Microstory 1648: Regal Sea Goddess

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Image credit: Greg McFall (NOAA's National Ocean Service)

The penultimate universe I’ll discuss for this series doesn’t have a name, because there isn’t a strong enough defining characteristic. Yes, all relevant stories are about a group of superheroes, who fight against a group of supervillains, but there are many branes like that. The first of the heroes came about in the early 1980s. Her work was relatively shortlived, and her only responsibility was to go against regular criminals. Her decision to become the first would fuel the heroes of tomorrow, and also the villains, who were at first, pretending to be heroes. She basically became an excuse for people to dress up in costumes, conceal their identities, and operate outside of the law. People didn’t know what to think when Sea Goddess showed up on the scene in her colorful frilly outfit, and started fighting crime. They didn’t have the concept of a superhero. Comic books were predominantly about angsty teens, and exceptional athletes. They had heard of vigilantes, though, and they knew that what she was doing was against the law. Still, she seemed to be trying to do some good, so law enforcement just kind of stayed out of her way. They didn’t help her, but they didn’t actively try to apprehend her. It became an unwritten rule that if a cop happened across her that they look the other way, and act like it didn’t happen. Sea Goddess’ real name was Shanti Gideon, and she didn’t have some sad story about why she wanted to clean up the streets. She won a somewhat modest amount of money in the lottery, which allowed her to quit her boring job, and now she didn’t have anything better to do. Superheroing passed the time, and gave her purpose, and most people seemed to appreciate it. Obviously, not everyone.

Sea Goddess named herself for a species of underwater creatures called nudibranchs. She took on characteristics of the animal, primarily by wielding harsh chemicals. One of the chemicals put her victims to sleep, while another just tasted bad, and overwhelmed them to the point where they couldn’t fight anymore. She did have one lethal poison that she only used once as a last resort, and it was her final mission before she disappeared. No one knew what happened to her after that. Some believed that she was murdered in retaliation for the mobster that she killed when she was backed into a corner. Others thought that she was always part of some rival gang, and was reassigned to somewhere else. Most people rightly assumed that she retired, having regretted taking a life, and not being able to make up for it. Instead, she dedicated herself to helping others in more traditional ways, by donating to charity, and volunteering. Her identity was never at risk, and she told no one the truth about who she had been. The police reluctantly pursued the mobster’s killer, but came up with no leads, and eventually just let it turn into a cold case. Even if they thought she deserved to be locked up, no one wanted to be the cop who actually did it. Her legacy lived on after this, but it would be decades before anyone truly followed in her footsteps. A support group for people who had been traumatized, and were now lost in the world, was designed with levels. You level up, you learn more about the organization. The middle levels revealed it to be a source of recruitment for superheroes, but the higher levels revealed that it was actually a front for criminals. Upon realizing this, real superheroes had to rise up, and do everything they could to stop them. Once they did, however it wasn’t like their job was over. New threats came along, and perhaps Sea Goddess would have to come out of hiding.

Microstory 1130: Natasha Orlova

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Varlam Orlov came to the United States from the Russian Empire with his family in 1916, when he was sixteen years old. They arrived with as little as many immigrants have, but they were hard workers, and they wanted a better life. Theirs was a roller coaster of a history. They made money, they lost it, they made it back, they struggled with their neighbors. They were persecuted during the Red Scare, and persecuted again during the other Red Scare. But they kept trying, and they never broke any serious laws. This isn’t a story about a legendary Russian organized crime family. This isn’t about a nuclear family of sleeper agents. This is about a woman named Natasha Orlova, whose father completely altered people’s perception of their family, and he didn’t even have to. Varlam’s grandson, Maxim was born in 1951. He was obsessed with mob movies and books, particularly the ones depicting the Russian mafia. He was fascinated by their antics, and their tactics, and wanted to grow up to be just like that. Unfortunately for him, organized crime began decades ago, and you don’t just suddenly decide to be a crime boss. He knew he wouldn’t get anywhere just by sitting around, so he started committing petty crimes, learning from his mistakes, and escalating little by little, until he was finally arrested. This is precisely what he wanted. No one would teach him how to run a business out of the kindness of their hearts. He figured that prison was the only place he would be able to find someone to take him under their wing, and that they did. He got himself into a gang, who nurtured his desires to take on the world, thinking he would join their family on the outside, once his sentence was complete. Of course, he didn’t do this, because now he had the tools to strike out on his own.

He had listened to what the other inmates had said about people in their ranks, and the ones who maybe had a little less loyalty than others. He used this knowledge of the social structure to recruit people into his own organization, and before anyone realized what was happening, he was well insulated from any permanently damaging retaliation. Suddenly there was a new family in Kansas City that no one knew what to do about, and over the course of the next few decades, he carefully and methodically edged out all of the competition. He never intended to have any children, because the life would always be too dangerous for them, but Natasha came as an accident when he was pretty old. He wanted to keep her out of it, but he also wanted to keep her close, and those two contradictory sentiments just did not work well together. Others in his organization were pressuring him to teach her what he knew, and groom her to replace him one day, in some capacity, but he never cared about that. He wanted to run a business; not leave a legacy. She resisted as well, but in the end, it was safer for her to be within the confines of his protection, so no enemy could come after her without serious consequences. He placed her in his construction company, which was probably the farthest she could be from the illegitimate side of his business, while still being inside the bubble. She found herself drawn to the demolitions division, which was primarily designated for imploding buildings to make way for modern replacements. Even though it was the most dangerous, it was a positive venture, and helped shape the way the city, and its surrounding areas, would look like in the future. When the family finally fell, she was the only one left standing.

Furor: Exit Strategies (Part II)

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Ace didn’t know if he should be surprised that Kolby came back to help, because he didn’t know the guy very well, but he was certainly grateful for it. A security guard unlocked the door, and stepped aside. “Why is she helping us, though?” Ace asked.

“Professional courtesy,” Kolby answered.

“I won’t work for a tyrant,” the guard answered for herself. “Senator Channing’s response to my helping you escape will tell this new world just what kind of person he really is. If we like how he reacts, we’ll back him, but if we don’t...we’ll take care of him.”

Ace didn’t want to know the specifics for what that meant.

“Sorry I took so long,” Kolby whispered as they were sneaking away from the guard, and down the hall. “I was getting this first.” He reached into his bag, and pulled out the dimension-hopping jacket.

Ace widened his eyes, and took the jacket back. “I’m shocked they didn’t use it to go back to the real world.”

“I have a theory about that. I saw a lot of black SUVs and white technician trucks parked by that giant orange TV tower near the border of Union Hill. I was literally running around the city, looking for a hacker informant I once had, who does not work for the Census Bureau. Suddenly, I lost my speed. I think they built a power dampener on that thing, which ironically, means the jacket won’t work.”

“We have to destroy that tower.”

“Yeah, we do. But they will just rebuild it, so I need you to do me a favor.”

“What?”

Kolby remained silent.

“Oh, you want out of here.”

“I take out that tower, you take me with you.”

“The jacket can only take two people at a time, and needs time to recharge.” Ace could have left that part out, and let Kolby just go on thinking that Ace would be able to help, but he didn’t want to make any enemies. “I don’t even know if this thing is ready to take another trip yet.”

“That’s okay,” Kolby said. “I may have a loophole to that. Worst case scenario, the two of you escape. I’ll survive.”

Ace thought about it for a minute as they were lightly gliding down the steps, thankful they were only a few stories up. He knew that a speedster named K-Boy—which was similar to Kolby—was destined to end up in the real world, and join the tracer gang. “You sure will. I promise you’ll get out of here. I know this to be true, don’t ask me how.”

He agreed to not ask how. Then they left the building, and headed South, towards the Union Hill neighborhood. It was just over two miles away, so it was going to take just under an hour. “Is it frustrating?” Ace asked on the way, “You must not be used to walking at such slow speeds.”

“I didn’t get my powers until the flurry,” Kolby explained, referring to the unseasonable winter storm that preceded the creation of this dimension. “So I’ve only had them for a few weeks. Running like that is what I’m not used to.”

“Do you like it?”

“I’ve never been much of a runner, but as a private security professional, I’ve always had to stay in pretty good shape, so it’s not like I lived a sedentary lifestyle before this. I have mixed feelings about my new gifts. I guess I won’t really be able to process any of it until I get back to Earth proper.”

They continued walking in relative silence, until arriving as close as they were willing to get to their destination until they had a good plan. At least, what was what Ace thought. As it turned out, Kolby had already been working on a way to destroy the tower, and he hadn’t done it alone. There was an entire team waiting for them in their secret headquarters. They were in what looked like a print center, complete with a giant printer, but also an ATM.

“Horace Reaver,” Kolby announced, “welcome to the Forger’s lair. We have Garen Ashlock, expert thief. Quivira Boyce, also an expert thief. Hm, do we need two? Maybe one of you should go.”

“Shut up, Morse,” Quivira said.

“You’re right,” Kolby conceded. “I guess Ashlock isn’t so much an expert as he is an amateur.”

Ace wasn’t paying too much attention, though. He found himself just staring at Quivira, whose life he had saved last year, and who had saved his life many years ago. She was smiling at him knowingly, but not saying anything.

Kolby went on, “Doctor Mallory Hammer, who can provide medical support.” He paused to gaze at the last woman, both affectionately, and with disdain. “And here we have Natasha Orlova, former mob princess, and possible lone Russian survivor of the 2023 Gang Wars. She has seen the light, but has not forgotten her past. She’s on demolitions. The Forger and Micro are busy at the Census Bureau headquarters. The latter will be providing technical support remotely. She’ll make sure we don’t get caught. She’s not a salmon or choosing one—or spawn,” he added, looking back at Quivira, “but she’s a good ally. Keep your guard up around Orlova, though.”

“I’m doing my best here, Kolby,” Natasha alleged. “Not every Russian is bad. I never wanted the life my father set out for me. I was always trying to get out, even as a little girl.”

“Prove it tonight,” Kolby advised.

A buzz began to sound from down the dark hallway, and drew nearer. A minidrone appeared from around the corner, and hovered in front of Kolby, who was not nervous about it. A voice spoke from the speaker, “the time is quickly approaching. If you’re going to take out the tower, you better get going now.”

“Thank you, Agent Nanny Cam,” Kolby said to the drone. “Please review the team’s exit strategies.”

“I’ll check to make sure the coast is clear outside the Forger’s den first.” The drone buzzed away.

“You people are so well-organized,” Ace noted. “Have you all been working together long?”

“Just since this happened,” Quivira replied.

“What am I meant to do?” Ace offered.

Kolby laughed. “We’ve only been planning this particular job for about a day. We can’t risk throwing another variable into the mix. I wanted you to know who was helping you here, but you’re not a part of this. You need to get to the hospital, and find your man.”

“But, I can do stuff. I have really good intuition. Like, a supernatural sense of intuition.”

“That doesn’t work here,” Kolby reminded him, “especially not while that tower is operational. We have contingencies. Everyone has a backup plan if something goes wrong. We are going to make this happen, but it’s possible that Channing and Andrews have built their own backup at the Entercom towers. If that kicks in, you may only have seconds before the jacket stops working again.”

“You can just run me there.”

“I have my own contingency.”

“How am I meant to take you back?”

“You don’t worry about. Put your family back together, Reaver. We’ll take care of everything else.”

Ace wanted to argue more, but Kolby ushered him out of the lair, and directed him to Serkan’s hospital, which hacker Micro had uncovered. Not knowing how long it would be before the people on the A-team turned time powers back on, he ran towards the hospital. He was there well before midnight, which he assumed was go time, but the hospital wouldn’t let him in. It was the middle of night, and the whole metropolitan area was in a state of emergency.

“Please!” he begged the nurse. “I have to find my boyfriend; the father of my child!”

“I’m sorry, sir, but you’ll have to come back tomorrow,” the nurse argued.

A man with the air of authority walked up from the other side of the room. “Is there a problem here?” He didn’t look like a cop, or even a security guard. He did, however, look like a runner.

“You’re part of the tracer gang?”

“We protect this facility,” the tracer responded.

“I need to speak with Bozhena.”

“Who?”

“Slipstream,” Ace clarified.

“She doesn’t have time for you.”

“Tell her Jupiter sent me!”

“Like, the planet? Or the god?”

“Tell her Jupiter sent me!” Ace repeated.

The tracer lifted his chin, and eyed Ace with caution. Then he looked over at another tracer standing guard. He closed his eyes, and nodded.

“Is that a good nod, or a bad nod?”

“You better hope she knows who this...” he stopped in thought. “Jupiter Rosa? The gun manufacturer?”

“He doesn’t make guns anymore, but yes.”

“Interesting.”

“Can I help you?” came Slipstream’s voice from behind him.

He turned around. “The love of my life is in your hospital. I need to see him.”

“Why would I let you do that? I would need confirmation from Census, and they’re not working right now.”

He started walking forward, and looked around at the walls. “You know where we are right now?”

“We just established that it’s a hos—”

“I mean the world.”

“Andrews said it was a pocket dimension.”

“It’s a duplicate. The perpetrators didn’t tear Kansas City out of the ground. They just made a copy. Of it, and everyone in it. There’s another Slipstream out there, and right now, she’s having tea with my daughter, Paige. Well, I guess that was a couple days ago, but it happened. Serkan is a runner, like you, and a different version of him will one day join your gang. As far as I’m concerned, you’re part of the family. I need to get upstairs tonight.” He consulted his watch. “By midnight.”

“That’s fine,” came another voice. “We can all go; have a chat.” It was Senator Channing, and a posse of thugs, pointing guns at them.

Slipstream stepped over to one of her tracers. “Deep six,” she ordered cryptically. He ran off. She then got in between Ace and the men, to protect him. “I got rid of the firearms in this town once. I’ll do it again.”

“You did that slowly,” Channing laughed, “not in one fight.”

“Actually...” Slipstream began, “I once disarmed twice as many guys as you have, all in one go.”

“Alone?” Channing questioned in disbelief.

Slipstream smirked. “No.”

Tracers appeared out of nowhere—a couple from above—and took all the guns away at once, dropping their wielders to the floor if they had to.

Suddenly, Ace’s jacket began to hum as it powered up. “They did it.” It wasn’t quite midnight yet. Either this was always the plan, or they had to move up the timetable.

Channing looked at this phone. “The tower’s down, good for you. Fortunately, I have three extra. They should be coming online within a few minutes.”

“Shit,” Ace said. He nearly got down on his knees in front of Slipstream. “I need to get to Serkan now. Please.”

“Take him into custody,” Slipstream ordered her people. “We need to have a talk with the mayors tomorrow morning.

“Wait!” one of Channing’s men shouted. “Horace, this is Quivira! I’ve come from the future to fix this! You have to wait for Kolby. He’ll be there at midnight. Exactly at midnight.”

“The towers,” Ace argued.

“Will be taken care of,” Quivira said, using the voice of the man she was possessing. “That’s why I came back, but if you don’t take Kolby out of here, both of our worlds are screwed.”

Ace inhaled, and redirected his attention to Slipstream. “Take me to him right now. I don’t care about the worlds.”

“Bozhena, please!” Quivira pressed. “Wait until midnight. If that man finds his husband a minute too soon, we’re all dead. Remember what I said to you when you were young. Vous aurez un mouton...”

“...si vous avez la vrai nourriture,” Slipstream finished, astonished.

The jacket abruptly stopped buzzing. The towers were back online.

“I’ll take you to him,” Slipstream said to Ace, “at midnight.”

Twenty minutes later, the jacket turned back on yet again, but it still wasn’t midnight, so Ace had no choice but to wait.

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The Advancement of Leona Matic: Fall of 2176

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Not long after Leona would have returned to the timeline in 2076, a man appeared in the ship proper, using the former’s emergency teleporter. He was out of breath, and holding onto his chest. He collapsed to his knees. Brooke left her controls, and knelt down to him. “What happened?” she asked as she was helping him up.

He was struggling to catch his breath. “They attacked us. Her,” he corrected. “They attacked her.”

“Leona?” Brooke confirmed. “Who attacked her?”

“Everybody,” he said. “They’re angry. I tried to protect her, but they were too strong. With her dying breath, she begged me to take the e-porter, and get out of there.” He sighed and stammered. “I shouldn’t have broken the news like that. But it’s true. She’s gone.” He paused for effect, as if traumatized by the event. “She’s gone.”

Paige casually walked into the cockpit. After sizing him up, she crossed her arms, and looked at Brooke.

“Sir?” Brooke offered to carry out orders.

“Put him in Nerakali’s room,” she commanded as she was turning around. “Get that teleporter to Hokusai, so she can figure out how to send it back to Leona.”

“Captain!” the man cried. “You are the captain, right?”

Paige turned back to face him, but didn’t bother answering.

“I told you, Leona’s gone,” the man continued to lie. “Don’t waste the teleporter on a dead body. Two of the people who killed her will just use it to come here, then you’ll have a real problem on your hands.”

“Why didn’t you bring her with you?” Paige asked, still as cool as a cucumber that’s been sitting in a refrigerator. “You can teleport dead bodies.”

He took a moment to come up with a reasonable lie. “We got separated. I couldn’t get to her, and...and I was in danger. I just had to go. I’m sorry you can’t give her a proper send-off.”

Paige smirked. “Not a bad attempt at recovery. It might even be believable, except for one truth you could never have known.”

“And what’s that?” he asked, almost breaking character.

“There are only two people on this ship—or any of its extra dimensions—whose lives actually matter. Leona is one of them. She can’t die. And I don’t mean that like, it would be really bad if she died. I mean she literally can’t, not until her mission’s complete, and maybe not even then.” She nodded to Brooke, who picked the lying man off the floor, and carried him kicking and screaming to Nerakali’s room, which they had successfully transformed into a fully-functional brig.

After the deception of the man who claimed he would help her, Leona felt hopeless, trapped, and scared. The mob outside was showing no signs of changing their minds about wanting to kill her. Sweaty and freaking out, she started pacing and spinning around the room, looking for anything that could help her; a weapon, or...cash, maybe. Anything She opened the closet door, not just in the search, but also hoping one of Saga’s magical portals would appear in the frame. She found only a couple blankets. She hadn’t realized right away, but this must have been one of the guests rooms, so nobody’s belongings were in it. She was about to slam the door shut in a rage when something on the inside of it caught her eye. Scratched on the wood was an odd bathroom stall-style note, In a bad time // call Jayde Mercy // 937-724.

Well, she certainly was in a bad time, but how could she call this Jayde person? She didn’t have a phone, and even if she did, it wouldn’t likely work all the way out here. And even if it did, there were only six digits in the number, and she knew not even Durus operated like that. She started working on the math in her head, trying to figure out whether the numbers would have anything to do with someone’s telemagnet. When coming up with the telemagnet network system, the Durune knew they couldn’t rely on traditional phone formats, like those found on Earth. If contacting somebody in another time period, one first needed a four-digit year code. Since the sun was fake, the year was then broken up into one thousand arbitrary days. There were ten months in a year, ten weeks in a month, and ten days in a week; all of which led to a three-digit day code. An individual then required a full twelve digits, which would allow all of Durus history to ultimately have just under one trillion people. They probably wouldn’t even run out of numbers. Basically, all this meant that this six digit number had nothing to do with that. What else could it mean?

Before she could come to any logical conclusion, the door burst open, and the mob flowed in. Out of desperation, Leona blurted out the message, “I need to call Jayde Mercy! Nine-three-seven. Seven-two-four!”

The frontlines were about to strike her with their various and sundry weapons, but hesitated. “Say that again,” one requested.

“I need Jayde Mercy,” Leona said.

They still lunged towards her, but apparently knew they couldn’t. “What’s goin’ on up there!” someone from the hallway demanded to know.

“She’s called Jayde Mercy,” someone in the front answered back.

“This ain’t Durus,” the other one reminded her.

“But we are Durune, and we will honor that!” she said.

“We’re not all Durune!” another one shouted.

“We are honoring the mercy petition!” the leader declared. “Everyone out!” she ordered. “I’ll be acting diplomat in this matter.”

They all reluctantly left, except for the leader, and one other woman.

“You may go,” the leader said to the other one.

“I am nine-three-seven-seven-two-four,” she explained.

The leader looked back, and thought this over. “Your inmate code. That was yours?” She looked back at Leona. “Did you want to speak with her?”

“Umm...yes. Her.”

The leader left the two of them alone.

“How do you know me?”

Leona stepped aside, revealing the closet door behind her. “I don’t know you, Jayde. But I still think you can help.”

“My name isn’t Jayde,” she said, like Leona was stupid. “It’s Dubravka. You requested Jayde Mercy, which means no one can hurt you until diplomatic solutions can be explored.”

“Oh,” Leona said. “Actual mercy.”

“Yeah.”

“Then why is your inmate code scratched here too?”

“No idea. Who did this?”

“No idea,” Leona echoed. “It may not have anything to do with me, and this was left for someone else, but would there be any way for you to help me? Are you, perhaps, a paramount?”

“I’m The Slipper. I can skip over any future period of time. It’s not really that useful since I can’t go backwards.”

“It might be, if you’re trying to escape from an angry mob,” Leona pointed out.

“Oh, no,” Dubravka argued. “I help you get away from them, they come after me.”

“I can get you out of here,” Leona promised. I just need time. If we can get them to go back to their normal lives for a few hours, and forget about us, then I can find a way back to The Warren. I will take you with me. You don’t seem to wanna be here, or to deserve to be.”

Dubravka was silent.

“Please.”

They could hear a ruckus outside. People were running back up their stairs, and not in a sort of happy dancing jog, but a rageful sprint.

“Dubra, please!” Leona begged.

Just before the mob ran into the room, Dubravka took Leona’s hand, and jumped them into the future.

Hokusai spent the entire day trying to find a way to send Leona’s emergency teleporter back to her, but had no luck. She was drenched in sweat as midnight central approached, knowing that if she didn’t get this right soon, they would have to wait an entire year before it could do Leona any good. She could be dead by then, if even one part of what that lying man said was true. If she was in as much danger as she seemed, she could be dead by now. Then midnight struck followed by dozens of other midnights. It was weeks before she discovered how to send the teleporter back to the other dimension, which it did so on its own. A week later, Leona’s body fell onto the floor beside her, from out of nowhere. She stared at it shock, knowing that she had failed.

A few days after that, decisions had been reached. Leona was to receive an airlock funeral, accompanied by the man they held responsible for her death. Paige did not take her burden of deciding the man’s fate lightly, and did not relish the idea of the Warren’s first execution, but he was a danger to the crew, and the mission. He needed to be dealt with more than he needed to be punished. She reasoned that he was the one who chose this, not her.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Hokusai said to little Étude. They had already said their goodbyes to Leona, and were currently placing a mildly sedated criminal in the airlock with her. She was still too young to see something like this. “Go back to our room.”

Étude refused, pushing Hokuai’s hand away, and trying to show her a little Buddha statue that Dar’cy had given to her before they left Durus.

“Étude, please. This is for grownups.”

“It’s okay,” Loa seemed to think. “She’s old enough to know what this is, and she’ll have to decide for herself whether she was right to stay or not. Go ahead, Brooke.”

Brooke wasn’t sure, but then she lifted her hand to open the outer doors.

“Stop!” Étude screamed. This was, as far as they knew, the first word she had ever uttered in her life.

“Étude,” Hokusai said, “you spoke. Can you do it again?”

She contorted her face, indicating the one word she did say felt gross in her mouth. She just held up the statue, shaking it in front of their faces, trying to get them to understand. They didn’t, so she threw it on the ground. It was too tough to break, but this seemed to bother her even more. She picked it up, and tried again, but failed. She shook it again, and tried to hand it to Paige. Once Paige took it from her, Étude mimed smashing the statue with her own hands.

“You want me to break it?” Paige asked. “This was a gift. You don’t break gifts.”

Étude was jumpy and teary-eyed, still pleading with them to listen to her, even though she couldn’t use her voice. Please, she implored them with her eyes.

“Trust her,” Loa suggested.

Paige mulled it over some more, then squeezed it with her hand, buckling the metal into a blob. She dropped it to the floor, but it never reached it. Dar’cy suddenly appeared, holding it in her hands. She looked it over with a sad face, and sighed. “I really liked this one. You guys must really need me.”

“Dar’cy, you’re here.”

“Yeah, Étude called me. It’s a failsafe. I always thread certain precious objects to the end of their life. If something like this breaks, I know something goes wrong. So what happened?”

The crew went over everything they knew, and everything they guessed, but didn’t know for sure. Having calmed down, Étude was able to express her thoughts as well. She came up with a plan to rewrite history without creating a potentially dangerous new timeline. They would keep reality about the same as it always was, but Dar’cy would go back to before the Warren launched from Durus, and leave a message for Leona to find in pocket one. All she needed to do was make a new friend in there who could help her stay alive long enough to find the emergency teleporter when she returned to the timeline in 2177. After all the specifics had been ironed out, Dar’cy hugged everyone, and threaded the Buddha back to her own time, to before the Warren had even left. Then reality shifted into a new timeline, so that no one could remember anything about Leona’s death.

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Microstory 824: Make All Ends Meet

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When I first found a way to clone myself, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with this new technology. As a trust fund kid, everyone had always underestimated me, and I had always ignored them. Now, even though I had done something great, I had no connections. I just spent every waking hour of the last ten years working on this one project, and only now am I realizing that I could have set aside a little bit of that time to plan for a future where it exists. I decide I need to keep it secret, at least for now, and maybe test it out. Part of the reason I have all this money is because my parents were both killed by one of the mafia families. In the end, they weren’t the best of people, because I ended up discovering they had been working for all of them, but they were also not as despicable as the people who brutally gunned them down. I didn’t feel the need to avenge my parents so much as I had to consider how much better this city would be if there was no more organized crime. As rich as I am, I still need some support, and access to resources you can’t just get anywhere. So I become friends with a local police officer; someone low on the totem pole, who I can convince that I’m an undercover federal agent. It’s not as hard as you would think, and that’s not because the cop is an idiot, but because I’m a pretty charming and persuasive fellow, if I do say so myself. Working together, we build what I’ve told him is an elite team of other undercover agents. They’re each going to be sent into one of the city’s crime families, and bring them down from the inside. Of course, since I don’t actually have independent individuals to take this on, I have to claim to my new friend that he’s not allowed to meet any of them, or it would compromise the compartmentalization of the operation.

It takes more than a year to thoroughly infiltrate all of the families, but I do, and since they’re notoriously suspicious of each other, there’s no way anyone will find out that they’re all essentially dealing with the same person. Bonus, since they’re just my clones, I’m free to live my life as I always have, leaving my duplicates to fully immerse themselves into the crimeworld. Since I maintain a quantum connection to each clone, they don’t risk getting caught by reporting back to the handlers, which is always the most dangerous part of an undercover job. Tragically, I did my job a little too well, and inadvertently smoothed relations between the families. They start talking to each other on an unprecedented level, and ultimately schedule a gargantuan meeting the likes of which this town has never seen. Since I’m so high up in the food chain for each family, I’m expected to be there. What am I gonna do now? Well, about the only thing I can do is out myself to my partner. He’s surprisingly cool with it. Even though he knows there’s a strong possibility he’ll lose his job over this, if he goes out as the cop who took down the entire crime network, he’ll be able to move on with pride. He says that the only way out of this now is for him to go back to his superiors, and organize a massive interagency operation to arrest everybody all at once. I build a small army of my clones, and send them to the perimeter of the warehouse, to keep all the mobsters from leaving, being totally fine with sacrificing them for the greater good. Once it’s all over, before any of them realize that half the people they killed all look exactly alike, I set them to self-destruct, and destroy the evidence. Now my only problem is figuring out what to do about the corrupt cops who used this opportunity to take over the crime network.

Frenzy: The Night Before (Part IV)

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I immediately regret not taking time to put on my uniform. It’s made of a special material that partially protects from hard falls and crashes, and also beads water. We both reach the balance beam at the same time. Unlike in the Frenzy, you can’t just find the fastest way through the course. When you’re doing the Gauntlet, you have to do everything, and only one person can be on the beam at a time. Theoretically one could get on behind the other, but it bends and wobbles enough with only one person. Braxton shoves his shoulder against mine and lets me fall into the Pit of Lava. No, there isn’t any actual lava, but it is filled with a slimy goop of some kind that’s colored a reddish orange. It’s like a golf course sand trap; extremely difficult to get back out of. It does dissolve quickly in water, and there is a showerhead nearby for this reason. Normally that would be perfectly fine, because it’s near the end of the course, but since we’re going the wrong way, I have no choice but to run the whole thing wet. Have I told you how much I hate water?

I take off my shirt and shoes, because at this point, that’s the only way to continue. I can hear the cheering again, along with several cat calls. Nudity never bothers me, but I try to be careful about making others uncomfortable. I throw my clothes behind me as I’m getting back in the race. Here’s one thing Braxton probably didn’t know. There’s a sweet spot on the beam where, if you hit it just right, it’ll bend just enough so that it can propel you forwards and land you safely on the other side. This works going the right way, and I take a chance that it does backwards, and am rewarded for it. There is an uproar in enthusiasm as I stick the landing and quickly move on.

The next obstacle is a halfpipe with a very specific route between posts. You can run through it incorrectly, but then an alarm is going to ring out nonstop until you go back and correct yourself. Again, apparently everything is fine going backwards. The trick is staying balanced on a curve without holding onto the posts, unless that is, you like being mildly tased. I’ve finally caught up to Braxton after getting through the halfpipe. He’s having trouble getting up to the catwalk. You’re supposed to climb up a rope, and then jump down a series of platforms, finally ending up back at the bottom by dropping into a pit of foam. He’s still trying to figure out how to shimmy up the wall, which is not part of the course. “Betcha wish you weren’t so muscular now, huh?”

Braxton is strong but heavy, which can be an asset, but something like this requires agility and nimble dance moves. With this I have the advantage. I hop back and forth between two load bearing columns against the wall and make it to the first platform with relative ease. From there I jump to the next platform and pull myself up. The Dark Knight ain’t got nothin’ on me, risen or not. I race down the catwalk and slide down the rope. It burns my hands, but I can’t think about that now. I’ve just realized that I actually have a chance of winning, and I can’t let that go to waste.

Behind me I hear a scream. Braxton finally managed to get up to the first platform, but he’s stuck on the second. He’s just hanging there by his hands, unable to lift his own weight high enough to reach safety. The crowd is shocked but unmoving. The bystander effect is preventing anyone from running out to rescue him. Where are the adults? Each one thinks that someone else will do it. He’s my opponent, which makes him my responsibility. I have to get back over to him, but it would take too long to climb back up to the catwalk, and they built a canyon under it that’s far too wide to jump over. There’s only one way, and it’s insane. This could kill me, seriously. While holding onto the rope, I run in his general direction, but not quite towards him. It’s just long enough to reach the edge of the floor. I start running on the wall itself, following the swing radius of the rope. Is this going to work, or am I going to die? The radius pulls me away from the wall and I have to start hopping across posts, poles, bars, and other obstacles intended for completely different purposes. But I’m able to keep going. There’s always something close enough to hold my growing momentum.

Finally I’ve reached critical mass and have to throw myself forwards through the swing so that it will direct me to the other side of the canyon. My heart races, not only to keep oxygen to my brain, but because remember that part where I could die? The room is completely silent as I continue through my side swing. I don’t make it to the second platform, which was my target. Hell, I would have even taken the lower platform. No, my body smashes into the wall and I fall to the floor. The shock of what I had just done presumably causes Braxton to lose his grip. Now normally he might die from a fall this high, but I’m there to break it for him, and we both somehow survive.

“Are you okay?” he asks as we’re struggling to get to our feet.

“I’m not dead at least,” I answer.

He can’t put any weight on his right leg, and I’m in some pain myself. “Betcha wish I weren’t so muscular now, huh?” He asks rhetorically.

I laugh, but the pain is growing by the moment

Finally the audience runs down to tend to us. Andrews and Rutherford push their way through the horde of racers and take over the situation. “Let’s get them to medical,” Andrews says.

I don’t spend long in the medical bay before my mother comes to pick me up. She spends the whole ride back home scolding me for what I did, saying that Braxton’s problem was the result of his own choices, and that I shouldn’t have risked my life for him. “I mean, you could have run around the canyon to get to him.”

“That would have taken too long. You wouldn’t understand, you haven’t seen the Gauntlet.”

“Oh, I understand. I saw the whole thing on Miss Buchanan’s video feeds.”

“You were watching me?”

“What, you thought your mother wasn’t hip enough to watch that sort of thing? I was one of Agent Nanny Cam’s first subscribers, even before you were a Frenzy runner.”

“I just...I’m sorry, I was just trying to help.”

“I know, and God knows nobody else was doing anything. But you know how much we hate when you leap across buildings. You do it for your city, and we can appreciate that sort of dedication. Running the Gauntlet in reverse came out of nothing but pride, from the both of you.”

“Yes, mother.”

“Okay, well we’ll probably talk more about your behavior next week, but for the rest of the day, you need to study and rest.”

“I still need to do a dry run.”

“The Gauntlet will just have to be your dry run.”

“Mom!” I complain. “That’s not the same thing!”

“You should have thought about that before.”

“You were the who wanted me to register for this race. I wasn’t even gonna do it!”

“Oh, don’t put that on me. I know you better than you know yourself, and you wanted it more than anything. You just needed someone to push you so you didn’t have to take responsibility for your own guilty pleasures.”

“That’s not it at all.” No, that was pretty much spot on.

“I’m not having this conversation.” They were back home. “Go to your room, study the map, and go to sleep.”

“What about dinner?”

“No dinner, I’m starving you.”

I stomp down the hallway.

“And no going to the bathroom either!”

I slam the door.

“And stop breathing!”

I forego the studying and go to bed extremely early instead. The only time I’ll be able to get to the city is if I sneak out at night when my family’s asleep. Alim catches me slipping out the back door, but he lets me go because he gets it. I grab my bicycle from the porch because it’s quieter than opening the garage, and I need the warm-up anyway. It’s mighty cold outside, and clouds are once again threatening rain. As late as it is, there’s still a not insignificant amount of traffic. I would normally weave in and out of it as part of practice, but more and more cars are adapting to it in a way that makes things even more dangerous. You can’t teach a driverless car that I know what I’m doing.

I reach downtown and lock my bike up on the corner. I look at it this way, if I had a school test tomorrow, and I hadn’t been studying, then I would need to take some risks in order to compensate. They say that cramming isn’t all that helpful, but when it’s all you have, it’s what you accept. So I take out a special pair of electronic training goggles. One of Andrews’ competitors built the prototypes this year, and wanted the Frenzy kids to test them out, but the council would have none of it. Still, a few of us managed to steal them, so we could try them out.

They were supposed to be for training purposes only, because these kinds of modifications are against the bylaws, but the adults don’t think they should be used at all. The screen is a special kind of augmented reality called controlled reality. Instead of enhancing your vision, it hinders it. This is supposed to teach you to move around the world without seeing where you’re going too well. It’s been programmed to delete potential hazards, replacing them with what the program thinks it looks like behind it. If you don’t use your instincts, and your other senses, you could just run into it. If you think this all sounds dangerous, then you would be entirely correct, and probably now understand why it was banned by the council. There’s bravery, and then there’s stupidity.

In the darkness, it’s even worse. I can make out the outlines of the buildings and other objects around me, but I’m having trouble pinpointing their location. Either it’s designed to flicker like that to keep me guessing, or it just has rendering bugs. I take a deep breath and start my dry run, or rather I start a wet run. As I knew it would, it’s raining. No, it’s pouring, and I just know that this will not end well. I start by springing myself off of a first floor window sill and reaching out for a fire escape ladder. The second to the bottom rung appears to be in my hand, but then the goggles flicker and show me that I’m about a centimeter short. I have to think quickly, so I open my fist again and try to take hold of the bottom rung; also known as my last chance. I make it, barely. But that rain, though. I swing forward once, then backwards, then forwards again. With this, I lose my grip and fall down for the third time today, this time to my back. That’s all I remember.

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Microstory 80: Mob Psychologist

Most people were enamored with Tucker Everett because of his superpower. By it’s very nature, however, people were not capable of recognizing that he had a superpower in the first place; but they were certainly susceptible to it. He had the power of persuasion, but only at massive scales. He could not, for instance, convince an individual to act like a chicken. He could, however, run a promotional video for one of his company’s products, personally asking people to buy it. If enough people saw the advertisement, the majority of them would be compelled to make the purchase. The larger the crowd; the more successful his message would be. But nothing had a 100% success rate. Not only would any given message only ultimately capture a certain percentage of the crowd, but there were a select few who were apparently immune to his powers. Some of these people started noticing the strangely steady increase in Tucker’s followers. They formed a group of concerned citizens, led by a man named Erik Schuler who called Tucker the Mob Psychologist.

One night, Tucker infiltrated their meeting. He sat quietly throughout most of it before standing up and approaching the podium. The crowd screamed, and some even took out weapons. “Have no fear, my dear friends,” Tucker said. “You have already discovered that my ability does not work on you. But I would like to clear something up. I did not know I had this ability at all until a few years ago. I started realizing that too many people agreed with my words, and that the numbers did not add up. And it was for this reason, that I decided to use my power for good. This world is sick, and I can heal it. But I need your help. I need people who are capable of disagreeing with me, to make sure that we’re making the right choices. This man, Mr. Schuler, has been lying to you. He is like me. You see, even though you’re immune to my persuasion, you are vulnerable to his.” Tucker smiled to himself as the mob turned on their former leader, Erik. It turned out that they weren’t actually immune to Tucker’s powers. He just needed to get them all in one room.