Microstory 1836: Sleepkiller

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Sleep and I have always had a very volatile relationship. It’s constantly hiding from me, even though I try to be nice, and always treat it well. I’ve tried everything to connect with it, from not watching TV within a few hours of bedtime, to meditation, to of course pills. Nothing seemed to do me any good. The doctors I talked to said it was insomnia. No der, what do I do about it? Nothing I haven’t tried, just keep trying those things. But stay away from the pills, because they can really mess you up. So I did, and I kept failing. I was miserable, and insufferable. I was fired from my job, not just because they caught me sleeping a time or two, but because I was agitated and ill-mannered to my co-workers. I had had enough. Something had to be done, and I didn’t care any more what the consequences were. So I went back to the pills, but I’m not talking about melatonin, or a tiny little sedative. I went for the big stuff. I was going to fall unconscious every night, whether my body wanted to or not. And if that shaved time off my lifespan, then so be it. It wasn’t like I had much to live for anyway, especially if I couldn’t even function during the day. I knew it was going to be rough, particularly at the start, so I carefully prepared for it. I set three different alarms. My regular alarm clock was set to the highest volume. A friend of mine tinkered with it so it would play the noise and the radio at the same time. My smartwatch vibrated simultaneously, which I always found jarring and annoying. Five minutes later, the television in the living room was programmed to flip on, again at the highest volume. I knew this would piss off my neighbors, which would motivate me to actually get the hell out of bed to unplug it quickly before then. I thought it was a foolproof plan, but I was wrong.

A new personality sometimes took over at night. At first, I didn’t know what was going on. Things were moved around, the refrigerator was open, the floor mat was upside down. I realized that I was sleepwalking. I had heard of that being a side effect, but never thought it would happen to me. Okay, that was okay, I could deal with it. Place a lock on the bedroom door, and line the floor against the walls with pillows. I could still hurt myself, but at least I would land softly if I fell. It didn’t work, as you might imagine. I still found weird things the next morning. Nothing truly bad had happened, though. I didn’t have any stairs, and I never once got in my car, or left the house. I would wake up feeling a little weird and dizzy, but I was otherwise better rested than ever in my life. So I kept taking the drugs, careful not to overdose, and kept just cleaning up my place when I came home from work. I did go through a lot of knives, though. My sleepwalking self had a habit of throwing them away, and always on trash pick-up day, like he periodically felt that it was time to refresh the collection. Again, fortunately, I never hurt myself with them. Then it happened. After all this goofiness, I did something truly terrible, and I still can’t explain it. I did get in my car, and I did leave the house, and I drove onto the highway. Evidently, I came across a horrible car accident, a victim of which I managed to pull from the wreckage. For whatever reason, I scooped her up, drove her to an industrial park, and threw her off the roof of a two-story building. I read about it in the paper the next day, and used my GPS history to put the pieces together. She didn’t die, but she was seriously hurt, and it was all my fault. I can’t live with myself anymore. So I’m back on that roof, but by myself this time, and completely awake. Goodbye forever.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 28, 2266

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Mateo still needed some time to recover from whatever it was that brought him back here. The jump to the future didn’t help things. Leona was frustrated, because he didn’t appear to have any serious injuries, and there really wasn’t anything she could do. She offered him some pain medication, but he refused, because he knew he would get over it on his own, and he didn’t like putting anything in his body that he didn’t have to.

Finally, Leona stepped out of nurse mode, and stepped into protective wife mode. “How did he get here? Why is he in pain?”

“I couldn’t tell ya,” Nerakali claimed.

“No, you said something about a time travel gun,” Leona argued.

“It’s fine, Leelee, I’m fine,” Mateo tried to comfort her.

“No, she’s gonna answer me.”

Nerakali sighed. “No, I’m not.”

Leona got all up in her grill. “And why exactly is that?”

“Rule number twelve,” she answered simply.

Don't learn too much about your future. It was kind of an amendment to Leona’s ninth rule of time travel, which was to gather as much information on the future, and your future, as possible. Well, maybe more like a clarification; a reiteration of the possible part.

“Look,” Nerakali said, “you’re gonna have to trust me on this. I cannot say anything more.”

“Let it go, Lee,” Mateo said.

“You don’t call me that,” Leona spat. “Stop acting like you call me that.”

He stood up and gave her a hug. “Okay, Del.”

“Ugh,” she growled, like someone whose dollar the vending machine keeps rejecting. She did let it go, though, and turned back to Nerakali. “Why are we here? What are we doing? You wanted us to find your mother, but I don’t see anyone else.”

“Her whonow?” Mateo asked, confused.

“We came to this place to get your husband,” Nerakali explained. “That’s as relevant to the mission as it is, and as relevant as it ever needed to be.”

“Well, then, where are we gonna start?”

“We start,” Mateo said coolly, like he had any clue what was going on, “by catching me up to what the bloody ‘ell is happening, and why she’s involved.”

Nerakali flipped a lid off the top of her ring, and revealed a holographic image of a woman Mateo thought he recognized.

“It’s Arcadia.”

“Everyone thinks that,” Nerakali said, shaking her head. “It’s actually our mother, Savannah. She’s the one what killed you.”

Mateo squinted, and looked again. “Okay, so she does look a lot like Arcadia, though I can spot some differences when I know to look for them. Still, she doesn’t look anything like Briar.”

“Briar was just the weapon,” she said, closing the hologram, and shrugging her shoulders.

“Evidently, she gave him the hundemarke so your death couldn’t be undone with time travel,” Leona added. She also gave it to Newt’s killers, and also Jabez Carpenter back in 2019.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Just one of many people my mother manipulated.”

“So she’s been doing this all over time and space?” Mateo asked.

“Yes. We are here to stop her.”

“Well,” Mateo began, “I’m happy to do anything I can to help, but this might be out of our wheelhouse. I’ve jumped back in time before—why, I was just in, like, a million years ago—but those are always flukes. I doubt the powers that be would let us keep doing that, so unless she stays in this time period, and during our days in the timestream, I’m afraid there’s little we can do.”

“Aren’t we just waiting for a moment when she shows up?” Leona assumed.

“Sort of,” Nerakali replied. She pulled up her ring hologram again, but swiped to a different image. It was a document of some kind; probably a spreadsheet, but holograms weren’t the best form factor for what was meant to be legible data. She seemed to just be showing them for illustrative purposes. “I know when the hundemarke was used. I have a list of every fixed moment in time that was made to be that way with the hundemarke. Most of them are deaths, but a few are presumably just moments that particular people don’t want to be altered. Not all of them have anything to do with Savannah. She seems to be deeply committed to wiping certain people from the timestream permanently, but other people have used it for their own ends.

“I believe I’ve narrowed the list down to just the ones she was involved with.” She swiped again to reveal another document. “But these just tell me the moments the hundemarke was used. What some people might not realize is that, just because you’re wearing it, doesn’t mean it’s going to be doing its thing. In fact, you don’t technically need to be wearing it all, but people usually do, because there’s a psycho-emotional connection. Still, some of the people she manipulated had no idea what they were wearing, yet they still activated its power. Why? Well, most of the time, it’s because even if they don’t know what they have, they are committed to the moment they’re in. Whatever it is, they want it to happen to a much higher degree than for other things they do. They may be wearing it when they go get their car washed, but since the wash isn’t particularly important to them, the hundemarke remains nothing more than an indestructible antique piece of jewelry.”

“We understand,” Mateo said. “It doesn’t work unless you really want it to, even if you don’t realize it has magical powers.”

“Right, but not all the time,” Nerakali said. “I mean, Jabez certainly had no intention of killing...” She trailed off, like she had been personally traumatized by whatever event she was referring to. “The point is that Savannah has seemingly exercised a level of remote control over the damn thing. She can activate it even when she’s not the one wearing it, and may not even be within its blast radius at the time. I don’t know how she does that, but what it means is that she’s even more powerful than we realized. If she can do that, we can’t just go to these fixed moments, and pick her out of the crowd. We have to trace the hundemarke’s path back from that moment, to the moment they received it from her. That’s the only way we’ll find her.”

“Why are you doing this?” Leona asked. “If she’s your mother, then...”

My siblings and my relationship with her has always been a complicated one. I don’t want to blame everything on her, because that’s not taking responsibility for my own actions, but she’s not totally blameless for how we turned out either. Zeferino inherited her obsession with becoming a master of reality. Arcadia inherited her desire for fairness, justice, and balance (read: punishment).”

“What about you? Or are you more like your father?”

“I am, actually. He taught me loyalty, honesty, and sticking to your word. I would be a really great person if not for Savannah, because I inherited her sadism. I like to hurt people. I like to hear their screams when I blend their brains, and I like that they have to live with the guilt from remembering doing things that they never actually did. Then I met you two.”

“Us?” Leona asked. “What about us?”

“You are good people. You’re a good couple, and even though I do know what happened to your kids here, I also happen to know how great of parents you were in another timeline. I admire you, and I’m jealous of you, and I wish that you had been my parents instead. You helped me remember why I was put on that plane of existence. I was created to help the world, by allowing people to let go of past traumas as if they had never happened, because to them, they hadn’t. I have a plan to find Savannah, and I don’t technically need you for it. It’s not even the most efficient plan, because like you said, you’re not generally allowed to jump back and forth through time. I’ve asked you to help, because I know you’ll make good choices. I need to make sure this happens, and I need you to be here, because you’re the reason I want to make sure it happens. The old me would have let it go. She was a bad mother, and I don’t ever want to see her again. But she’s doing bad things, and you’ve turned me into the kind of person who wants to stop her.”

Neither of them knew how to respond to what Nerakali said. It was a pretty moving speech, and it seemed pretty sincere.

“Obviously, you can back out. I’m not gonna force you, or hold something over you. This isn’t going to be safe. Mateo, you and I are kinda in the same boat now, except it’s worse for you. Every time I’m put in a life or death situation, I revert back to my actual moment of death, and take one more step towards it. I don’t think you have any steps, though. I think you probably have one chance, and then you’ll just die. It won’t be any safer for you either, Leona. I don’t have a comprehensive list of every single time the hundemarke was used, so for all we know, you could secretly be destined to become one of its victims.”

Leona smiled sadly, and wrapped her arms around Nerakali. “Of course we’ll help you. I regret everything that’s happened between us. Well, the bad things that happened. It hasn’t all been bad. You blended my brain without my permission, because of that whole sticking to your word thing. That wasn’t right, but I can’t argue with the results. I’m glad I remember Mateo, and I’m glad that you existed to give me that.” They ended the hug, and enjoyed a moment of silence together.

“I would hug you too,” Mateo said, “but that feels inappropriate.”

“Come here,” Nerakali said to him. So they hugged as well, and it wasn’t inappropriate, or awkward, or uncomfortable.

“So,” Leona said, after the moment was over. “What’s the plan? How are we going to find your mother, and how are we going to stop her?”

“Honest hour?” Nerakali asked rhetorically. “I thought it might take a couple years-slash-days to convince you. The mission doesn’t start today. It doesn’t even start next year. Our first clue can be found on November 30, 2268.”

“Okay,” Mateo said, “we’ll wait.”

“Until then!” Nerakali spun around until she lost her balance, and then just turned so she was facing the direction she wanted. She lifted a blue fob and pointed it towards the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She held down the button, and waved it towards the ship, which caused it to disappear, line by line. The more she waved, the more the ship was erased.

The other two watched her do this, confident that she wasn’t somehow destroying their ship. It didn’t look like it was being torn apart, but that Nerakali was using photo editing software to make it look like it wasn’t there. After she was done, the ship was gone, leaving only an empty corner of the underground hangar.

“I don’t think you want Savannah Preston to have the ability to travel over seven hundred light years in a year. It’s best we keep it secret. Besides, we need to jump all over the globe, but not beyond its atmosphere, and the AOC isn’t designed for that.”

“What is?” Leona asked, excited to see another vehicle of some kind.

“Are you ready?” Nerakali sported an evil smile, but, like, in a good way.

“Yes,” Leona said, happy that they were friends now.

“Here we go!” Nerakali teased. She reached behind her back, and quickly returned with futuristic handcuffs, but with the two halves separated from each other. Before they could stop her, she had them installed around their wrists. She then reached behind her back again, and retrieved a third cuff, which she placed on her own wrist.

Leona tried to get hers off. “What is this?”

“They’re Cassidy Cuffs. They bind our powers together,” Nerakali said. “Well, my powers, and your pattern. Whenever you jump forward in time, I jump with you. Whenever I teleport, you teleport with me. You could also blend someone’s brain, if it strikes your fancy.”

“Why did you do this?”

“I don’t want to get separated. You don’t want to separate from each other either, right? That’s rule number thirteen. This protects you from that.”

“We did not consent to this,” Leona complained.

Nerakali took out two slips of paper from her pocket, and handed one to each of them. “These are your respective cuff codes. You are free to leave at will. Please don’t. You’re not prisoners any more than I am, but while I think this is for the best, it’s up to you.” She started tapping on the console on her own cuff. “I’m putting a thirty second delay on this, and teleporting myself to what’s left of Machu Picchu. Either you unlock your cuffs in that time, and walk away, or you leave them on, and follow me through. You choose.”

She disappeared. Thirty seconds later, so did they.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 27, 2265

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“I recognize this,” Mateo said as he was standing beside the spaceship that Pribadium built for them. “You made this?” He gently glided his hand over the hull.

“Yes, so we could get back to the future,” she replied.

“Why did you make it so small? This only fits two people.”

Pribadium contorted her face. “What? What are you talking about? It’s a tight fit, because passengers are meant to remain in their stasis pods for the entire journey. It has room for four people, which is just as many as we need.”

Arcadia teleported in next to him, but didn’t say anything at first.

“You lied,” he noted. “You said that there was only one stasis pod. You made me and Juan go all over time and space, looking for Youth water, so that Leona would be able to survive. Alone. For four thousand years.”

Arcadia held up her hands, almost like she was being defensive, even though she was far more powerful than anyone else here. “Okay, technically, I’ve not yet lied to Past!You.”

He stepped forward, almost threateningly, even though she was far more powerful than anyone else here. “You made her go alone. Or you will make her; it doesn’t matter, because that’s already happened to me. You tortured her for thousands of years.”

“I’ll have a good reason,” Arcadia claimed.

He crossed his arms. “This oughta be good.”

“Who says I’m gonna tell you the reason?”

He just cleared his throat.

After a few beats, Arcadia did begin to explain, “you remember before you reset the timeline by killing Hitler? You had a run-in with Kayetan. He got his friend, Tauno to trap you in a pocket dimension for thousands of years. You could only hold a thought for ten seconds, but you had to stay there all that time, just constantly reliving the same moment over and over again.”

“Yes,” Mateo said. “I remember that. I mean, it didn’t actually happen to me, but The Cleanser had my brain blended, so I do have access to those memories. A future version of Leona had to take care of me for five years because of the trauma. Is this about her?”

“No,” Arcadia said. “That version of Leona is gone in this new timeline. This is about the version of Leona who’s currently waiting for you to come back from our date.”

Mateo sighed. That was an uncomfortable challenge.

Arcadia continued, “I could have easily saved Brooke. I could have delivered her mother back to Earth before she gave birth, so there would be no issue. But I saw an opportunity to help you two.”

“This was to help us?” Mateo questioned. “In what way?”

“Mateo, you’re four thousand years old,” she said. “And you were dating someone who was in her thirties. That was weird, so I’m going to fix that. I’m going to make her four thousand years old too.”

“Jesus Christ, Arcadia. That is not okay. And it’s total nonsense, because you’re, what, half my age? Yet you wanted a relationship with me.”

“This isn’t about us. What you went through is necessary. What Leona has to go through is necessary. Paige Turner, and her friends, need her back in 2025. This is how I get her there. You can’t change that; I won’t allow it.” She looked back over to Pribadium’s ship. “So, I’m gonna commandeer this vessel, and I’m gonna put Leona and baby Brooke on it once Past!Mateo and Ponce de León procure the necessary water. In the meantime, Vitalie and Pribadium need to return to Tribulation Island so they can take care of Brooke while her mother doesn’t exist.”

“What are you talking about?” Mateo asked. “Angelita isn’t removed from the timestream until 2127.”

Arcadia looked confused. “No, she isn’t. No, I’ve been taking people out of time the day after you leave the timestream; not the day before you come back to find them missing. They’re gone a whole year before you find out about it.”

“Oh,” Mateo said. “I guess I didn’t know that.”

“I don’t know how to take care of a baby,” Vitalie argued.

“Neither do I,” Pribadium said.

“You’ll figure it out.” She removed a pill packet from her back pocket, and tried to hand it to the ladies. “This will induce lactation. There are two pills, so either both of you can nurse Brooke, or not. I’m not giving you any formula, though, so one of you has to volunteer, or just let the baby die.”

Mateo felt that he couldn’t argue. It wasn’t right that she was forcing them to nurse someone else’s baby, but anything he said might sound like mansplaining. They could fight it themselves, if they wanted to, but he just needed to keep his mouth shut.

Pribadium reached out, and took the pills. Then she turned to Vitalie. “You’re immortal. According to what Leona said of her, Brooke is incapable of experiencing non-linear time. I’m afraid that your milk could...complicate matters. I’m the only one who can do this.”

“Her mother could do it,” Cassidy pointed out.

“Who are you again?” Arcadia asked rhetorically.

Pribadium removed one of the pills, and popped it in her mouth. “I’ll save the second one in case something goes wrong.”

“Okay, cool,” Arcadia said. “You do this for a year, at which point I’ll get Leona to take over for you, and then I’ll let you cross the merge border.”

“We have to get back to the mainland of Dardius in 2263,” Mateo said.

“You can be a hundred and thirty years off,” Arcadia rounded down. “I can’t do everything for you.”

“Yeah,” Mateo said, “you can.”

Before she left, Arcadia gave Pribadium some parenting books, to help her figure out what the hell she was going to do with a baby. She also allowed them some amenities, like reusable diapers, a solar-powered washer to clean them, and a solar-powered food synthesizer for the group, so they wouldn’t only have boar and bananas to eat. They would have to handle their own shelter, though, and neither Mateo nor Cassidy would be around long enough to help. Perhaps they would just live in the spaceship.

As Vitalie was skimming through the books so she could help, and Pribadium was running a pre-flight check, Mateo noticed Cassidy acting a little cagey, and then scurrying off into the woods. Curious, he started following her. They were all adults here, so if she just needed to relieve herself, she wouldn’t need to be all sneaky about it. If she was going off to search for a hidden immunity idol, he needed to know about it. She stopped before too long, and just stood there with her back to him, like a creepy ghost child from a Japanese horror film.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I suppose I can be honest with you,” she said, turning back around. She was holding the magical solution Pribadium came up with that was meant to turn her into a blind spot, so no one could use time powers to find her.

“Are you going to take that?”

“Quite the opposite,” she said, removing the cap. “I’m here to get rid of it. I don’t know what it is, but dealing with this Arcadia chick has made me not afraid anymore. I don’t want to be sheltered, and I don’t want to be a secret.” She turned the needle, and released the solution inside it, so that it fell into a puddle of water on the ground. “Whatever happens, happens. I’m sure it’ll all turn out okay.”

“Oh my God,” Mateo said. He was staring at the puddle.

“Did I just do that?” Cassidy asked. She leaned over, and watched. The solution was having a weird effect on the water. It didn’t mix together in an expected way. It was turning most of the water completely black, while leaving little dots of light. “What is that?”

“Holy crap. This is the star puddle.” He looked around to get his bearings, but if he was right, and this was the same place he went to with Xearea, the landscape would look a lot different in millions of years anyway. “It’s part of the immortality waters. They call it Time, and it apparently makes it so that your immortality was always part of you. This way, no one can go back in time and prevent you from one day drinking the waters, and becoming immortal.” He couldn’t help but smile. “Pribadium invented it, and you created it.”

“So, we’re not supposed to try to fix it?” she asked.

“No, definitely not.”

Just then, they heard a rustling in the bushes. A figure appeared from behind them. It was Mateo himself. Yes, another one. Future!Mateo pointed down at the star puddle. “I’m going to need some of that.”

Present!Mateo stepped back, and presented the water to him. “Have at it.”

As Future!Mateo was kneeling down to siphon some Time, Present!Mateo took Cassidy by the arm, and escorted her back towards the others.

“Are we not going to talk about that?” she asked.

“No,” he replied. “Rule number four.”

“Hey, Mateo!” Future!Mateo called out to him.

“We shouldn’t exchange words,” Present!Mateo warned him.

“It’s cool,” Future!Mateo contended. “I think I’ve got this.” He reached into his bag, and pulled out a shotgun. “Go see your wife.” Before either of them could react, he fired the gun, and hit the younger version of himself right in the chest.

Present!Mateo could feel himself disappearing, and being spirited away to some other point in spacetime.

Earth. It wasn’t the only planet known to harbor life anymore, but it was still the best one. Leona hadn’t been back here for nearly two months now. That was over fifty years ago, though. A lot had changed about the solar system since then. Religion was all but dead now. What few people still identified as religious mostly did so for cultural reasons, and probably didn’t truly believe anymore. Science had pretty much taken over, allowing technology and general progress to skyrocket. The species was now a Type I energy civilization on the Kardashev scale, which meant it was capable of harnessing all of the energy that Sol provided to the planet. They were presently constructing a massive ring around the sun called the central processing belt, to provide energy for what was basically a giant systemwide computer.

The surface of Earth itself wasn’t too much different than the last time Leona was here. Most people still lived in arcological megastructures, scattered throughout the world. One notable difference was the loss of the Northern Forest multi-development circles. It wasn’t that there were no longer people who wanted to live less advanced lifestyles, but they now had opportunities to move out to the exoplanets, and build whatever colonies they wanted. Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida was a popular destination, since it didn’t require giant domes to maintain an artificial atmosphere. Newly terraformed Bungula was popular for the same reason, but scientists were still unsure whether any of the other planets in the stellar neighborhood were capable of such drastic transformations.

“What are we doing here?” Leona asked.

“Patience you must have, my young padawan,” Nerakali said.

“That’s not an actual quote from any Star Wars movie.”

“You’re not an actual quote from any Star Wars movie!” she shouted playfully.

“You’re right, I’m not. But seriously, where are we?”

“This is the underground military base where The Overseer first gathered the crew of The Sharice Davids.”

“Oh, okay.” She paused another moment. “Are we getting a ship?”

Nerakali turned her head to face her. “You already have a ship.”

“It’s not a warship.”

She turned back to look forward again. “We don’t need a warship.”

“What do we need then?”

“I struck a deal with a man named Mateo.”

“A man named Mateo,” Leona echoed. “Am I not supposed to know who that is?”

“Oh,” Nerakali laughed. “Different Mateo.”

“What?”

Nerakali didn’t respond.

Leona was growing a little impatient. “When is whatever is going to happen going to happen?”

Nerakali sighed. “Well, when does your next alarm go off?”

“Huh?” She instinctively checked Mario’s watch. “It says one minute. I don’t remember setting this.”

“Do you not know how to use that thing? It sets your alarms automatically. You just have to be paying attention.”

The alarm went off, and in response, Leona’s husband, Mateo Matic appeared out of nowhere. He keeled over, and massaged his chest.

“Time travel guuun,” Nerakali sang, “you know it’s not fuuun!”

Leona knelt down, and started to help him recover. “How did you get back here?”

“I—” Mateo began, but couldn’t remember what the answer was. “I don’t know.”

“No matter,” Nerakali said, now sporting a British accent. “Welcome to November 27, 2265.”

A minute later, midnight central struck, and sent them to the future together.

“Sorry. I meant...welcome to November 28, 2266,” Nerakali joked.

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Microstory 1178: Dr. Mallory Hammer

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Mallory Hammer was a time traveler. While other people had interesting niches or limitations, her power was pretty simple. She could move back and forth through time at will. She also had pretty good aim, which was good, because when she did jump through time, it was very important when and where she landed. The only use she found for her ability at first was to get a really good education, or rather, more like an array of education. She was born in the late twentieth century, which meant she could easily receive an early twenty-first century medical degree. She did not believe this was enough, however, if she wanted to be the best doctor in histories. She couldn’t just rely on future medical advancements either, though. For one thing, much of medicine in the future is done by nanotechnology, and other forms of automation. Future doctors just don’t know a whole lot about the practice of medicine. They mostly know how to operate the machinery, and even further in the future, human medical professionals do not even exist at all. So her education was done in three waves. She learned what she could in her own time, then jumped to the future with a new identity to learn more, and find a source of highly advanced tech. Then she went into the past, to learn the ways doctors did it long ago. This was the most difficult for her, being a woman, and also having to listen to people claim ridiculous things could be used to cure ailments, like like leeches. Still, she felt it was important to understand their misconceptions, not just for the sake of it, but also for practical reasons. If she wanted to help people in the past, she couldn’t exactly use a handheld MRI machine, or something. She had to do it in a way they were familiar with. Of course, that didn’t mean she couldn’t sneak in pills that wouldn’t exist for years. If she didn’t find a clever way to help them, then there was really no point in not just letting normal doctors take care of it. After spending an unknown amount of time as a time traveling doctor, Mallory started realizing this wasn’t doing the world much good. No matter how much she traveled, she was still only one person, and could only help so many others. She ended up just becoming a doctor for other temporal manipulators; aiding in both their physical, and psychiatric needs. She commissioned The Switcher to make her a communication system, so that anyone, anywhen, with her number could contact her for help on a special time pager. She didn’t really have a home base, but she would sometimes spend a significant amount of time, stationed in one place. She also did a fair amount of research into time travel, and its effects on the human body, because apparently, no one had thought to look into that before.

Microstory 978: Chocolate

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I just took a big sniff inside my bottle of melatonin, because it smells like chocolate. I didn’t know this brand did that to their product, so I certainly didn’t buy them for that reason. They don’t even advertise the smell, which is weird. My allergies, made it so it would take me weeks to realize what the scent even was. The reason I do this every night is because smell is surprisingly well-associated with memory; better than most other senses. Even sight can’t compete in some respects. I worry about forgetting that I’ve already taken my medicine, and overdosing, so I have to find ways of reminding myself, which makes me wonder why pharmaceutical companies don’t do this with all of their pills. They want people to take them, right? So make it worth their while. Anyway, it’s probably not a shock to you that I love chocolate. Bear with me while I go off on a tangent. I just got in an argument with someone on Twitter today who absolutely could not understand why I could possibly have the audacity to not like sports. He just couldn’t fathom it, I mean it has everything. If you’re looking for entertainment, sports is the best, and personal preference doesn’t exist. Everybody likes sports, and anyone who doesn’t has a severe—and likely terminal—medical condition, and is missing something in their life. We shall never know happiness. We shall never know peace. My point is that we all like different things, but I’m notably irregular. I like disco, I hate Star Wars; I listen to Selena Gomez and The Offspring; and I don’t really enjoy eating food all that much. One thing I do like to eat, however, is chocolate...just like everybody else. You see, chocolate isn’t like sports. Chocolate is perfectly tailored for human consumption (once processed appropriately). The reason anything tastes good at all is because our ancestors needed to know what foods were safe to eat, and which were not. When I say ancestors, I’m talkin’ way, way back. This is how organisms have survived for literal aeons. Chocolate is very good, and nature wants us to know that, as does evolution. I don’t go one day without eating the stuff, I like it so much. Almost all of the various protein and granola bars I eat include them as a significant ingredient, so I’ve been living like this for years. I try not to be too much like you neurotypicals, but I cannot resist the chocolate. Huh. I guess I do have a medical condition.

Microstory 925: Nanotechnology

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Let me start this off by explaining that nanotechnology does not exclusively deal with teeny tiny robots. Those are a big [sic] part of it, but they don’t tell the whole story, and are only being studied in some of the fields that can benefit from the subject as a whole. Nanotech refers to the manipulation of technology at nanometer scales, which can still always be incorporated into larger devices, like your phone. There’s this concept known as Moore’s Law, and in order to stop this from getting too technical, it basically means that computer processors are getting smaller and smaller all the time. Nanotechnology allows us to get so incredibly small that, not only can your phone itself be smaller, but it can be more powerful, allowing you to perform more complex tasks, faster. But again, that’s not all there is. Nanomedicine will do wonders for the development of cures for an array of diseases. You see, when it comes to your body, it’s all about the processes happening at miniscule scales, in the background, that you aren’t even conscious of. Little cells are floating around you, interacting with each other, and foreign objects, and performing the duties they’ve been programmed to carry out. This is what allows us to fight off diseases, while at the same time, it is the exploits in these microscopic systems that allow pathogens to take advantage of us in the first place. Our microbiome is under constant external threat, and certain cells are consistently required to learn to deal with dangers they’ve never seen before. But what if we could subvert all that? What if, when a new disease comes along, artificial cells could be the ones to attack the invaders, and heal the patient, just by more efficiently mimicking cells that evolved to do that for you. Highly specialized superserums can be injected in the early days, but as technology marches on, we will one day just have an army of these nanoregulators inside of us that can be updated over the air at the click of a button. You can request new resistance using an app on whatever device people are using in those days, or maybe there will be some central server that blasts a security patch to everyone all at once. Of course this all comes with risks.  What if someone figures out how to hack this? What can they program your system to do against your will? How far can they go? Can they order your body to literally start attacking itself? Can patches be reversed, or otherwise corrupted? What long-term effects would this regimen have on your system? Could it have a negative impact on your body’s natural functions, or those of your descendants? I don’t claim to have all the answers, which is why I love that thousands—maybe millions; what do I know?—of people are all working together to figure this all out before anything bad happens.

Microstory 924: Medical Science Breakthroughs

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Settle in. This one is short, because I can offer little insight into this matter, and the only people who disagree with medical advancements are religious zealots whose opinions don’t matter. I’ve already talked a lot about transhumanism, and I appreciate that people may not be quite on board with such a thing, even if they understand it, because it’s a pretty high jump to that from cures and treatments. Cyborgs are ever-present in science fiction narratives, and they don’t paint a very pretty picture of the concept. People are strapped with machine guns for arms, and they’ve usually had one eye replaced with something artificial. The truth is that upgrades will be far more seamless and elegant, but I’m already digressing. In the meantime, before those wild alterations to human physiology take place, we have good old fashioned medical science to keep us alive and healthy. You might be surprised to learn that only a couple infectious diseases have been eradicated worldwide. I don’t mean that as an underexaggeration. There are literally only two of them: smallpox, and rinderpest. A few more can be eliminated if problems with funding and distribution can be solved first, but not many. The rest of the diseases have treatments, often very promising ones, but they don’t have cures. While the diseases themselves cannot be eliminated, the symptoms they cause can be handled with the right cocktail. While not ideal, pain and symptom management is an important component of wellbeing. This is set to change, which I mentioned the my entry about the spread of truth. Institutions, like the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization, are learning more every day. It can only get better from here, as long as we increase public access to treatment centers. I, for one, am hopeful about it, especially if we work towards the development of nanotechnology. Oh, look at that, up ahead; a post about nanotechnology.

Microstory 828: Spitting Image

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It’s not uncommon for people in here to claim that they’re innocent, and don’t belong. I’ll be the first to tell you that I’m guilty...mostly. I wasn’t holding them for a friend, and I didn’t just find them on the street. They were mine, and I planned to take every single one of them eventually. It’s not like they go bad, or anything, so yeah, I bought in bulk. But the Divided States of Bullshit arbitrarily decided that carrying some threshold of product meant there was intent to sell. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Needless to say, I think I’ve overstayed my welcome in this joint, and I’m ready to get out. I was supposed to be paroled, but the committee didn’t think I showed enough remorse for what I had done, so they rejected me. These people, who had no idea who I was, what I’ve been through, or what I’m gonna do next; they chose my fate for me. So I resolved to leave on my own accord. Luckily, my cellmate feels the exact same way. Long ago, we agreed that there was no point in letting the rest of the prison know how close we were. We have so much in common, I almost feel like I met my husband the day I walked in here, and we were put together. Unfortunately, our races don’t mix well in this particular facility, so we have to pretend to hate each other. He’s in here for life, because of a total misunderstanding, and I don’t really have anything to lose anymore, so the plan is on. Or at least, it will be on, as soon as we figure out what it is.

He’s a master strategist, so I know he can come up with something brilliant, but that ends up being the least of our worries. Not long after my parole falls through, the system moves us both to different cells, in different wings. This place is real strict with the schedule, so now the only time I ever see him is when I’m leaving the yard, and his line is walking towards it. The guards watch us like hawks, so there’s no way to pass any notes either. They’ll just get read in front of the whole class. I don’t know what we’re gonna do, and frankly I’m losing hope, but every time we pass, he gives me the stinkeye, but with his left eye, which is our code for everything is going according to plan. I have to believe that he’s telling me the truth, and that he still has something up his sleeves. I just wish I knew what it was. Then one day, he picks a fight with me, which we’ve done on occasion to cement other people’s belief that we can’t stand each other. We don’t do it too often, though, because I still needed to be on my best behavior. Now that that no longer matters, we can go all out. We just start hitting and kicking each other relentlessly. Normally, the guards would pull us off right away, but it’s magically not inciting a riot, so they let it go on for a long time. He wipes his middle finger across his forehead, which tells me this is supposed to end with him in the infirmary. Then he growls in my right ear, which tells me I’m supposed to go to solitary for this. I start winning the fight, and he starts letting me on purpose. Then he does something that’s never been part of a code. He spits in my face, and I swear it burns a little. In a fake rage, I sweep the leg, and jam my foot against his neck; not hard enough to kill him, but hard enough for him to need medical treatment. I can’t get the spit off my face, and then I realize I shouldn’t even try. I start getting a vision of blueprints, guard shift schedules, and other relevant images. I have no idea how it’s possible, but he’s somehow provided me with the prison break plan, which now also includes his new cellmate. Now it really is on. Tonight.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Circa 1921

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It was blistering cold once Arcadia apported them through time, to a new date, theoretically in the past. The group huddled together and looked around, seeing only snow, clouds, and the hint of civilization a ways away. They were all bundled in several layers, with the men wearing tall fluffy hats, and the women hoods and scarves. They couldn’t remember changing into their new clothes, which made them uncomfortable, but they all agreed to just let it go. Surely they changed themselves, and only later had their memories erased.

They started trudging through the snow, towards the part of some building they could see in the distance. It would get larger and smaller as trees blocked their view. Only once they were nearly inside it could they tell that it was some kind of village. The houses were built of logs, often with stone foundations. They were crude and deteriorating, but it was unclear what year this one. None of them knew what kind of time period to assume when looking at this kind of architecture. It was possible for these structures to exist in Mateo’s original time in the early 21st century. They didn’t even know what part of the world they were in.

People milled about in either misery or depression, or both. As destitute as they were living from the perspective of privileged people from what was likely the future, this didn’t seem like a normal day. There was an air of unusual calamity that the residents weren’t used to going through. They tried asking a few people what was happening, but they just ignored them and moved on, not wanting to stir up trouble.

“Perhaps they don’t speak English,” Serif proposed.

“We just have to try harder,” Lincoln said. “We have to figure out what we’re meant to be doing here; who it is we’re being asked to save.”

They kept walking slowly, careful to not make any sudden movements. This didn’t seem like all that small of a village, but it also looked like it was larger than its current population. People must have been moving away in recent times. At least that was what Mateo presumed, but what did he know? They saw a few signs on the buildings, and they were all in English, so that didn’t explain why no one was responding to them. No, it was because everybody probably knew everybody, and they were very obviously strangers. Finally, an elderly woman didn’t wait to be asked any questions. She offered to help them spontaneously.

“We have traveled a long way by foot,” Darko said to her. “We were hoping for a place to rest, and a warm meal, though we cannot pay.”

“But we could work for it,” Leona said. “We do not wish to take what we do not deserve.”

“The synagogue will have food,” the old woman replied. “You can help with the children there.”

“What is wrong with the children?” Serif asked.

She turned to lead them to the synagogue. “They’re dying.”

The group looked at each other in horror. Arcadia had not prepared them for the sight of dead children.

They entered the synagogue to find several children lying in cots, each with similar symptoms. They were sweaty and shaky. Some were coughing, others were vomiting, and others were doing both. It was an even more frightful to see than they thought it would be. Most were toddler age, with the youngest probably having been born in the last couple months, and the oldest being around eight.

“What disease it this?” Lincoln asked.

The old woman was gone. A younger woman was nearby, though. “Double pneumonia,” she said. “It can be treated, but we do not have the medicine for it. Not here. We have sent word, but I fear help may not come in time. Unless, that is, you are who we have been expecting.”

“No,” Leona said with a determined look on her face. “But we can help just the same.”

She reached into her bag and took out what she referred to as her second aid kit. It had all the basic of a first aid kit, plus a few things that didn’t generally come with it. Not everyone was educated enough to carry needles and antibiotics, but Leona was, so she always wanted to be prepared. Her kit had seen a boost in inventory after she recovered from having to cut off both of her legs during the Legolas tribulation. “Pneumonia is easy to treat where we come from,” she whispered to the group while inspecting her supplies. “Unfortunately, these children may be too far gone. I can quell all of their symptoms, but I can only cure one, maybe two.” She took out one of those plastic pill organizers and opened up every slot. Then she started dropping medicines into the slots to create individualized cocktails. She stopped in the middle of it and started thinking. “Serif, go find a mortar and pestle. Lincoln, ask someone for everything required to make tea. Darko, start helping keep the children comfortable. Give them water—boil more if you have to—ask them if they want more pillows, or more blankets, or whathaveyou.”

They all sped off to complete their tasks, leaving Mateo wondering what he could do to help.

“You have the worst job of all,” she said to him.

“What?”

“Like I said, I can only cure one for certain. The rest will have to pull through on their own, which they may not be able to do. It will be your responsibility to find out who it is we’re here to save.”

“Are we sure there is only one? Maybe we’re here for everybody.”

“Mateo, have you ever heard of a group of dozen and a half historical figures who all grew up in the same tiny village?”

“Well, no...but—”

“Your father was The Kingmaker, right? He saved famous people. There’s only one famous person here, and you have to figure which one of these children that is.”

“But we need to—”

“I’d like to save them all too, but Arcadia didn’t put us here to do that. If you want your father back, you have to do what’s being asked of you. Learn all of their names, and report them to the group. Hopefully, between the five of us, someone will recognize the right name.”

He hesitated.

“Go,” she ordered. “The faster I administer the medicine, the greater the chances we have that it works.”

Mateo did as he was told, and started asking the children’s parents’ their names. They weren’t particularly expressive, but they saw no harm in telling them this information. They could see that the newcomers were here to help, even if they didn’t understand how. Based on the names he was being given, everybody here was Russian, or something. He asked a couple of their birthdays as a sneaky way of finding out that it was probably around the year 1921. Why they were able to understand each other, Mateo didn’t know. They certainly didn’t know any Russian, and the villagers likely didn’t all speak English at the time. Arcadia must have put in place some kind of universal translator for them that also made signs legible, and made it so that no one realized people’s mouths as they spoke weren’t matching up with the translation listeners were magically hearing. None of the names sounded familiar until he reached the last one. A two-, maybe three-year-old was lying in his little cot. He was experiencing the same things as all the others, but wasn’t in near as much distress. He was a strong child, with an iron will who couldn’t be broken by phlegm or vomit. His name was Isaac Asimov.

Mateo had never read any of Asimov’s stories, but Leona absolutely adored him. As saddened as this ordeal was making her, she would be happy to learn that she would be the one to save his young life.

He went back to the group, and found them putting together the tea medicine the children would be given. When he told them the name, Leona stopped for a second, but then got back to work. “No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is...but the world as it will be,” she quoted. “I believe he would be pleased that a group of time travelers gave him the life I know he lives following today.”

“Would you like to meet him?” Mateo asked.

“And say what? Goo goo, ga ga?”

“He can speak now,” Mateo responded with laughter.

“Never meet your heroes,” Leona said.

“You met Juan Ponce de León,” Darko pointed out before heading out with two cups of tea for the first two kids to be treated.

“Wait,” Leona said, noticing something peeking out of her bag. “What is this?” She pulled out a manilla envelope. Little somethings slid back and forth as she turned it around. She opened it up and took out a note from Arcadia.

You can either save only the one, or all of them. You choose, the note read.

“What’s the catch?” Leona asked out loud.

“There’s writing on the back,” Lincoln noticed.

Leona flipped it over and read it out loud. “The catch is there is no catch. Save ‘em all, Leona Matic.” She reached into the envelope and retrieved a small brown pill, which she held up in front of the light. After some thought, she dropped it into one of the cups that Darko was holding. She then reached in again and took out a second pill for the second cup. “Go on,” she instructed him.

“Are we sure this isn’t a trick?” Serif asked. “She might just be messing with us.”

“I can’t help them,” Leona said. “Maybe this little pill can.”

They gave each of the children their tea with the brown pill, except of Isaac Asimov. He received a regimen of antibiotics. As the day went on, the children started dying off, and it was looking like they would all be gone by the end of the week. Apparently Arcadia really was messing with them. Out of seventeen afflicted children, only Isaac Asimov survived.

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