Extremus: Year 122

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With Pronastus out of the way, Waldemar has been able to sit in his chair, and get some much-needed work done. It’s smooth, comfortable, and unworn. Past captains have sparingly sat on the bridge. He knows why, but he still doesn’t think it’s right. In the scifi shows of old, the bridge was the happenin’ place to be. It was literally the seat of power for the whole ship, and given the nature of the narratives, usually the focal point of the whole universe. The fictional captains were basically gods. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that in the real world. There are no aliens to fight or negotiate with. There are no spacetime anomalies, or colonies to save. There’s not even anything to see out here. Faster-than-light travel does not streak the stars, or show them endless ionized clouds of hyperspace. It’s just a blinding grayish light. If this bridge had a viewport, they would never be able to open it, except before they left, or once they make it to their destination. Waldemar has changed all that. He had ordered viewscreens to be installed before his chair. The stars they’re seeing aren’t really there, but they alleviate the claustrophobia. And that’s not all they do.

When the tentacled alien character appears on screen, Waldemar chuckles at him. “Lieutenant Xaxblarg. Is your boss on the shitter, or did you finally grow the balls to overthrow him?” His voice is a bit melodramatic, but it’s supposed to be.

“You know that Xaxblergins do not have balls. You insult me, human,” the alien spits back.

“Is he named after his race?” Waldemar’s helmsman whispers to the navigator.

“Stay in character, ensign!” Waldemar orders. He clears his throat, and looks back up at the screen. “Xaxblarg, I don’t care who I’m dealing with. I want your blasted blargship off that planet. You have enslaved the Tukpluckians for way too long, and we’re here to free ‘em. If you don’t go to the devil in five Milky Way minutes, I’m gonna blast a hole in your ship so big, you’ll be fartin’ xentriflux plasma for days.”

Xaxblarg chuckles evilly. “You think you’ve won, human captain, but your sensors have been degaussed. If you look outside, I think you’ll find yourself thoroughly surrounded by my strike penetrators.”

“Strike penetrators?” the science officer complains. “Jesus.”

“That’s two days in the brig, ensign!” Waldemar orders.

“In the real world, it is called hock, sir,” the ensign replies.

“That’s a stupid goddamn word that no one ever used until we started building real starships. I refuse to use it. Three days in the brig.”

“You told me to be historically accurate with my character,” the ensign goes on. “The way you wrote me as the radically honest half-trentlamite, I would push back against your errors. You have never called it the brig before—”

“Your sentence in the brig is four days now. Keep talkin’ and I’ll make it five...years.” Waldemar doesn’t like when people argue with him. It’s ridiculous. He’s in charge here. Whatever he says is right, even if it’s wrong. That’s the whole reason to be the boss. If this asshole wanted the job instead, he should have saved the ship from annihilation several years ago, instead of Waldemar.

“Four days is fine sir. Thank you.” He leaves the bridge using the door. That’s another thing Waldemar changed. Ubiquitous teleporters are too easy. Even the shows that had the technology almost always only used them to transport down to a planet, or back up. They didn’t waste energy jumping from one deck to another. Sure, the visual effects would have cost too much, but that’s no reason to overuse them in real life.

Waldemar takes a breath. “Now. Does anyone else have a problem with my script, or are you ready to get on board? Here’s something you need to understand—and perhaps I was unclear about why we’re doing this—the simulations are not just for fun. We all believe that there are no aliens out here, and we all believe that we’re never slowing down or stopping until we make it to the Extremus planet. But we don’t actually know that. What if we do encounter an alien race of slavedrivers, bent on our destruction? What if we fall into a black hole, and end up in another universe? And what if that universe is the opposite of ours, where I’m evil, and Adolf Hitler was good. We’re doing this to be prepared. I made it fun to keep you engaged and entertained. But I can make it boring if you want. Is that what you want? To be all technical and realistic,” he says with airquotes. 

“No, sir,” they grumble.

“Good. Now someone find me a replacement science officer who isn’t gonna backtalk me, and let’s run it again, from the top! I wanna get through this at least once.”

The next attempt went better. The crew performed admirably, and was able to kill everyone in the Xaxblergin fleet efficiently. He wrote the script himself, but they’re still not taking it seriously enough. Maybe he needs to hire some writers. He can still take credit for it. He doesn’t have to admit that he didn’t come up with the new storylines himself. Maybe his wife will have some thoughts on that. “You have the conn, Lieutenant.” He teleports off the bridge. He’s back in his stateroom now where Audrey is waiting for him, as usual. They have gotten into this habit where she cooks for him. The synthwrights didn’t want to engineer and build them a real kitchen, but they fell in line. They always will, or else.

“Welcome home, honey. How was your day?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.” Waldemar sits down. “What are we having?”

“This is chicken tetrazzini with cheesy white sauce and oven-roasted cherry tomatoes on top. For the drink, I chose a rosemary-infused sparkling lemonade.”

“I don’t like lemons,” Waldemar counters.

“Oh, you’ll like this. Lemonade is very different. The sugar—”

“I don’t like lemon anything,” he volleys, raising his voice, but still not yelling. “Bring me the milk we had last night.”

“We had turkey chili last night. Milk paired well with that, but it will not pair well with this dish,” she argues.

He swipes the cup off the table, letting it spill and break on the floor, but not shatter. “I’ll decide what pairs well with what.”

Audrey calmly stands up, walks around the table, and raps him on the nose. “No! No! We do not throw things, and we don’t knock them over. No!” She strikes him again.

She is the only person on this ship who can do something like that to him. Anyone else would be six feet under the Attic Forest or floating in the black nothing by now. He flares his nostrils, but doesn’t otherwise react. It’s not easy, holding himself back with her. He can’t just do it. He has to concentrate on it. Most things he tries come easy to him, but not social etiquette. That’s why he usually doesn’t worry about it, because it’s too much work, but she’s worth it. That ass alone...

“Okay.” She lifts her hand and taps on her fingers in the right command sequence. A bot emerges from the floor, and begins to clean up the mess.

“I told you, I don’t like those things. Your job is to keep house, when I’m not here, and when I am. If you’re going to outsource that work, what’s the point?”

“Good question,” Audrey replies as she’s returning to the kitchen. She takes the milk out of the fridge, and starts to pour. “What’s the point of playing house at all? You’re a captain for Christ’s sake.” She sets the glass in front of him. “You don’t have time for domesticity.”

“We all have our roles, dear.” He takes a bite of the chicken pasta. “I didn’t want to be captain, it was my destiny. I was born for this.” He takes a drink of the milk. “Blech,” he exclaims, letting the milk shoot out of his mouth, and land on the cleaning bot, confusing it. For a moment, he’s embarrassed. He looks back up at Audrey. “I guess you were right.” He wipes his lips with his sleeve.

“Oh, you animal,” she utters with a sigh. She sits on the edge of the table, and dabs his face with a napkin. They stare into each other’s eyes. Then she leans down and kisses him passionately. He has little need for most personal connections, but having someone to take care of him like this is nice. He won’t give it up, for the job, or anything.

He takes her hand in his, and kisses it too. “I’m sorry I got mad.”

“It’s okay.” She goes back to the kitchen again, and pours another glass of the lemonade. “It’s like you said, it’s my job to keep house. Unlike 99.98 percent of the population, I know how to cook. That’s just about all I spend my time doing. Trust me.”

Waldemar accepts the drink this time, and tries it. She’s right, as always.

He’s still feeling uncomfortable with the emotion he emulated during dinner, so Waldemar leaves the stateroom afterwards, to go on his rounds. The people know by now that when he’s walking at this pace, with this gait, he is not to be disturbed. If he wants to interact with someone, he will initiate contact, not them. And he’s not there to help anyone either. This is his personal time, which he uses to clear his head, or work through problems. He likes to be seen. He wants to be present, and for the citizens to associate him with every corner of this vessel. His focus is on the bridge, but they should not forget that he can go anywhere, and do anything he wants. He can show up any time, so it’s best not to be whispering about him, or planning some misguided coup. He absolutely detests not knowing what people are discussing or thinking, and while he hasn’t had to explain this out loud, people understand that. When he’s around, they go silent. If he wants them to speak, he’ll unambiguously let them know.

He doesn’t usually pay attention to where he’s going. Again, he has free rein, so he doesn’t have to plan a specific route. He finds himself in the park. Before Tinaya Leithe was even captain, she worked for the Parks Department, and eventually used her power to build the Attic Forest, which takes up the whole upper deck. People love it there, and use it all the time, which is why Waldemar doesn’t go there. He doesn’t care for nature, nor people. The original park is still here. It’s only a fraction of the size, and poorly maintained these days, so regular people have no use for it. He typically only comes here when he wants to be alone, but today, he has more stumbled upon it. Perhaps his subconscious mind is trying to tell him something.

He’s not alone this time. A young girl is sitting by whatever these plants are called. She’s...what is she doing? Is she drawing them? On paper? What a weirdo. He’s intrigued. “It doesn’t have any color.”

The girl doesn’t look up, and doesn’t stop. “Yeah, it’s a sketch. It’s not supposed to have color.”

“What is the point if it’s not going to be accurate?” He catches himself asking that question a lot. He used to ask it even more frequently. Silveon taught him that people notice because he’s questioning things that are obvious to normal people.

“It’s art, it doesn’t need to be accurate.” She’s still not looking at him.

He smiles. She has no idea who he is. It’s a relief, really. Yes, of course he wants people to respect him and do as he says, but there’s something intoxicating about the few who refuse to. That’s why he hooked up with Audrey in the first place, because she doesn’t take his shit. She’s almost as strong as he is, and can work at his level. This girl here, whoever she is. She might be even better.

“I’m not much into art. I’m so busy. With my job.”

“Yes, I’m sure you are, Captain.” Oh. So she does know who he is, if only by his voice. But wait, if that’s true, why is she being so casual and distant? Why is she not looking him in the eyes to gain favor, or down at his feet to show her fear and reverence?

“Do you mind if I sit?” he asks.

She sighs, and closes her notepad. “If that’s what you’re into.”

He sits rather close to her. “Can I see?”

“Go ahead. I’m not ashamed.”

There are a ton of other drawings in the sketchbook, some also without color, but some with. Many of her subjects can be found around the ship, but others are nowhere near here. Lots of animals. She likes cows. She’s a cowgirl. “These are really good. uh...oh, what’s your name?”

“Sable.”

“Sable?” he echoes. “You’re Admiral Keen’s daughter.”

“That’s right.”

“Royalty.”

“Huh?”

“Uh.” Why is it so hot in here, and why is he stumbling over his words? She’s pretty, yeah, but she’s so young. It’s...that doesn’t matter at any rate. He can have any woman he wants. Why worry about this one girl? “I meant your art. In the past, you could have sold it for money, and I think they called that royalties.”

“Cool.” God, she’s such a—what word is he looking for?—renegade. Just an untamable, fierce, defiant badass. She smells nice too, and the curve of her neck is so enticing. Who cares how young she is? He must have her. She reminds him of Audrey, back before the, ya know...sagging and wrinkling.

“Have you ever painted a mural before?” He asks her, leaning in a little. She needs to know that he’s interested without it being obvious to someone watching them from the outside.

“Like on a wall? We don’t have the right kind of walls.”

“Say the word, I’ll make one. You can paint anything you want on it. Do we have paint? I’ll get you some paint. If it’s not the right paint, I’ll get you the right paint.”

“Captain, I really appreciate you trying to engage with your people, but this is really not necessary.”

“I just see your talent, and I think everyone else should too.” He places a hand against her back, noting that she doesn’t flinch at his touch.

For the first time ever, she makes eye contact. “Do you really think so?”

He begins to lower his hand. She doesn’t reject this either. “Unequivocally. Let’s talk about this some more.”

“I would like that.”

He moves under her shirt, definitely not only touching her back anymore.

She smiles. She’s so into him.

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Microstory 2447: Terminator Track

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This isn’t a dome. It might be, in fact, the only thing that you can do on this rock that isn’t. It’s basically this big wide train that goes around and around the circumference at a certain latitude. They told me exactly how far from the North Pole and equator we were, but I can’t remember. The point is that the time never changes when you’re on the terminator track. It might be sunrise, sunset, magic hour, or twilight, and as long as you stay put, it will remain as such until the solar system collapses, or the track goes out of commission....whichever comes first. I’ve only seen sunrise and sunset, but I heard that magic hour isn’t that great since the atmosphere is so thin. I think they’re planning on adding more trains in between these, so it can always be night, or always be day. I’m not sure why you would want that exactly, but to each their own, right? This is a cool concept that they’ve tried on a few other planets. Varkas Reflex has something very similar, but the train is of a very different layout, and I think the capacity is a lot smaller, because it’s an older design, and the megastructural engineering capabilities weren’t quite there yet. Or the size of the one here on Castlebourne is the result of natural advancement. They made it bigger very deliberately because they wanted it to be bigger. If the Varkas one had been built to this scale, this one would be even bigger. Anyway, you get the gist. You sit on the train, and watch the sunrise. And watch it. And watch it. The show never ends. Again, it’s a cool concept, but if you stare at it long enough—even though you’re going, like, a thousand kilometers per hour—it starts to look like a painting. Well, I can go look at a painting of a sunset whenever I want. Do you have any idea how many paintings there are of sunsets? I couldn’t tell you, but look it up, and then multiply it by several times, because some people will paint a sunset, and then not show it to anyone else, so whatever’s in the records is probably an underestimation. As you can see, I’m a bit of a tangentist. There’s just not much I can say about Terminator Track. I don’t think it’s any better than just setting your smartwindow to show a hologram of a sunset at will. Actually, it’s worse, because again, Castlebourne has such a thin, dusty atmosphere, so just remember that before you board. When you think about it, it doesn’t make much sense, even if they thickened the atmosphere, and created some of that Rayleigh scattering. Part of the beauty of a sunrise or sunset is watching it change from one state to the other. Yeah, they’re pretty colors, but seeing them appear and disappear is part of what made humans like them in the first place. This is just static...like a painting. That’s the way I see it anyway. I’m not gonna tell you not to come here. I’ve not gotten into any specifics, but they have a restaurant, and several lounges. You can watch the domes fly by too if you go to the side viewports, so that’s another thing. I see this spot as a one-time destination, not something you frequent, except maybe if you’re on a romantic date, or something. Or, like I said, you could just tell your nearest smartwindow to show whatever you want. In fact, I bet the trains have cameras, which you can tap into, allowing you to watch it remotely anyway.

The Seventh Stage: Painting Rocks (Part V)

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Echo is standing in front of the blue wall, painting wispy white clouds on it, paying close attention to details. It would look complete to anyone else, but to him, the work is never done. He can always add one more curve...one final flourish.

Clavia walks up to him. “There you are. What are you doing?”

“Painting this wall. It ain’t gonna paint itself,” Echo replies, still watching what he’s doing.

“It’s literally going to paint itself,” she counters.

He smiles. “I know. Sometimes I just need a break to unwind. Like you with your little headplays.”

She nods. “Fair enough.”

“What’s the count?”

“Three thousand, seven hundred and four.”

He drops his elbow, and looks over at her. “Technically at quota. We’re ready for move-in.”

“Like you said, in the technical sense. We still need to figure out how to convince a supermajority to do it, or it’s not really helpful.”

“We also need to figure out how to do it without loading everyone onto a proverbial bus, and driving them here.”

“It’s time to talk to Cedar,” Echo realizes. They have been dreading this day for a long time. They like him, but they don’t know how he’s going to react or respond to this news. There are whispers that the Cloudbearer twins are building something, but no one knows what, and all of their guesses are wrong; though off by varying degrees. Cedar ran his campaign for power on a foundation of intercivilizational unity. He believes that the only way to keep the Reality Wars at bay is if there’s no one to fight against, because everyone is on the same side. The amount of space between people in this universe could tear them apart. It’s the distribution. Cedar is probably gonna have trouble with the distribution.

“Yeah, we have no choice. Do you think he’ll be mad we didn’t read him into the situation earlier?”

“He’s serving as Head Advisor to our parents,” Echo replies. “He was too preoccupied to worry about this. That can be our excuse for keeping it a secret from him.”

“Good idea.” Clavia takes her brother’s hand, and transports them both to what essentially amounts to a holodeck, though on a much grander scale. They’re standing on an island floating in the air. At least, that’s what it looks like to them. It’s just an illusion. The “air” around them is clear purplish water. They can still breathe, of course, and talk just fine. The sky above is much more unambiguously an ocean. It’s upside down. Waves jut down, and spray a sweet misty rain down towards them. Some of it tastes like chocolate, other drops like honey. Their feet are planted firmly on the ground, though they feel like they could float away at any second. All around them are crystalline structures, also purple, since that is the theme. A stream gives way to a waterfall that slips over the edge, and disappears into the oblivion below, though again, it’s just invisible floor. Between them and the sky are giant turtles, swimming around. One of them nods and winked before moving on.

They aren’t alone on this floating island. They summoned Cedar, and are currently patiently waiting for him to get his bearings in this new world. “This breaks the laws of physics,” he notes. “I’m assuming it’s not real?”

“No,” Echo replies. “Our powers do have some limits.”

“You’ve been gone for nearly a month,” Cedar points out.

Clavia smirks. “We’ve been gone longer than that.”

“Framejacking, or temporal acceleration?”

“Both,” Echo answers. Time is moving faster in this universe, so more gets done in a shorter amount of time in comparison to the Sixth Key, but their own minds are also operating at much higher speeds, allowing them to think and act more quickly.

“This is what you’ve been working on?”

Echo laughs. “This took only a few seconds to construct. We got the idea from Castlebourne. Most of the domes on that world are physical, except for the holographic sky. One of them is nearly all holography. You can make it look like anything. We chose this today. Isn’t it cool?”

“Yeah,” Cedar agrees. “What am I doing here, though?”

Echo clears his throat. “What is the number one cause of tension and conflict in the Sixth Key?”

Cedar dismisses his words with a wave of his hand. “Don’t pitch me. Just tell me what you’ve done, and what you want. You’re gonna need to learn this for when you take over in a more meaningful sense. We’re in charge of undecillions of people back home. No one has time to beat around the bush or be polite about it.”

“Very well,” Echo decides. He reaches up and pantomimes pulling a stage curtain open. As he does so, a tear in the hologram appears in the far, far distance. Behind it, they see what looks like regular outerspace, but as the curtains separate even farther, a figure appears. It looks like a big metal statue of a humanoid, or perhaps just a big robot. It’s hard to tell what scale they’re working with here, so Echo has to explain. “Have you ever heard of the matrioshka body?”

“I have,” Cedar confirms. “I went to a sort of school like you did. That’s where the afterlife simulation was housed, before it collapsed, and everyone was transported into Fort Underhill. The Sixth Key shares interdimensional space with them now. I never knew what happened to matrioshka body, though. That it?”

Echo shakes his head. “That. Is MB-3704.”

Cedar laughs. “You made your own? That’s impressive.”

Echo and Clavia exchange a look. “He said it was three-seven-zero-four.”

Cedar is confused, but only for half a second. Then his face drops into a frown. “You made 3700 of these things?”

“Yeah,” Echo says.

Cedar starts to pace around and shake his head, almost in disappointment. “Why? What do they do?”

“Well, they...have people live in them.”

“Who lives in them?”

“No one yet, that’s what we’re asking you for.”

“Asking me for what?” Cedar questions. “I told you, get to the point. Stop trying to be dramatic.”

“We need you to transport everyone from the Sixth Key who wants to live here. Send them all to their new homes...all at once.”

“I can’t do that!” he cries.

“We’re gonna let them consent,” Clavia defends. “We’re not gonna make anyone move, but this will be better, and I think there will be a ton of interest.”

“Think about it,” Echo begins before Cedar can make another argument. “There are hundreds of billions of stars, but we don’t have enough resources for everyone. How is that possible? Because stars radiate a ton of their energy away, even with dyson swarms. Matrioshka brains are more comprehensive, and more efficient. And matrioshka bodies are just stylish and cool.” Honestly, I don’t know why no one ever thought of it before. I thought that was the point of the original matrioshka body, and its successor, Big Papa.” There ought to be far more than two of these in existence. The Parallel was more than capable of doing it, but they chose not to. They still orbited stars. Even the interstellar settlements were quite literally few and far between. Why? Why keep the stars? Aesthetics? Safety? Ethics? Probably all of the above. Or. Echo and Clavia are just that clever.

“That’s not my point. I literally can’t do it. I don’t have that kind of power.”

Echo and Clavia are both confused. “What are you talking about? You already did it. You moved them all from their original realities, to the Sixth Key.”

“No, I didn’t.” He starts to look around on the ground. Guessing at his needs, Echo manifests a chair for him to sit in. Cedar hunches over and stuffs his face in his palms. “That wasn’t me. I didn’t do any of that.”

“What? It had to have happened,” Clavia argues. “Everyone’s there.”

“I’m not saying that it never happened,” Cedar tries to explain. “I’m telling you that I didn’t do it. I have powers, but not like that. That’s insane.”

“Then who did?” Echo asks him.

Cedar looks up to meet Echo’s gaze. “I have no idea. They didn’t tell me. They have to keep it a secret, even from me and my family, even now that it’s done. We were...a misdirect. It’s like sleight of hand. We were the left hand that distracted everyone so no one would see what the right hand was doing. I don’t know if anyone knows who saved everyone during Reconvergence. All I know is that it wasn’t me.” He pauses before adding, “I just took credit, per my instructions.”

Echo and Clavia manifest their own chairs to sit in. They sit there in silence for a good five minutes before Echo decides to speak again. “Time is not linear. If something exists at any moment, it exists in all moments. If you know something about the past, you can change it. Keeping it a secret was smart. Even if someone were to go back and kill you as a child, it wouldn’t stop the creation of the Sixth Key. You’re like a bodyguard, there to take a bullet if one ever comes flying through. That’s how I would have done it if I were there.”

“Maybe you were,” Cedar reasons. “Maybe you two are the ones who created the Sixth Key; you just haven’t done it yet from your own perspectives.”

They exchange another look. Clavia decides to explain. “There’s a small group of people on a planet in the Sixth Key who are aware of what we’ve been up to. Just a few billion people. They were our test group. We’ve already tried to transport them to our new universe. We don’t have that kind of juice either. Stars are easy. Giant metal statues are easy. Moving people? That requires a level of precision that we do not possess; not with hordes anyway. We could probably move them a couple thousand at a time, but that’s all but useless for our needs. That’s a meaningless rounding error compared to the total population.”

“What about Ellie Underhill?” Echo asks after another bout of silence. “I don’t remember how many she transported into Fort Underhill.”

“It was only 120 billion,” Cedar replies. “Not quite a rounding error, but still not good enough. Besides, she gave them all new bodies; it was a whole different animal.”

“So what we’re saying is that we need to find the person who actually did move everyone from the five realities to the Sixth Key. We need them to do it again.” Clavia starts to pace. Finding someone out there in the abstract is not something that she’s ever done before. She always knows who she’s targeting, or roundabouts where they are. This is a mystery individual, who might be in either of two universes—or, hell, maybe neither of them. They could have also done it subconsciously, like how Echo lived before he became self-aware and realized his true potential. Maybe it’s not just one person. Maybe it was a group, or somehow everyone. Maybe through the spirit of survival every single living organism consolidated their untapped collective power into one brilliant miracle. Ugh, Clavia doesn’t know, but you know who would?

“Hey, boys!”

Echo nearly falls out of his chair, but catches himself by spreading his feet apart. He stumbles away from her. “Debra. How did you get out?” She still looks like his sister. She’s still occupying that body, and nothing about it has changed. But Echo knows. He would always know. “What did you do to Clavia?”

“Relax, she’s still in here; on the first stage. She gave me control of the body, because you need me.”

“I need you for what?”

“I can find your mysterious god-being,” Debra spits back like he’s an insignificant little ant on the ground. “I found you, didn’t I? You were alone on a nothing planet in the middle of the universe. I knew exactly where you were. I intuited that you existed in the first place.”

“We can’t trust you,” Echo contends.

“Believe it or not, I’ve changed. Living with those people, doing those plays...it’s changed me. I’m no hero, but I’m not a villain anymore either. Clavia maintains full veto power. She can come back whenever she wants.”

“Prove it. Let me talk to my sister again. And don’t try to trick me, I’ll know.”

“I know.” Debra actually does what is asked of her, and temporarily returns control of the body to Clavia.

“She’s not exactly right,” Clavia says. “She doesn’t need my body, she needs my brain.”

“Can’t you just do it? You have all her power, don’t you?”

“It’s more complicated than that. You would understand if you could be inside my head. You would get it if you could see the construct that I’ve constructed.”

Echo steps forward, and places a hand on each of Clavia’s shoulders. “I bet I can. Show me. I think it’s about time that I meet your little brain buds.”

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Microstory 2021: Tennessee

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Papa was only an active member of the Navy for four years. He thought about staying in, but ended up not. It’s all because of something he did as his required time was ending. He was still in the reserves after this, but he wasn’t working on the sub anymore. While he was trying to make a decision, friends of his from college called him up, and asked him if he wanted to work with them on a mission trip in Tennessee. They were Mormons, and they were doing it for their church, but that wasn’t going to be what the trip was about. There was an old folks home in a small town outside of Memphis. He was in Arkansas at the time, so he wasn’t very far away. That’s probably why they called him. He took a bus to the home, and got to work. The people who owned it didn’t have very much money, and they were having trouble keeping their residents comfortable. Don’t worry, they all always had their medicine and stuff, but there were other issues. They couldn’t afford plants, or nice paintings for the walls. The biggest issue was the courtyard, which is a space that is outside, but it has walls around it. Residents can go and sit down and enjoy being outside, but it wasn’t very pretty at this place. I don’t think my papa spent much time on that, though. He basically became a volunteer handyman. While the others were planting trees, he fixed things around the building, because he was an engineer. What he said was that this was an eye-opening experience. He wanted to spend more time doing things like that. Of course he was helping people when he was serving this country, but he decided that there were things that he should do outside of it. That’s what led him to leaving the Navy, as an active officer at least.

Microstory 1765: Easel

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I’ve never been good with emotion. I have them, sure, but they don’t ever move far from the middle. When someone does something that I don’t like, I get upset, but I don’t get mad. As the date of an event that I’m interested in attending approaches, I feel enthusiastic, but not excited. I never lash out, or cry, or squee, or anything like that. I don’t have a problem with other people doing all such things; their emotional reactions don’t annoy me, but I bother them with my lack thereof. My first girlfriend deliberately let herself get caught cheating on me with another guy. I wasn’t happy that she did it, but I easily let it go, and didn’t break up with her. Of course, she broke up with me, because I wasn’t passionate enough, and that’s when I realized that I needed to find someone who didn’t need too much attention. I was never able to, and I eventually decided that it wasn’t fair for me to lead my partners on, and make them feel like there was hope for the two of us. It’s mostly been fine, but unfortunately, it became a problem when my last ex-girlfriend reached out, and revealed that I had a nine-year-old daughter. She was with another man shortly after we were together, and the two of them had always assumed that he was the father. The girl even looked a little like him, so it didn’t occur to them to get a DNA test. They only did it recently when there was a medical issue that required some background information that didn’t match up right. So it was no one’s fault, and the mother felt comfortable breaking the news to me, because she knew that I would not take it poorly. The problem was I couldn’t ignore this new child, but I also couldn’t be a good father to her either. More than math and language skills, kids learn emotional intelligence from their caregivers. Even I know that. I decided to seek professional help. It went a little too well. It would even say it broke me.

I tried a few therapists, each one of them deciding that I needed to be referred to someone else. Again, it wasn’t anybody’s fault, but they had to dig a little deeper to find out what my problem was, and the next layer always fell beyond their expertise. I ended up with a world-renowned hypnotist, known for managing to get through even the most steadfast of skeptics. As far as the technique went in general, I wasn’t a skeptic, but hypnotism often involves latching onto some kind of emotional trigger, and as you know by now, there’s not much of that there with me. At least, I didn’t think that there was. It’s like there was a switch in my brain that accidentally got turned off when I was young, and never got turned back on. I saw a TV show about that once—three of them, actually—where it makes vampires worse than they usually are. I didn’t go on a killing spree, but I did go a bit crazy. I destroyed my hypnotist’s office. All of my emotions from the last 29 years of my life came flooding into my mind all at once. Everything I might have felt got locked away without me even realizing it, and now they were unleashed. After the initial shock wore off, and I paid for the damages, the hypnotist referred me to yet another psychologist, who could help me deal with my newfound feelings. She suggested I channel them into art, even though I’ve never been much into it, because I wasn’t capable of seeing the beauty. As it turns out, I’m not half-bad as a painter. I put everything I’m feeling onto the canvas, but it’s not about the fabric, the paint, or even the images. What I’m doing is unloading my burdens onto the easel...to ease my pain. It’s been working well, and I think I have a decent relationship with my daughter now.

Microstory 1703: Apus

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I’m going to tell you my story once, and then never mention it again. Every time I look down at my legs, I relive the most traumatic experience I’ve ever had in my life, and I don’t need to keep rehashing that on purpose. Three years ago, I had just pulled into my garage after working late, and was trying to close the door behind me when I heard a grating screeching sound. At the time, the door was very old, because I had just moved in to a quiet town where the regulations were lax, and I hadn’t had time to modernize it. So it had a remote, but the door itself didn’t have any sensors that would automatically lift it back up if it encountered an obstacle. I took my hand off the keys, and looked in my passenger side view mirror to see a figure dressed in all black, holding onto the bottom of that door, preventing it from going down. The strain from this eventually damaged the system, and I guess the motor gave up. I look back on this day often, and wish I had just reversed the car into him. I could have escaped, and none of this would have happened. Of course, I’m not a violent woman. I didn’t know what the masked stranger was going to do to me, but I knew what I was going to do to him, which was nothing. I could only hope that he didn’t hurt me. As you can see, he did. He climbed into my car, smoothly, like he did this sort of thing every day. I slowly tried to reach over to my key again, hoping to push the alarm button, but he reached over just as slowly, and held my hand back. He shook his head, but didn’t speak. He tilted his head down a little, and pointed behind us with his left thumb, indicating that I should back out.

As I was complying with his demand, I scraped the side of my car against the frame of the garage, hoping to alert my neighbors. Choked up, I apologized, and claimed that I was nervous, which he believed, because it was not a lie. I overcompensated, and ran right into my metal trash cans on the other side of the driveway, making even more noise. Still, he believed I was doing my best, and he did not become angry. In the fastest I had ever seen him move, he quickly waved his index finger towards me, which I took to mean that he wanted me to start driving that direction down my street. As I was doing so, he casually reached over, and punched a set of GPS coordinates in my satnav. He didn’t have to search for a place, or even use an address; he knew the numbers by heart. We went far past the edge of town, and onto a gravel road in the woods. We didn’t speak a single word on the way. As far as I could tell, he was mute. We arrived exactly where you would expect someone like him to live; in a dilapidated and unpainted cabin. He pointed to my door, as he was stepping out of the car himself. He never touched me, though. He knew that I knew that I was in deeply unfamiliar territory, and there was nothing I could do to escape. He followed me into the cabin, and pointed to the chair where I was meant to sit, which I found to be bolted to the floor. He had me bind my stomach with rope, as well as a zip tie for my left wrist, before handling my other wrist for me. He dragged a bucket of burning hot coals out of the fire, and towards me. When it got to close, I lifted my legs, but he forced them back down, keeping them there while the coals seared my skin. When they were good and burned, he carried me to the trunk of my own car, and drove me back home. So that is why every wall in my apartment is filled with paintings of birds-of-paradise. Their Latin nickname is Apus, because people once believed that, like me, these magnificent creatures did not have feet.

Microstory 1688: Unstable Universes

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Perhaps now is a good time to talk about brane stability. Not all universes are created equal. Some are naturally occurring, while c-branes are created in someone’s dreams. Most dreams last for only minutes before they end, and unless something else steps in to maintain the dreamworld, the universe that was born out of it will collapse as well. Even if the dream is strong enough to survive, that doesn’t mean it will last forever. It is only as strong as the people who are responsible for it. What does this mean? Well, if the dreamer continues to deliberately explore the new world, it can last longer. If they create something semipermanent from it, like a written story, or even a painting, that can make it last even longer. If this art reaches some kind of audience, that can make it last indefinitely. The most popular stories make for the most stable universes. They have room to expand, and become more detailed, and most importantly, interesting. They might also be able to survive on their own merits, by the force of will of their inhabitants, but this is fairly rare. I was expecting to give you another story about the universe where zombies take over the world only briefly before dying out, but like Vacuumverse, there is nothing more I can say. The events that occurred here did not follow any level of logic, and the inhabitants weren’t strong enough to hold up their story on their own. History began the moment zombies were first created, and ended centuries later when civilization was all but rebuilt. Little happened in the meantime, and nothing happened afterwards. The whole universe collapsed under its own unstable insignificance, and that’s all you need to know.

Microstory 1546: Waiting

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I have been ________ in this waiting room for an ________. I don’t have anything else to do ________, but that doesn’t mean I want to ________ it here. I’m not usually that kind of ________ who will get up and demand to be ________, but this is getting ridiculous. Most of the ________ were here before me, but they don’t seem fazed. They just keep ________ backwards through their magazines, and fidgeting with their ________ forms. Maybe I should get up, not just for me, but for ________ too. They haven’t called ________ back this whole ________, so something is holding the entire process up, and if no one ________ is going to try to find out what that is, I suppose it will have to be ________. I nonaggressively stand up from my ________, and walk over to the counter at a reasonable ________. I politely ask the ________ for an estimated wait ________. He just looks at me like he doesn’t speak ________. No, it’s more like he thinks I’m speaking a ________ language. He reaches over, and closes the ________, not aggressively either, but it’s still rude. It’s ________ enough to upset me, so I reach over ________, and just open it back up. He’s gone. It hasn’t even been one ________, there’s no way he could have gotten up, and walked ________. I have too wide of a view of his ________, and the hallway behind him. Plus, he has all these ________ piled up on the floor, it would have been too much to navigate. I ask if anyone else saw that as I’m turning ________, but they too are gone. The noises they were making—flipping through book ________, coughing, sipping ________—it lingers for a while, but dies ________, like they were able to disappear faster than the sound ________. I suppose that makes sense as ________ moves faster than sound. No, that doesn’t mean this makes any ________. They shouldn’t have ________ at all! What the heck is going on here? I turn back to the reception ________. The folders are still there, but they’re knocked over, and ________ dust. The ________ are out, and there’s a draft in here that wasn’t there before. I turn my ________ yet again. The paintings have fallen to the ________, and the wall____ is peeling. Chairs are turned ________, and a few are broken. I have either just ________ to the future, or ________ to some kind of eerie upside down silent ghost dimension. I have to find help, and ________. That’s what’s important right ________. I leave the waiting ________, and then exit the ________. The rest of the ________is as dreary and dead as it was ________, there’s probably nothing useful to ________. I have to try at least, though, so I keep ________. I start out by walking on the ________, but without any ________ around, I wonder why I’m wasting my time. The ________is less damaging to my ________ and knees. I wander down the ________, only headed in one particular ________, because the fading painted lines tell me so. I hear a rushing ________ around me, and then squealing. Then I hear some honking ________, and as the traffic is coming back into ________, a pair of ________ take me forcefully by the shoulders. “Let’s get you back to your ________. How do you keep escaping? I swear to ________, this time you literally disappeared before my eyes.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, May 24, 2078

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Sanaa was looking around the area with her Cassidy cuff. “Love Kansas City.”

“You do?” Leona questioned? “I didn’t think you had ever been there.”

“No, that’s just what the painting says. I mean, I don’t hate Kansas City. I don’t have any strong feelings about it.”

Leona lifted her own cuff. “Oh, the mural. Yeah, this is downtown KC. I’m kind of surprised this building survived the decades.”

“I don’t think it did.” Mateo was down the sidewalk a little, looking through AR mode. “They just left the wall up. The rest of the building is gone. Who painted it?”

“I dunno,” Leona answered, like it was a dumb question.

“At-scribeswalk.” J.B. was pointing his cuff on the corner of the building.

“I don’t think this reality has Twitter,” Mateo presumed.

Leona sighed. “Anyway, the transition is happening over there, at that construction site.”

Everyone turned around to see, and then followed her to get closer to their destination. People in the main sequence were walking down the street, going about their lives. The window was scheduled to open in under a minute, but nothing looked dangerous. No one was standing on top of a roof, or chained to train tracks. This was just a normal day, except that one of these people was going to spontaneously disappear from the world. Mateo tried to find someone he recognized, because so far, they hadn’t encountered a stranger during one of these challenges. Who did he know in 2078? That was back when he thought the Makarion he knew was his own person, and not being possessed by the spirit of Gilbert Boyce. It wouldn’t be long before Mateo would watch inmates from Beaver Haven Correctional fight in the Colosseum replica, and shortly after that, he would go backwards in time to 1945, and then skip a few years on his pattern as a result of the choice he made back then.

The flickering began, revealing their target. Yes, it was just some guy. He looked upset and frazzled, but not like his life was in danger, more like he was just having a bad day. Once he was fully integrated in this reality, and saw that his environment had changed, he was stunned. Natives of the Parallel were well aware of the Bearimy-Matic joint pattern. They were expected to clear the area of every transition window, which they did immediately after the four of them arrived, as if being directed by a film director. So now it was just them, and the refugee.

He looked over at them. “What just happened?”

“It’s okay,” Leona assured him. “No one here is going to hurt you.”

“Where exactly is here?” the man asked.

“This is...you have...”

“It’s Kansas City in a parallel reality,” Sanaa jumped in. “You’ve been transitioned to our world by a powerful frenemy of ours, whose motives are hazy. It’s okay. We just have to get you to your exit window, and you’ll be back home before the day is through.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” the man was getting mad.

J.B. took his shot. “Time travel is real. We don’t know why you were chosen, but it’s completely reversible. You may just miss a few hours of your life.” He consulted his cuff. “We just need to get you to Washington D.C. in...oh, only twenty minutes. You won’t miss much at all.”

“That’s exactly where I wanted to be. I couldn’t get a flight out yesterday, or today. The meeting is in an hour. There is no way we make it.”

Sanaa smirked. “We would have time for a quick breakfast, if we wanted.” She placed her hand on his shoulder, and presented him with the AOC. “That’s our spaceship. It can also teleport.”

“Teleport.” The man narrowed his eyes. “Are you people crazy?”

“Nah, man. We’re just from the future.”

He wasn’t convinced.

“What’s your name?” Leona asked him.

“Jericho Hagen, Esquire.”

“What do you need to do in Washington D.C.?” she continued.

“They’re working on a proposal. They want to completely blow up our judicial system, and replace it with something entirely different. Of course, they’re going to start out slow, but I know their future plans. You won’t recognize the court system twenty-five years from now.”

“Oh my God,” Leona began, “this is the start.”

“What is the proposal?”

Jericho was hesitant to keep talking to them, but if there was even a chance they would be able to get him to where he belonged, he probably figured it was best to be nice. “They want to add, like, a professional jury member. Every jury will have someone who studied law, so they can evidently keep the others on track. That will taint the entire system. Our courts are founded on a jury of peers. If we start contaminating the pool with people who have that kind of education, the process will no longer be fair. It would be like having a lawyer serve on the jury. That’s not technically illegal, but I’ve never heard of an attorney selecting one of their own kind for a jury. We just don’t do it. This is even worse, because they’ll be making it a requirement. And like I said, it’s only the beginning. They’re gonna start making juries smaller by default, and limiting the defending attorney’s ability to vigorously defend their client. I cannot let this pass.”

“That’s interesting,” Leona said. “Just give us one moment to talk.” She started leading the group away. “Just...don’t touch anything.”

“This sounds familiar,” Mateo pointed out.

“This really is the beginning. That bill is a historic moment. The first step should happen in two years, and changes everything about how we handle criminal and civil court. More changes will come later. Instead of having one jury, they’ll have two arbitration panels, who deliberate separately, and aren’t allowed to talk to each other. Attorneys start losing incentives to win at all costs, as priority shifts to finding the truth, and not letting the guilty get away with it. Judges become a completely separate profession. The arbitrator procedures he’s talking about only become stronger as time goes on. What he’s describing lasts for decades, at least, and that’s only because I don’t know what the future looks like beyond 2278.”

“So, he fails to stop it,” J.B. guessed.

“Or maybe he fails to get to the meeting,” Sanaa suggested. She pulled her head from the huddle, and looked back over to Jericho. “Maybe we’re here to stop him.”

“That’s your choice.” Jupiter Fury was standing behind Mateo’s back.

“Where have you been?” Mateo asked him.

“I’ve been working on your pattern, making sure the right people get here, so you can improve their lives.”

“Are we supposed to get him to Washington D.C., or not?” Leona questioned.

Jupiter pursed his lips, and shrugged his shoulders. “That’s up to you. I can tell you that if you send him through the egress transition window, when you return to the main sequence—and I promise, you will one day—the timeline you end up in will be wildly different than the one you left. That man has power. He’ll fight against progress, the jury system will remain, and inequality will reign. His people’s drive to win every case possible will send our country into a downwards spiral, until the very idea that the United States of America was ever a superpower will be laughable for students learning history two hundred years from now. They won’t believe it.”

“That’s bullshit,” Leona argued. “Our system has stayed pretty much the same for centuries already, and our status as a superpower hasn’t been questioned since it became one in 1898.”

“True,” Jupiter agreed, “but nothing lasts forever...unless it changes. He doesn’t know it yet, because he fancies himself a moderate libertarian, but Jericho Hagen becomes synonymous with a major paleoconservative movement that emphasizes maintaining the status quo above all else. He believes the Constitution is perfect, and amendments should be kept to a minimum, and that speaks to a lot of people. I’ve seen this future, and I don’t think you want it. To be honest, I don’t really care. My friends and I thrive in all realities; we just have to adjust our plans accordingly.”

“We have about ten minutes to make a decision,” J.B. alerted them.

Leona shook her head. “We’re not gods. Just because we have the power to change reality, doesn’t mean we should. It was one thing to save my mother from death, or let Elder Caverness go off to fight a war he wanted to fight. It’s another thing to keep this man from his life.”

“Would you do the same for Hitler?” J.B. asked. “If he came through a transition window in, say, 1910, wouldn’t we be obligated to keep him from getting back until after 1945? Or, I dunno, hold him forever?”

The other three looked over at Mateo, who had first hand experience with this scenario, several times. He rolled his eyes. “This is not the same thing. Jericho Hagen is not Adolf Hitler. Believe me, I know. We have to get him back. That’s the job. Like my wife said, it’s different when they don’t want to go back. He does, so we should accommodate that. It’s what we do. I’ve always been against messing with time, and if we come from a reality where Hagen never makes it to D.C., then I imagine that’s the result of time travel, and we would just be undoing that by teleporting him there.”

“You can’t possibly know that,” Sanaa contended.

“Ripples; not waves,” Mateo retorted.

“Ugh.” Now Leona rolled her eyes. “That’s a dumb line. But he’s right. He wants to go back, so let’s take him back. We better hurry. Sanaa and I will go set the coordinates, and prep for a jump. Go get him, and make sure he boards the AOC.”

“Very well.” Jupiter really didn’t seem to care either way. “I gotta go get Ariadna. I’ll see ya when I see ya.” He winked at Sanaa, then disappeared.

“My God, it’s real,” Jericho acknowledged when Mateo and J.B. went back over to retrieve him. “He just blinked away.”

“That’s time travel for you,” J.B. replied. “Or teleportation? Or reality jumping. I’m not sure how his power works. How does he do all this? Doesn’t he make copies of himself? Why does that allow him to switch timelines?”

“We’ll ask Leona later,” Mateo said to him. “I’m sure she knows why it makes sense. Anyway, you wanna get to Washington, we gotta go now.”

“Yes, definitely.” Jericho was all in now. He apparently totally believed that they were there to help him, and he seemed grateful for the opportunity to get back to his mission. Mateo might have even called him giddy. Hopefully this meant they were doing the right thing.

They walked up to the ship, climbed the ladder, and crawled inside. Leona was climbing back up from engineering. “We’re all here, and ready to go. Hey, Thistle! Make the jump.”

The ship powered up, and disappeared, just as it was meant to. Unfortunately, none of the passengers went with it. They were all left behind, and now falling through the air, towards the hard surface below. Leona thought quick, and caught Jericho in the air, so she could land him safely on the ground. Mateo and J.B., on the other hand, fell hard, and suffered painful injuries. Sanaa happened to have stayed down in engineering, so she hadn’t had as high of a fall.

Mateo could feel the pool of blood form underneath his body. “What the hell was that?”

Leona let go of Jericho, and dove down to tend to her husband. “I have no idea. That shouldn’t have happened.”

“I’m sorry.” Sanaa was now standing next to Jericho. She reached up, and slapped Holly Blue’s former Cassidy cuffs on his wrists. “Fortunately, the people in this reality have magical powers. They’ll fix you up, so it’s like you never got hurt at all. In the meantime, this will help with the pain.” She shot J.B. with a jet injector, then went over to do the same for Mateo.

“What did you do?” Leona asked.

“I know more about how spaceships work than you might think,” Sanaa began to explain. “Hokusai taught me a lot during your interim years. I’ve also been experimenting with our cuffs. We’re stuck on this pattern, but these things have other features Jupiter never restricted our access to. All I did was quantum lock them to this position temporarily, so the ship could jump away without us. It’s safe and sound in the Capital, waiting for us.”

“Why?” Mateo asked, wiping the blood from his lips.

“I come from a bloodline of telepaths. Not all of us kept their powers a secret, or kept it well. My family has a long history of being screwed over by small-minded white people who thought we were witches, or demons. The only thing that saved us was a more fair adjudicative system, which this man wants to dismantle before humanity even has a chance to start it. I can’t let that happen. If I had had more time, I could have done something else, but the window before the transition window was just too short. This was my only solution.” She checked her watch. “And now the moment’s pretty much passed.”

They could hear sirens in the distance, drawing nearer.

“The next window is in three years,” Leona nearly shouted at her. “We could have gotten him back then. You didn’t have to slap the cuffs on him. Now our job is really complicated, besides having to make sure these wounds heal.”

The ambulance approached.

Sanaa shook her head. “You were wrong. Jericho Hagen is Hitler. He just doesn’t know it yet. Well...now he never does. When he finally gets back to the main sequence, he’ll see the world he almost destroyed, and he’ll thank us for it.”

Leona stood up, so the medics could start treating Mateo and J.B. “Will I? Will I thank you?”

Sanaa took a half step towards her friend. “I hope so.”

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