Microstory 2509: Former Girlfriend

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3

Landis wasn’t always the great and noble guy you’ve heard of. I’m not surprised that he became what he is today, but I do wish that it was happening while we were dating. He wasn’t a bad guy, but he really struggled with motivation. He didn’t want to work very hard at anything. He didn’t want things handed to him, but he didn’t want to have to think too hard either, and figure the solutions out for himself. He wanted to know how to do something, and understand why he should be doing it. He didn’t have a great job, bu he was content with it, because he gave an unremarkable interview, yet they gave it to him. He didn’t care about being promoted, or even making more money. His budget was always based on the bare minimum, and he didn’t care about anything else. He didn’t want to improve, or have a better life. This sounds really selfish of me, but it might have been nice had he treated me to dinner every once in a while. I felt like I was the only one making an effort in the relationship. I had to leave him, because it was so one-sided, and when I finally did, he didn’t seem to care. This goes to show how dispassionate he was. I wanted him to want something, even if it wasn’t me. I couldn’t tell you how he got his powers, because I wasn’t around for that, but I’m happy for him. I am not bitter, and I’ve not tried to get back together. He’s doing his thing, and I’m doing mine. I feel lucky that the path we walked took us to where we are. Even if I were miserable, at least he’s a superhero now, and that’s a beautiful thing. People ask if I regret not sticking by him but if I had, the Foundation might not exist. It’s all so mysterious, so we don’t know how he ended up with the abilities, but he has told us that we received them. He wasn’t born with them, so he would not have randomly developed them in an alternate reality. He was reportedly simply at the right place at the right time. If we had still been living together, he would have been in a completely different place at that particular time. We would have gone on with our lives none the wiser, still not happy, and none of you would be cured. I guess I should say...you’re welcome.

Microstory 2502: Father of the Cure

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3

I’m going to be totally honest here, Landis and I have not always agreed. His mother always believed that he was gonna move on to do great things, but the kid was approaching his thirties, and he had nothing to show for it. Don’t get me wrong, I love him to death, and nothing he could have done would have been able to change my mind. I just remember wishing that he would have some kind of ambition. I wasn’t one of those fathers who had a plan for their kid, and they were going to follow it no matter what. I only had a few requirements. Number one, he had to learn a second language. Most of the world understands English, and I feel like the least we can do is meet them halfway. You can’t learn them all, but you can at least learn one. Well, he didn’t do it. He didn’t even try. He did the bare minimum in school, in his language classes, and everything else. He wasn’t an idiot, but he was a poor student, because he lacked motivation. I only got him into sports to teach him discipline, and perseverance. I didn’t care if he became obsessed with it, or even if he liked it. He could have switched to theatre or A/V Club, if that’s what struck his fancy. I chose baseball, because that’s what I was familiar with, but I made it clear that he had a choice. What he didn’t have a choice in was doing nothing. He couldn’t just coast through school, and work minimum wage for the rest of his life. I know, that might seem unrealistic. Someone is working minimum wage, that’s why it exists. I just wanted him to want more out of his life. Again, he didn’t have to do anything that I specifically chose for him, but he had to have at least some passion about it, even if that passion was for the money itself. He had to contribute positively to society, and if that meant sticking with that minimum wage job, well, I figured I could get over that. At least he was doing something. But he kept losing them, and having to find something new. Secretly, I think that he preferred it this way. He gets tired of things, you see. He doesn’t quit because he’s no good at it, but because he just doesn’t wanna do it anymore. It becomes tedious. I’m actually kind of surprised he came up with his foundation, because it’s the same thing; day-in, day-out. I can’t believe that he can take it, but I’m proud of him, and I’m happy for him. I never expected him to cure the entire world. I would have just been happy with him holding down a job for longer than six months. But he went for it. He really went for it. He exceeded all of my expectations, and I regret every doubt I ever had for him. That’s my kid, and I’m grateful for him.

Extremus: Year 101

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Pro text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3

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

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

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

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

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

Audrey is tearing up. “Dougnanimous Brintantalus.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A few years.”

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

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

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

“That sums it up,” Audrey confirms.

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

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

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

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

“What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How’s that?”

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

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

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

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 2421: The Wasteland

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Pro text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3

This place sucks. I get what they were going for here, but it’s lacking that authenticity that a real post-apocalyptic wasteland would have. Or maybe there’s just no way of making this exciting and interesting. The name says it’s all. It’s just miles and miles of desert, it’s so boring. There are a few burnt out cars strewn about, and some random collapsed structure, but not much else. You’re supposed to take your cues from science fiction from days past, and make your own adventure, but I don’t think it really works all that well. I mean, since it’s not real, there’s no desperation. You can always find an exit, and just leave. I really don’t see this one sticking around. Yeah, it’s all right to watch a two-hour movie about this, but I don’t know that anyone wants to spend any substantial amount of time in this environment. Thinking on it, though, it has to exist. This guy’s got 83,000 domes, and had to come up with almost as many ideas. I don’t think he made it, he doesn’t have quite as much—which is fine, I’m not criticizing; I’m just saying that wasteland is certainly a theme that exists. There are tons of examples in media. It would be kind of weird, actually, if they didn’t use it. There seems to only be one like this, which is probably a good thing. Many domes are based on particular franchises, but in the end, all wastelands are about the same, so you probably shouldn’t make more than one. I doubt most people would be interested in even seeing it once. I can’t recommend coming here at all. Maybe they’ll add more intrigue later, with robots that have their own programmed motivations, but if they’re expecting us to do all of the heavy lifting, I just don’t see enough people getting into it. There’s another desert dome where your only goal is surviving long enough to make it clear across to the other side. Try that one instead. At least the incentive is clear. My recommendation to the builders is that they should put the ruins of more buildings here. If the world were to end in such a scenario, it’s not like everything would be flattened and buried, ya know? There would still be stuff here to show that a human civilization once thrived. Just a thought, you don’t have to change anything if you don’t want to.

Microstory 2382: Earth, October 31, 2179

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google ImageFX text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 3

Dear Corinthia,

I’m sure that my son has already informed you, but I was recently on a trip to Eastern Seaboard, which if you don’t know, is a city-state in the former United States of America. I was taking part in very early negotiations for future possible trade deals. The platform is still circumnavigating the continent of Australia, even though our initial required proximity period has passed. We ended up extending that another four months after some people from other Australian domes began to express interest in moving here. We currently don’t know where we’ll go after this, but it’s always good to have your options open, and it’s not like we have to float over to a trading partner in order to trade with them. That’s what jets are for. So I went out there for my work, but I was also doing something else. After investigating my own past, and reaching out to my contacts, I discovered that an old friend of ours from before the collapse of society—or, I guess it was kind of during it—was living there. I couldn’t pinpoint his exact location remotely, or find his contact information, so I decided to fly up there to look for him myself. And wouldn’t you know it, I found him. I told you that I wouldn’t send you another message until I had a solid update for you, so I hope this qualifies. I confronted Gunnar about his motivations back then after we started catching up, and felt like he was being rather evasive. He seemed to have mixed feelings about seeing me again, like he was happy, but also pretty worried. In my head, I thought for sure this was the guy. He knew something. He was part of it. He was Condor’s secret observer. As it turns out, not exactly. When we met, he was genuinely trying to be my friend. He didn’t even like sports or outdoorsy stuff either; he just figured that I did, because they were very common hobbies, and he was desperately trying to connect. The reason he approached me in the first place was because he had social anxiety, and his therapist recommended he intentionally step out of his comfort zone, and try his hand at small talk, explaining that the worst that could happen was an awkward conversation that ended quickly. I felt really bad about accusing him of something nefarious but then he admitted that he was once contacted by a mysterious someone, asking him to keep tabs on us; Condor in particular. Out of fear, he actually agreed to do it, but he fed this stranger false information. He would just straight up lie about how Condor was doing, and how his personality was developing. He didn’t know if this was the right thing to do, or if he should have refused entirely. He wasn’t sure if he should have told me what was going on either. He always regretted not speaking up, though, and was grateful for the opportunity recently. Except for the first one, Gunnar recorded every conversation he had with this other man, who never gave him his name. Gunnar kept these recordings all this time, so he was able to give me copies of them. I’ve put in a request to the forensics specialists to have them analyzed, and will update you again if and when they find something. We’re getting closer, Cori. We’re gonna find out who did this to you. To us.

Your distant but doting father,

Pascal

Microstory 2063: It Was Murder

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Workspace Labs text-to-image Duet AI software

I’ve been thinking a lot about my friends, Cricket and Claire. If I never see them again, I would at least like to know that they’re safe and still together. I placed a not-so-cryptic ad in the newspaper, asking if anyone else happens to be from another universe. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Nick Fisherman IV, you’re going to get a lot of crazies who never actually traveled the bulkverse. But here’s the thing, I don’t care. If they’re not lying, then maybe we can figure something out, or maybe we’ll just commiserate together. If they are lying, who cares? I’ve told you how boring this world is. It would be a nice change of pace to meet someone who doesn’t think like everyone else. Hell, they could be a dangerous psychopath, and that would still be better than all this tedium. Welp, that’s all I got for ya today. I’ll let you know if anyone responds to my ad. Just as a little disclaimer, no matter what the autopsy says...it was murder.

Microstory 2062: From Womb to Tomb

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Workspace Labs text-to-image Duet AI software

Right. I was going to tell you how I got my name. I might as well. Nothing is happening today. My symptoms are about as bad as they were yesterday. I told you that I have a bad memory, though, so maybe I’m wrong about that. I tried looking for a website or app that helps you keep track of your health and mood, but it doesn’t exist. You’re so uncreative here. I want to call you small-minded, but that’s usually reserved for people who don’t like things like diversity, or can’t see the forest through the trees. It’s more like you don’t do anything that isn’t absolutely necessary. Could a health tracker app save lives? Maybe. But also maybe not, and it hasn’t occurred to you to try. Anyway, I’m rambling again. My name. Nick Fisherman IV. Why that number? Well, I can’t give you too many details, but the original Nick Fisherman never called himself the first. He just was the first. I don’t know much about him, but in the universe he lived in, he was being monitored by what you could think of as a guardian angel. Except that these angels didn’t guard anything. They only served as observers. They watched your whole life from womb to tomb, and never interfered. These never-called angels had no emotions, nor personal motivations. Or rather, they weren’t supposed to. The one responsible for the first Nick Fisherman developed feelings for his subject, and ultimately decided to adopt the name for himself. Thus was birthed Nick Fisherman II. This story was passed onto me after he accidentally became my observer. I wasn’t meant to ever be assigned one of them, but it happened, and since that was an interesting development, the leadership just let it keep going. Fast forward to my adulthood, I ended up going back in time, and creating a new timeline. I’ve let my other self go by Nick Fisherman III, which leaves me as the fourth. So there you go. There’s the story, as vague as is needed under the circumstances. Keep reading III’s “fictional” stories, and you may learn a little more about it.

Starstruck: The Toliman Nulls (Part I)

< > Entire Story

Generated by Google Workspace Labs text-to-image Duet AI software

When Brooke Prieto, Sharice Prieto, Mirage, and the newest member of their group, Belahkay Teal arrived inside the heliosphere of Alpha Centauri B, they immediately figured out why the vonearthans had chosen not to colonize it. All stars and other celestial bodies are valuable. They contain hydrogen, helium, and other elements, which can be used to produce energy and/or construct useful structures. Lots of science fiction stories only care about worlds that are naturally habitable, but that doesn’t really matter. With sufficiently advanced technology, anything can become habitable, even if that only means breaking it all apart to make enclosed spaceships. Nothing in the universe is completely useless, including Toliman, except that there’s something different about it. There’s something eerie about it. The closer they got to the star, the worse they felt, and there was no escape from this. Mirage was an early general intelligence turned transdimensional observer god turned android. Sharice was an unregulated AI turned android. Brooke was a human turned android. Out of the four of them, only Belahkay was alive with nearly all biological components. They were all capable of manipulating their sensory inputs to varying degrees, but not in this case. The sickness took hold of them all, and made them all feel the same.

According to the exploratory records, a single probe was sent to the star system. This happened at the same time that they were being sent to Proxima Centauri and Rigel Kentaurus. These were the three closest stars to Sol, so it made perfect sense. While the first two received later vessels, as well as passengers, Toliman was abandoned after the first probe. The reason for this was never publicized, but since there were hundreds of billions of other stars in this galaxy alone, no one really bothered to question that decision. Not even Mirage knew the answer, but her educated guess was that a time traveler had something to do with it. Travelers come from all time periods, and while the majority of history can be attributed to normal people making whatever decisions they feel they ought to, a few events were ultimately caused by someone who knew how specific decisions would turn out. Of course time travelers made certain decisions all the time, but in this case, we’re talking about deliberately driving the course of the future with profound and more obvious choices, or with big nudges.

For instance, to travel at something called fractional speeds—which is to say, a significant fraction of light speed—an object in motion must accelerate from a stopped position. This works with anything. A car can’t just suddenly go from zero miles per hour to 60 miles per hour with no intervening speeds in between. Except it can, as long as it can manipulate time and space properly. It was a time traveler, or perhaps a team, who first introduced the humans to this concept, and vonearthans have been taking the feature of interstellar travel for granted ever since. It’s not instant, but it’s impossibly fast. They don’t have to accelerate or decelerate at nearly the same rate as normal physical laws would suggest, which cuts down on travel time. Mirage was sure that Toliman was just like this. She thought a time traveler needed the star system for something, and made sure that no one would come here until they were ready. That might still be the case, but there was more to it. There was something wrong with it. There was something wrong with people when they came here.

Every atom in each one of their bodies was telling them to leave. They felt nausea, chills, muscle fatigue, dizziness, and fear. This place was frightening in an indescribable way. If they were on a planet, they would say that there was something in the air, but in this case, maybe it was in the radiation? They couldn’t tell, and they didn’t want to spend too much time trying to figure it out. Unfortunately, fate had other plans for them. They couldn’t leave, because one of the symptoms was a complete loss of motivation. Had Belahkay waited even one more minute, he may not have made it to the stasis pod, which saved his life. Because the other three stopped where they were, and didn’t move for the next five years. In that time, the little jumper ship they took from the planet of Bungula drifted throughout the star system until it finally happened to come close enough to the nanofactory that Mirage sent there years ago. Their real ship dispatched a tugboat to tow them into the hollowed-out asteroid. It wasn’t until the hatch was sealed behind them that they were released from the spell.

Brooke stood up, and emulated a deep breath. “What the hell was that?”

Sharice couldn’t stop shaking her head. “It was bad, it was bad, it was bad, it was bad. We can’t go back out, we can’t go back out, we can’t go back out.”

“We have to,” Mirage reasoned. “We can’t live here forever.” She composed herself, and approached the console to get some answers. “Whatever was doing whatever it was doing to us can’t reach us through the walls of the asteroid, but that might not always be enough. We have to take our new ship, and get the hell out of here.”

“Is the ship even finished?” Brooke questioned.

“Of course it is.” Mirage tapped the button to open the forward shutters. Before them was the interior of the asteroid. A shipyard was built here, and in the center was a beautiful shining vessel. It was small for a transgalactic ship, but it wasn’t possible to look at anything else in the room. The hull was a dark royal purple, with perfect curves, and no sharp edges. “Ladies...say hello to the Iman Vellani.”

“Unique design,” Brooke noticed.

Sharice was admiring the ship as well before looking over her shoulder. “The human. Is he okay?”

The Prietos ran down to the other side of the jumper to the stasis pod. “Vitals are okay,” Brooke said as she was looking through the interface screen. She released the door, and had to catch Belahkey before he fell to the floor.

He took a moment to catch his breath, and shake off the feeling of dread. “At the risk of sounding like a cliché, are we there yet?”

“Yes,” Sharice replied, “and now we’re leaving.”

“Good.” He shivered again. “What the hell is wrong with this star?”

“Mira?” Brooke asked. Belahkay was still having trouble walking, so she was carrying him down towards the control area. “What’s wrong with Toliman?”

“I don’t know, but...it affects everything. The Vellani, it’s...damaged. There are parts of its operational code that I didn’t write.”

“Can you repair it?” Sharice asked her.

Mirage sighed. “Not here. The effects of the...” She didn’t know what to call it.

“The Nulls,” Belahkay suggested. If it affects you as well as me, it’s not a real disease. It’s something new.”

“The Nulls,” Mirage echoed. “The shielding of this asteroid appears to be protecting us from the symptoms, but it’s really just suppressing them. I can already feel myself losing motivation again. We can’t stay here for even a day.”

“But if your ship is broken.”

“It’s not broken, it just needs to be reprogrammed” Mirage contended. “I’ll fly it manually until we can do that. This will work. We’ll just point ourselves away from the star, and go. But just to be safe, Belahkay, you should go back into stasis.”

“No. I’m with you.”

“It’s your choice. I’m not your boss.”

“Aren’t you, though? Sharice asked as Mirage was walking away.

Mirage didn’t answer. While she went off to prepare for things in their shiny new ship, Sharice teleported Belahkay over, and then started to ferry all of their belongings. It thusly fell to Brooke to distribute antimatter bombs in key places in the asteroid. They weren’t really bombs, but antimatter was inherently unstable, so if you wanted to turn some of it into a bomb, all you had to do was find a way to disrupt the magnetic field that was keeping it from touching matter, and preferably do so remotely. They could imagine some intrepid explorers in the future, who couldn’t understand why this star system was off limits, coming here to figure things out. They too would become trapped, but if they were organic, it could result in their deaths. This could still happen, but at least there wouldn’t be anything left around here to make it more interesting and inviting.

Once everything was done, they convened on the Vellani, and prepared to launch. They left the jumper where it was, because it was no longer of any use to them. They had everything they would ever need right here. Mirage commanded the airlock doors to open, and then shot out of there as fast as they could. They immediately started to feel the effects of the nulls again, but now that they knew what they were up against, they were able to fight against it. If they were to stick around much longer, the sickness would probably win again, but they weren’t planning on doing that. Even if they did lose all hope, and become unable to escape, they wouldn’t last much longer. The antimatter containment pods were programmed to fail on a timer, rather than be detonated remotely. It had to be this way, because what if Brooke lost her motivation to trigger the chain reaction while she was out here. And anyway, there should have been enough time to get sufficiently far away. The resulting explosion would be large, but still mostly limited to the scope of the asteroid. The pods they used weren’t full to the brim with antimatter, and it’s not like they needed to destroy the whole solar system. So the question was, why did that happen?

They were more than far enough away from the asteroid when it exploded, but the annihilation didn’t stop there. Bursts of energy started to pop up in all directions, much farther than they should have. It was like there was more antimatter in the area than they expected. But that couldn’t be possible? Antimatter wasn’t just floating around all over space. It was short-lived, because whenever it came into contact with ordinary matter, they would annihilate each other, particle by particle. How was this still going on? How could they stop it?

“We can’t stop it,” Mirage explained to Belahkay, who probably should have been placed back in stasis. “But we can protect ourselves.” She tapped on the controls, and boosted the EM shield. It was a simple enough feature that every starship had. While time travelers had access to things like a teleportation field for dust and micrometeoroids, that wouldn’t help them with things like solar wind and cosmic radiation. Still, the electromagnetic shield wasn’t usually turned up to eleven, because it didn’t need to be. In this case, it did. The Vellani was made out of matter, and if those explosions got any closer, they would all be vaporized instantly. The EM shield held, but it wasn’t enough to protect them from the devastating effects of what they had done. Something started to pull them back towards the host star, and they couldn’t do anything about it.

“Can you boost the propulsion?” Belahkay offered. He was holding onto the center console since artificial gravity had been turned off. The other three could magnetize their feet at will.

“All available power is being diverted to the shield!” Sharice replied. “We would be destroyed if we started using it for anything else.”

“If we fall into that sun,” he reasoned, “we’re gonna be destroyed anyway.”

Mirage was watching the screen as the explosions all began to approach the star. It too was made out of ordinary matter. “There is no reality where we’re not destroyed! Everything living on Bungula is dead too! It’s over! We fucked up!”

The ship continued to fall into the sun at an accelerated rate, and soon, the four of them lost all will to care about it. They just sat there, not worrying about anything, not willing to do anything to fix it, which was okay, because there wasn’t anything to do except accept their fate. In the blink of an eye, Alpha Centauri B was gone, as was the newborn starship Iman Vellani, and its crew.

< > Entire Story

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 29, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

That proves it. Meredarchos and Erlendr are sharing a body, they can transfer themselves to anyone they choose, and the whole thing with taking Trina’s body was just a ruse to get them to look for the wrong face. The danger here is that, regardless of what body they’re possessing at the moment, they can psychically infect others. Either their victims become so loyal to them that they’re willing to kill their own friends, or the process instills such hatred in them that they’re willing to kill their own friends. Either result ends the same, and they don’t know how to stop it. Arcadia was able to keep them out of her head, as well as Vearden’s, but she may not be able to scale that to the entire team, let alone everyone in the world. Right now, the evil duo feels like an unstoppable force, and while nowhere is safe, some places may be safer than others.

“Are you sure?” Leona asks. She came back early from her business trip at the factory in Oberlin, Ohio to deal with all this.

“Positive,” Arcadia answers. “He’s...a shell.”

Heath is kind of like a baby, except that he doesn’t cry, and he has the motor functions of an adult with absolutely no motivation. If someone turns his head to the left, he just leaves it there. If they stick his hands up in the air, he leaves them there too. He can be physically manipulated like a puppet with invisible strings. He can’t talk, or express needs and wants. He can’t feed himself, and he soils his pants when the opportunity comes up. Fortunately, he’s showing signs of being able to relearn all of these things. He’s mimicked basic sounds, and Marie is hopeful that he will one day speak again. He won’t really be Heath, though. He’s just a doll who looks exactly like her husband did, who is now dead. Any emotional attachment she holds for this individual is irrational and human. He can’t reciprocate, at least not yet.

“We don’t have the resources to protect him,” Leona points out, “nor the qualifications.”

“What about our joint therapist?” Marie asks. She’s always teary-eyed now, but keeping it together.

“She’s not qualified to help someone like this with something like this,” Leona explains.

“But surely she knows someone. He doesn’t need neurological help, the tools are all there in his head. He just needs...a parent. I can help partially, but I really need the guidance of someone who understands development.”

“Okay, I can try to speak with Magnus Sharpe,” Leona agrees.

“No, I know her the best,” Marie says. “I’ll speak with her. I just need someone to help Heath get into bed for a nap.”

“I can do that,” Arcadia volunteers. She frowns when Marie gives her a look. “Forget what you remember of me, or what you’ve been told. I’m not that person anymore. I want to help. He and I grew close while we were living together at the condo. Let me do this.”

Marie is hesitant, but gives in. Heath needs constant supervision, and since she can’t be with him all the time, she’ll have to learn to trust others to pitch in. She steps away to make the call, expecting to have to speak to a number of people regarding her husband’s unique condition.

Mateo nods at her respectfully as he’s entering the apartment. He sees Arcadia ushering Heath into the bedroom. “What can I do?” he asks his wife.

Leona has been thinking about that. “You developed rapport with the founder of Palmeria, correct?”

“Keaton Palmer, yes, I did. He’s quite friendly. He’s going to help us leave this reality when his ride shows up in five months.”

“Even if it overrides that favor, I need you to ask him for a new one.”

“What’s that?”

Leona releases a hologram from her watch, showing a satellite view of the islands. “I had Ramses look into why you weren’t able to teleport within the borders of the island. Preliminary data suggests a powerful barrier protecting the area. I wondered how he was able to prevent invasion without any security to speak of. Why, even a couple of kids wanting to pull a prank might try to boat up there and teepee the woods. They can’t. Ramses found stories of people trying. They all wake up on this side of the border, feeling terribly sick, and with no memory of what happened to them. Barely any time has passed. This may be our best defense against Meredarchos, and his future legions. I think he has to be in proximity to get into your head.”

“You want me to ask Palmer how he built his barrier?”

“More than that, I want you to ask if he would be willing to accept some refugees. We need to protect our family. We need to protect Heath and Marie, and the kids. Ram and I can construct our own barrier of some kind if we need to, but this would still be a warzone. Palmeria is small, remote, and inconsequential.”

“You don’t need to sell me on it, love. I got you.” Mateo disappears.

Arcadia steps out of the bedroom and shuts the door quietly. “I think he understood me when I told him to sleep. He closed his eyelids on his own upon hearing the words. He’s picking up skills quickly.”

“Good. I know that Marie appreciates the help, and I appreciate you wanting to help us at all. And I think we both know that playing capacity nurse doesn’t exactly make use of your own skills, does it?”

Arcadia frowns. “What do you mean by that?”

“Kivi is leaving us. She’s leaving the business, and staying in the field. She may not know yet, but she’s taking her team leader up on an offer to work full time for SD6.”

“Okay...” Arcadia isn’t sure why she needs to know any of this.

“I have a lot of pull there, so while I haven’t actually spoken to anyone about it, I’m certain that I can get you assigned to the team as well.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Kivi can find Meredarchos and Erlendr. You can combat their psychic power.”

Arcadia wants to argue, but she knows she’s in no position to do so. “Okay.”

“Before you leave for that, however, I need you to do something else,” Leona begins, “if you’re even capable of it.”

“I’ll try, whatever it is.”

“What you did for Vearden, when you blocked psychic energy from getting into his head, or whatever it is. Is that permanent, or has his mental wall fallen since then?”

“I made it permanent once I realized the full extent of the threat. I suppose you want me to do the same for everyone else?”

“I like the way you think,” Leona says.

Microstory 1867: Lottery Winners All

< > Table of Contents

In third grade, I took a math test. I wasn’t a child prodigy, but I was one of a handful of students who tested into a slightly more advanced math class. While the rest of the students stayed in the room, we went off to learn at a higher rate. We focused most on probability. The first question our designated teacher asked was what were the odds of winning the lottery. None of us knew the answer of course, nor were we expected to. It was just to get us warmed up to the basic concepts. I don’t remember the numbers people say, but the truth is that the chances are actually a hundred percent. Hi, my name is Arnie Arnoldson, and I’m about to die. But before I go, I’m gonna explain to you what I mean. The reason my answer works out is because each and every one of you has already won the lottery. The chances that the universe would exist were profoundly low. The chances that life would exist were profoundly low. The chances that any given person will be born to this world are low. You went through so much to get here even before you were alive to do anything on purpose. That’s amazing. You’re amazing, and I want you all to give yourselves a round of applause for making it this far, because as I’ve said, it was virtually impossible, yet you did it anyway. You know, I didn’t start out as a motivational speaker. I was just a wee li’le baby, like anyone else. What I did to get to this place in my life is I kept playing the lottery. Sometimes I won the pot, but I never truly lost, because at the very least, it was experience, which helped me play the next round. Because life isn’t really like a lottery, it’s hard work. Put in your time, day after day, and I promise you, no matter what, at the end of the week, you’ll be paid fairly.

Notice how I said that you’ll be paid weekly. This is important, because if you expect that paycheck every day, six times out of seven, you’ll be disappointed. As a result, you’ll stop working as hard, and you’ll start getting paid less, and that will make you even more discouraged. We all receive what we deserve. It may not feel like it, but that just means that you need to manage your expectations, work harder, and never give up. Say it with me, manage your expectations, work harder, never give up. That is your new philosophy. Whenever you’re down, or you think you have done nothing but lose, just ignore all that, and remind yourself that there is always time to turn things around. But you have to take charge of your life, and decide that you’re not satisfied with what you have right now. No one else can do that for you. Let me tell you a story about the moth in the pond. A moth fell into a pond, but he didn’t die. He had spent his whole life fluttering through the air, and landing on leaves, but now he realized that those same wings he used to balance himself and fly were also good for swimming. This opened up a whole new world to him. So he said to himself, I’m never going to fly again. I prefer to swim. I’m a swimmer now. He smiled—insomuch as a moth can smile—and continued to swim around, looking for food. But he could not find the fruits and flowers he normally drank from. Oh, the moth realized, now I know why we moths don’t usually swim. And so the moth summoned all of his might to get back into the air, but he quickly discovered that his wings were too heavy, weighted down by the water. Try as he would, all he could do was swim. He swam until he was too exhausted, but before he could drown, the hand of a human reached underneath, and raised him from perdition. All of you are that moth, and the water is every obstacle you face; past, present, and future. I am the hand.

Microstory 1440: The War Begins

< > Table of Contents

Seers on Durus didn’t tell everyone, or even anyone, everything that they knew. They had to be smart about what information they let get out. If, for instance, one told their neighbor that they were going to run into a door today, the neighbor would go outside, and try to avoid doors for twenty-four hours. Then seven hours later, a construction worker walks by with a door, and accidentally hits him with it when he turns around.  The seer actually exacerbated the problem by saying something. The victim would have been much better off hearing that they should be careful, or to wear a helmet. That did not explain, however, why it was that no one seemed to know that the Mage Protectorate was destined to fall. The final battles of the war with the monsters began in 2090, and ended in less than a month, and it all started when an unexpected visitor appeared shortly after the Mage Selection Games. He was definitely not human, but nothing like what they had seen before. He was white, and tall, and fierce-looking. Speedstrikers looked just like you would think an unstoppable killer alien would. Mirror monsters looked like, well, mirrors. All the other types had been cataloged and classified, and nothing new had ever appeared since those very early days after Springfield fell into the Deathfall portal. So what was this thing here? It seemed intelligent, just like the verters, and it didn’t take long before his true nature was fully understood. Based on some things that the verters had said over the years, people always suspected that time monsters were only temporal glitches, and that real, intelligent, and independent monsters were the ones who were actually trying to step through the portal. This pretty much proved it. He was the real deal, and all the things that had come through before were quite accurately mistakes. There was something wrong with the portal, which this new monster explained led him here from his home universe of Ansutah. No one else ever survived the trip intact, so even if it turned out to be possible to travel back through the ring, it had never happened before. So the other monsters never knew the portal wasn’t working, which meant nothing could warn them to stop trying.

This monster, who called himself a Maramon, was a one in a million success story. He didn’t make it through the ring whole because of anything he did, but because the chances that it would happen at least once were not zero. They were low, but not impossible. He told them that time wasn’t passing the same way for his people on the other side. While the monsters had been arriving for decades, he had only waited a couple hours for his turn to step through. Time probably wasn’t moving at a different rate on his homeworld, though. They were probably just being spit out at random intervals. Hell, it could even be that every glitch that had shown up before him had actually come from a Maramon who tried to cross over sometime after him. There was no way to know, but that wasn’t the point here. All this time, the humans on this planet had been fighting an enemy that mostly didn’t know they were enemies. They weren’t actively trying to hurt the humans. They were most likely just moving along the surface on instinct, attracted to the presence of other moving creatures, and destroying them incidentally, rather than deliberately. If it was possible for a Maramon to cross over without being turned into an abomination, then a real war might start. This new enemy was free-thinking, and capable of forming motivations. They were a huge threat. Though he was the only monster who had ever kept his faculties during the trip, there was no proof it wouldn’t happen again, and he was making no attempt to quell their fears that he really was an enemy. He made his motives remarkably clear; that he wanted to kill all the humans too, and that he would be doing it on purpose. At first, they figured they could contain him before he could cause any trouble, but he easily escaped, and he used his intelligence to control the glitches all by himself. Things were only going to get worse from here as the War for Durus began.