him the nickname of Holy Roller, partly out of affection, partly out of insensitivity. As he grew up, though, he decide to adopt this moniker, but he would not maintain its attachment to his true identity. He ended up joining a group of supervillains who were purporting themselves to be superheroes. Upon leveling through the ranks enough to learn the truth behind this organization, Pedro started secretly fighting back, aligning himself with a small group of rebels who too knew what they had really signed up for. He worked under the leadership of Stuntwoman, who was highly trained in not only stunt work, but also martial arts. She wore a flame resistant suit that burned to the touch, but only to her opponents. She kept with her sidegliders, a parachute, and landing padding that softened her falls. Stuntwoman’s cousin, Bolster wore special boots that could spring her high into the air. Her cousin taught her some hand-to-hand combat, as did her mentor, whose intentions were not so honorable. As for Pedro, a.k.a. Holy Roller, he learned to focus his body’s vibrations to use them against others. Though he couldn’t be rid of them entirely, he could draw the vibrations to a single point, say his fist, and expel the force against enemy combatants. Of course, he wore hybrid roller skating boots, with wheels that could descend, or retract, as needed. An associate of theirs later built for him a poison dart gun that resembled a snake to cement his flare identity. Pedro never had an easy life, even after discovering his calling as a champion of justice, but he owned his weaknesses, transformed them into strengths, and became a feared name in the criminal underworld.