The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 14, 2496

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“Anything?” Mateo asked.

“Nothing,” Leona replied.

“Where could they possibly be?” he went on. “You need at least three people to make the new slingdrives work, if it even works at all.”

“Maybe he was wrong about it,” Olimpia offered. “Maybe it works with only two.”

“We should still be able to detect them,” Leona reasoned, “wherever and whenever they are.”

“Unless they’re shrouded in dark particles,” Mateo pointed out.

“Yeah, that’s my hypothesis,” Leona agreed, “but Ramses’ systems are being finicky with me. I technically have access, but it’s...argh!” She didn’t want to have to explain the complexities of it all, and she didn’t have to.

“If it is dark particles, you know who we can call,” Angela said.

“Won’t work,” Marie countered as she was walking back in from the other room. “Buddy was here. He disappeared with them.”

“How do you know?” Leona questioned. “The surveillance was garbled.”

“I didn’t look at the footage from the lab. I looked at the recordings from the drone in Dome 216.” She lifted her hands, and projected a hologram of the video recordings from Dome 216 last year. They could see Buddy standing there with Romana and Ramses. There was no sound, and it wasn’t detailed enough to read their lips, but their body language appeared nonconfrontational. None of the others remembered experiencing angry emotions from this moment, though there was some agitation leading up to it, if they were remembering correctly. As the three of them were standing there in the desert, the dark particle creature appeared out of nowhere, and seemingly tried to kill Buddy. It kind of looked like Romana was trying to save him, further reenforcing the idea that they were not at odds at this moment. Marie closed the hologram with a drop of her hands after the creature grabbed Romana and disappeared, and the other two left, presumably to rescue her.

“You gotta fix that machi—” Mateo began.

“I know,” Leona interrupted. Then she sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“I know that you love her too,” Mateo acknowledged. “I’m just sick of worrying about her.”

“I don’t think that ever goes away,” Olimpia said.

“There’s another possible way to find her,” Angela began. “Maybe we don’t need Buddy. Ramses has given us all we need.”

“You wanna use the tandem slingdrives, and hope that they take us where we’re trying to go, even though we don’t know where exactly that is,” Leona guessed.

“If it doesn’t work, we’ll try again,” Angela reasoned. “If we can’t navigate back here for another attempt, it probably means that it never mattered if we knew where they were, because they’re probably out of range, and the tandem slingdrives don’t work right.”

Leona sighed, and looked back over to the screen. The computer was trying to find them just as it had when Buddy abducted Romana years ago. “I don’t know if this thing is good enough. That seems to be an entire person made out of dark particles. It could be orders of magnitude more powerful than the stasis field that Buddy put Romana in before.”

“Is that a yes?” Angela asked.

“I would have preferred to test the tandem slingdrives in a more controlled situation, but you make a good point that that doesn’t really exist. The whole purpose of these things is to push the boundaries of intergalactic travel. If we get lost, that was always going to be the result, and we’ll be no further from locating Rambo and Romana than we are now.”

“The great thing about these suits he made for us, we’re never not ready to go.” Mateo mused.

Olimpia interlocked her arm with his. “As long as we have each other.”

“They could be in a harsh environment,” Leona warned. “Suit up.”

Mateo released his emergent nanites, and commanded them to turn mostly green. He now looked strikingly like Green Arrow. When Leona looked at him funny, he shrugged and said, “she loved this show.”

“She had time to watch it?” Leona questioned.

Marie looked at the time readout on her interface. “Eleven, ten, nine...”

Everyone shut themselves up safe in vacuum mode, though Mateo kept the superhero costume on over it to keep things light. If he didn’t laugh, he would cry. No one lost track of their children as many times as he had. Put a bell on her, he thought to himself. Well, she had a bell. A psychic bonding bell, which should always let them know where the other one was. These dark particles were incredibly frustrating, and how funny it should be that they would come into their lives around the time the quantum connection was too. Their fates were sealed, whether they were aware of it or not.

Marie finished counting down, and they all slung away, concentrating on nothing but Ramses and Romana’s location. It looked like they were still in the lab, but it was very different. It was a hell of a lot darker, and these flashlights that looked like forearm weapons weren’t doing them much good. They couldn’t make out any details in the room around them, it just had the vague shape of everything back home. The right angles of the tables, desks, and chairs; the curve of the gestational pods in the corner; the height of the ceiling. They were here, but not here, kind of like the Upside Down. Everything was just a shadow of its true self, nothing more than a slight hint of its presence. Shadows, really. They could call this a shadow realm. It was very much like that in more ways than one. This was seemingly where the dark particles lived. They were swarming all around them, not paying the humans much attention, but clearly aware of their sudden appearance, however complex their intelligence might be.

Something was coming at them from the darkness. It was moving steadily, and maybe a little threateningly, but not too quickly. Before it reached them, it split in two. Shortly after that, they could be recognized as people; people wearing EmergentSuits. It was Ramses and Romana. Nice, it worked. Ramses took Mateo by the hand. He was already holding Romana’s. She took Marie’s, and together with everyone else, they completed the circle. With nothing more than a sense of homesickness, and no words exchanged, they reactivated the tandem slingdrives, and left this place as quickly as they had come. They were back in the lab; the real lab, complete with light and solid objects.

Ramses collapsed his helmet, and fell to his knees, sliding on the floor a few centimeters. At first, they thought he was hurt, but he was positively ecstatic. He was laughing and crying simultaneously, holding his arms up and to the side like he had just won Olympic gold, panting, both relieved and proud. No one had a clue what was going on. Romana was just as perplexed as the rest. “Oh my God. Yes! Yes! That’s it! I finally figured it out! I saw it! Me! Well, Romana and I, but I understand it. Whew!” he whooped.

“What happened in there?” Mateo asked his daughter.

“I don’t really know,” she replied. “We couldn’t talk, but he was super excited the whole time. He kept tapping on the interface modules of his suit. I’m guessing he was taking readings, but who knows?”

Ramses was still laughing. “Yeah. I was taking readings, all right.” He stood up, all giddy and cheerful. “I know what it is. I know what it all is.” He squealed. “I have to write it down.” He rushed to find the nearest device.

“Care to share with the class?” Leona asked.

“Yes, class first. Then the paper.” He clapped, then started gesturing with his hands as he prepared his remarks. “Neutrinos.”

“Neutrinos?” Leona echoed. “Are you saying that that’s what the dark particles are?” She didn’t seem to believe him. She was the only one who was following him even remotely.

“Yes.” Oh, Ramses was still so jazzed about this whole thing, whatever it was.

“That doesn’t make any sense. They’re subatomic particles. You can’t see them.”

“I was wrong,” Ramses went on. He kept talking with his hands. “I thought that they were lifeforms, which were replicating, but that’s not it. They don’t breed, they congregate. They form masses. They’re like...snowflakes; water adhering to a mote of dust, and clumping together until it becomes too heavy to stay up.”

“So, a dark particle isn’t a neutrino. It’s billions of neutrinos.”

“Exactly. But not like water forming on a mote of dust—”

“You literally just said that that’s what it’s like,” Angela reminded him.

“I know, but not really,” Ramses insisted. “It’s more like...a whole bunch of neutrinos who happen to be on the same trajectory as each other. They emit some kind of energy. Individually, it’s negligible, but combined, we can actually see it. We perceive it. It’s dark, because neutrinos don’t interact with photons very well either, but these bursts of energy, firing in rapid succession, do occasionally repel light like a solid object would. Again, it appears dark, because it’s a minuscule amount, but it is technically visible. For fractions of a second, but as I said, when they get close enough to each other, these bursts are happening all the time. Normally, you don’t see it, because we can’t see the neutrino dimension, but Buddy can...call them forth.” He pointed while adding, “and so can Romana.”

He was talking real fast, but no one bothered to ask him to slow down, because they didn’t understand him either way. Except for Leona. She knew what he was saying, she just  couldn’t believe it. She crossed her arms, but didn’t say anything else for now.

“So, they’re not alive?” Romana asked.

“No, as I said, I was wrong. They just seemed to be that way, because baryonic matter freaks them out. No, that’s personifying them again. They’re not used to baryonic matter, because they usually pass right through it, but in these clumps, and with some sort of weird charge that Buddy can artificially generate, they do find themselves running into us.”

“That doesn’t make any sense either,” Leona pointed out. “The particles move around people. That requires some level of sentience.”

“Yeah, I was thinking about that. I don’t think they’re diverting with any semblance of intent. I think as soon as this energy comes into contact with normal matter, they split off into different directions, ultimately colliding with other clusters, and forming new temporary trajectory masses. It only looks to us like they’re swarming, because we can’t effectively track one clump at a time. They don’t have to hit us directly, because a sufficiently concentrated layer of air is all around us at all times. To us, it’s meaningless, but it’s like a wall to them. I thought they were disappearing and reappearing, and I was sort of right. They don’t hold together for very long, but they do form clumps constantly during this charged condition. I would really love to get my hands on Buddy, and see how he does it. I may have learned all I can from Romana.”

“Where is Buddy, by the way?” Olimpia asked. “We saw you with him on the drone cam in Dome 216.”

Ramses brushed it off. “Oh, I dunno, we lost him in there. He could still be trapped for all I know, or he knew exactly how to escape. I’m sure he’ll show up again at some point.”

“Hold on,” Leona said, still unconvinced. “Where were we? What was that place? The neutrino dimension? That’s where they live? Why? Seems random.”

“It’s not,” Ramses continued his lesson. “Let’s say you have a vacuum-sealed room with two doors. There’s a screen door, and then the fully sealed door. When you open the sealing door, only the screen door remains, which allows the air to rush through the screen, and into the room. That’s because nature abhors a vacuum. As you know, neutrinos don’t interact with electromagnetism, or the strong nuclear force. The dimensional barrier is apparently made up of one or both of these, which is why the neutrinos pass into it. It’s just like entropy, where a state of order naturally flows into a state of disorder. It wasn’t made for neutrinos specifically, but those are the particles that go into it, because nothing can stop them. And they don’t usually come back out, because there’s so much space in there.”

Romana tapped on her arm interface. “Yeah, that was my interpretation too.” She lifted her arm up. “That’s what it says here, neutrino clumps.”

Mateo laughed. “You’re adorable. Like a young me.”

“Why are you dressed like Green Arrow?” she asked.

“Why aren’t you dressed like Speedy?”

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Microstory 2280: Peaks and Valleys

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I’m back home, and feeling much better. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still in a lot of pain, and it’s difficult to move around, but this is a far superior environment. Man, I feel like I’m so out of touch these days, bragging about my large house, and private medical team. I never wanted to become this, but you have to admit, healthcare is better without all those other sick people. Jesus, what the hell! Why did I just say that? And why am I not deleting, and starting over with a more relatable tone? It would be really nice if this were how everyone lived. Or would it? How would that even work? Everyone’s rich, so they can hire a private home staff, but then who are these home staffers? This sounds like a caste system. So maybe there’s a happy medium between traditional healthcare, and private. I suppose things could get better and more comfortable for more people by improving the ratio. Fewer patients per medical professional would make it easier for each one to focus, and not be spread so thin. Maybe they could work shorter shifts, and have a better work-life balance too. Is that what I should do? Should I be concentrating all my money on healthcare reform? I’ve always thought that I should be distributing it across a number of causes, relatively evenly, but I’ve heard that it’s more productive in the long run if everyone chooses one or two causes to be passionate about. I dunno, I’ll need to see some numbers. In the meantime, despite my circumstances, things are looking up today. Watch, now people will start taking bets when the next bad thing will happen to me, and maybe what it will be. That’s how it always seems to go. Peaks and valleys. Peaks and valleys. Anyway, I’m going to put all that out of my mind, and just try to live in the moment. Nobody’s rethinking their charitable contributions today. Best not to make any big decisions while you’re on drugs, right?

Microstory 2057: Precision of Language

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The interview went about as well as it could. He didn’t seem to have a problem with the fact that I didn’t have a résumé. I spent so much time traveling the bulk, and dealing with all sorts of wildly different people, I almost forgot how unusual I am. I’m neurodivergent, which doesn’t mean much in the extreme diversity of the multiverse, but it matters here. The reason I’ve been saying this planet is boring is not just because the headlines are pussycat tame compared to the kind I’m used to, but people seem to be mostly humorless too. At least when people back home would make absolutely dreadful approximations of jokes, I knew that they were trying. They wanted to be funny, they just weren’t very good at it. Metaphor, simile, analogy, hyperbole; these all go over these people’s heads. By that I mean, you failed to comprehend it, not that an object moved over your physical head. I told the interviewer that I’ve been to a thousand parks in my day, and he wanted to see my log of them, which he assumed I would need in order to come to such a precise figure. He didn’t understand that I didn’t mean it literally. I’ve just been to a lot, but probably still under a hundred, I don’t know. When I explained as much, he understood, so these people are not like Drax in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. They don’t have to take things literally, but it’s not intuitive for them to pick up on things like sarcasm and emotional nuance, and they have to think about it for a moment once you clarify. Fortunately, they also don’t seem perturbed about it, like the society in The Giver, which emphasizes something called precision of language. Listen to me, making pop culture references that you don’t get, because these stories don’t exist here. I guess that’s what I’ll do with my time. You do have fiction here, but it’s got to be different than the kind in other worlds if they’re more about just telling the story, and less about the poetry. Hopefully I hear back from the garden soon. I’m ready to get my hands dirty. Just so you understand, getting one’s hands dirty is an idiomatic expression that usually means being able to put in the work to accomplish something, rather than just sitting by and letting others do it. It can sometimes mean doing something bad, but it doesn’t have to. In my case, it’s to be taken seriously, though, so don’t worry. Gardening is dirty work.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 202,398

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Once Mateo was back up to full strength, he teleported himself and Curtis back to Theia, or maybe for the first time for the latter. Curtis can’t remember how he got in the pod, and wasn’t aware that he was in a parallel reality until being told. Danica’s little robots investigated the nature of his suspended animation pod, but found no answers from it. It was generic, and didn’t contain any helpful information in its memory; not even the date of manufacturing, or the name of the manufacturer. They couldn’t even tell how long it’s been active, or how long Curtis was in it, though probably not for too long, because he has not noticeably aged since the last time he saw himself.

He was given a new pod, but this time through temporal stasis. Not only that, but he was sharing a stasis chamber with Cheyenne and Abigail. With Bhulan gone, it’s three against three, against Mateo, who is all alone in his own pod. Actually, he’s not technically alone. The past version of himself is still in the pod next to him. He suspects that Alt!Mateo is awakened every once in a while as well, but it doesn’t really matter, because his memories will ultimately be erased when he finally makes it back to the future. Then, after months of continuing to try to figure out what the hell is going on, he’ll find himself back in the same time period, fighting with Danica, not being trusted, and being pretty much completely alone. That is when the loop closes. Time, right?

It’s Year 202,398, according to some random calendar that evidently started when Danica first came here from her own initial time period. It did not begin when the solar system began, because there is no such date. The coalescence of celestial bodies is a drawn out process, taking place over the thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of years, depending on how specific you get when discussing it. Or so says Tamerlane Pryce, who is now the only person who will talk to him. Cheyenne and Abigail don’t want to associate themselves with the outcast for fear of being ostracized as well. Funny, they don’t seem bothered by Tamerlane’s continued participation, but probably because he outranks nearly everyone, so their personal feelings regarding him probably feel rather irrelevant.

Mateo’s pod opens automatically. “Mateo Matic, please come to the master sitting room. Mateo to the master sitting room,” Constance says, in a much more robotic tone than usual.

This can’t be good. Mateo does as instructed, and goes to the master sitting room, where everyone else is already there, waiting. It looks like an intervention at first, but upon closer examination, Mateo starts to feel like no one wants to be here and most of them don’t exactly know why. Even Danica seems nervous, and every version of her always appears so confident and capable. “This looks like a party,” he jokes, instantly regretting trying to lighten the mood.

“Mateo, please sit down. I would like to begin,” Danica asks, almost politely.

He wants to ask what this is all about, but he’s even more convinced now that this isn’t about him. It’s Dani’s show.

She waits another moment after they’re all settled. “For those of you who it’s your first time for one of these, allow me to explain. Every time all four of us are awake simultaneously, we hold at least one meeting. We call them conferences. We discuss any issues that we don’t all know about yet, any plans for the future, and other such stuff. They’re usually not very long, but this will change in the future, once life starts roaming the planet. I cannot wait to talk about all the dinosaurs I saw during a surface excursion, but I’m worried that I won’t have anyone to tell when that actually comes to pass. That’s why we’re here today. I can’t believe I’m holding one of these without Bhulan, or with all of you, but we are facing a crisis, and I don’t know what else to do. Not all of you know why she’s gone, or where she went, but you all know that it’s Tamerlane Pryce’s fault, as well as Mateo Matic’s.”

They all awkwardly try to avoid making eye contact with the accused.

Danica goes on, “I’m not here to get angry, or to have a fight. I want to come up with a solution. I would like to hear from everyone, and since not all of you have the whole story—especially not our newest guest, Curtis—I’ll go over it before we begin that discussion. Please hold all of your questions until the end.” She starts by explaining the basics of the Constant. She breaks her no questions until the end rule for Cheyenne, who has been living here for a good amount of time, and still doesn’t know much about the place. In her reality, temporal manipulation is ubiquitous, but as far as she knows, this facility doesn’t exist there, and the history is completely different. She refuses to give too much detail about it herself, which is fine, especially for now, since this is about something else.

As Danica moves on to talk more on the specifics of the issue at hand, both Tamerlane and Mateo speak up to defend their own positions. Asier says a few words as well, ever worried that the discussion will turn hostile and unproductive. By the time they’re all done, no one has any questions...except for Danica, who opens the floor to anyone with any idea of how to fix this.

Cheyenne timidly raises her hand. “If the tracking device is in the future, why don’t you go to the future, and catch it there?”

“You want us to solve a time travel problem with more time travel?” Danica asks. “That’s now how we do things around here. That goes against our very principles.”

“With all due respect, your rule has already been broken,” Curtis submits. “Back where I’m from, if a vehicle driver breaks the law by driving faster than the speed limit, the only way a law-abiding law enforcement officer can effectively get them to stop doing that is by breaking the law themselves, and driving a little faster.”

“Actually, they’ve done studies,” Asier counters, “and researchers have concluded that police chases are one of the least effective means of catching criminals. Identifying them, and pursuing them later, has been proven to be safer for the community. Police chases usually only result in the target driving even faster than they would if they were just in a hurry, or on a joyride.”

“What kind of cop are you, you don’t like police chases?”

“A corporal,” Asier replies honestly.

“We’re getting lost in the metaphor. I need real ideas. Now, I’m not one hundred percent opposed to a brief mission using the time machine, but I’m going to need a whole lot more to be convinced. I don’t want to fight fire with fire.”

“Actually, firefighters do fight fire with fire,” Mateo says. “They burn the brush in the path of an oncoming wildfire before it can reach it, so there’s nothing left to catch.”

“What did I say about getting lost in the metaphors?” Danica questions.

“How do you know where Bhulan is if you can’t find her?” Abigail jumps in.

“Well, that’s where Mateo put her,” Danice replies.

Tamerlane looks uncomfortable.

“Is that what he said?” Abigail pushes.

“Yes, because that’s what happened,” Mateo claims. “I betrayed Danica’s trust, but I didn’t lie to her about it after the fact.”

Abigail looks to Danica for confirmation, who gives it. “Okay well, maybe he was mistaken. Maybe he only thought he transported Bhulan out to the middle of space.”

“I saw her face in the little window,” Mateo contends.

Abigail shrugs. “That can easily be faked with a hologram. I would pretend to be asleep in bed as a child when I snuck out of the house to pet the liefersevims.”

Danica studies Tamerlane’s face to see if he gives anything away. She doesn’t see any proof. Mateo is staying out of it. If this is true, he’s a victim too, so maybe that will be enough for her to cool off on him. Danica turns back to face Abigail. “What makes you think he’s lying?”

“Your probes never found her,” Abigail points out, “in thousands of years. Don’t you think that’s odd? I know your resources are limited, but that’s a long-ass time, and you did find someone, just not who you were looking for. I mean, it’s not even a stasis pod, it’s regular suspended animation, which means he couldn’t have been out there long, which means someone would have had to put him that far away, and his power signature would be lower than the ones we’re using. Trust me, my father is an expert on all things pods. It’s his whole thing.” She’s talking about a different Tamerlane Pryce.

“Well, where do you think she would be, if not out there? I searched the whole facility, including rooms that Tamerlane doesn’t even know about—”

“Wait, why doesn’t he know about them?” Abigail interrupts. “Could there be rooms that you don’t know about? Again, ten thousand years is a long time. You could build something in secret if you wanted to while everyone else was frozen.”

Danica looks to Tamerlane again. “Is there any truth to her hypothesis?”

“I promise you that I did not build any structures, or extra rooms, in secret.”

“Okay,” Danica begins, “but what she’s saying sounds reasonable. It is weird that we never found her, and also weird—now that I think about it—that you may have tried to hide her like that, knowing that I would have 50,000 years to remedy the situation.”

“Fine.” Tamerlane faces Mateo. “I’m sorry I lied, and risked your life in the vacuum of space. The stasis pod you threw out there was completely unoccupied. That’s just how heavy they are empty.” He looks at Danica. “I didn’t send Bhulan’s tracker into the future. I sent Bhulan. She’ll be back in 40,000 years, just to be on the safe side.”

“Why do all this?” Danica asks. “Why the ruse?”

“I was trying to keep you busy,” Tamerlane admits. “Curtis was a part of that too. He showed up 200,000 years ago via Westfall. I erased his memory, put him in his own pod, and kept him on ice for an occasion such as this. Both the Omega Gyroscope, and the hundemarke, are too dangerous. They cannot be trusted to stupid humans.”

“Bad logic,” Danica argues. “By your own admission, you’re not competent enough to decide what to do with the objects, yet you unilaterally decided to take that power from everyone.” She holds up her hand to stop him when he tries to respond. “Now that I know the truth, this is no longer an acceptable topic for a group conference. We will continue in private, along with Asier. Mateo, I’m sorry for everything you’ve gone through. I shouldn’t have forced you into the vacuum again. I’m the asshole.”

“I’m grateful that he came for me,” Curtis says.

“I too am grateful that I did that,” Mateo agrees. Curtis is good people.

“Anyway...” Danica says with a disappointed sigh. “Meeting adjourned.”

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Microstory 1770: Net Loss

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I’ve always been a terrible person, who treats others poorly, and only looks out for himself. I don’t like that about myself, but no one understands how hard it is to change. I keep trying to do better, but when I think of something nice to say, it gets stuck inside my head, while a bunch of malice comes out instead. One of my therapists and I worked out the metaphor. There’s a golden net on the top of my throat. It catches all the pretty things that people want to hear, and what I wish I could say to them. These pleasantries are larger, as they should be, but it means that they can’t escape. The smaller, meaner, bits of darkness can slip out easily. After deciding to look at it this way, we began to work on ways to make me easier to work with. Before I respond to someone about something, I’m meant to force myself to smile. This apparently should stretch out the golden net so much that it breaks, and lets out all the goodness I supposedly have inside me. Well, I’ve never been able to break it, but the stretching helps a little. It opens up the holes just a little more, allowing some of the smaller pretty words to get out sometimes. It’s not enough for the Catholic church to canonize me as a saint, but I guess I would call it a start. Sadly, that’s not my only problem anyway. My biggest issue is how I behave, not just what I say to people. Sociopaths and psychopaths say charming things all the time, but if they still act selfishly, or even hurt people, it’s not really good, is it? Altering my instincts to stop just taking what I want without regard to others is going to be the biggest thing I’ve ever tried, and I don’t think I can do it alone. So here I am at this spa, upon the recommendation of one of my therapist’s other patients. They can reportedly turn anyone into a nice person. I feel like I’ve seen this movie before.

I sit on the table in the exam room. The woman who ushered me in here ordered me to remove my clothes. She took them all with her, and never provided a gown. I thought maybe it was an oversight, but when the...I guess, doctor comes in, she’s not fazed, so I guess this is how it goes. She looks me over from the door, quite clinically; not sexually, nor critically. She reaches up, and turns a dial on her glasses, like she’s seeing me through multiple filtered lenses. Once she’s satisfied with her readings, she steps over to a computer terminal on the wall, and begins to input the data. I don’t say a word. She’s the one leading this hoedown, so I wait for her. When she’s finished, she walks back over to the door with a clicker, which she uses to retract the floor. I try not to freak out, but I’m rather confident that the exam table is safe. It stops short of it, like I figured, but I’m stuck up here. It’s a surprisingly large room. There’s no way I would be able to make the jump. The maybe-doctor gives me a choice. I can wait 30 seconds, and walk out of here on the floor with a full refund, or I can take a literal leap of faith, and fix my life. With no context, she leaves. I peer over the edge, and see a beautiful glow emanating from below. My eyes adjust and I realize it’s a net. It’s a golden net. Am I dreaming? Am I just living in the metaphor? This can’t be real, it doesn’t look real. So I jump. I jump belly first. My body lands in the net, and it gives just enough to keep it from hurting. I bounce a little before it returns to equilibrium, and then I’m just lying there. Not for long, though, before I begin to feel skin ooze off my bones. It’s like the net is melting me, except it doesn’t hurt, and I’m not scared. I fall all the way through; not all of me, though; just the best parts, leaving behind only the garbage that once weighed down my soul.

Microstory 1750: Wolves in the Woods

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Every night it’s the same thing. I’m creeping through the forest, trying to find a safe place to hide. Even though I dream of the same place every time, I don’t always remember at first what it is I’m running from. Sometimes I’m not even running from anything, but towards something good. Only later do I learn that there are wolves all around me. One is angry, one is sad. Another is guilty, and yet another is hateful. Some of them try to attack me, but mostly they just attack each other, fighting over prey. I try to keep them apart, but that usually only makes things worse. They battle it out, and whoever wins is how I’ll feel in the morning. The wolves do not merely have these feelings themselves, but represent them. It’s not just an angry wolf, but the wolf of anger, and every time it wins, I wake up angry. Of course, the wolves aren’t real, this is just my subconscious preparing me for the day ahead, upon a foundation of the days behind. I’m not angry because my anger wolf won. The anger wolf won because I’m angry. Presumably, I heard The Tale of Two Wolves when I was young, and it stuck with me in a profound way. Everyone supposedly has two wolves inside of them, fighting each other, which determine your personality. The one who wins is the one you feed. I don’t feed any of my wolves. I guess I’ve always considered that their problem. None of them has died yet, I’ll tell you that much, but honestly, the wolf of contentment hasn’t been looking too good these days. I dream of nothing but my wolves. One of my many therapists once suggested I keep a dream journal, because he figured I actually was having other dreams, but I was just so focused on the one that I never remembered the other symbolic stories. He was wrong. It is only the wolves in the woods.

I’m seeing a new therapist today who specializes in hypnosis. I’m hoping she can get into my head, and perhaps take the wolves out. It would be nice if I could dream about something not so bloody on the nose. I mean, the wolves are a metaphor, but it’s so obvious, it makes me feel like such a basic person. My subconscious mind can’t come up with something more clever—maybe something slightly more difficult to interpret? Really? Hell, I’ll take walking into school with no clothes on, or my teeth falling out, just to get some variety, even though those are still basic. The hypnotist sits me down in a chair, but after we get to talking, she decides that hypnosis is not for me. She doesn’t think it’s going to help, but she thinks maybe I can handle the problem on my own. My issue is that I have no control over the dreams, so they consume me. It’s like the wolves are deciding who I am without giving me any say. If I want to interact with them, I have to assume control. I have to learn how to have lucid dreams. She says to restart the dream journal, that it will help me, but also gives me some books which spell out some other techniques. Not all methods work on everybody, so I need to find what fits me. I read the books cover to cover, and formulate a plan. Then I go to sleep, and enter the woods. All of the wolves are in one place this time, sitting quietly in a pack, apparently waiting for my instructions. “All right, wolves,” I say. “We’re gonna do this in an orderly fashion. No more fighting for scraps. We hunt together, we dine together. Everyone gets their fair share.” From then on, I continue to have the same dream, but I’m in charge now. The wolf who wins is the one I feed? If that’s true, then I’m going to try to stay balanced, not even bothering to kill the negative wolves. I’m going to feed them all.

Microstory 1723: Pair of Compasses

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Pamela. You are my compass. When you found me, I was nothing. I was going nowhere in my life. My father, may his soul rest in peace, did everything he could to point me in the right direction, but when I lost him, I lost myself. Instead of honoring his memory, I continued on a pointless path, and made nothing of myself. Then you came along; my light in the dense forest. You showed me that it wasn’t too late, and that there was still hope for me. I will forever be grateful for where we have gone together, and how far we’ve come. Now, I know that I strayed from the path a little, and for that, I will forever be ashamed. But you forgave me my transgressions, and that just proves how perfect we are as a team. You knew that, even then—even after all I did—with my ex...and her ex, and your sister...and your sister’s ex—you knew—you knew that I was still redeemable. I will never be able to make up for what I did, but I believe together, we can walk towards a beautiful future. I will no longer attempt to walk alone, or find my own way. I will surrender to your wisdom. Your needle always points North, and knowing that, we can make our way to any way that we wish. Um. I think this metaphor is getting to be a little too much. Just give me a second. Notecards, I know, but...just hold on. (Let’s see, don’t want to bring this up—I’ve rethought this whole part of the  speech—my brother said that was an inappropriate—hold for laught—oh, never mind). Okay. Pamela. Poetry aside, I would just like to promise you that I have successfully changed my ways. You changed me, and you won’t have to worry about me ever again. As long as you’re by my side, I’m certain that we can get through anything. I vow to be faithful and fearless, interesting and inspiring, mesmerizing and motivating, and successful and satisfying. I can’t wait to begin the next leg of our journey together. Thank you.

Chaz. I think you’re right, I’m a compass. But you are a compass as well. You could even say that we are a pair of compasses. I don’t mean that we’re just two mariner’s compasses. We are the drafting instrument that architects and engineers use to make their designs accurate. I don’t mean to say that we are building something great, or that our home is perfect. The truth is that nothing has been remotely perfect about our lives together. Yes, you cheated on me, and I’m not sure why we needed a rundown of your offenses. Well...I think we all know that those were only about half of your offenses, and that it only includes the ones I actually know about. Who knows how many more there are? Which children here today are yours? Do we even know? I joke, I joke. You’re right, I forgave you for what you did. And that brings us back to my metaphor. (I admit, I took a peek at your vows, which is why I’m prepared to say what I’m saying now). When I took you back, my friends pointed out what we mean to each other, and what our potential is. I didn’t listen to them, but now I know that we truly are a pair of compasses. You see, the compass drawing tool involves two legs. One is steady. It stays in place, while the other makes the drawing. You are the steady leg. You plant yourself in one spot, and I revolve around you. That is our pattern. All we do is make circles. Sure, we can make smaller circles, and sometimes even larger ones, but we can never escape the pattern. We just go ‘round, and around, and around. The only way to break the cycle is for me to break the compass, and set myself free. So I’m leaving you, Chaz. You can sleep with whomever it is you want. It’s not my problem anymore. Goodbye.

Microstory 1657: Portrait of a Universe

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Most versions of Earth advance technologically at about the same rate. This is due to the fact that the majority of them are only c-branes, but I won’t get into the specifics of how that works. The reality is that this can be altered moderately by changing a few key conditions, or more dramatically by something insane, like time travel. In Muxleyverse, an alien descended from a group of Ansutahan who were expelled when The Crossover exploded, came to Earth to decide whether it was worthy of being brought into the galactic community. He brought with him highly advanced technology, which ended up being sent backwards in time. This changed everything about human history. This one little bit of tech transformed Earth from the youngest and weakest civilization to the strongest, and most powerful. This was where the mess began, and why most bulk travelers tend to avoid Muxleyverse, even the Ochivari. Now the dominant race in the Milky Way galaxy, the humans went around exerting their will upon all other worlds. They didn’t enslave anyone, and they didn’t kill unless provoked by a resistance, but they weren’t exactly pleasant either. They knew where they came from, and how it happened. They knew that the aliens would do the same to them, if given a chance. They felt that their only hope was to keep control of the situation at all costs. Unfortunately, one you introduce time travel into the mix, control becomes a laughable concept. Eventually, a rebel group of aliens managed to steal time travel technology. They used it to go back to their early days, and become the dominant race over all others. They were especially ruthless against the Earthans, for obvious reasons. But it did not stop there. An alliance of humans, and a different planet of subjugated aliens, stole time travel technology, and went back so they could become the dominant species. Can you guess where I’m going with this?

As you know, I have the ability to witness events in other universes, but that gift gets complicated when alternate realities are in the mix. You see, since each universe operates on a completely separate timeline, I’m actually watching these other events having happened, not as they’re happening. The past, present, and future don’t just happen all at once; they don’t even exist from my perspective. It’s all just one giant picture to me, which allows me to piece together stories. Alternate realities of all kinds make piecing those stories together more complicated. Concurrent realites are all but impossible for me to see through, because they add extra layers that block each other from sight, but sequential timelines aren’t easy either. The metaphorical picture of the universe is larger than a normal one when that happens, but my perspective hasn’t changed, so every detail is smaller. The point is that I don’t know how many loops these people went through. I only know that it was bad. They just kept going, always trying to gain an advantage over each other, until things got to be so messy that it all fell apart. For the most part, unlike what you might hear in time travel movies, the universe can’t be destroyed, even by a paradox. The paradox simply won’t take place, and everything will be fine. You can overstrain the fabric of spacetime, however, especially for a brane that was never meant to have temporal manipulation in the first place. Everything that those people did, it still happened. The end of the universe didn’t negate the past, also like what you might see in movies. But it did end prematurely, and it’s a shame.