Microstory 1748: My Future as a Hare

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Everyone in the galaxy has a right to immortality, unless they lose it by committing a severe enough crime, but not all forms of immortality are created equal. We’re all ageless, but how old you look—and feel—when you stop aging, is dependent upon a number of factors. You can be awarded lagomorphic status, as they call it, upon your own merits. Good people lead infinite lives, unless they become bad, in which case their lagomorphicity can be removed from them. Some buy their way into status, often worried that they won’t be worthy of achieving it on their own, or because they’re children whose parents don’t have confidence in them. But again, just because you’ve been accepted into the program, doesn’t mean you’re going to be young and healthy forever. There are three primary classes of lagomorphic immortals. Pikas appear as children, which could mean they were children when they underwent the procedure, or because their age was sufficiently reversed. They may not have been the one to make this choice. The most common of the lagomorphs are Rabbits, who look like adults. The last class are the Hares, which is what I have recently become. They’re not constantly on the brink of death, but they’re not super healthy either. I suppose I should be saying we at this point. I would rather be a Rabbit. Pikas are often not taken seriously, because they look so young, but at least they’re healthy. Hares, like me now, apparently, are riddled with general aging problems, which can’t really be treated. We suffer for eternity. There is one upside in that we’re the ones who run the government. We make decisions about who receives the gift, and what kind. We can even transition people at will. I know what you’re thinking, but no, we can’t later choose to change ourselves into Rabbits or Pikas. That would be a conflict of interest, and a gross abuse of power.

Most of the time, a Hare has become that way because they have spent a lifetime proving themselves to be up to the challenge, and have kept themselves on track. They have usually refused to be turned into Rabbits specifically so they might one day be entrusted with the ongoing prosperity of our culture. Occasionally—and it is incredibly rare, according to everything I have ever heard about Hares—someone will be aged forward so that they become an elder after having only lived a relatively low number of mortal years. Why this happens is a closely guarded secret. It’s happened to me, and I still don’t know whether someone did it on purpose, or if my body reacted to the treatment in a unique way. I don’t know why I’m like this. As I said, I’ve always just wanted to be a normal Rabbit. I have no interest in making decisions, or in wearing a diaper until the end of time. I don’t think all Hares have to do that, but it’s not unheard of, and no thank you. Right now, I’m waiting in The Great Hall for someone to retrieve me, and give me some sort of assignment. I’m sure most people understand the process at this point, but I don’t pay much attention to politics, so I don’t know how the distribution of power works. It’s been two hours. I would complain about them making an old man wait this long, but they’re old too, so they’re probably pretty slow. Finally, the gargantuan doors open, and I just get the feeling that I’m meant to step in. I walk up to the Grand Council, and stand before them patiently. I have never even seen their faces before. Honestly, it’s a huge honor. “Welcome. The sad news is that a member of our council has chosen to die after centuries of service. The bad news is...you were selected to replace her.”

Firestorm: Alexina McGregor (Part I)

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It was a bit of an overstatement when Warden McAlister claimed that the rabbit dog was one of my creations. I’m the founder and president of Gregorios Bank, so I was responsible for bankrolling the research that eventually led to the rabbit dog, among other things. I didn’t have a hand in the research or experiments, but I suppose I can’t relinquish all blame either. I’m trying to become a better person, though, so I’m taking a page out of Jupiter!Two’s book, and dissociating myself from people who make bad decisions. That’s not all I’m doing, however. I’m also actively trying to make better decisions, and helping people when I can. I’m working with a new team now—a better team—and I can’t let them down. We are the only ones who can get an innocent man out of prison.

“What’s this?” Ace asks. He’s the prisoner.

“It’s about bunnies.”

He half-chuckles, and flips through the pages. “Yeah, my father read it to the family when I was a kid. I don’t remember anything about what happened, though. Thank you.”

“Look,” I say, “I know you have a lot of entertainment there in your pocket world, but I felt compelled to contribute.”

“Yeah, this isn’t in my library. I appreciate it. The Warden let you bring it in here?”

“I couldn’t figure out how to hide a time file in there to help you break free.”

“A time file?”

“Sorry, bad joke. There’s no such thing. There is no escaping Beaver Haven Rehabilitation Center.”

“Don’t be so sure of that,” a guard muses as she’s walking by, but she walks off before we can ask her to elaborate.

“Thank you for the book, Miss McGregor.”

“Please. Call me Alexina.”

“Okay.” He pauses a moment, presumably working up the nerve to say something that truly matters. “Can you take care of my family? Can you...?” he trails off.

“I can do the first thing,” I assure him, “but I can’t agree to the second thing until you vocalize it.”

He composes himself. “It sucks being in here.” He looks back behind him. The cell itself is about as small as any other, but the back wall leads to a pocket dimension, which is full of extra space, and amenities. Beaver Haven is a cruel facility. If you find yourself in here—present circumstances notwithstanding—you’re in for life. Every sentence is a life sentence, because every inmate is either capable of traveling through time, or can find someone who is. Whatever you did to get on their radar is bad enough, at least in their eyes, that you no longer deserve to ever be free. It is for this reason that they provide you with a lot more comfort than even the swankiest of white collar prisons has. “But it doesn’t exactly suck in here. It was really bad for Slipstream, because she’s a runner, and the treadmill they gave her doesn’t exactly scratch her itch. She runs to go places; not to move her legs. I’m not like that, though, so I’ll be fine. If at any point, the mission becomes too dangerous for Serkan or Paige, I need you to pull the plug. Now, they may hate you—”

“I understand,” I interrupt. “I run a bank; I know what it’s like to be the bad guy. I won’t let anything happen to them, even if it means you never get out of here.”

“Thank you,” he says graciously.

“I asked for a communication device, so you can be read into our plan as we’re formulating it, but the Warden didn’t allow that.”

“It’s okay. I’ll find out what happens when it’s over.” He shrugs, but only slightly.

“I better go. Your boyfriend and daughter will be wondering why I asked to speak with you alone for so long.”

“It’s cool. Don’t feel pressure to get this done quickly,” he calls out to me as I’m starting to walk away. “Do it right.”

I hear the voice of my former friend and business partner just before I walk out of earshot, but I can’t think about that right now. It was the Warden’s sick joke to put her in the cell next to his, and the best thing I can do for him now is get him the hell out of here so none of us has to see her ever again.

My new team and I return to our condo in the Ponce de Leon, which we’re using as our base of operations. Lots of temporal manipulators have lived here over the years. A man named Kallias Bran technically owns it, but he leaves it available for anyone who both needs it, and deserves it. We’re not sure where he goes when it’s not using it himself. Our mission is to find a way into the FBI building. An agent there has possession of two special temporal objects at least, and we suspect he has more. Though, I guess, calling the rabbit dog an object is a bit demeaning. It’s a living creature, genetically engineered by the woman who’s in the cell next to Ace. So this is a rescue mission as much as it’s about stopping a threat. We don’t know precisely what the agent knows about the world of time travelers. Hell, we don’t even understand what his own time power is, but our biggest concern is what he’s going to do with what he has. Though the rabbit dog would be a genetic marvel if word got out about it, its hybridness isn’t what will get us into trouble. It possesses electrokinetic abilities, which were adapted from a number of real life specimens, but it also has psychic powers, which it got from its creator, Volpsidia Raske. That could expose us all.

“I know what the rabbit dog is capable of,” Serkan says. “I took care of it for hours. What I don’t know is anything about this Omega Gyroscope. What does it do?”

“Anything,” I answer. I don’t know much about it myself. I’ve just heard rumors. “It can alter reality. Of course, certain people can do that, which you saw firsthand with your run-in with Rothko Ladhiffe. The reason the gyroscope is such a problem is because it’s an object; not a person. It doesn’t have any buttons or switches, and anyone in possession of it can use it. There’s no telling how bad things can get, because the user would have to know exactly what it is they’re asking for, and comprehend the side effects and consequences.”

“Few people are smart enough to do that,” Paige notes. “Maybe no one is.”

“Right,” I agree. “We can’t let anyone have it; not even ourselves.”

“Well, does he know what he has; this...what’s his name? I see references in these files to Austin Miller, but this part here just talks about Baby Boy. Can he alter his own age, or something?”

I laugh. “No. Okay, here’s the story, at least how Vidar told me. His parents wanted him to choose his own name when he was old enough. So the name they left on his birth certificate was just Baby Boy. That’s the placeholder they use until the parents come up with something else. Different states have different laws, but this country is one the least strict when it comes to what you’re allowed to name your child, and how long you have before you have to do it. So for four years, that was his name; Baby Boy. Then when he was four, his parents decided it was time for him to decide for himself. Unfortunately for him, like many children his age, he was obsessed with one animated film. You may be too young to have heard of it, but it’s called Aladdin.”

“I’ve seen it,” Slipstream says.

“I’ve heard of it, but haven’t seen it,” Serkan remarks.

“I’ve never heard of it,” Paige adds.

“Great,” I joke. “Now our survey is complete. Anyway, there was one phrase from the movie the kid couldn’t stop saying. It’s not a particularly interesting quote, nor something, if you heard it, would automatically make you think of the movie. But I guess he found it delightful, so he would just randomly blurt it out. When his parents asked him what name he wanted, naturally, that’s what he said. So they changed his birth certificate to Hello Doctor.”

“Hello Doctor?” Slipstream echoes.

“Hello Doctor,” I repeat. “I don’t even remember the context in the film, but that’s who he was. His parents made him go by Hello Doctor for twelve years before he was old enough to demand the court change it. He finally became Austin Miller on his seventeenth birthday, but even though he went to college halfway across the country, he can’t escape his first two names. I bet he gets really pissy if people call him either Hello Doctor or Baby Boy, so we should keep that bullet in the chamber. Good question, Serkan.”

Serkan nods. “I’m just going to call him Agent Miller for now. Does he know what he has? More importantly, does he know how to use it?”

I think about this for a moment. The Warden didn’t give any specifics in that regard, and the files don’t answer it. “I imagine the answer to both is no. If he knew how to use it, he probably would have created a reality where Austin Miller was always his name, and we wouldn’t have had a conversation about it just a few seconds ago. If he knew what it was, but didn’t know how to use it, we would probably see evidence of it, like a giant starfish crawling up the side of a skyscraper, or all the water turning purple.”

“So, he has this gyroscope,” Slipstream begins, “and this weird psychic creature. How sure are we that he’s keeping them in the FBI building? I mean, other people would have to be in on it for him to keep it under wraps, right? He can’t just occupy a secret space in there, and keep it all to himself.”

“Maybe he does have help,” Paige suggests. “Father is living in a pocket dimension at the moment, and Kallias has one of those too. Hell, there’s one over there.” She jerks her head over to the closet. “What if Hello Doctor’s office closet is bigger on the inside?”

“Are we really gonna call him that?” Serkan asked. Overruled.

“You’re right,” I say to Paige. “We need a lot more information if we’re going to do anything. We need to find someone who knows Hello Doctor.”

“I think I have a lead,” Slipstream announces unexpectedly.

We all look at her.

“People talk in Beaver Haven. We’re never allowed out of our cells, but we have our own phone network. Word got around about this FBI agent, and I think I know of someone who met him. It would be easier to ask a temporal manipulator for insight, instead of an oblivious human who won’t talk to us, because we’re strangers.”

“Oh, please,” I beg, “don’t make us go back to Beaver Haven.”

“It would give me an excuse to see him again,” Serkan points out, which is a reasonable position for him to have.

“Nah, it wasn’t anyone there,” Slipstream clarifies. “What did they call him? It was something...”

We wait patiently for her to recall what she learned.

“The Juggler. Yeah, he’s called the Juggler.”

“Oh, I know him,” Paige realizes. “I went to one of his shows while we were five people in different places.”

“His show?” Serkan questions.

“Yeah, he’s a magician. It looks like he’s a very limited apporter. He can transfer something from one hand to the other, but I don’t think he can go much farther than that. I can get us backstage. NBD.” And so it begins.

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Microstory 820: Attack Dogs

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This is what happened. The neighborhood’s crazy old man was trapping rabbits in a tiny icey stream in the backyard, so he could tie them to fireworks. He forced me to chase after the rabbits so he could torture them first, but I was purposely failing. Instead, I caught two stray dogs. The dogs had been living in a series of rabbit tunnels that should have been too small for them. The owner teleported in immediately. He acted like the dogs were barking and screaming at me, but then I realized he abused them, so I ordered them to attack him. While attacking, the two dogs became five dogs, and I helped by kicking the evil owner. Now I had five dogs I couldn’t take care of. As I was wondering what to do with the dogs, spacetime shifted around me. Our base had been ransacked...blood smeared on the walls. The ordeal with the dogs had altered the timeline. Now a rival spy agency had taken over our operations, which accidentally destroyed the world. My spy agency and I were in the middle of our last stand against the rivals. But they were too strong...it was going to be a slaughter. The last of my spy agency and I fled to a bulletproof car. Two of our people sacrificed themselves to push our car over the edge of a cliff. We fell backwards in the car down the side of the cliff in slow motion. We knew we would survive, and that the other two wouldn’t. Unfortunately, the car was impenetrable. Once at the bottom of the cliff, we couldn’t even get out. We eventually starved to death. Do you have any idea what it feels like to starve trapped in a car? Your holographic simulator is clearly broken; it’s combining multiple programs into one. I demand a refund.

Microstory 26: What Does the Fox Want?

While Linda Carnegie was in the middle of setting the table, she looked up and saw a fox staring at her from outside her door. He watched her intently, like he was waiting for an answer to a question asked long ago. She was entranced by him. The patio outside of her apartment was closed off by a fence and thick shrubs, so he would have needed to make a concerted effort to get through it. He couldn’t have just been passing by. He moved his head to one side, which she interpreted to be an invitation. She had no choice but to accept this invitation. It was more of an order, and less of a request. Still in her slippers, she opened the glass door and got down on her hands and knees to crawl through the brush. One of her neighbors was outside waiting, not for Linda, but for the magnificent creature who had already invited him out. The fox started running away, but kept one eye on the two of them, slowing down as needed. The more she followed it, the more urgency she felt. They looked to the right and saw a few of their other neighbors, running after a squirrel. Up ahead, they were closing in on an elderly couple who were following a rabbit that was hopping every once in a while, keeping its dependents moving as fast as they could. As they continued the pursuit, they could see more people, in groups of at least two, each chasing their own animal. The ground shook and they ran faster, until they felt safe enough. Linda turned back and watched as a fiery mid-sized aircraft fell from the sky, and demolished the apartment complex.