The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 13, 2398

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Mateo, Marie, and Alyssa are sitting on one side of the table, trying not to look up at the overly bright bulb above. The others have yet to arrive. Alyssa is noticeably nervous, bouncing her knee, and cracking her knuckles. They know that she’s under a lot of stress, so they don’t want to say anything, but this isn’t the kind of behavior that she should be displaying when that door opens. “It’s okay,” he assures her.

“What?” She didn’t even notice what she was doing.

“Are you gonna be able to handle this?” Marie asks her.

“Yes, I’m fine, it’s fine. It’s just...this is the government, but kind of not?”

“That’s the best way to describe it,” Marie says. “They’re sanctioned, but...not everyone who expects to know what they’re doing actually knows what they’re doing. It’s a special kind of covert.”

“And you’re one of them, but no one can know.”

“Yes, you can’t tell anyone,” Marie confirms.

“I can do that. I can keep secrets. I basically raised Trina, and the boys, though less so. You learn how to lie when you have kids.”

Mateo places a hand on her shoulder. “She has to see what you can do, that’s the only reason you’re here. We wouldn’t involve you with this side of things if we had a choice. Sometimes I wish I didn’t know anything about these people.”

Winona comes in, followed by two men, one of which appears submissive, and maybe about as nervous as Alyssa. “Sorry we’re late.”

“It’s my fault,” the nervous one says.

“We’re fine,” Marie promises.

“Yes, it’s all right, Tate. You’re not losing my job.” She faces the members of Team Matic that are present. Mateo starts to think about this. They only ever called it that because most of the members used that name, but now they have multiple Waltons, and multiple McIvers. So it just sounds self-serving.

“Snap out of it,” Marie orders him, reaching across Alyssa’s face to literally snap her fingers in front of his.

Winona laughs. “He does do that, doesn’t he?”

“He’s waiting for the narrator to finish talking,” Marie explains cryptically.

Winona doesn’t know what that means. She was never briefed on the whole Superintendent thing. “As I was going to say, this is my assistant, Tate. He’s afraid of his own shadow, so you can speak freely around him, and he won’t tell anyone.”

Mateo leans forward. “If he really is so afraid, then don’t forget to be nice.”

“I am,” Winona says. “He’s not just loyal to me, I’m loyal to him. The way I see it, that’s what separates us from the bad guys. Speaking of which...” She turns to look at the other man. “...this is Timofey Putin.”

Mateo is surprised by this name. He tries to exchange a look with Marie, but she’s not fazed at all. He’s the only one balking at it.

“What is it?” Winona asks, concerned.

“We really can speak freely here?” he asks.

“Yes, Timofey knows. Marie okayed him a month ago, even before all of this.”

“Vladimir Putin is the name of a historical President of Russia where I come from. He’s...well, he’s a bad guy.”

“Interesting,” Winona begins. “I said, speaking of bad guys, because that’s what he used to be. He was a spy, but he’s recently defected. We believe, however, that his people do not yet know, which is why he could be a great asset to you on your mission. I mean, I don’t know why you’re on the mission, or what this has to do with everything that you are, but that’s why we’re here today, right? Anyone want tea?”

“We’re fine,” Marie says. “Please, sit.”

They sit down. Tate pours himself a glass of water, spilling it from the pitcher, from the glass, and out of his mouth, right down his shirt; all three, a turkey. Alyssa can’t help but giggle. For a moment, no one speaks.

“Does this have to do with that fancy hat you’re wearing?” Winona asks, looking at Mateo.

“You don’t know what that is?” Marie asks her.

“I believe it’s called a fumbler?”

Marie laughs. “Alyssa, are you ready to remove it from Mateo’s head, and place it upon yours?”

Alyssa first looks at Marie, then turns her head to look at Mateo, and then turns back. “Any requests?”

“Her,” Marie answers, nodding towards Winona.

“Is this going to hurt?” Winona asks.

“Not if you hold still, and give Tate a raise.”

Winona cracks a smile. “Fine. Three percent.”

Tate is more scared than anyone.

Alyssa takes a deep breath before taking the hat. She immediately transforms into a mirror image of Winona, complete with the same clothing she’s wearing right now. She adjusts her position to match too, which is a trick they didn’t know she had until yesterday.

“You can move again,” Marie says as Winona is doing everything she can to hold back a gasp.

She adjusts herself, and Alyssa continues to match in realtime, like a true mirror. It’s just something that she can feel. When she creates an illusion of someone who is still alive and kicking, she also creates some kind of connection to them. Ramses figures that she could match Winona’s movements from the other side of the planet if she wanted to. It’s not necessarily just an image. It’s...her. This is important, because they need to convince people that she’s someone else, both in how they look superficially, and how they move around. Everyone has their own gait, their own way of itching the back of their head, or pushing their glasses up the bridge of their nose. Even holding up the wrong specific fingers to gesture a quantity could give her away. She has to look and act like her target at all times, or people might get suspicious, even if they could never guess that it has something to do with a time power illusion.

“I do not understand how that works,” Winona laments. “I thought all powers had to do with time in some way.”

“Time and space,” Marie clarifies. “You’re in that space over there, so she is superimposing everything in that space over what is in her space. It’s all about the movement of light.”

“Fascinating,” Timofey finally speaks, and does it in his thick Russian accent. “I have heard the stories, but to actually see it... Is there more you could show us?”

Microstory 1691: In All Things

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Biological optimization was always sort of in the back of the minds of the people who lived in Moderaverse, even before they earned their name. I couldn’t explain why it is that this version of Earth was so different than others. I couldn’t explain why such a thing ever happens at all. What changes are made that cause this divergence, and why? I suppose that it doesn’t truly require an explanation. It just is. The Moderaversals just reached what they would call technological completeness, and left it at that. That’s what it really comes down to. Most cultures develop a high level of curiosity, and nothing can stop them from pursuing knowledge. They might be held back by religious hangups, or they may be limited by other conditions, such as pandemics, or extreme gravity. But the strongest of them will survive because they had a drive to be better, more advanced. This, I suppose, is an extension of the evolutionary concept of the survival of the fittest. The reason humans always become the dominant species of their world is not because they decide to be better at life. They’re better at life because those fit to survive are the only ones who will survive. Nothing evolves to be subservient, weak, and averse to survival. Such traits always disappear, because anytime they show up in an individual, that individual will struggle to persist, and pass on their genes. So once the species evolves enough to have intelligence, they’ll start using that intelligence to improve themselves. Then it will just keep going until there is nothing left to learn, if such a state is even possible. The Moderaversals, on the other hand, experience no such desire. They have determined that life itself is good enough, and as long as it never ends, they shouldn’t worry about advancing beyond it. They don’t need faster ships, or cooler tech. All they care about is relaxing, exerting as little effort as possible, and living in harmony with nature.

It was a long road to reach this point. As I said, the dream was always there, but it wasn’t always practical. Everyone starts somewhere. No one quite remembers how exactly the movement got started, or who started it, but it was kind of like a nonreligious religion. I guess it was more of a philosophical way of life, where people started to reject modern technology in favor of simpler lives, but still with less work. A true simple life would involve waking up while it was still dark, and working until it became dark again, but they certainly didn’t want that. That wasn’t chill. They got rid of most of their worldly possessions, which included a lot of art. That was one interesting side effect of the movement. Art does not require technology, but the enjoyment of it often does. For them, it meant no more movies, no more television. If they wanted to see a play, admire a painting, or hear music, they would have to go witness it in person. Over the decades, even as technology progressed, the movement grew. The great thing about it was that it was adjustable. Some people eschewed all electricity, while others just tried to unplug more often. Eventually, there wasn’t as much demand for certain things as there are in other universes. Most people didn’t care about looking for life on other planets. They didn’t care about cooling down supercomputers, or building extremely realistic virtual simulations. They just didn’t ever want to die. So that was the kind of science that students started getting into, and the more that started the help them, the less they relied on other things; from the hyperfast pocket devices, to even just clothes. When you can regulate your own body temperature, clothing seems a lot less necessary. There wasn’t really any sort of opposition to this movement. No one decided to move off, and do their own thing somewhere else. They all just fell in line, and got with the program, until doing anything all day other than pretty much nothing was essentially unthinkable to nearly everyone.

Microstory 1681: Dark Studies

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An Efilversal survivor named Nils Nilson was the one who ultimately taught the Ochivari how to start their antinatalistic movement. It was he who believed most passionately that the only way to protect life was to destroy it. He saw no irony in this. “To prevent suffering, one must cut the threads of existence before they get too long,” he was once heard saying. He was insane. But he was an excellent orator, and a very moving teacher. In exchange for his words, he asked the Ochivari to transport him to a new universe. He didn’t specifically say that he was going to continue to spread his message, but that was definitely what he wanted to do. His people were becoming extinct, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. If he wanted to mould a civilization into his image, he had to find one still with a significant population. That was what he really wanted, to turn people to his side, and convince them to do whatever he wanted. It probably didn’t matter much what he convinced them to do, as long as he would go down in history as the most influential voice of all time. It worked. The world he ended up on was falling apart. Wars and unregulated technology were threatening everyone in some way. There weren’t really even rich people who could protect themselves against the consequences. It was just a huge mess, and from just about everyone’s perspective, a lost cause. Nilson saw potential in them, though. If he could condition them to despise technology beyond a certain level, he could have his notoriety. He got to work. He used his charm to gather a few followers, and with the power they gave him, he was able to gather more. And more, and more, and then after that...more. It was never enough.

No one could stop him, even if they wanted to. Any government still standing at this point in time was wholly ineffectual, so there was no one willing and able to oppose him. Anyone who had some kind of principled stance against his ideas didn’t give him much thought. The reality was that he was not only the loudest voice in the crowd, but one of few who had any interest in using that voice to enact change. With little resistance, he banished sufficiently advanced technology, and killed anyone who did actively operate against him. Most people were too scared of him to argue. Yes, he was violent, but he was ending wars, because people no longer had the suitable resources to try, and they were all coming together under one banner anyway. Eventually, no one was left to fight, because they were either dead, or on the same side. Now, the Ochivari promised never to enter the universe where they left Nilson to start a brand new life. They had every intention of keeping that promise. Unfortunately for all of us, that kind of attention to detail can get lost when you’re dealing with bulk travel. Nilson died not too long after he arrived, which only augmented the mystique surrounding his philosophy. When the Ochivari finally did arrive, it was nearly thirty years later, and no one on the mission who made the original promise to him was even still alive. Despite their ability to travel through time, a generation for the Ochivari goes by quickly. Each time an individual tries to make a jump, there’s about a fifty percent chance that they’ll die, and past successes hardly increase those odds. Anyway, since their outlook was transformed, these humans were happy to welcome the Ochivari to their home, and were more than willing to join their cause. The loop is complete. The Ochivari gave Nilson to these people, which made them the confederates they would end up becoming to the Ochivari.

Microstory 1639: Smart Plants

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Aliens are rare. They exist for a few different reasons, the main one being that they were genetically engineered from humans, or evolved from a branch of genetically engineered humans. Or they were humans raised on something called a source variant, which basically means that something in the way they were developed—with every intention of keeping them human—altered them enough to make them a different species. Radiation is often a factor. There’s one other method of creating a non-human intelligent species, and it goes back to a multiversal maxim which states that God is human, and therefore God’s godlings are also human. This is vague, and doesn’t explain anything, so I’ll break it down. My people and I come from a god, who houses us in a special subdimension in his soul. But that god also has his own god, and he’s housed in her soul, and so is everyone else in my god’s universe. So too do they have their own godlings, running around, being human. Nothing can evolve that isn’t technically human, because they are all ultimately sourced from one theoretical universe that stands above all others. The people in this universe have no god, so they are not godlings; only gods. And from them, we all come into being. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other lifeforms; just not ones that are sufficiently evolved. These other lifeforms are often known as pets, and if one forms a strong enough bond with its human, it actually has an impact on the genetic evolution of the godlings that belong to that person. That’s what sometimes results in an alien species that is not very human. Something different has been introduced into the system. On at least one occasion, a God actually bonded with a plant, and ended up creating plant-based godlings in their subdimensional soul. So they’re aliens, and they’re not fully human, but they have to be a little human, because we’re the only species with complex souls, as opposed to the simplex souls that animals have, as well as apparently, this plant. The plant in the higher universe will not create godlings on its own.

This doesn’t mean that the hyperintelligent plant species will suddenly spring into existence either. Evolution still takes place, no matter what. It usually follows an inevitable path that will eventually lead to a version of humans, but even with this exception, it still has to follow evolutionary logic, or it won’t happen. Evolution takes place over the course of billions of years, and that remains true for Sapioplantaverse, so I’ll just go over the highlights. There was a species of plant that lived on a planet in the Milky Way galaxy. This plant struggled to perform photosynthesis, and get enough energy to survive. Trees towered above them, and blocked much of the sunlight, but it wasn’t just the lack of light itself. It takes a lot of energy to create the components necessary for photosynthesis in the first place. It’s a cycle, where the sunlight powers the plant, which allows it to build itself up, and gather more sunlight...to power the plant. This cycle was strenuous, and taxing, so this plant evolved to lower the cost of energy. It did this by eating nearby plants, and stealing their photosynthetic pigments. The individual plants who were better at leaning towards these prey plants were better at surviving, for they were able to steal more pigment. The leaners slowly got even better at this when they figured out how to uproot themselves, inch closer to their prey, and reroot themselves at this new location. Their descendants became better and better at this, until they were pretty much walking. Then eventually, they were walking. The rerooting process became so quick that they essentially had legs, and from there, the evolution was obvious. The mobile plants were able to move to areas of stronger sunlight, and better nutrients, making them larger, and stronger. The better the individual’s external sensors were, the better it was at detecting where it was going, and overcoming obstacles, so that genetic trait was passed down to its descendants. This led to them evolving eyes, noses, and appendages. They developed knees to move faster, tongues to gather nutrients more efficiently, and brains to navigate easier. After a whole lot of time, they attained human level intelligence, which made them just as skillful, and fully capable of conquering their world.

Microstory 1481: Time Tech

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As the first generation of paramounts was coming into their own, people figured that disparity was unavoidable. They could treat non-powered people with respect, and give them all the same rights, but at the end of the day, there was a difference between them, and it was noticeable. When an individual introduced themselves as one way or the other, people made judgments about them; again, not necessarily borne of bigotry, or anything like that, but there was no denying there was a difference. By the mid-2180s, some people were feeling this more than others. They were more sensitive to the nuances of social interactions. They weren’t worried a war was brewing, or that the paramounts would form some sort of caste system, but they realized the distinction was outside of everyone’s control. One could be born with time powers, or without, and there was nothing anyone could do to change that. Not since the source mages disappeared in 2090 was there anyone who could give other people abilities. Even when they did exist, they chose who was worthy, and who wasn’t. Whether their criteria were fair or reasonable was irrelevant; they controlled everything, and if someone didn’t like it, they would just have to suffer through. This was no longer the Mage Protectorate, however. It was a new era, under a new democratic government, and they couldn’t use the past as the foundation of a better future just because it was prosperous and peaceful. Progress was about making things different, and always being receptive to new ideas. Thanks for the Deathspring, people from Earth had come with new skills, and a longer history. Technology had improved so much since Springfield became trapped on Durus, and maybe that could help level the playing field. The people in a new movement didn’t want to start giving everyone their own powers, but make those powers obsolete. Instead of contacting a teleporter for transportation, for instance, they could just activate a transportation device. If they wanted water, they could simply open a filter portal to their location. Hell, filter portals could replace water bottles and breathing tanks altogether, and allow anyone to go anywhere they wanted, and always have everything they needed to survive. There were lots of applications for time technology, and if given the permission and resources, this group knew that they could make real change in the world. Fortunately, they were supported by the new president of the Democratic Republic, who did not merely sympathize with their cause, but believed in it completely herself. They had already done things like this before, like with the emergency teleporters, and when they placed the Capitol building in another dimension. So it was obviously possible, they just needed to expand the research, and make this kind of technology as ubiquitous as the family car in the 21st century. They had a long road ahead of them, persuading the public to be on their side, and convincing the government to give them the resources they needed to accomplish their goals, and this would only be the beginning.

Microstory 1450: Ladytown

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After the fourth fake election process, people were really starting to wise up that their voices weren’t counting for all that much. Law after law was being passed, limiting women’s rights more and more. Nobody wanted to try for another revolution, but things were definitely not going to get better without one. It seemed that the only option was to secede from the union, and break the algebra apart once more. One might think this movement would be struck down swiftly and definitively, but Republican loyalists still only ever wanted to solve their problems through deception, spin, and other forms of strategery. The day they instigated war was the day they lost the approval of all the civilians who were at least happy that their lives were safe and secure. Many women were starting to get used to the new system, and didn’t complain anymore, because the more they opposed the rules, the worse those rules became, and the harder things got for those who didn’t support them. The female spirit could not be crushed, though, and there were still plenty of people who did not want to live under the man’s thumb. They didn’t want to revolt either; they just wanted to live their lives in peace. Perhaps the only way to do that would be to strike out on their own. They worked slowly, just as the phallocratic movement started way back during the Interstitial Chaos. They quietly built support, and gained momentum. They followed all the rules, and pleaded their cases in the appropriate ways. The only women working towards this goal had support from their husbands, leaving the ones without it with their mouths shut, only able to hope this would somehow also help them. Still, the Republicans made no attempt to shut them all down, because they did not want public opinion to sway out of their favor. In fact, they agreed to the secessionists’ pleas, but of course, they had some conditions. 

The first and most important condition was that the settlers were not to interfere with the affairs of Aljabara, nor make any attempt to war with them, or steal resources. Fine, they didn’t want to have anything to do with the city anymore anyway. Secondly, not only did some men have to agree to go to the settlement with them, but there had to be a certain ratio of interested people, according to gender. Well, that made things a little more difficult, but not impossible. Not every man’s life was super great under this regime, and many of them saw the ratio as beneficial to them. Lots of daughters who did not yet have husbands wanted to go, which sons without wives saw as a numbers advantage. The one condition that made it clear that the administration had less than no respect for women was that the government would be allowed to name this new settlement for them. They decided to call it Ladytown, principally because of how stupid it sounded. That wasn’t their only reason, though. By now, misogyny was ingrained in society as the way things were. All children alive at this point had grown up under these rules, and if they were ever told how civilization once worked, they possessed no context, and couldn’t fathom it. It sucked to be born a girl, and boys were aware of this fact, unlike on Earth, where many guys were oblivious to their own privilege. The government’s requirement that some men sign up to go with, in the government’s eyes, was contradictory to the name. What man would want to live in a place called Ladytown? Well, maybe the older ones would if they had fewer prejudices. They added an age mandate, which required there be a certain number of younger men, in order to combat the idea further, but as explained, this wasn’t too much of a problem either, since these younger men hoped to find wives, and some were secretly okay being with a bunch of independent women, in a settlement called Ladytown, without the comforts and freedoms they could find in Aljabara. In 2117, Ladytown was founded on the other side of Watershed. They complied with all conditions, and didn’t make trouble. They didn’t last forever, though.

Microstory 1436: Motus

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Following the 2070 Mage Selection Games, a young man was sourced what would turn out to be a very powerful time power. He could teleport, but also apport, which means he could instantaneously transport other things besides himself. Not all apporters are alike. Assuming a given mage or choosing one is standing at point A, some would be able to move an object from A to B only, while others could move it from B to A, while still more could move it either way. There are even a few who can move something from B to C, but they would have to know a whole lot about the location of just about anything within range, whether they were looking at it, or not. These were the three primary classifications of apportation, but there were variants within them. Baran Avan was a Class A apporter, but with a special twist. He had to teleport himself along whatever it was he was trying to move. Of course, regular teleporters were limited to this, but they generally had to be at least touching the target for it to work. He just had to be close enough to see it. The thing about him, though, was that his power grew over time, the more he used it. When starting out, Baran could only transport something the size of a penny, but he kept practicing, and upgrading, and becoming more powerful. In under ten years, he was so strong, and his range so wide, that he was capable of moving an entire town from one place to another. Knowing this would be the case, a group of people started building a new town to capitalize on its utility, which they called Motus. They didn’t dig into the ground, though. They first constructed a gigantic platform, on top of which every building would sit. It required a flat surface to remain stable, but these weren’t too hard to find. While Durus did have mountains, valleys, ravines, and the like, it was actually pretty smooth. They had, by then, surveyed the whole surface, so Baran had an accurate map to know where to make his jumps. Once completed in 2079, Motus required fewer mages to be assigned there than other towns. It wasn’t like they didn’t need any, but their primary means of surviving monster attacks would be Baran. When the alarm sounded, the other mages would fight the threat, while Baran gathered his strength, and prepared to make the jump. At first, this often resulted in his fellow mages being left behind to fend for themselves, but as time continued, he not only grew even stronger, but also more precise. He could select individual objects within his range to tag along with them, even if they were a hundred meters off the platform. Some believed his power would never reach a limit, and that he would one day be able to move the whole planet across the void. They never found out, though. Motus was only around for a little over a decade before the final battles of the war began. While many of his contemporaries survived to pass their genes onto their offspring during and after the Interstitial Chaos, Baran ultimately became a casualty of the war. Until then, however, the Motus method proved productive. It just made travel between it and the other towns a little more complicated.

Microstory 1424: How to Protect a Town With Pointless Powers

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Some of the source mages wanted the process of gifting people with mage powers to be fair. They wanted to randomize it, so that a selectee could ultimately end up with anything. That seemed fine on paper, but it could cause a lot of problems down the road. No amount of competitive scoring was good enough to measure precisely what an individual would do with their powers once they actually received them. A given person might be incredibly noble and brave with the ability to repulse time monsters, but end up gravely dangerous with the power to manipulate reality itself. Same person, different powers, wildly different outcomes. Still, it would be irresponsible to leave it up to chance. They ought to be trying to tailor powers towards the mage’s innate abilities. There were also countless powers that wouldn’t be very helpful for a mage at all. For instance, it might be cool for someone to have the ability to see what an object will look like in the future, to measure the effects of wear and tear over time, but they wouldn’t be able to fight a monster with that. By the time the first sourcing ceremony began, the source mages had reached a decision, though some were not happy about it. They didn’t feel like they had any choice but to control what power someone received. They would do their best not to play favorites, but making it random was just too risky. It was not, however, so simple. No matter how unbiased they were, or thought they were, people would accuse them of being unfair. They could claim it was random, but some would not believe it, and even if these were only a minority voice, a small group could grow. To protect themselves against this backlash, they decided that someone needed to be sacrificed. His name was Vaion Newport, and he hoped to end up the most powerful town mage of all, but his excellent scores in the Mage Games were exactly what made this impossible.

Source mage Madoc Raptis was tasked with giving Vaion a pointless power. They wanted to show that anyone could end up with any gift, and there was no guarantee they would like it. It was particularly important to use Madoc for this, because he hated the inequity of some of their decisions, and he was considered the lucky one. If even he could source someone a power that wasn’t good for them, then it could happen to anyone, and the source mages must not have been lying when they claimed it was completely out of their control. After being sourced, Vaion learned that he now had the ability to freeze time in place. That kind of thing happened all the time in movies, but in real life, it was practically impossible, and no one had ever heard of it before. If time were to stop completely, then nothing would be moving. Photons couldn’t bounce off of objects, and show an observer what they looked like. Air couldn’t reach people’s lungs. Nothing could move, not even Vaion himself. And of course, that was the whole problem. While technically time wasn’t totally stopped, it was slow enough, and did not really give anyone an advantage, or disadvantage. While this was active, Vaion was able to continue thinking, and even process oxygen in his blood, but once time restarted, everything pretty much just continued as it was, without anyone having detected a change. It was interesting to be able to essentially stop time—and no one in histories enjoyed this same power—but since he also couldn’t move, it was useless in the war against the monsters. If he wanted to help the town, he had to contribute in some other way. Madoc was sick to his stomach that he had to do this to Vaion. None of the winners would have deserved this, but especially not him. Madoc resented his friends for making him do it, and vowed to never do anything like it again. He walked another path, and subverted the Mage Games by sourcing those who did nothing to earn powers at all, every year, and everyone let him do this. Meanwhile, the rest of the source mages continued as they were, and in order to maintain the lie, they always sourced at least one person with a power that was pointless against the monsters.

Microstory 1250: Enobarbus Agnelli

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The planet of Durus was named such that it could survive the harshest of conditions. The survivors of the Deathfall in 2016 fairly quickly realized that they were on a rogue planet, meaning that it was no longer in orbit around a parent star. Yet even without a blue sky, its atmosphere remained, and it was somehow perfectly suitable for humans to live. It wasn’t until later that they learned it was a series of temporal anomalies that allowed organic life to survive on the surface, but the name was already there, and it would come to mean many things over the years. Governments rose and fell, but the flame of humanity on Durus was never snuffed out. There were good times and bad, and depending on who you ask, one regime could be both at the same time, if only it retrospect. After the phallocracy fell, and democracy slowly began to come to the towns, most of the people who hated where things were headed preferred the way things were when men ruled, and women served. Also known as Barbwire, for his sharp attitude, Enobarbus Agnelli did not like what was happening to his world now, but not because of any nostalgia for his childhood. He never believed women were inferior—or that they couldn’t be trusted, which was the line used by the former leadership as a canned response regarding the matter. He didn’t really even believe in inferiority, or at least didn’t use such terminology to justify his stance. He just wanted to go back to the way things were a long, long time ago. He didn’t hate the regular humans; the ones who didn’t have any time powers, but he certainly considered himself separate from them, and he was sick of people using the term regular to mean normal. To him, paramounts should be the default. During the Mage Protectorate, people with powers were revered, and the honor of having them was coveted. True, back then, most people had to earn the right, but just because Enobarbus was born with abilities didn’t mean he didn’t deserve them. The mages brought order to a planet defined by chaos, and he believed the only reason Earth wasn’t ruled by them was because the Earthan equivalents were far outnumbered by people with no powers at all, and no hope of receiving them. So he started a movement. There would still be a democracy, but it would be led by paramounts, like him. He wasn’t looking to become a dictator, but he was the one with the vision, so for now, he should be first in line. He failed in his mission before it even got started, and ended up being banished, not just from the planet, but the entire universe. He unwillingly joined a group of warriors fighting against a multiversal threat that didn’t have much to do with his former life, or his old plans. This was where he belonged, though. All that nonsense about paramount dominance fell far behind him, and is a mere footnote in the story of his life.

Microstory 1212: Faustus Lambert

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When the Deathspring came for a seemingly random scattering of Earthan residents, most were unhappy about it, but not as unhappy as one might assume. While the magic portal seemed to take people at random, it often took multiple people within a community sphere; as if it were being controlled by some kind of intelligence. Entire families were swept up, even if they happened to be standing nowhere near one another. The worst losses the refugees felt were the people they loved, but many of their loved ones were taken along with them, so it could have been far worse. This was why—despite how difficult life was on Durus—not everyone lobbied to be transported back to Earth when the opportunity arose. Only a couple hundred people expressed interest in making the journey, and out of those, only about half had come in the Deathspring. The rest were born on Durus, and just didn’t want to live there anymore. Faustus Lambert did not fall into either of these groups. He saw the arrival of the interstellar vessel, The Elizabeth Warren as a means of furthering his own agenda, but its flight plan didn’t matter much to him. He was an entitled prick, to be quite crude, but appropriate and accurate. Durus, Earth; he could live anywhere, as long as there were those who would give him what he wanted most, which was attention. Under the guise of being an advocate for his people, he orchestrated a violent attack on the of the Warren, and demanded they let them tag along as passengers. The truth was, however, that their feelings and desires were of little consequence to him. They were just tools. Faustus didn’t care who his people were. They could be puppy-kickers, Nazis, or serial killers. He just wanted to lead. More to the point, he wanted people to follow him—not because he thought he knew best, but because it made him feel relevant.

Faustus lived a rather comfortable life from the very beginning. He was born male, so he had that going for him. He outright rejected the idea that women were systematically treated unequally, while simultaneously treating women poorly. His beliefs were no less true anywhere than they were on Durus during its phallocratic era. He wasn’t a violent rapist, but unfortunately, that was more problematic in its own way. Had he committed even one assault, it would have at least been possible to arrest him, but he just continued with his life, never breaking the law, but never following the spirit of the law either. He abused his girlfriends psychologically, but too subtly for them to prove anything, even to themselves. He cheated on his partners frequently, and while he didn’t ever do anything with a minor, he sure did like them young. He had an unwritten rule that he couldn’t date anyone over the age of 20. This lasted until he was 35, and could no longer “score” so young, so he raised his limit to 25, but only because he had to. When the public learned that the only ship on the planet capable of transporting more than one person was scheduled to leave within a matter of months, Faustus took his shot to get those precious followers. He quickly changed his tune on a number of sociopolitical causes; pretending to champion women’s rights and Earthan refugee living conditions. Anytime anyone brought up his history of bigotry and misogyny, he simply denied their allegations. Anytime anyone presented proof that he was lying, he doubled down, and claimed that it was nothing more than fake news. Faustus took control of the movement that was trying to get to Earth, and nobody felt like they could fight him on the matter. His new people thought he could get them on that ship, and if that meant they were following a dishonest clown to do it, then so be it. In the end, the majority of the people who wanted to go were allowed in, but all the violent people—the ones who took the crew hostage—were completely excluded, including Faustus himself. He was finally sent to prison for his proven crimes, and this was where he died, alone and unremembered.

Microstory 976: #MeToo Campaign

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This series is meant to be a list of things that I love. I love disco, and chocolate, and Stargate. But I can’t say that I love the #MeToo campaign. It’s on this list because I’m glad that this, and related movements, are finally happening. For too long, women have been silenced. They’ve been expected to do not make waves, and to just move on with their lives. Men are conditioned to believe that they are entitled to their thirst for sex and power, and are charged with chasing those dreams relentlessly. I’m horrified every time I hear a new story about some kind of sexual misconduct, or abuse. Each time sounds like a surprise, but if you read deeper, you find that it’s not a surprise. People knew what this man was doing for a very long, and the only reason we’re hearing about it now is because it’s what’s trending. It’s not that all these twisted men got together, so they could coordinate their attacks. This is a systemic problem that has been going on forever, and it’s the revelations of them that are happening all at once. I once made this morbid joke that the only men I would be shocked to hear about doing something like this are Tom Hanks, Colin Hanks, and Jason Ritter. There are more people out there who aren’t abusers, but it’s becoming more and more difficult to trust in that reality. Like any social media movement, it has not come without its faults, or criticisms. It is unclear to some what the hashtag is supposed to accomplish, besides raising awareness, because awareness does not always breed action. It’s important to recognize that a hashtag, no matter how much it’s spread is not capable of truly transforming society. Each case must be examined independently, and abusers have to experience true accountability for their actions. Judges must stop passing out “get out of jail free” cards because their crime happened in the past, and there’s nothing we can do about it now. Could you imagine if we did that for every crime? “Well, we didn’t catch you before your murdered all those people, but the law says we have to let you go. It’s only illegal if you haven’t done it yet.” The entire justice system, in this country at least, needs to change. Statute of limitations is a legal concept; not a moral one. There is no limit to the amount of pain a traumatic event can cause a survivor. One does not simply get over it because enough time has passed. I can’t use the hashtag myself, because I have never experienced anything like this, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing I can do to help. I can start with #IBelieveHer, and I can continue to listen.