Microstory 1958: No Offense

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Myka Tennison: You’re Navin, right? That’s how you pronounce it?

Navin Misra: Navin Misra, sir.

Myka: You don’t have to call me sir.

Navin: You’re my boss, right?

Myka: Yes, but I prefer Myka.

Navin: I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. I’m sorry, it’s just the way that I grew up.

Myka: Okay, I can accept that. So, I just wanted to talk to you. The brass didn’t tell me what experience you have. You’re an expert in maintenance, is it? Or was it cleaning?

Navin: Maintenance and repair, yes. I used to work in an office building. It wasn’t just offices. They had a pool, and a gym, and even a dance studio. To be honest, I never understood what they did. Well, there were multiple companies, but I think they were kind of related. Anyway, I picked up a lot of skills there. I’ve had no formal training. One time a dancer accidentally kicked a hole in the drywall, so I had to figure out how to fix it. That was back before VidChapp, so trial and error was the name of the game. As for cleaning, that’s what I did in prison. So yeah, I suppose you could call me an expert in that too, but it’s really not that hard.

Myka: Okay, great. I’ll really be leaning on your for that, because I don’t have much experience fixing things. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no stranger to manual labor, but always after someone teaches me how to do it. If you’re good at learning on the job, and improvising, that could really help us around here.

Navin: You’ve done labor? No offense, but how, as a volunteer?

Myka: I’ve held down a few jobs in my day. I didn’t make all my money from stealing. In fact, I never did it enough to pay for much. No bank heists for me.

Navin: Wait, stealing? You’re a thief?

Myka: I was. I’m reformed. I’ve gone legit.

Navin: Why would the government hire someone with a—no offense—checkered past?

Myka: *shrugs* Why did they hire you?

Navin: Because I found out about aliens, and they figured that the best way to keep me quiet was to pay me.

Myka: Yeah, same here.

Navin: I thought you were the boss.

Myka: The boss? No. A boss—your boss, yeah. But I don’t intend to abuse my power. We’ll work together; I won’t just tell you to do everything while I sit in my office all day.

Navin: No, I mean...they put an ex-con in charge of an entire department? No offense.

Myka: This whole place is a department. We’re in Facilities, which is known as its own section. There’s also a field agent section, and a finance section...

Navin: I understand that, I’m just surprised. Does anyone who already worked for the government work here?

Myka: Reese was a Fugitive agent, and Leonard was a parole officer in another life. Other than that, no. The majority of us have what you would call checkered pasts.

Navin: This place is wild. I think I’m gonna need a nap to wrap my head around it.

Myka: Cool. I’ll show you the Chambre de Sieste that I made behind the break room.

Microstory 1872: Losing Sleep

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I was a little monster as a baby. I sometimes kept my mama up all night and all day. The doctors could explain the crying—it wasn’t much more than a normal baby’s—but they couldn’t explain why I never went to sleep. Except I was crying more, because unlike most people, nothing could stop me. According to her stories, she hired a nanny to take shifts. She could have raised me on her own if not for my little peculiarity. As I grew up, I started figuring out how to express myself through other noises besides screaming, but I never did learn how to sleep. In my school, the younger children would take naps. The teacher ended up moving me over to the bookshelves, and gave me a little reading lamp, so I could keep myself busy. I wasn’t the only one who needed the extra accommodations. A boy in my class also didn’t need to nap, but in his case, it’s because he slept all the way through the night. I called him my opposite, but my mother noted that a true opposite would be in some kind of coma. There’s just something different about the way my brain works that makes it so I don’t need any sleep to function. Not only that, but I can’t sleep at all. I’ve never done it even once, which is sad, because the whole dreaming thing that people talk about sounds positively fascinating. I asked the boy to tell me his dreams, so I could live vicariously through him; which is a word we learned through a book that had no place in that classroom. He said he couldn’t remember his dreams, but the next day, he was able to regale me with his stories. He said just wanting to remember them made it so that he now could. Years later, he would admit to me that this had been a lie. He had come up with the stories on his own, because he didn’t want to disappoint me. That was so him, from start to finish.

College was difficult for me, because the schoolwork was so easy. Well, it wasn’t easy, but I had more time to study than the other students. Everybody hated me, but it’s not like I was an overachiever. I was just bored, and as much as they liked to party, at some point, they would have to go to bed, and I would still be up, so I had to do something to pass the time. I tried to have a roommate my first semester, but that didn’t work out, because I would disturb her sleep, and that wasn’t fair. Once the boy and I were married and living together, my situation saved us a little money. I was able to be productive for more hours of the day, and hell, he only needed a twin bed. Anyway, my coworkers were as jealous as my classmates. It’s just that I found it easier to do my paperwork in the dead of night when the hemisphere was asleep, and not work so hard during regular business hours. Then came the time for us to grow our family, and I was hesitant, because there was no way to know what kind of child would come out of me. Would they enjoy the same benefits? Would they have some kind of corrupted version of it that left them tired all the time? I didn’t think we could risk it, and my husband was okay with that. We chose to adopt instead, which was no problem, because there are so many other good reasons to adopt. We went to the agency to submit our application, and after some time, we were selected for a child who we were told required special needs. For reasons they couldn’t understand, this little girl never slept. Obviously, we knew we had to make her part of our family. I mean, who better than me to raise a woman like that? It was decades before science progressed enough for us to take a DNA test. Wouldn’t you know it, she was an exact match. I mean exact. I still don’t know how, but she is my twin.

Firestorm: Kallias Bran (Part IV)

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I’m not in hiding, but I have been laying low for a while. Back in the year 1990, I started investigating a child’s disappearance. It was my first case as a detective, and the weirdest thing I had ever seen up until that point. Things like it would eventually become commonplace for me, but back then, I couldn’t explain it. Escher Bradley was missing according to his supposed father, but according to the mother, he never existed. I spent years trying to figure what the hell was going on. More children disappeared over the next decade, and I was the one assigned to them all. Other strange things happened in Springfield, Kansas until it all just ended when the entire town itself disappeared. I continued to investigate, though. I traveled to other planets, other points in time, and even other universes. My life was non-stop adventure, so when I was given the opportunity to go back to where it all began, and lead a more normal life, I took it. Sort of.

The first moment I experienced nonlinear time was, as I said, way back in 1990. But since then, I’ve seen all kinds of technological advancements. Living in a time before I could look up literally anything in an online encyclopedia, or navigate to a new location on a little computer phone, was something I didn’t think I could do. I hitched a ride back to the future—the 2020s, to be exact—and I’ve been generally avoiding other time travelers ever since. There are some good people in this underworld, though, and I should have left myself available to them if they ever needed me. I don’t know how he did it, but one of them did finally manage to find me, and he apparently needs my help.

“Where’s your family, Ace?” I ask him.

“They’re still looking for you,” he says. “We got separated, and I found you first.”

“Can’t you call them?”

He pats his pants. “I don’t have a phone.”

“How did you know where I was, but they didn’t? Why were you separated?”

“I was in prison,” he explains. “Don’t worry, I didn’t belong there, and The Warden let me go. I came into possession of some intel while I was on the inside, which led me to you. If you don’t help us with our mission, you’ll still need to bug out. Not everyone who knows your location is on your side.”

“Am I, like, wanted?”

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly. “My cell neighbor seemed particularly interested in you, though. You could better understand what it is that makes you special. I just consider you a friend.”

“Okay, I appreciate the warning. And I’ll definitely help with whatever mission you’re talking about. I’m sorry I haven’t reached out lately. I’ve been kind of staying out of the game, but I think I’m ready to be involved again.”

“We appreciate that. Come on. We’re based out of your safehouse.”

The condo I bought a long time ago has been used for many different things by many different people. I probably lived there for the shortest amount of time, but I still technically own it. I’m glad it’s been there to help so many people. It is a joy.

Serkan Demir runs over and tackles his boyfriend when we arrive at the condo. “How did you get out? Did we win? I don’t remember winning.”

“It had nothing to do with this,” Ace explains as he was peeling Serkan off so he could hug their adopted daughter too. “A friend I won’t have until the future broke me out.”

“They broke you out?” Slipstream asks. I’ve never met her, but she’s famous in all of Kansas City, and beyond. It’s an honor just to be in her presence. “So they’re coming for you.”

“Well,” Ace begins, “when I say he broke me out, I mean he literally broke the bars on my cell. I don’t understand who he is, or what our relationship will be in the future, but the Warden basically said he can do whatever the hell he wants, and she has no right to go against him. I’m in the clear.”

“So, is that it?” Paige asks. “Do we not have to do what it is the Warden charged us to do?”

“I still need to,” Alexina McGregor says. She’s one of the Springfield Nine, like me. She got her time powers from another dimension, and while most of them are amoral, at best, she’s recently tried to redeem herself. I hope she makes it. “I still have to get the rabbit dog from the FBI. I can’t ask you to continue if you don’t have to.”

“Of course we will,” Ace assures her. “Now we have some real firepower to back us.”

Is he referring to me? “Are you referring to me?”

“Slipstream has some clout,” Serkan says. “She’s still a civilian, though. We could use a real law enforcement officer on our side. Ace, how did you find him?”

Ace looks like he doesn’t want to explain how it is he found me. He told me it had something to do with other people in the prison, but maybe it’s a lot more complicated than that, or it’s something bad. There’s a phrase I’ve heard before, which serves as what I guess you could call the time traveler’s way of saying shut up. To avoid paradoxes, and other timeline problems, all you have to do is say, “eh. Time, right?”

Serkan still wants answers, but he’s letting it go for now. “Right.”

“What exactly do you need from the FBI?” I ask them.

And so they go about telling me what they’re hunting for. There’s some kind of psychic hybrid creature, and a temporal object that’s so powerful, no one seems to know what it does. They’re both being protected by a federal agent who probably has special time powers, and he may be in possession of other things they don’t know about. What his motivation is, or what his ultimate plan is, they don’t know, but they know they have to get these things back, because he can’t be trusted.

“And what do you need me for?” I go on. “I’m not a detective in this timeline. I don’t have a badge, or even a gun.”

“We can make you a detective again,” Paige says. “We need it to be you, because you know what questions to ask; how to get into people’s heads.”

“Are you planning on taking me to The Forger to get my badge back?”

“That was the idea, yes,” Paige acknowledges. “Do you not think that’s gonna work?”

I sigh. “It probably will, as long as we give his bouncer a thousand dollars. I’m willing to do just about whatever it takes to help you, but I don’t know if I want to go back to that life. I gave up the force a long time ago.”

Paige comes over, and takes my arm in her hand. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. We weren’t going to contact you, but Dupont dropped your name, and it made us realize we could do with a little more help.”

“Delmar Dupont? The magician guy? Hm. Weird.” I sigh again, and watch them watching me, wondering what I’m going to do. “Okay. Let’s go make me a cop again.” I start heading towards the other side of the condo, while everyone else heads for the exit. “Where are you going?”

“Where are you going?” I ask them. The Forger is this way.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Ace questions. “He’s downtown.”

I study them a moment, to see if they’re joking. “You’ve been living here the whole time, and you didn’t realize he and The Communicators moved here last year?”

Slipstream and Serkan tilt their lizard brains.

“Yeah,” I go on, “they’re in the closet. Come on.”

I lead them to the closet, which gives us access to another dimension. We step through it to find ourselves in a much nicer facility than the one these people were working out of before. It’s cleaner, brighter, and modern. I was in here once recently, since I’m the one who gave them the money to upgrade, but I haven’t been here since they finished fixing it all up.

“This used to be a clothing warehouse,” Paige notes.

“Yeah, they moved that to The Hub,” I explain, but it’s clear they don’t know what that is yet. That’s okay, I’m sure they’ll see it later in the timeline.

The same bouncer is standing at the entrance. He seems to recognize everyone, except for Alexina. “She’s cool,” I tell him.

The bouncer nods his head towards Ace. “He owes me a thousand dollars.”

I pull two thousand bucks from my back pocket. “I got it covered.” Ace doesn’t look happy, but I shake my head. “I’m rich, and I didn’t even work for it. I don’t want you to bother paying me back. Money isn’t gonna matter much in the future.”

We keep walking down the great hall. A wide-smiling Ennis waves to us through the glass of his new post office. Susan’s office is darkened, with a red light above the door, which indicates that she’s currently napping. Allen and Richard’s restaurant is open to the public on the other side of the kitchen, and it sounds like a lot of people are dining right now. The time traveler side, however, is almost empty. Only one young woman is eating right now, and she looks a little worried about this group of people walking by her. The Salmonday Club isn’t open at all right now, but we see somebody cleaning the entrance. Finally we’re at the Forger’s new den. I open the door, which knocks into a little bell hanging from the ceiling.

The man himself, Duane Blackwood, comes in from the back, and lifts his arms in a welcoming fashion. “All of you together in one place. My heart is warmed. Mr. Reaver, I heard about your jailbreak. How do you know Mateo Matic?”

“I don’t yet,” Ace answers.

“Ain’t that how it always goes?” Duane asks rhetorically. “How can I help you fine folk? I’ve expanded my business. I can now offer direct transport to another time and place, and discount prices on certain living places. I would just generate the cash myself, but that can screw with the local economy too much, so you’ll still need to pay a little yourself. We even house a Nexus replica on the premises, so if you need to get to Tribulation Island, that can be arranged.”

“That’ll be all right,” I say to him. “I just need...I need you to make me a detective again.”

Duane frowns, but not too sadly. “I thought you were done with all that.”

“My friends evidently require access to the FBI building,” I say. “I’m the only one they know with enough experience to help them.”

“You need access to the fed building, then you need to become a fed, not a detective,” Duane suggests.

“You can do that?” Paige asks.

“Hell yeah, I can,” Duane says. “With my new digs, I can make authentic badges, and appropriate firearms, as well as necessary identification papers.”

“I don’t know much about what it takes to be FBI,” I say honestly. “They’re very different professions.”

“You just need to get through security, right?” Duane asks. “That’ll be easy. I do...umm...ask for payment these days? Not money, of course. Like I was saying, I have my own bottomless ATM, but I do need a favor.”

I was worried something like this would happen, but I’m not gonna freak out until I hear what it is he wants from us.

“There’s a guy at the front door,” Duane begins. “He comes every single day. He knows there’s something here. I’m not a hundred percent sure what he wants, but he’s just human. The Salmonday Club has had to let people in the side entrance, so he doesn’t notice them.”

“What’s the Salmonday Club?” Paige asks.

“You know how there are only seven days a week?” I pose to her.

“Yeah.”

“There are eight, as long as you enter the club thirty seconds to midnight at the very end of the week.”

“Everyone rushes in all at once,” Duane continues for me. “This place is a madhouse on Saturday nights. This dude saw the clubgoers coming into this building one time, and I guess he’s been obsessed with us ever since. The power/pattern detector filtered him out, and just showed him a regular abandoned building, but he knows something’s up. Security can’t get him to leave.”

“Is he there right now?” I ask him.

“Yeah.” Duane walks up to the counter, and reaches over to swing the computer monitor around. It’s showing security camera footage from the main entrance of this building. A guy in a button-up shirt and skinny tie is leaning up against a pillar, hastily writing in a journal, or something.

“Oh my God,” Paige says with a bit of disgust. “That’s him. That’s Orson Olsen, the mormon I accidentally inspired to start a religion.”

I sigh one last time. “You make me FBI credentials, and I’ll get him out of here.”

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Furor: The Required Skills For It (Part IV)

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Before Ace could leave with Slipstream, he needed to regroup with his family, and obtain Serkan’s knowledge and memories of what was going to happen in the next coming weeks. Once he had that, Serkan and Paige went back to their lives for the time being, while Ace went on a background mission about their new enemy. Slipstream wasn’t able to keep the files from The Archivist, but she was able to remember quite a bit about him. Rothko Ladhiffe was born on the second of February, 1984. He was born after the cutoff date, but he showed such promise as a young child that they let him into kindergarten early. He would go on to skip fifth grade, and be one to two years younger than most of his peers.

In the summer of 2000, just before the beginning of the school year, the incoming senior class got together for a lock-in at the high school. It was an unauthorized event, but a decades-long tradition that adults allowed to continue, as long as no one got hurt. Rothko was living on the edge of a breaking point. For the last ten years, the city of Springfield, Kansas was gradually disappearing. Entire blocks would spontaneously disappear, leaving all survivors completely oblivious to its former existence. Rothko’s family was suddenly living on the edge of town, where they were once somewhere in the middle of it. Rothko, however, happened to have strayed beyond the borders on the night of that block’s disappearance. Several of his friends in the senior class had done the same. Together, they worked to get back home, and after awhile, they succeeded. Rothko, however, would not return for another twenty-one years.

He became stranded on a rogue planet that would come to be called Durus, with a boy named Escher, and a girl named Savitri. They had fallen into their own portals on two separate occasions before, and were the only survivors until much later, when the last of the now-small town of Springfield was swallowed up. No one—not even the Archivist himself—seems to know what happened to Savitri, and there were some plot holes when it came to Escher’s fate, but Rothko was eventually saved. He was sent back to Earth via a machine of Hogarth Pudeyonavic’s design. It would be another few years before she was able to rebuild that machine, and return to Earth herself, where she fought Jesimula Utkin by Paige’s side.

It was a culture shock for Rothko, who was now basically alone on a second world he knew nothing about. Smartphones, cars that could drive themselves, and the corporate automation tax were just too much for him to bear. Beaver Haven Penitentiary keeps criminal records in a location far removed from the Archivist, who was responsible for everything but. Slipstream was unable to garner information about what Rothko did that led him to a prison cell, but it wasn’t likely something good. The prison was specially designed to handle people with time powers. These weren’t the worst of the worst, or the ones with the potential to do most damage. They were just the ones who risked exposing the underworld to the Earth at large. This can be as simple as teleporting a loudmouth human—with a lot of followers on social media, and a permanent body cam—out of a deadly fire, to predicting global events that are destined to come true on national television. An individual who spent the majority of their life in a hellworld, fighting literal monsters, probably wasn’t capable of making considerate and careful decisions. Rothko Ladhiffe was placed in custody at some point in 2022, and managed to escape just last week. He was the only one in this reality to ever do so. It was unclear what he was so upset about when it came to the City Frenzy, but it was becoming clear that whatever was going to cause the commotion Serkan recalled from the near-future, he had something to do with it.

“What’s his power then?” Ace asked.

“He can manipulate local reality,” Slipstream answered unelaboratively. They were headed towards The Forger’s den. They weren’t going there to see him, but a man named The Courier, who operated in the same building, and was the only person they knew who traveled regularly to the prison. They needed answers, and that was the best place to get them.

“What exactly does local mean?”

“Well, he has to be able to see something in order to change it. He can’t just create a world where all trees are blue, or buildings hang from the clouds.”

“That’s a nice little limitation. I can’t imagine dealing with someone who could do those things.”

“Oh, that person exists too. She’s one of the other Springfield Nine.”

“Is she evil?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why is Kolby not coming with us to this place?”

“He’s doing this thing with his alternate self. I was asked to not ask too many questions about it.”

“Oh, okay.”

A man opened the door when they knocked on it. “Do you have a thousand dollars?” he immediately asked of them.

“What? We’re just here to speak with the Courier.”

“The last guy who came in without an appointment gave me a thousand dollars.”

“We don’t have that kind of money,” Slipstream said.

“Yeah, we do,” Ace said. He took a credit card out of his wallet. “The Forger has an ATM, doesn’t he?”

“You can give me the cash on your way out,” the freelance security guard said. He stepped to the side, and presented the dark rounded hallway to them. “Forger on the left, Courier on the right,” he called to them. “Don’t forget the money!”

They opened the door on the right to find another man sorting mail into slots, while a woman was sitting in the corner, in one of those giant covered chairs that hip startups have in their exposed-brick headquarters, which allow employees to take naps.

Ace tried to get into the Courier’s periphery. “Excuse me?”

“Speak softly,” he responded. Only then could they see that he had severe burns on part of his face. “She’s sleeping.”

“I didn’t know there were two of you,” Slipstream noted.

“Susan and I work in different departments. She’s The Switcher.”

“What does she switch?”

The Courier snuck past the sleeping pod, and into another room. It was full of stuff. They saw jenga blocks, and dark cloak hanging on a hook with a knife, and a penny sitting on a table that looked like it was there very much on purpose. “When you’re dealing with time travelers, you can’t exactly call each other on cell phones.” He picked up a device from the table. “Though, this is a Doctor Hammer pager.”

“Don’t touch that,” Susan mumbled from the other room.

“Sorry, love,” he said back. “Anyway, some choosers have special ways of contacting each other, usually with something that is symbolically relevant to their specialty. Sometimes you have to dig deep to find the connection. He was about to lift the penny, but thought better of it. For instance, there’s a woman with the ability to project her consciousness across space. If you want her to come, you find an ordinary penny, and recite be the penny to it. If you watched a certain science fiction adaptation on a certain science fiction network, you’ll know why that makes sense, but not if you didn’t.”

Slipstream nodded. “I watched it.”

“Susan is sleeping because she has one of the strongest powers ever. She can see the river of time itself, and she uses it to manage communications for all of us. If you’re trying to reach across time, she’s the one who decides precisely when your contact gets your message. Sometimes she maintains an order, and sometimes she lets people meet back up with each other in the wrong order. We are no one to question her reasoning.”

“Would she be able to contact someone at Beaver Haven for us?” Ace asked him. “Or could you?”

“It’s a prison,” the Courier said, “which means they’re not generally allowed packages. I can propel regular mail through time without actually traveling to it, so I’ve never had a reason to go there myself. You’ll have to wait until Susan wakes up. If she has a contact there, and wants to help, she will.”

“I’m up,” Susan said, somehow both reluctantly and ardently.

“We’re sorry to wake you,” Slipstream said to her as she was coming into the room.

“It’s okay,” Susan said. “As Ennis was saying, it’s exhausting work, so I need to sleep about fourteen hours a day.”

“We absolutely must build that extension,” Ennis lamented, “so you have an entire sleeping room to yourself.”

“We would need an extra dimension for that,” Susan said, “because the other tenants in this building aren’t scheduled to leave for another nine years and four months.”

Ace thought about their predicament. “You help us get to Beaver Haven, and I’ll get those tenants out ahead of schedule.”

“You don’t understand. The timeline says—”

“No, I get it, but the future can be changed, right? If anyone can do that, it’s me.”

Slipstream backed him up with her facial expression.

“That would be lovely. Let’s assume you’re bound to succeed in that endeavor, why do you want to get to the prison in the first place?”

“We would like to interview someone there who knew a man named Rothko Ladhiffe.”

The name seemed to make both Susan and Ennis really uncomfortable.”

“He and the rest of the Springfield Nine are out of pretty much everyone’s jurisdiction,” Ennis explained. “The fact that Beaver Haven arrested him in the first place speaks volumes about their desperation to stop him, and his escape is probably their greatest shame.”

“So, what are you saying?” Slipstream pressed.

“They’re not going to want to talk to you,” Susan said. “They’re going to pretend it never happened. If word gets out that their facility is not inescapable, they’ll start having a lot more people on their hands who want to test the limits of time traveler exposure.”

“We can reason with them,” Ace said confidently. “Because we can get him back.”

Susan sighed deeply. “Well, you were instrumental in bringing in Keanu ‘Ōpūnui, and she was vital to bringing in Jesimula Utkin, so I guess you are indeed our best shot.”

“Wait, if they’re also Springfield Nine, how did the prison justify locking them up too?” Ace asked. “I didn’t realized they had gone there.”

“No, me neither,” Slipstream said.

Susan smirked. “You’re loopholes. Choosing ones are not allowed to go after outliers, like the Nine.” She faced Slipstream. “But you’re human.” She faced Ace. “And you’re a salmon, your husband is a chosen one, and your daughter is spawn. We also aren’t allowed to go after any of you, but it’s totally fine if you go after each other.”

“You’re saying that we’re the only ones who can do this?” Ace gathered.

“Essentially. I mean, you’re not the only ones, but you’re some of the few living in this time period who have the required skills for it.”

“And they’re not going to get in trouble for involving me?” Slipstream questioned. “They exposed time travel to a human.”

“No, Jesimula exposed time travel to a human. Paige and the others just garnered your help with stopping her. They’re perfectly innocent, and even if they weren’t, Beaver Haven doesn’t arrest everyone who gives up their secret. It has to put us all at risk, and you’re not a liability because you’re a badass mercenary who knows how to keep a secret.”

“So, you’ll help us?” Ace wanted to confirm.

Susan smiled again as she was walking over to a corner. Ennis helped her move some boxes out of the way, revealing a barred window without the actual window. She lifted a metal mug from the sill, and started swiping it back and forth along the bars, making a huge racket. “Guards!” she shouted.

A security guard stepped in from a door on the other side of the room. “Yes, Madam Glines?”

Susan gestured towards Ace and Slipstream. “These two will be asking some questions at your institution. Give them anything they desire. Anything,” she reiterated.

“Yes, sir,” he said with the utmost respect for her.

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Furor: A Difference Between Action and Inaction (Part III)

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Five minutes to midnight, Ace ran up to find Serkan in his hospital room. He lifted him out his bed, and let him hang off his shoulders. He watched his watch intently, as the seconds ticked by. Kolby Morse, a.k.a. the future K-Boy was expected within the minute, but if he was even one moment late, then that was his loss. Ace’s primary concern was the father of his child, and he couldn’t let anything stand in the way of that. As soon as the clock struck 0:01, he activated the dimension-hopping jacket. This time felt different. There was a more violent tug as they transported back to the real world. He found himself face down on the floor of his own home. Serkan was there too, as was Kolby. At first, he was pissed off. Kolby must have screwed it up for them. The jacket was never designed to take more than two people at once. But then Paige’s babysitter, Mireille started helping him up, as Paige did the same for Serkan. Apparently it had worked, and Kolby’s transportation of them all the way back here had had something to do with it.

“Father Serkan,” Paige exclaimed. “You’re finally back!”

“Yes, dear,” Serkan said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “It is so good to see you again. You too, Ace.”

“It must have been so lonely,” Paige guessed.

“It’s only been a month for him,” Ace explained. “Time moves differently in there.”

“Oh, so you’ve not been gone that long, have you?” Paige asked. “It’s been almost a month on this side.”

Serkan was having a lot of trouble staying standing. Mireille was doing everything she could to keep him upright. “He needs medicine,” Ace pointed out.

“I can go,” Serkan said. “You have a list, or prescriptions?”

“Yes, the nurse gave me this packet,” Ace said, pulling it out of his back pocket.

Kolby took it from him, and ran off.

Paige and Mireille were shocked, but not that shocked. “So...he’s fast.”

“I’ll explain later. We have to get your father up to bed.”

“Yeah, I need to nap too,” Paige agreed. “We can catch up in a few hours.”

Ace didn’t realize how little sleep he had gotten recently, so the three of them didn’t wake until well into the next day. They had a long conversation over breakfast, comparing war stories. They had gone through so much apart, and needed to reconnect. Quiche was good at supporting bonding experiences. Serkan evidently lost both of his legs from the explosion, but they were basically regrown using the miracle of science. That kind of technology was not quite up to par with federally regulated standards, but the hospital in the fake version of Kansas City didn’t have to worry about government agents breaking down their doors. Only time would tell if the limbs would cause Serkan problems. He could have them for years, and only then begin to experience rejection symptoms.

Paige had had her own fill of adventure since Ace left. Several new people fell into her life, and started wreaking havoc on it, in some cases on purpose. A woman named Jesimula Utkin commissioned her and a small group of other women, including Slipstream, to stop a version of herself from the past from destroying the world. Of course, since she had done something that could destroy the world in the first place, she wasn’t an entirely good person. She fulfilled her promise, but also forced Paige into becoming a carrier for a disease that did end up taking one life, which was a horror Paige would have to recall over the course of her entire life. Throughout the ordeal, she learned that she had the power to travel through time using photographic images. This was implied to have been caused by her having been holding a camera when her now-fathers accidentally brought her into the future the first time. Paige was still getting used to her new reality, and the other two would need time for that as well. They would have a year until things started to get crazy again.

July of 2026 was quickly approaching, which meant that Serkan was soon to catch up with his own timeline. The three of them weren’t sure what they were meant to do with that. When he first fell back in time, it appeared to be somewhat of an accident. Or if someone had done it according to a master plan, that plan was lost of its game pieces. They had spent this year getting to know each other again. Paige was going to school regularly, Serkan was working, and Ace was gambling. They hadn’t completely avoided the topic of time travel, but it also hadn’t consumed their lives. Now it was about to fold back in on them, whether they wanted it to, or not. There were a few decisions they would need to make.

“So, if there’s one thing I learned last April,” Paige began, “it’s that the timeline can be changed. Perhaps you are unaware of any alterations you made when you came back here, but you might have made them. Everything you describe about the weather, and everything else that’s meant to happen during the Frenzy race this year may have all been negated by your prior actions.”

“Or we made it worse,” Ace said.

“Or we are what ultimately causes it,” Serkan added.

“How?”

“Well, our first indication that something was wrong was the unpredictable weather events, as Paige just mentioned, right?” Serkan put forth.

“Right.”

Serkan continued, “then in 2024, we saw first hand how...out of hand weather can get when we’re dealing with people with powers. Keanu ‘Ōpūnui created a winter hellscape in the summer, which is why we started investigating his organization in the first place. We didn’t exactly put him in jail, which means he could still have plans for this city. We may have inspired him to those plans by working against him two years ago.”

“It could even be more complicated than that,” Paige said. She was sixteen years old at this point, and behaving a lot more like an adult than before. “The weather man does his thing by borrowing the conditions of other times and places. No one has answered what happens to those other times and places. Maybe he’s not using his powers at all this summer, but at some other time, and he’s borrowing it from July of 2026, which impacts the now. We have to find him again to know for sure.”

“No, we can’t do that,” Ace argued. “Serkan just said it, our actions could be causing the future events. Interfering with Keanu could be what causes our later problems.”

“What do you suggest we do?” Paige asked him. “Nothing?”

“Maybe.”

“If we’re living in a time loop, it doesn’t matter what we do, or what we don’t. Everything we try will be the quote-unquote right choice, because it all comes down to fate.”

“That’s true,” Serkan said, “but I still think that I came back for a reason. It may not be my reason, and it may not be a good one, but there is a difference between action, and inaction. The weather is the least of our worries during the race. Something was happening downtown while I was running around with Crispin. I never found out what.”

“Okay,” Paige said, but stopped to think. “We don’t know everything that happens in the future, but we know some things. What we need to do is consolidate all of that information. Amongst the three of us, there must be no secrets. Serkan, you’re going to have to draw us a map of the race. Not literally, I mean...we need every detail possible. From the color of the underwear that Future!Ace lets you borrow, to the model of the car you and Krakken steal to chase after that guy who stole the rabbit dog. Having all that information in one place might give us clues about what else happens that you don’t know about.”

Serkan was nodding. “Are we sure that’s a good idea? Maybe I should have told you nothing about it. What was that thing about boots your new friend told you?”

Paige understood. “Bootstrap paradox, yes. Knowing the future calls into question the source of originality. If Future!You tells you how to build a time machine, then after you build it, you go back in time and tell Past!You how to do it, who exactly first came up with the design for a time machine? That’s the thing about paradoxes, though, they’re impossible. If one is about to occur, it simply won’t. The universe won’t be destroyed, the forest won’t turn red, it just won’t work. And isn’t that all that really matters, the consequences? We could be facing our greatest threat since the other Kansas City. Whoever is responsible for the mayhem may already know the future too, because we know these people have friends. We need to arm ourselves with as much knowledge as possible.”

Serkan sighed and nodded again. “Okay, I’ll type up everything I know, and send it to both of you.”

The doorbell rang.

“You get on that,” Paige said, acting like their leader. “I’ll answer the door.”

“I’ll answer it,” Ace challenged. “Don’t you have summer reading to get back to?”

“Finished all of them,” Paige claimed. “I also went back in time and spoke personally with the authors.”

In most households, that would have been a clear joke, but this was something Paige could have actually done. “Just to be clear...” Ace started to ask.

“I’m kidding,” she said. “J.D. Salinger refused to see some random sixteen year old girl.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Serkan said as he was leaving.

Ace walked over and opened the door to find Slipstream on the other side. “Slip, what are you doing here?”

“I need your help.”

“Help with what?”

“Once you meet someone with time powers, you can’t really escape that world. You know what I’m talking about.”

This was worrying. He stepped onto the porch, and closed the door behind him. “I do, but...what are you trying to say?”

“I became obsessed with it. I started looking into Jesimula Utkin, the one who terrorized me and your daughter. She did tell you about that, yeah?”

“She did, yes.”

“When you can change the timeline, like Jesi and her friends can, it’s hard for people to really know who you are. That little cabal has taken great pains to keep themselves hidden. Fortunately, I know people too now. Kolby and I—”

“Wait, you’re working with Kolby?”

“Didn’t you send him to us?”

“I might have accidentally let it slip that he has a place in this world, and that I know something about his future.”

“Well yeah, we’ve been working together, away from the other tracers. They all still think he can’t speak. We met someone called The Archivist. He has the records for every person who can manipulate time, across ever alternate reality. He wasn’t really allowed to give us any information, but he’s a confused drunk, so we were able to convince him.”

“Where are you going with this, Slippy?”

“I have a list; a list of Jesi, and Keanu, and all of their friends. They all come from the same town. This town no longer exists, because it was ripped out of time.”

“I know,” Ace said. Kallias Bran was a friend of theirs, who explained to them everything about the city that never was. “Springfield, Kansas.”

“These people aren’t supposed to have powers. They weren’t born with them like you guys.”

“Okay...”

“They all got them from the same source. They’re called the Springfield Nine, and one of the most powerful of them just broke out of this prison called Beaver Haven?”

“Yeah, Keanu mentioned that place. Who broke out?”

“His name is Rothko Ladhiffe, and he’s apparently taken issue with the City Frenzy event. I need that intuition of yours.”

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Microstory 478: Floor 7 (Part 2)

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Quality Manager: God, grant me the serenity to—

QA Associate: Dear God, grant me the strength to not slap this guy in the face.

Quality Manager: What’s your problem?

QA Associate: That’s, like, the fifth time you’ve said that in an hour. Could you do that somewhere else?

Quality Manager: This is my desk, I have every right to be here.

QA Associate: Not if you’re going to disrupt my nap to spout a bunch of religious nonsense.

Quality Manager: It isn’t nonsense. The Serenity Prayer is—

QA Associate: It’s nothing.

Quality Manager: Would you stop interrupting me!

QA Associate: It is nothing. It is an inspirational quote. It was not created to inspire people to feel a certain way, or to improve themselves. The guy who came up with it did so with the intention of being inspirational. That is, he didn’t want to inspire change, but to make people take note of how inspirational he was. He did it for the same reason any human does anything: ego.

Quality Manager: That’s a cynical viewpoint, and I refuse to live in the dirt with you.

QA Associate: Have you ever paid attention to the words you’re saying?

Quality Manager: What do you mean? I know it by heart, of course I’ve paid attention.

QA Associate: No, I mean really paid attention. I’m not saying it doesn’t reflect how you actually feel, but have you analyzed the message, and really tried to understand it? Or was it taught to you once, and you just accept it, because you were told that it would help?

Quality Manager: I—I guess...

QA Associate: Do you know what a chant is? Lots of Eastern religions use them. They often hold no semantic meaning, if they have any meaning at all. They call out the names of their gods, or they just repeat some random string of sounds. They’re not trying to convey an idea, which makes it non-language. What they’re doing is centering themselves on a rhythm, so that they can clear their mind of worldly anxiety, expand it to accept the divine, and learn discipline. It doesn’t matter what they’re saying; only what they’re thinking about while they’re saying it. The Serenity Prayer is no different, because most people don’t consider it deeply on its own. They just use it to escape the stress of reality’s current moment.

Quality Manager: What’s your point?

QA Associate: My point is that chants were invented before soap and toilet paper. We’ve evolved since then. We now know that there is a much better way of reaching zen.

Quality Manager: And what might that be?

QA Associate: Sleep. Now shut up so I can get back to naptime.

Overwritten: Perspective (Part VIII)

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I return to work after a couple of years in recovery. I think they only give me this time off because I’m such an oddity. No one else is like me. A human who has survived such a dramatic temporal shift is rare if not completely unheard of. Each time I see my daughter again, more time has passed, and she spends less time with me, weening me off of her care. Eventually, she’s gone for good, and I never see her again. I keep abreast of the situation with Mateo and Leona year by year. Horace Reaver spends a little time in a human prison, which is apparently good enough for the choosing ones, while it lasts. But Mateo and Leona need his help with something, and so I pull some strings and have him transferred to a different prison. It’s far more complex, and seems more difficult to break out of, but it’s not; not for them. Somehow, I know this. I have some kind of connection with time that I tell no one about. I can’t see the future, and I certainly cannot travel there, but I feel it. I am part of the timestream itself. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, I just know what needs to be done. I gather a list of other salmon within my “range” and assist them as well. They never know, and that’s just how I like it. I even help Reaver out once by sending a message on a convoluted path throughout time. He thinks it's a favor, but it doesn't work out for him. But it’s all for the best. And again, I just know this to be so.

After yet another decade of working at a salmon/chooser prison facility, I am given a special assignment. I and four of my closest friends operate in shifts, monitoring two of the most notorious salmon criminals I’ve met. Reaver is one of them, of course, but his pseudo-partner rival, Ulinthra is the other one. I live underground on Easter Island in a sort of cave mansion. It’s pretty badass, and I feel no need to go anywhere else while I’m not working. The others live with their families in the future. I was ferried there once. It was a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there, I’ll tell ya that. At the moment, my shift partner is taking a nap, and I’m keeping Reaver company. We’ve just returned after a brief journey into the past so that Reaver could finally attend one of his friend’s funeral service.

“I’ve been down here with you for years now,” I tell him, “yet you refuse to speak to me. I’m curious as to why that is.”

“You betrayed me. That’s all I need to know.”

“I never betrayed you. I was never with you. I was a spy.”

“Who were you working for?”

“Lady Justice.”

That got a laugh out of him, which is all I was really going for.

“Melly accidentally sent me back when she sent you back to 2016. I was born to protect people from people like you. It’s fitting that it should end in a place like this.”

“What do you mean, end?” he asks.

“This day today is our final day.”

“How do you know?”

“I can feel it.”

He lifts his chin, not totally surprised. “When did that start?”

“Melly rubbed off on me I guess.”

“She’s a strong one.”

“Indeed. She helped me out when I needed her most. Way I hear it, she did the same for Mateo, against you.”

“She did. I overestimated her loyalty to her father.”

“She wants to do the right thing. All in all, I would say she is the most noble of the choosing ones.”

Reaver chuckled in a way that made it clear that he agreed. He walked over to the corner and rested against the glass. “I’m so tired. Is it really over today?”

“It is. There is nothing we can do to stop it. But it sounds like you don’t want to.”

“Do you?”

“I believe I’ve served my purpose.”

“What are we talking about? My shift partner said suddenly.

I look at my watch. “Is it time already?” My end is coming soon. It’s like I’m being pulled towards it, and it doesn’t feel like darkness. It feels like peace.

“What do you mean?” the other guard asks.

I cover for myself, “oh, I just thought you would be asleep longer.” Before anyone can question what I really mean, someone pulls me out of the timestream.

I find myself standing on a simple garden path. A man pretends to be picking flowers up ahead of me. “Can I help you?” I call up to him.

“I just wanted your last sight to be of beauty, so I hijacked The Cleanser’s jump,” the man explains vaguely.

“What exactly does that mean? Who is the Cleanser?”

“He’s a rival of sorts,” the man answers, but then adds that he’s more of “a partner.”

“He will be the cause of Reaver’s death?”

“And yours, yes.”

“What shall I call you?”

“What do you think you should call me?”

“I’m getting the sense that you’ve been breaking the rules, but you’re so powerful that no one can stop you. You’ve gone rogue.”

He stops haphazardly tugging at a dandelion. “Rogue,” he repeats. “I love that.”

“Glad to hear it,” I lie.

“The Cleanser is trying to rid the world of time travel,” The Rogue says. “In all time periods, in all realities.”

“And you’re trying to stop him?” I ask.

“Not all that much,” he clarifies. “But I certainly don’t want him to do it, even if I thought he would be capable of such a thing. I’m just trying to have a lot of fun. When you’re immortal, every decision you make is meaningless. At that point, all you have left is watching other people’s decisions.”

“If you say so,” respond, but I have no interest in him expanding on his words.

He turns and looks at me. “But I can see that you don’t care.” Can he read minds? He goes on, “no, what you want is true beauty. I thought this garden would do it for you, because of its simplicity, but you want something more. You want to see something no one else has.”

“And do you have any idea what that is?”

“Death.” He snaps his fingers and returns me to the Easter Island cavern, far away from Horace Reaver’s prison cube. Reaver is talking with someone. “That’s the guy I was telling you about,” The Rogue says.

I nod. “The Cleanser.” I can’t hear their conversation, but I see what is likely a bomb. “I’m going to watch Reaver die? I have no interest in that either.”

“Not him,” the Rogue says. “Just wait.”

I patiently wait for them to finish their conversation. The Cleanser mysteriously moves over and picks up Reaver’s pillow. His body shudders away from itself, and then he disappears. The pillow falls to the floor. Just as that happens, all five of Reaver’s security guards appear inside of the cube, including myself.

“This is my favorite part,” the Rogue says. All he needed was a bucket of popcorn. He turns an imaginary dial in the middle of the air and the volume from inside the cube increases.

“It’s a bomb!” Horace yells as one of the guards is pointing a gun at him.

“You see? Without you, Reaver wouldn’t have cared that others were going to die. It may not seem like much to you, but if there’s an afterlife, you’ve increased his chances of going to heaven. You’ve helped redeem him.” He turns the imaginary dial the other direction and lowers the volume. The device the Cleanser left in there exploded and consumes the cube.

“They died anyway,” I say. “I died. Who cares if Reaver was a slightly less despicable human being at the time? Why are you showing me this?”

“I showed you this perspective so that you could die knowing you made a difference. Sure, Reaver is only negligibly better than he was, but what about people you met who already had potential, but were squandering it. What about Micro? What about Brian?”

I laugh at the obscure pop culture reference.

“You mattered, Lincoln Rutherford,” the Rogue claims. “You matter.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better for when you send me back into the loop to experience the death I just witnessed?”

“It is,” the Rogue says.

I lean against the cave wall and let out a sigh of relief. “Do it.”

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