The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 13, 2398

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Miller Dennard didn’t understand when Leona called the weapon that one of the other helicopters dropped down in the gulf an atom bomb. She didn’t even have any clue what that could mean, or make any connection between the term, and the sunboxes of lore. Apparently, the a in a-bomb stood for addle, for its function of spoiling life within the blast radius. She’s not a scientist, so she couldn’t detail how it worked, but she assured the team that international war laws prevented the military from using such weapons against humans. They’re only ever deployed to disrupt an enemy’s agricultural capacity. Taba, Egypt relies heavily on marine life in the gulf to support their economy, particularly in selling fishing licenses for tourists. This is going to severely damage their budget, but as she put it, they should have thought about that before they collectively decided against helping a small group of lost wanderers. Heath is shocked that she was able to secure approval for such a hostile act. The three time travelers are valuable, and he knows that, but now it seems that others are starting to agree. People are going to great lengths to both protect them, and get them on a certain side.

The transport helicopter and its escorts landed in Frankfurt, then got them into first class on a direct flight back to Kansas City. A driver came for the fake Amir, and then another came to deliver the rest to the condo, which is when they discovered that the other three members of their group were not there. Angela left a coded note, explaining that they were going off on a rescue mission. That was days ago, though, and they should have beat them back here with The Olimpia. Something else happened, and they needed to know what. They weren’t able to get ahold of them by phone, so they confronted Winona Honeycutt for answers. She claimed that they were aware of the rescue attempt by the Dead Sea, but lost track of the other half of the team after that. No one appeared to have detected them teleporting away, but that’s what the Honeycutts figured went down. She said that she had been searching for them ever since, and have come up with no leads. It’s hard to tell when she’s lying, but it could be true.

Finally, after days of stressing out about it, Leona received a call from an unfamiliar number late at night. Mateo wasn’t able to talk for very long; not long enough for Leona to arouse the others to listen in on the whole conversation, but he was able to report that the three of them were okay, and were making their way home. Communication was difficult, though, so she shouldn’t expect to hear from them frequently. No word on where they were, or what they were doing, but it was a relief just to make contact. Their communications may be compromised in more ways than one, so they’ll wait to debrief each other in person. They sure have a lot to divulge themselves.

“What else did he say?” Kivi asks, having only heard the tail end of the conversation.

Leona frowns, and stares into empty space. “They won’t be back for days, if that.”

“I’m sorry.” Marie and Heath only heard Mateo say goodbye, and then hang up.

Leona straightens herself out. “You’re in charge while I’m gone.”

“Where are you going?” Heath asks her.

“I’m going to wherever they are.” Amidst confused protests, Leona goes back to her room to get dressed, and gather a few essentials. She orders the others to remain here, and not follow her. Then she drives down to their lab.

Microstory 1672: The Last Wars

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After the two surviving Ochivari left the first universe they went to—or rather after one of them escaped, and the other was killed in the attempt—things started to get worse for the humans. They were devastated to learn that aliens were bad. Of course, they had only encountered three individuals, which is hardly a decent sample size, but they were convinced. Each country started bolstering its military might. Some allies tried to form joint militaries, but for the most part, they stayed separate. In other universes I’ve witnessed, when a culture encounters some kind of massive external threat, the people generally come together. They set aside their differences, and focus on defeating the enemy together. This did not happen here, but if it had, it may have saved their lives. For years, they sat like this. People were conscripted into the various branches of their respective military forces, but didn’t have anything to do. Unlike other versions of Earth, this one had never experienced a world war before, but it wasn’t really because they were more peaceful than anyone else. They usually tried to settle their issues diplomatically, but if that didn’t work, two civilizations might have resorted to war. If that happened, if they wanted to fight against each other, everyone else stayed out of it most of the time. The boredom and frustration was really getting to them now, though. All global conflicts were put on hold in order to prepare for the return of the aliens, but nothing happened. The Ochivari had never come on purpose, and they had no reason to show up now, especially not since they knew where the timeline was headed. They knew that the humans were destined to destroy themselves, without a sterility virus. After eight years, the signs of the apocalypse were beginning to present themselves.

For no apparent reason but they didn’t feel like they had anything better to do, the nations started fighting each other. It wasn’t the leadership so much as it was the conscripts, who felt cheated out of the time they could have spent with their families. If these former civilians had to put so much effort into learning warfare skills, then goddammit, they were going to use them. It was like a global barfight, where some people started fighting just because someone carelessly bumped into them. Country A was trying to get to Country B when Country C got in the way, so Country C fought back, but accidentally hit Country D instead. It was a huge mess, and obviously, no one won in the end. Fortunately, they had never developed nuclear weapons, because history didn’t suggest there would be any need to bomb more than one enemy at the same time, so it just seemed like a waste of resources, when nuclear power was a far more useful pursuit. They kept killing though. It turned out to be one of the bloodiest wars I have ever seen. No, it probably is indeed the bloodiest. Internal conflicts started springing up when soldiers found themselves unable to get to someone from another country. Literal neighbors started killing each other when the supply chain broke down, and there wasn’t enough food to go around. Where once they numbered in the billions, over the course of the next two decades the population dwindled to the thousands. They pretty much only stopped killing each other, because survivors were so few and far between, and they were composed mostly of people who had always tried to stay out of it, and had succeeded. Civilization never recovered from this. Those survivors eked out a living amongst the ruins, but could not significantly grow from there. Many didn’t even bother trying to propagate the species, and after several decades more, the human species went extinct.

Microstory 1617: Efilism

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The Ochivari were not born as antinatalists. In fact, they were quite the opposite in the beginning. They multiplied like crazy, obsessed with developing galactic dominance through sheer numbers. Even without the technology of many human civilizations, they figured they could ultimately win any conflict simply by the fact that it was more difficult to kill them all. They would win any battle, because so many of their kind would be left over. This sentiment was not limited to the population growth itself. Overexploitation of resources became almost a point of pride amongst their species. They destroyed their planet as they raced to increase their numbers, and as they fought to spread out to other planets, so they could take those resources as well. Of course, this was a completely unsustainable model, and caught up to them quite quickly. They would have died out if they had not discovered that they were biologically capable of crossing over into other universes, where resources would ultimately prove infinite. As it would happen, the second universe they went to experienced a similar fate, though not quite as on purpose. The humans there were not living on Earth, but had evolved elsewhere in the galaxy. They wrecked their own world, and due to a number of unfortunate circumstances—including a relatively low oxygen ratio in the atmosphere, and relatively high surface gravity—they were never able to venture out into the solar system, let alone beyond. In the end, in order to preserve their planet’s future, they were the ones who came up with antinatalism for themselves. They killed almost the entire population, save for an elite few who were selected to survive in stasis. With humanity out of the way, their planet could once again take over, and eventually repair the damage. They would not awaken for millions of years. Now, while this brane is referred to as Efilverse, its inhabitants weren’t truly efilists. Efilism is a philosophical stance that places a negative value on both birth, and life. The efilversals make no such moral judgment. They just saw how much their civilization destroyed of their world, and decided that it was their responsibility to fix it, which they chose to do through genocide. Real efilists are not murderers.

The efilversals didn’t want their species to die out completely, but thought they could do things better once they returned from stasis, and restarted civilization, equipped with insight, and advanced technology. Unfortunately for them, they continued to make bad decisions, right up to the end. They made no attempt to choose the most practical survivors for the stasis program. Many of them were too old to bear children. Others were prone to genetic diseases. Some suffered from fertility problems, while others never thought of themselves as parents. They agreed to join the program, because they wanted to live, not because they would be particularly beneficial to the movement. Some stasis pods even malfunctioned, and killed their occupants long before they could be revived. The rich and the lucky survived, while all the poor people perished in the nuclear holocaust, which was already ironic, given why it was they were doing any of this in the first place. They were doomed from the start, even if everyone came out of stasis alive, was biologically suited for the task, and wanted to do it, because they did not have the numbers. Only a few committed themselves to realizing their dreams, but it just wasn’t enough. They died out within two generations, and that was that for the efilversals. Yet they did not go extinct without leaving a legacy. During their final years, the Ochivari showed up, only looking to expand their empire. The efilversals taught them what they had done—how they had fixed their world, which was the only successful part of their plan. The Ochivari weren’t willing to become efilists themselves, but it did spark the idea to be antinatalistic instead. They went back to their homeworld of Worlon, and fought in a great war, which saw the antinatalist faction to victory. This was when they began their crusade. They returned to efilverse, and started using that planet as their new homebase, and from there, they began to travel to other branes, where they would sterilize any civilization destined to make the same mistakes as them.

Microstory 973: Survival

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This slot was originally scheduled for Healthcare (When It Works) but since I know very little about countries and regions where it works, it didn’t seem appropriate. All I know is that Usonia isn’t one of them, but that’s all I’ll say about it, other than mentioning the fact that Obamacare saves lives. Instead, I’m going to take this opportunity to admit that I’m a survivalist. The only differences between me and the doomsday preppers you see on television is that I’m smart enough to not advertise all my secret plans to the world, and also I don’t have any. Some preppers have the money to build or commission bunkers. Others have purchased luxury space in old missile silos; dumping tons of money into something they probably won’t ever need. The less wealthy kind of prepper just squirrels away food and resources as they can, and reinforces their homes as much as possible. These tend to rely on their firepower, because they believe profoundly in gun ownership, so they would be spending money on them either way. I’m not any of these things; I really just come up with end-of-the-world stories, and have trouble distinguishing them from reality, which is true of all my stories. And that reality is that the end of the world probably wouldn’t happen all of the sudden. Yeah, maybe a supervolcano will erupt without warning, or an asteroid will decimate these lands. It’s an interesting thought experiment. Assuming you survive the initial event, what would you do next? Are you a series regular on this post-apocalypse series, or just zombie fodder? The most likely scenarios, however, will involve a slow-burn of destruction. Hell, we might be heading towards the end of civilization right now, and not know it. King Dumpster is certainly doing his level best to make that happen. Just like the truth behind most holidays, no single day will mark the end. Institutions will slowly erode. People will stop having faith in their leadership, and the market will drop steadily as fear replaces hope. Before the nuclear missiles fly off to enemy countries, sanctions and bad trade deals will create extreme tension amongst once-friends. Allies will leverage each other for control, until there’s nothing left to control but a big pile of crap. Sure, maybe the bombs will drop on everyone, but the most likely outcome is that people will just give up on life. Governments won’t be able to survive anymore. Ineffective factions will attempt to take their place, but a lack of vision, and no sustainable distribution of resources will just make things worse. Infrastructure will fall, and no matter how deep you dig into the ground, your life will have no meaning. You’ll live on down there, but nothing will get better, so if you’ve already had children, it’s best that they don’t. I’m fascinated by disaster scenarios, but those stories only ever end one of two ways. Either everyone dies, or the cataclysm gives rise to a societal phoenix. They usually ignore the possibility that we’ll trudge on long after any arbitrary defining moment, until our descendants suffer diminishing returns. So I guess what I really love isn’t survival, but civilization. I love the world, so let’s do everything we can to protect it, and make it better.

Microstory 590: Operator Halts All Ploutonic Enterprises Operations

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Our new overlord, proclaimed by some to be the incarnation of God, has decided to cease all operations at Ploutonic Enterprises. Ploutonic began in the early-to-mid 20th century with one goal: to give the people what they wanted. Their slogan was the same yesterday as it was when it first began, “Always there, hands open.” What exactly does this mean? Well, as time marches on, society and its peoples develop different priorities. At times of war, Ploutonic manufactured uniforms, munitions, battle transport, etc. At times of great peace, such as following the Stockton Nuclear Disarmament, Ploutonic designed innovative toys. Their original toy factory remains standing today, and has occasionally been used as a Bellevue outpost. They have had their hands in a number of wildly different industries, sometimes overlapping each other, but often after shuttering one division in favor of the next. Their unorthodox strategy has led to great profits, but have recently seen a decline in success. A quote from business analyst Riva Holsten, originally posted on her newsblog, is below.

[Ploutonic] always positioned themselves to take advantage of relevant opportunities. No one could accuse them of not understanding the future, that’s for sure. They’re always one step ahead of the trends, leading some to believe its founder to possess anomaly abilities to actually see the future. This would certainly explain their deep connection to Bellevue. But all the future studying in the world can’t help you if people begin protesting your brand. The fact is that Ploutonic has had to lay off more of its workforce than most companies of its calibre, and it’s done so in order to make room for these new opportunities, not because it had to. And their aggressively passionate stance in support of disloyalty finally caught up to them near the end of the millennium. Few employees were sticking around past a year, and even fewer people were applying for the vacancies. The enthusiasm just wasn’t there anymore. What always baffled me was how baffled they were about this turn of fortune. Honestly, I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner. I surmise that the only thing that kept it afloat was the number of people who were able to stay on board based on their qualifications, regardless of what direction the company went in. Accountants and marketers, for instance, can account and market for any industry. Unfortunately, many jobs aren’t like that, and this made people angry. If the organization didn’t close artificially anyway, I would have estimated their longevity at three years.

Godlike anomaly Operator—who possesses the ability to manipulate the physical movements of anyone and everyone on the planet simultaneously—has finally decided that enough is enough. Ploutonic Enterprises, and all of its divisions, have been completely shut down, effective immediately. Most people still working there have been transitioned into Operator’s universal basic income program, which draws its fund from the no longer necessary defense budget. Most recent president and CEO of Ploutonic declined to comment in detail regarding the new development, saying simply, “I didn’t want it to end at all, but I definitely didn’t want it to end this way. Operator was able to make my fingers type the email blast that laid off my entire workforce at once, but she couldn’t stop me from crying while I was doing it.” Early reports suggest that Operator will convert Ploutonic Enterprise’s headquarters into a reformed education academy.

Microstory 549: Bellevue Increasing Scope to Utah

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Back in the early 1990s—and earlier, for that matter—only a select few people know that there existed those with extraordinary abilities. At first, it was only family and friends, with the occasional passerby catching sight of something they weren’t supposed to. In the midst of the great revelation to the rest of the world, the organization responsible for bringing them together was still trying to figure out exactly what it was. They knew that they wanted to be involved with these powerful anomalies, and they knew that they wanted to be leaders in the advancement of science, but something felt missing. As it turns out, what they hadn’t quite found yet were law enforcement, and even public policy. Bellevue became an agency; one designed at first only to protect anomalies, and people from anomaly dangers. The thing about this, though, was that the scope was far too narrow. The number of Bellevue members far exceeded the number of threats, and intensity, of threats. And so, they gradually began increasing their scope. They offered their abilities, knowledge, and skills to other law enforcement organizations. They were working the Confederacy, national investigators, and local orderkeepers. Pretty soon, most of what they were dealing with had little to nothing to do with anomalies. They were simply a force for good, safety, and equality. This is the Bellevue we know today. Most living anomalies are still active members, technological advancement remains their number one priority, but most of the world accepts them as another group of trained professionals exercising authority over the populace. But this does not cover the entire world. There are still some regions that reject their authority, probably the most notable being Utah.

The country of Utah is one of only a handful of nations that are each geographically within the entirety of another. In this case, Utah is as completely surrounded by Usonia, and is just as large as—and in some cases, larger than—other Usonian states. In fact, Utah began as any other state, just one that was more heavily populated by religious followers of Amadesis. However, things have changed a great deal since then. A nuclear explosion here, a war there, total global nuclear disarmament, and the Amadesins were given control over the majority of Utah land. Historically speaking, the Amadesin Utah has been resistant to any interference or interaction with any other country, maintaining a policy of isolationism. Few visitors are ever allowed on Utah soil, and for the most part, that’s how non-Utahan like it. Bellevue has recently taken a stance against this, stating that they no longer accept the idea that anyone living on this planet has the right to ignore anyone else. In a press briefing this morning, they have officially increased their scope to Utah. This does not mean Utah accepts this declaration, but it does force its leadership’s hands, calling upon them to take some level of action in response. They have so far made no move, and it is unclear what they will choose to do, but experts discredit any theory that any act of violence could seriously threaten the strength, and the will, of the Bellevue authority.

Voyage to Saga: Ends of the Earth (Part IV)

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“Are we feeling better?” The Shepherd asked of him. She was holding a clipboard and wearing a stereotypical nursing cap.

“Good enough.” He struggled to sit up. “What’s my next mission?”

“Now, hold on. You don’t even know if you did well enough on the last one. Hell, you don’t even know if you survived. I can talk to dead people.” She said that like an overconfident kindergartner who can now count to ten.

Vearden just sat there and waited.

“Okay, fine, you did great. The people on that planet are fine too, by the way. You cured them, and saved the better part of an entire galaxy.”

“That’s nice to hear,” Vearden said honestly.

“I thought you might enjoy that, because this next one is going to be more complicated, and you’re not going to like how it starts.”

“Does it matter?”

“I guess not,” the Shepherd agreed. “You could always quit. You came to me, this isn’t like the Cleanser with his tribulations, or Arcadia with Mateo’s expiations.”

“Arcadia who, and her what?”

“Don’t worry about it.” She paused before adding, “yet.”

Vearden sat up a little straighter. “I’ll be ready in a minute. I just need to find my clothes.”

“Clothes?” she asked. “Where we’re goin’...we don’t need clothes.”

“So, a nudist colony?” He had to admit, if only to himself, that that did not sound like something he would say no to.

“No, L-O-L.” She literally laughed. “You’ll just be wearing someone else’s clothes.” She looked at him over her fake glasses. “I must say, though—and you might call me a cliché—but I do love a man in uniform.” She waved her hand in the air and spirited him away.

He found himself sitting in the cockpit of an airplane, wearing a pilot’s uniform. The Shepherd was right. He wasn’t happy with this. It was giving him traumatic flashbacks to the time he lost Saga in the first place. He had to get over it though, because it was time to get into character.

“I’ll tell ya what, though,” the guy who was presumably his co-pilot said without looking at Vearden. “I sure wish they could put an air marshal on every flight.”

Vearden chose to stay silent. Either he had leapt into the body of the pilot, or they had switched places. He wasn’t quite ready to find out which. He could also hear someone banging on the cockpit door, yelling something about diverting the craft.

“King Dumpster would never—” the co-pilot tried to continue, but then did happen to look over. “My God, who the fuck are you!”

“Uh...” he couldn’t come up with a good excuse. He missed the days when the people he ran into weren’t surprised to see him. The people on Orolak had encountered aliens many times before, and the doctors on Vaidy didn’t dismiss the possibility of alternate universes. Vearden waved his arms in front of himself like a stage performance. “Magic.”

“I’m gonna call this in.” The co-pilot started speaking into the radio, and Vearden had to think quickly. Violence was never the answer, but since when did he ever receive a perfect score for anything? He punched the co-pilot in the jaw, successfully knocking him out.

He stood and turned up the volume on the little security camera outside the cockpit. The man kept yelling. “There’s a bomb! We have to divert the plane! Go south! Go as far south as you can!”

Curious, Vearden opened the door, shocking the man on the other side. “If there’s a bomb on the plane, how would flying south help?”

“Uh...” the man didn’t know what to say either, but then he composed himself. “The bomb is not on the plane. It’s over Kansas, and the resulting EMP will knock out all electronics for hundreds, if not thousands, of miles. I can’t believe you opened the...” He trailed off when he noticed the co-pilot. “Who are you?”

“Someone who doesn’t know how to fly a plane. Do you?”

The man didn’t expect to be taken seriously. “I think I could figure it out. We just...we just need to go south. Then we can deal with the whole emergency landing problem.”

The flight attendant showed up from evidently having needed to calm down the other passengers. “What the hell is going on here? Where’s the captain?”

“It’s okay, um...Stevenson,” Vearden said, looking at the flight attendant’s nametag. “I’m an air marshal, and this is an emergency. We have to divert the plane.”

“Where’s your badge?” Stevenson asked.

“I’m under cover.”

He stared at him like he didn’t believe a word he was saying. But then he shrugged. “Whatever. I don’t mind being a hostage.” Stevenson left to sit down casually in his cute little jump seat.

“We better get inside,” Vearden said to the other guy.

“Taniel! Taniel! Come up here!” he called back to the fuselage.

“What’s your name, by the way?” Vearden asked.

“You can call me Kasabian.” They stepped into the cockpit, along with a young man named Taniel. Stevenson waved goodbye to them.

“What kind of world are we living in?”

“Have you been—” Kasabian began.

“...living under a rock?” Vearden proposed. “Let’s say I have. How would you explain this world to an alien?”

“Things have been going bad for years now,” Taniel explained while Kasabian sat down and tried to get a feel for the controls. “Now my father believes shit has finally hit the fan. So instead of taking me and my sister to safety, he left her behind.”

“I have my orders,” Kasabian defended himself. “She’s not a part of this.”

“She’ll die out there!” Taniel argued.

“I have taught her everything I know. She’ll be well clear of the blast, and radiation. She’ll survive, but we won’t if I can’t figure out how to get this thing turned.”

“Oh my God,” Taniel said. He shooed his father from the controls and started manipulating them himself. They could feel the plane make an uncomfortably sharp turn to the left. When he was done, the other two didn’t know what to say. “It’s not that hard,” Taniel said to them. “Parents complain about all the video games their millennial children play...until it comes time to call upon the skills learned in an airplane simulation.”

“Great,” Kasabian said with a nod. “Now that I know how to do that, we can turn again and go south, which is where we need to be, because we’re not going back to Houston, son!”

“You’re an asshole.”

“You’ll thank me when we’re in the—” he stopped short, apparently realizing that he had said too much. He just went back to making a much more dramatic turn than before, and pretended like they hadn’t been talking.

“In the what?” Taniel questioned.

“The safe zone, of course,” Kasabian covered. Taniel wasn’t buying it, but didn’t think he would get any more answers anyway. Besides, someone was knocking on the door.

“Don’t answer that,” Kasabian commanded.

“Why not?” Vearden asked.

“We don’t know who it is.”

“You don’t know who I am.”

“Exactly. I don’t any more variables.”

“I’m the one in the captain’s uniform,” Vearden said, with a slight smile.

“I’m the one with close-quarters combat training,” Kasabian countered.

“I’m here for a reason, and this women might be a part of that.”

“She looks familiar,” Taniel said, peering at the security stream. She was a pretty middle-aged woman who looked nervous and desperate.

Vearden opened the door, knowing that Kasabian was too busy to stop him.

“Are we going south?” the woman asked.

“We are now, yes,” Taniel said. “Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry but we will not be going to Atlanta,” Kasabian said, now looking through a manual he found. “This is a matter of national security.”

“I didn’t want to go to Atlanta,” the woman said. “I wanted to go to Brazil. Atlanta was just one of my stops.”

“We can’t go to Brazil either,” Kasabian told her. “We have to stop at the nearest airport, and from what I gather, that would be Havana.”

“Are you crazy?” Taniel asked. “We can’t go to Cuba.”

“Why not?” Vearden asked. “Did President Obama not reopen Cuba?”

“Who? King Dumpster was our last president.”

“Who the hell is King—oooohhhh.” Vearden finally realized who they were talking about. “You guys reelected him in this reality?”

“What?”

“Cuba won’t be happy to see us,” the woman continued, ignoring Vearden’s strange remark. “Let’s just go on to Brazil. Surely we have enough fuel.”

“Honestly, ma’am,” Kasabian said, “I have no idea. We’re playing this by ear. We too are trying to get to Brazil, but we may not make it, so we have to play it safe. No one anywhere is ever happy to see Trumpericans.”

“Is that really what—” Vearden tried to ask.

“No.” Kasabian sighed. “It’s not what we’re officially called. Man, that rock must have been heavy. Now everyone please stop talking. I need to learn everything I can about this so we don’t all crash into the gulf and die.”

“Fair enough.” Then Vearden added under his breath, “I’m just not sure what I’m still doing here.”

Vearden and Taniel sat on the floor while the woman, whose name turned out to be Candida, sat in the co-pilot’s seat. The co-pilot woke up a half hour later the jumpseat next to Stevenson; confused, angry, but with no way of getting back into the cockpit. A half hour after that, things got really insane. All of the sudden, the controls that were once lit up just shut off. Kasabian could steer the plane to a certain degree, but the electronics were all gone. It would seem that they were unable to get far enough away from the EMP he mentioned earlier.

“Oh my God, are we gonna die?” Candida asked, loudly, but not loud enough for the passengers to hear.

“We’ll be able to glide for a while, but it may not be enough to get to the runway. I don’t have that math, or enough education to, like, solve it anyway.”

“What can we do?” Taniel asked, but received no response. “Dad! What can we do?”

Kasabian frantically started flipping back through the manual. “Where do they keep the parachutes?”

“There’s no way this plane has a parachute for every single passenger,” Taniel said.

“I wasn’t talking about every passenger,” Kasabian said back. “Just us. In fact, just us two. Only you need to survive, and I only need to survive to protect you.”

“What makes me so bloody special?”

“I’m not having this conversation again.

And then they began to fight with each other, not one of them offering any viable solution. Candida tried to play mediator, but they started attacking her a little as well. Vearden remained silent before doing that thing where he shuts everybody up at once. “We can’t do this. None of us knows how to fly. Sure, you held onto the stick thingy, and kept it moving, but autopilot does most things these days, so I’ma hold onto your medal. Even if it had been programmed to land from a glide, it doesn’t work, because the power’s out. There’s only one person on this thing who can save us.”

It took some more persuasion, but eventually, they reluctantly opened the door and let the co-pilot come back in. Apparently, if they did manage to survive and make it to Cuba, they weren’t going to be punished as terrorists, because...well it was 2023 Cuba in a universe where a massive nuclear weapon was just detonated over Kansas. No one was in charge, so they might as well let the co-pilot do what he was trained to do. It wasn’t like he could stop them after that. He ordered them out of the cockpit, and they complied. It was out of their hands. More specifically, it was out of Vearden’s hands.

He stepped into the lavatory to splash water on his face. When he tried to step out, he found himself back in the magical suite from before. Housekeeping hadn’t even come in to clean.

“Oh, you did a good job,” the Shepherd said from the bathroom. “In the original timeline, no one thought to call the co-pilot back, and they all died.”

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Microstory 432: Floor 10 (Part 1)

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I work on the lower floor of the Research and Development department. Why this company needs two floors of labs, and one of offices, for only R&D is something I couldn’t explain to you. Things are far too spread out, and we’ve hired far too many people. In fact, too many people work at Analion in general. It is not a healthy way to conduct business. First of all, you’re spending too much money of labor. Secondly, all of my coworkers are stupid. If I extrapolate my personal experiences across every floor, it would turn out that we’re composed of at least 80% morons. That is, unless you examine only the executives and board of directors on the higher floors. If you do that, you’ll come to a cool figure of 100% moron. As soon as I started working here, I felt like the smartest person on the planet. I mean, there’s the scientific method, and then there’s doing the same thing over and over again, while expecting different results. Is my department at fault for Windowgate? Eh, probly. We break a lot of things here. Applying enough stress on any object will always ultimately result in its destruction. Nothing is impervious to force. So if we scrapped every project that couldn’t withstand a nuclear bomb, then we would get nowhere. We sent products down the line that eventually made their way to customers’ homes or businesses that ended up killing them. Sorry. I would like to take the blame for it, but I can’t. I told you that I work with idiots, and I can’t stop them from making mistakes. I know I sound like I’m making excuses, but whatever. I wipe my hands clean. I can’t feel remorse for something I didn’t do. If you don’t like it, you can take it up with my superiors. I consider them responsible for everything anyway.

Microstory 358: Safety from Political Corruption or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Escape to a Constructed Reality

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Freedom from War

My personal political ideas are so radical that I’ve never really gotten into studying how politics work in the real world. I approach the fictional worlds in my stories as a naïve child; with few preconceived notions. Don’t get me wrong, I do tons of research for my work, and it’s actually my favorite part (I more often than not dread the typing part, whoops). But I also like to reimagine the world from an outsider’s perspective, because if another planet wanted to create a judicial system, they wouldn’t check in with Earthan humans first. I tell you this as a disclaimer so that you’ll understand where I’m coming from when I tell you that voting for Donald Trump is unlikely to be any less than the second or third worst mistake of your life. It on its own probably wouldn’t be the worst, because Trump-voters have something fundamentally wrong with their brains. He’s not as dumb as his twitter feed makes him seem. In fact, he and his campaign team are geniuses. We hear so much about the “black vote” and the “female vote” and the “hispanic vote” but Trump has finally figured out that idiots outnumber the rest of us by a ratio of at least 3:1. He’s low on money, and the polls aren’t looking great for him, but the scare is not yet over. Even if he doesn’t win, he’s a giant mirror for the state of our country. That Trump has made it this far is an omen to how close Uncle Sam is to shooting a firecracker in his own face. I speak so much of him because he’s not a politician, yet he could be the greatest we’ve ever seen. Politicians lie, cheat, and steal. They put people in danger, they do favors for each other, and their motives rarely align with the greater good or the moral high ground. Sounds like Trump to me. He’s corporate incarnate, so I’m not worried about him and policy, because little would change there. I’m worried about him being in possession of reapers and nuclear codes. He’s why I live in an alternate reality.

Right to Privacy

Microstory 250: Perspective Twenty-Five

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Perspective Twenty-Four

I hate the term “luddite”. I’m not a huge protester, or anything, I just don’t personally like technology. I wear an analog watch, I don’t own a television, and I still use a feature phone that I don’t always carry with me. I read somewhere about this movement called neo-luddism that is attempting to overthrow present-day technologies and return society to a more primitive state. I’m not part of that, but if you read up on some of their literature, I think it may give you a shiver. For instance, the invention of the personal computer has ultimately resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country. I bet you didn’t know that. Such technology is also associated with overdevelopment of cities, resulting in ecological devastation around the entire planet. It can’t be a coincidence that rainforests are being destroyed 30% faster today than they were in the 1990s. I read that somewhere. As technology progresses, so does the desolation. But like I said, I do not belong to that movement. I just don’t see the point of owning all these fancy new gadgets. My great grandparents did just fine without electricity. Well, I mean, they had electricity. But not much. People think that technology makes our lives better, but does it really? Humans were having babies for thousands of years before hospitals were even invented. And now we have 3D imaging of creepy sonar babies, and we can manipulate our babies’ DNA, and I heard this one story about a woman whose baby was delivered entirely by a robot. Tell me, exactly what is wrong with just giving birth in your bedroom with a midwife? And it’s not just health and environmental concerns. Tech is also responsible for nuclear war, GMOs, and I even read somewhere that says smartphones cause autism. Just look at the statistics; approximately zero people were diagnosed with autism a hundred years ago. If I recall correctly, this lines up nicely with the so-called Industrial Revolution. And now they’re all over the place. How many autistics are we gonna have a hundred years from now? Huh? And it’s not just that. My uncle is lucky to be a mailman, what with all this electronic mail going around. Soon he’ll be out of a job, thanks to robots. That’s right, I’m not crazy. Companies are already looking into having drones deliver packages. Drones, my God. Flying heralds of death is what I call them. Ya know, most drones have guns on them, I swear. I read that somewhere.

Perspective Twenty-Six

Superpowers: Sacrifice (Part VII)

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The year was 1961. Stockton had not spent the last few years while in exile playing solitaire and shoveling snow in Antarctica. He had continued working. His loyalists had been dispatched across Usonia to gather intelligence, much in the same way they had with the nations from earlier stages. Some spies were already in place, but much had changed since then, so he needed updated information. But this was not all he did. He had also succeeded in funding the campaign for the new leader of the free world.

Usonia was famous for pioneering a new form of governmental elections; one that was copied by other countries not long after it proved to be successful. For the first two months of an election year, every participating city large enough to qualify would hold their own presidential election. Anyone within reach who wanted to run for president would be able to, and for those first two months, they only had to convince their city that they were the right person for the job. No other city would even pay attention to them, and it was common to be running unopposed. For the next two months, each candidate who had won their city election would run a second campaign; this time competing with all the other city winners in their county. They would do this with a heavier purse, and greater notoriety. All county winners competed with each other for the next two months to win their state. Winners from a region of six states would compete across another two months until there were a total of seven candidates that would run against each other in the nationwide election for the last five weeks of the year. The incumbent would sometimes run as the eighth candidate, but they were not actually allowed to campaign since this was a distraction from running the country.

One benefit of this election structure was that it prevented only the richest from having a chance to serve their people. It did not take much money to campaign across a single city, and if you won that one, people would start to notice you, and provide you with funds so that you could go further. This also removed the need for political parties. Before this structure was implemented, people would regularly vote for whichever candidate belonged to their party, and all but completely ignore their actual position on the issues. This also meant that the candidates could be gradually whittled down until only the best remained, and once the electorate only have seven people to vote for, they knew that the six they were not yet familiar with had already been vetted by their area’s voters. But it was not without its flaws. When only rich and/or famous people could run for office, you pretty much knew what you were getting into. But when a random person from a random city who had no experience, could potentially run the country, it was possible to generate a somewhat fabricated narrative for them without anyone noticing. And this was especially true of any election before the data network was invented, and any six-year-old with a computer could run a background check.

Former governor of Federama, Frederick Stockton used this flaw to his advantage. Near the end of 1959, he personally traveled to Usonia in secret and recruited a woman named Larisa Peters. She had no prior aspirations for leadership, but she had a passion for politics, and a strong community in her Telamonic temple. Many believed in her, and her ideas of peace from sacrifice integrated well with Stockton’s plans for finally disarming the world. She would end up making one of the greatest sacrifices to carry out what she believed to be a righteous mission. She ran for president in the large city nearest to her town on a mild and generic platform; one that she won easily due to Stockton’s secret financial contributions. She continued through the elections, and found herself president eight months later.

After taking her position in the capital, Peters took a radical stance against Federama. She started out slowly making waves; an offhanded comment here, a meeting with the right person there. Within only a few months time, she had managed to create dozens of resistance groups all over; people who were angry with her, and were attempting to get her to step down. Protests began to crop up across the land, and she was facing a ton of backlash from congress. Almost no one was happy with her term, and the few who were happy could not be loud enough to be heard. Nobody so much as suspected that Peters had been working with Stockton. Again, this was before the personal computer was invented, and so tracing the campaign funds, and connecting the dots, would have been difficult at best.

The resistance grew and merged, until someone had the bright idea of making the connection between Peters’ ideas and everything that a certain former island leader had feared years ago. Suddenly, Stockton was no longer a pariah, but a hero to the people; one with a following ten times larger than his home’s population. Everybody wanted to be part of history, even if they weren’t educated enough to understand what the issues really were. More recruiters from the Antarctic base were dispatched to Usonia, and contacted the protesters. Together, they formulated a plan to get Stockton back on the radar for good, and in the best light possible. Eventually, he was able to officially step out of exilement, and begin to speak across Usonia. His following continued to increase until even people who weren’t really part of it agreed that he had been right all along.

Stockton held a highly publicized event where he would go to the capital of Usonia and request a meeting with President Peters. They stepped into a room together and began discussing the final stage of the final stage. It didn’t take very long, but they wanted to make it seem like Stockton was working tirelessly to convince her to change her mind, and so they just played cards for several hours. Once enough time had passed, an agreement had been supposedly reached. Peters took to the podium and announced plans to relieve her country of every single one of its nuclear weapons, and to place a moratorium on nuclear research that pertained to its applications for violence. People would go on to say that she only agreed to this so that she would not lose her chance at a second term, but most didn’t care. As long as the job was done, it didn’t matter how it had happened.

Months later, it was once again the eighth day of the eighth month, on the anniversary of the Utah bombing that had ultimately killed Stockton’s parents. He had invited his now gracer, President Peters to visit the secret Antarctic base. She was actually still at risk of being impeached by her electorate, but she wasn’t worried about that. Someone else could have the chair. She had no intention of putting her name on the ballot in 1965 anyway. She had some news of her own to give to Frederick, but wanted to let him tell his news first. He escorted her to a viewing room they overlooked the floor, and then went downstairs alone. Every single one of the hundreds of bombs and missiles that had not already begun the process of dismantlement were in one place. She positioned her lips over the microphone. “Is this safe?”

“You are perfectly safe in there,” Stockton assured her from the floor.

“Are you safe? Should you not be wearing protection, or something?”

“I was born immune to nuclear radiation.”

“You were? Because of Utah?”

“Because of Utah.”

“What are you doing, Frederick?”

“I want you to know that I had not intended on bringing you into this. I didn’t even know you existed when I started my plans. But those plans had to change, and when I first recruited you, I never knew that I would fall in love.”

“You’re scaring me. What are you going to do with these weapons? Why have they not yet been destroyed?”

“The world is sick, Larisa. It needs to be cleansed. I started forming this plan when I was still only a child. I never thought I would actually be able to get away with it, but humans have proved to be just as predictable as I suspected. Even with my setbacks and alterations, things went about the same as I thought they would. The only surprise was you and me. And I’m sorry for what I have to do now.”

“Oh my God. You’re going to send the bombs, aren’t you. This was your plan? To become what you claimed to fear the entire time?”

Frederick smiled. “That’s funny. You’ll understand. It might take years, but once I’m done here, and the world can begin anew, you’ll know that my mission was the best thing to happen to this planet since its coalescence.”

“Frederick. Don’t do this. You hear me? Do. Not. Do this!”

“Push the button, Tanner,” Frederick ordered.

“No!” Peters yelled, but Roma Tanner was in a separate room, so she couldn’t get to him. She banged on the door and watched in horror as Roma pushed the latte-colored button.

“Godspeed,” Roma said into the microphone. “I’m sorry I ever doubted you. Your country, and your planet, appreciates your sacrifice, even if they never know what happened here today.”

Frederick Stockton stepped into the machine and placed his hands on the metal bars to each side of him. The radiation from the weapons began to leak out of them and seep into his body. The power increased exponentially until he had absorbed all of the radiation. “If I could have,” he said through coughs and tremors, “I would have sent the weapons themselves, but we simply do not have the technology for it. The more I waited to implement the plan, the more weapons I would have needed to transport, and the more rockets I would have needed to build. I would never be able to keep up, and so this is my sacrifice. There is no truly safe way to dismantle a nuclear bomb, Larisa. They’re always dangerous, and the ones I let go could come back and bite you in the ass one day. There is also no safe way to set one off. You could do it over the ocean, but do you really want to do that for every bomb in the world? The environmental repercussions are beyond human understanding. I couldn’t risk that either. The only safe method is to get them off-world, and only I can do that. Close me up, Tanner.”

“Yes sir,” Roma replied.

Frederick continued speaking into his microphone. “I’m sorry it has to end like this, but also...I’m not sorry.” The door of the machine closed in front of him and lurched. It was preparing for takeoff. “I love you.”

“Oh my God, it’s a spaceship.” Larisa placed her hand over her mouth and gasped.

Roma began to count down, “Eleven...ten...nine...”

“Wait!” Larisa screamed. “Wait! I’m pregnant!”

Frederick smiled again. “I wish I could meet my child. How about we name the baby Gardenia? After my mother. Could you make that sacrifice for me?”

Tears dripped from Larisa’s cheeks. “That’s a beautiful name. It isn’t a sacrifice.”

“...one.”

“Goodbye.” The rocket shot out of the base and through the sky. It soared out of the atmosphere and into space. It was designed with no navigation. It was just supposed to go upwards as far as it could, for as long as it could. It was not until the rest of the world had mastered space travel did people know how far Stockton had made it away from the planet before his ship blew up. He died without ever being sure that his mission had succeeded. Since that day, save a few outliers that were stopped, the only nuclear research conducted had been for benevolent reasons like renewable energy. Frederick Stockton landed in the history books as the leader who had made the greatest sacrifice for the happiness of mankind.

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