Spaghetti West: Strange New Worlds (Part VI)

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While Sugar was talking into the microphone, trying to appeal to the masses, she was quickly generating a network portal for them to access. Though their systems were not entirely interoperable, everything was technically built on the same architecture. Computers were invented on Earth, so every civilization that spawned from it should be compatible with that technology, even if it required some tricky integrations. With Desulforudis, it was relatively easy, almost as simple as sending a web link for them to click.

Sugar wanted their input. She wanted them all to respond to her queries, and tell her how they felt about Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, the Milky Way Galaxy, and just sort of everything, including their own government. Their answers were surprising. They weren’t just isolationists. That didn’t even begin to cover it. They were hateful, mean-spirited, and if Sugar and Liselot could be so bold, potentially downright evil. The AI which aggregated their responses reported a great deal of comments that it interpreted to be racist, though their vocabulary was just a little different than standard English.

It was heartbreaking and hard to read. An entire civilization of misanthropes. How did they ever manage to survive together? If they bonded with each other over hating everyone else, she couldn’t see a common thread. There had to be something deeper...something preventing them from imploding. The two of them stood there for a moment, trying to think of a solution to this. How could they get through to the Desulforudisians?

Liselot’s face suddenly looked puzzled. “Wait. Why would we need to do that?”

“Why would we need to...try to understand these people?” Sugar assumed. “Oh, um...you’re right. We can just write these people off. They live in the sticks of a distant galaxy, and an examination of their technology shows that they are not capable of reaching anyone we care about, not even Dardius. Though, we do need to find out if they have any enemies. Maybe someone else is trying to attack them, and Bida just got caught in the cosmic crossfire. The detectives call it victimology.”

“All right,” Liselot said with a shrug. “Punch it in.”

Sugar said it out loud as she was typing, even though she could have plainly used voice-to-text. “At the risk of the answer being literally everyone in the universe, who might have reason to attack you with charged Kugelblitz black holes?”

They waited for everyone to input their respective answers. The whole world had stopped for them, like an extremely cynical and depressing remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, which was saying a lot.

Liselot rolled her eyes and took it upon herself to command the aggregator, “filter the answers that say some variation of everyone. They’re either trolls, or stupid.”

Then there it was. After removing every result that just basically blamed every non-Desulforudisian, only one remained. They don’t care about the Desulforudisians, or the Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bidans. They’re trying to kill me. If your planet is being attacked, it’s because there must be another dupe of me hiding out there too. I’m surprised he made it that far, but I suppose it proves our enemy has intergalactic range.

Sugar and Liselot exchanged a glance. Sugar then zeroed in on that one reply, cancelling the global address. She used voice-to-text this time. “Where are you?”

What are you going to do with me? the mysterious target asked.

“I’m going to get you off this world, for one. My ship can handle a black hole or two. We need to get you away from these, uhh...innocent people, and then we’re going to find your Bidan dupe to pick him up too.”

The next response took a long time to come through. “Oh, no thanks.”

“Ah,” Liselot said. “He’s hiding out here on purpose. He probably knew the KBHs were coming, and chose certain planets specifically because they were more likely to have the means of combatting the attacks.”

“Yeah, that’s my guess too,” Sugar agreed. “I don’t know if he thinks we can’t track him, or what...” She started fiddling with the console to trace the pings. She sighed.

“Problem?” Liselot asked.

“Maybe it’s that he knows we can’t track him.” Sugar growled.

“If he’s the type of guy to get an enemy to send countless singularities after every version of him, no matter who gets in the way, we shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Sugar violently rubbed her eyes. “Okay. We’re goin’ nuclear.” She opened the global address again. “This is happening because of one person. We don’t know who they are, or where they are, but they do not belong on your planet. They’re a foreigner. It sounds like you don’t like those. If you have any information, tell us, and we’ll be on our way. If we never find them, we never leave, so there’s your incentive.” She slammed the microphone toggle off, annoyed at having to resort to this.

Liselot peered at the screen. “Lots of different coordinates. They can’t all be our guy. They’re turning on their neighbors, trying to get us to do their dirty work.”

“Yeah, we found the keystone holding this all together. This could end the world,” Sugar mused, “eventually. Thistle, synthesize all tracing data we were able to gather from the target. Cross-reference it with the tattle-tales. Isolate the most likely coordinates. Re-ping our mystery man if you have to.”

“Processing...” Thistle reported. “Coordinates locked; dead zone.”

“Why would it be him if it’s a dead zone?” Liselot asked, noticing Sugar’s smile.

“He doesn’t wanna be caught, so he blocked all signals, and out of every patch of land on this God forsaken world, it’s the only area like that. If you want to hide, you don’t go somewhere remote, you get lost in a sea of people who look just like you. Stay here.”

Sugar teleported herself to the dead zone. Under her feet was a broken device. It was still slightly warm from having recently been in use. She looked around. She wasn’t the only person here. It looked like some kind of homeless encampment. So they did have some hate left over for internal use.

She switched her watch to megaphone mode. “I’m looking for someone who doesn’t belong here. Anyone who tells me which one it is gets a minishuttle, fully stocked with a bed, hygiene amenities, and a food synthesizer.”

Everyone pointed to the same guy. When he realized he had been caught, he disappeared.

“Do you all have teleportation abilities?” Sugar asked the unhoused.

They shook their heads.

“Your prize will be here in a moment.” Sugar adjusted her watch to breach-scanning mode as she was walking over towards the spot where the target was standing. Her watch locked onto the next coordinates, so she jumped away. She had to jump a few times, but she kept following his trail until she caught up with him.

“Just leave me alone!” the man screamed, not bothering to escape again.

“You answered my question! You obviously want this to end!” Sugar shouted.

“You can’t make me go,” he argued. “It would be a death sentence.”

“I’m the only one who can save you,” Sugar reasoned. “These people are holding back the KBHs for now, but how long do you figure it will be before one of them gets sick of it, and turns on the others? What happens when a KBH threatens a competing nation, or whatever it is? This is not a sustainable sanctuary for you. Come with me willingly.”

“They...they can always find me,” he explained. “If I leave, these people will be safe, but I’ll be more exposed. Are you sure your ship can survive that?”

“I’m quite certain,” Sugar confirmed. “It doesn’t have to exist in realspace.”

He tried to wrap his brain around it. “Fine.”

She took his hand and teleported them back to the ship. “Thistle. Did you already prepare that minishuttle I promised?”

“I’m preparing a full-sized shuttle,” Thistle answered, “based on the scope of aid.”

“Thank you,” Sugar said as she was dragging the stranger into the cell. “Once it’s ready to go, stripped of its flight capabilities, go ahead and dispatch it to ‘em.”

“They’re going to kill each other over it if there’s not enough for everyone, or if others come to take it,” Liselot warned.

Sugar watched the shuttle disappear from the hangar. She just kept staring at its now-empty dock. “That’s not our problem anymore. We’ve done enough for these jerks. Thistle, take us back into orbit, and activate a trans-ejection burn in any random direction. Get us away from this fly speck on the ass of the universe as fast as possible.”

A duplicate, by all philosophical measures, was their own unique self. Sure, the two versions could share a lot of the same memories, but their neurology was different, and every second that passed following their split increased the divide between them. Even so, on the quantum level, there was enough similar data to match them. It was like the modern version of a paternity test, which was perfected in the 21st century. They weren’t 100% the same, but close enough within a margin of error, and that was all it took to find the target’s other dupes.

Now that Sugar’s ship had experienced passing through a wormhole safely, it was better at it. It learned how to compensate for the gravitational perturbations during transit, allowing for a much smoother trip. None of these wormholes ever took them to the point of origin, as far as they were aware, and no pattern emerged. Each time they pushed a KBH back, and tried to follow it, they ended up in a random star system, quite often doubling back to worlds they had already been to, thanks to a likely tracking delay.

Most of the planets were in the Miridir galaxy. None of them was welcoming. Some were almost as hostile towards visitors as Desulforudis. It sounded like they specifically left because they didn’t like how soft Dardius had become. It wasn’t Sugar’s place to judge or help. She just fired up her quantum locator, scooped up the alternate hiding out there, and bounced. None of them gave her his name, but they all looked like the same guy, so it wasn’t hard to be sure that she had found the right one.

Finally, they had some evidence that they had rounded all of them up. They were back in the Tau Ceti system. She beamed up another human target, and waited for another attack to give them another window out of here. It never really came. Sure, more KBHs appeared, but every time she pushed one back and entered the wormhole, it spit her out somewhere around Tau Ceti again.

“This must be it,” Liselot decided. “We have them all, and now the KBHs are coming because this is where they all are.”

“Well, I don’t want to overload the defense grid, so we should leave. I must say, I’m rather glad it at least brought us back to the Milky Way, so we wouldn’t be so far from home. I don’t know what it’s going to take to find that damn source, though. It could be in Miridir, for all we know.”

“Well, where are we gonna go?” Liselot questioned.

Sugar stared into space for a moment. “Three hundred years ago, a seer asked me to personally colonize Waizidi, and set up a facility there. No one is allowed to go there but me, which I was able to accomplish using an ungodly amount of energy credits, and a colonial law loophole that allowed me to install defensive measures back then which are illegal today. Honestly, I forgot it was a thing. They didn’t tell me what to do with it. They just had me set the trap, and I moved on with my life in other places.”

“That’s only about one and a half light years away,” Liselot pointed out.

Sugar nodded. “It will take us less than a day to get there using the reframe engine.” She took a deep breath and started tapping on the console. “Thistle. Plot a course. I’m also uploading a hazard map into navigation which will show you the path to avoid my booby traps.” Sugar looked back at Liselot. “If my traps have held, it should be empty. They can send as many KBHs as they want; it will hurt no one. But I need to know something.”

“You need to know who those men in hock are,” Liselot figured.

Sugar went back down the corridors where the cells were packed with human targets of unknown origins. “The first man to tell me his name gets to go free. I will make contact with friends of mine who can get you tens of billions of light years away in an instant, but I need to know who I’m saving. Because the way I see it, if you’re all dead, the KBHs stop coming, no matter where your bodies happen to be.”

“Denver Strong!” they all cried at the same time.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 15, 2528

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The tree light receded. They were now standing outside. The ground beneath them was yellowish, there was no apparent atmosphere, and they felt very light. It was probably an uninhabitable moon. There was a massive structure before them, maybe four or five kilometers away. Leona checked her watch interface. “August 15, 2528.”

Ramses knelt down, and scanned the surface with his sensor suite. “Sulfur and sulfur dioxide, also silica. We got some pyroxene and feldspar. That explains the yellow.” He stood back up. “I believe that we are on the rogue moon of Jaunemus.”

They didn’t know much about this world. It once orbited the planet of Verdemus, but was transported to the Goldilocks Corridor, and used as a staging ground for the Verdemusian Corps. They lived and trained here when they weren’t on the Anatol Klugman warship. The team looked around, and couldn’t find Miracle Brighton anywhere, nor Adult!Dilara. They were dispatched, not ferried, or perhaps the other two had just moved on, since it had been a full two years since the team was last in the present day.

The Jaunemusians seemed like all right people. They were warmongers, sure, but not Klingons. They didn’t want to fight simply for the sake of it. They felt a duty to protect their home planet from the Exin Empire, and decided to take an offensive strategy, instead of a defensive one, since Verdemus was still in hiding, much like Castlebourne now. According to their military mandate, the fighters on this moon didn’t have much interest in fixing the Goldilocks Corridor. They just calculated that the only way to prevent the Exins from spreading beyond it were to put an end to it altogether. It was unclear how they felt about Earth, the rest of the closer regions, or Team Matic. According to Core World conventions, this whole part of the galaxy belonged to what they called the Borderworlds. It was technically too specific of a term to use for it, however. It was only called that because it covered all systems between 14,000 and 28,000 light years from Earth. On the other side of the Milky Way, that referred to systems that were literally on the edge. In this direction, though, they were still in the middle.

“Drive check!” Olimpia announced as she looked down at her wrist band. “Whew, I’m in the red. Anyone else have a better gauge?”

They all shook their heads. It took an enormous amount of power for them to send the entire Oblivion tower to another reality in the past. That wasn’t even that long ago for them. It would be a while until their slingdrives recharged. They might as well pop in to see how the Jaunemusians were doing lately. They teleported to an airlock that appeared welcoming enough, and knocked on the door. There was a doorbell, but it looked like it was only meant for emergencies. Hopefully the sound would travel through the structure well enough for someone to hear. They stood there for a few minutes before a face appeared in the viewport. Hm. No cameras? Or were there, and he just wanted to get a look for himself? They waved at him with smiles.

The man went away, and then the airlock door opened. They let their suits collapse before the airlock was fully pressurized again. The man was still watching them, from the observation chamber now. Another man entered the room behind him with an air of authority, so the first one opened the next door for him. “Greetings, Team Matic. My name is Anatol Klugman.”

“No, it isn’t,” Mateo said, being unable to stop himself.

The man winced. “I may not have been born with the name, but I earned it.”

“Forgive him,” Leona mediated. “It’s just that we know the man who serves as the namesake for your warship. You’re obviously not him, it’s just a little jarring to hear.”

“Ah, yes.” Fake!Anatol nodded. “It’s easy to forget that the ship was named after a man. I am named after the ship. And when I retire, a new Anatol will be selected to take my place. There are others like me even now.”

“Are you connected to your vessel?” Ramses asked him, fascinated. “Do you control it with your mind?”

Fake!Anatol considered the words. “It’s more like I instruct it with my mind. The crew has to carry out the orders, and could theoretically refuse them. Right now, my second has the reins. The human brain cannot handle the interface for too long, so the link changes hands regularly.” His gaze shifted to Romana. “I’m guessing that you’re here in search of your sister? I can take you to her.”

“That is not my sister,” Romana said, her blood boiling. “She is an impostor.”

“Oh. She said her name was Miracle Brighton.”

“Oh, well that’s her name,” Mateo explained, “but she stole my daughter’s body. Well, she stole one of them. The extra one.”

Fake!Anatol lifted his chin as he absorbed the information. “I see. We might be able to help with that. We are...pretty good at cloning here.” That was how this army began. Omega Strong cloned himself thousands of times, but he didn’t use the exact same code. Each clone was slightly different than the one before it. Despite ultimately being born of a single source, the population was almost as diverse as any other of comparable magnitude, thanks to this intentional genetic drift. That was a long time ago. This man would be a descendant of the original generation, now many generations removed.

“It wasn’t technically theft,” Romana explained, “but more of a con. She has legal claim to that substrate. If we were to move her to a different one, she would have to consent.”

“If she does, we can arrange that,” Fake!Anatol offered. “Do you still want me to take you to her?”

“Yes, please,” Mateo confirmed.

They followed him down the corridors until they reached a common area of couches, tables, and other basic amenities, like you would find in a hipster apartment complex. Fake!Anatol stopped when he noticed Miracle sitting in a comfy chair with a good book, and a cup of tea. She, of course, knew when they would be returning to the timestream, so she was not surprised to see them. She dogeared the page she was on, and snapped it shut. “Thank you all for coming. And thank you, Mister Klugman, for bringing them to me. You can go now.”

Fake!Anatol looked awkwardly at the team, not sure if he should do what she said, or accept their guidance, or do whatever the hell he wanted.

“Please, sir, could you show me your neural interface?” Ramses requested. “I would much like to learn about it, if at all possible. This conversation is going to become uncomfortable, and I don’t need to be here.”

Romana stepped forward, between the team and the antagonist after Ramses and Fake!Anatol departed. “Thank you for not using my name,” she said to her doppelgänger

“I prefer mine.”

“I wouldn’t,” Romana mumbled.

“What was that?”

“I am as appreciative as my daughter,” Mateo said, also now stepping forward. “We would like to ask you, what is your plan here? What do you think we’re going to do for you?”

“You’re going to find a way to kill the unkillable,” Miracle answered plainly.

“If you want him dead, why don’t you just do it? You, Pacey, and Octavia seem intelligent enough. Why are you trying to make us do your dirty work?”

Miracle bit her lip.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Olimpia posed. “She thinks we’re untouchable. If his sycophants come after us for it, not only will it keep their hands clean, but she thinks we’ll survive it anyway...because we always do.”

“Or she’s counting on us not surviving this time,” Marie countered. “Because if the Exin loyalists interrogate us, we’ll be able to link her to it.”

“Lots of people know I’m here,” Miracle argued. “Word will get out that I’m involved, I don’t care.”

Mateo shook his head. “Word might get out that a woman who looks like Romana, and goes by the ridiculously made-up name of Miracle, is involved. Not very strong evidence that it has anything to do with Pacey. I’m not even sure if anyone besides us, and his sycophants, knows that he exists. We’re the only ones who have interacted with him, to our knowledge. He’s Snuffleupagus.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Miracle said.

Their armbands beeped at the same time, alerting them that their slingdrives had charged up to Orange. “We won’t do what you ask,” she contended. “We won’t kill him, and we will no longer interfere with these people’s lives unless we decide that it’s necessary, and we will also decide when that is, and what that means.”

“Those things can’t save you,” Miracle claimed. “We’re like Arcadia Preston. We can just keep bringing you back here. You have to remember that Pacey is the one who invented the—what do you call it—slingdrive technology, not your precious little Gyppo.”

Mateo tensed up, and leaned in closer. “Do not..ever say that.”

“Sorry, that was too far, I’m just trying to remind you that you took quintessence from Pacey. He has every right to dictate what you do with it.”

She wasn’t getting it. It was irrelevant how long they had to wait to sling again. This was a perfect example of you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. If she kept dropping them here, they would keep escaping, or just doing nothing. Even if their slingdrives weren’t ready to go again, they didn’t have to do anything they didn’t want to. She only had the power to move them places, not control their actions. If she could do that, why would she need them at all? “It doesn’t matter, we’re not doing it,” Angela reiterated.

Miracle finally stood. She sighed. “Miss Nieman is the youngest in your group, and for that reason, she will be spared. The Oaksent doesn’t see her as a threat, and I think he may have a little thing for her. He has instructed his minions to spare her, should they encounter Team Matic, and find a way to end the rest of you without hurting her. If you don’t kill him, Romana will be the one to do it, if you get my meaning. She won’t be safe anymore. She will be the primary target.”

Leona smiled.

Miracle was confused. “What? What just happened? Why are you so excited?”

The others weren’t excited, it was just Leona. She reached out, and took hold of both of Miracle’s wrists. She instructed her nanites to construct handcuffs around them. “You just gave me permission to remove you from that substrate.”

“How’s that now?” Miracle questioned.

“You just admitted to making plans to commit a crime using a substrate that will implicate a different individual of said crime. That gives me everything I need to get you out of it, and reclaim the substrate to protect the world from you who would abuse her power in it.”

“I was just speaking in hypotheticals, I didn’t say anything,” Miracle insisted. “Plus, I was so vague.”

“We all heard what we heard, and I’m sure that camera caught it too.” Leona pointed up at the security cam. “Besides, at worst, it places us in a stalemate. You can’t actually commit the crime any more than you can admit to the conspiracy of it. If you go through with the plan, we’ll show that footage to the Exins. They have similar cloning laws internally. Harsher ones, in fact. Your safest course of action is to leave that body, and move on with your life without it. Romana is damaged goods.”

Miracle was flustered. She backed up a little, and tried to pull the cuffs apart through brute force. “I have an exit strategy. These can’t keep me here.”

“We can track you wherever you go. Their friends can, anyway,” Leona added, referring to the nanites that she was still using herself.

Their armbands beeped. They were now in the Yellow.

“Not if I figure out how to get them off first!” Miracle shouted. A black hole appeared underneath her feet, and she fell right through it.

“What if she does it?” Angela asked. “What if she just goes off to kill Bronach before we have the chance to find her, and remove her from that substrate?”

“She doesn’t know how,” Leona believed. “She was bluffing entirely. She called him unkillable, because they also need us to find the killswitch that will prevent him from coming back to life, however exactly he does it. We’re known for finding loopholes, and Team Pacey is betting on us finding this one too. There’s more than one reason they chose us.”

“What do we do?” Mateo asked her.

“Today, we rest. I don’t think we’re gonna be able to sling again until next year.”

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Microstory 2038: Maryland and D.C.

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It takes a long time to adopt a child, especially one that is in the situation that I was in. My parents put in their application right away, but it was almost three years before it finally went through! I lived in an orphanage while I was waiting, and the people in charge had to first find out if there was any way to get me back to where I was born. In the year 2016, and evil man started to run for president. He doesn’t like people who look like me, or who are from countries like my home country. He thinks that everyone who wasn’t born in this country is automatically bad. Even if they were born here, if their parents weren’t, he just doesn’t like them anyway. He believes in a lot of other bad things, and a bunch of people wanted to vote for him, because they felt the same way. My fathers are good people, who feel nothing but love for everyone. So while they were waiting for me to come into their lives, they drove down to Washington D.C. to protest against the presidential candidate. Washington D.C. isn’t a state, it’s a district, but it’s pretty much in Maryland, and my fathers’ hotel was really close to the border, so they spent a little time over on that side of it, and I think that it counts. They marched on the streets to let people know that they didn’t want this man to win the election, and guess what, he didn’t! He was never a president, and I say my fathers had something to do with it. They obviously weren’t the only ones who protested, but as my grandma will say, every voice counts. I think that’s probably true. If you feel a certain way, and you want people to know it, then you should say it. That’s what it means to be in a free country. Even the bad man had a right to say what he didn’t, even though it was all bad stuff.

Microstory 1965: Aggression

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Leonard: Hey. This is a nice jet. How did you swing this? To be honest, I don’t know where our department gets any of its money, full stop.

Reese: The government didn’t have a black budget in your version of the U.S.?

Leonard: Yeah, I guess it did; I just didn’t give it any thought, because I didn’t work for any entity that would use it. So the public doesn’t know how much we spend?

Reese: They don’t know how much we spend, but they know the current pot for the entirety of the black budget, which is eight hundred billion dollars this year.

Leonard: Jesus, that’s a lot.

Reese: Yeah, so that pretty much makes the cost of this jet a rounding error. You don’t ever need to worry about our funding. National Command takes the largest portion, and we’re a part of that. The Office of Special Investigations enjoys both a transparent, and a black budget, because the Director reports directly to the National Commander.

Leonard: I see. Well, anyway, that’s not why I came over here. I wanted to learn about Mississippi before we landed. Everybody groaned when you told them that that’s where the mission would be. Where I’m from, the state suffers from a lot of racism, but it’s certainly not universally despised, like it seems to be here.

Reese: Did your version of the country have legal slavery until the eighteenth century?

Leonard: It actually lasted through the nineteenth century. About halfway through.

Reese: Oh. Well, it didn’t take us quite that long to end it, and preserve the union, though we did not come out of it unscathed. I am no historian, but what I do know is that it came at a cost, and that cost was the state of Mississippi. Even after the U.S. Internal Conflict of the 1790s was declared over, the southern National Commander would not let go. He chose Memphis as his capital, because it was at the border of the three most steadfast secessionists during the war, and the years leading up to it. Because of this, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi refused to accept that the south had lost. They continued to enslave people, and fight against anyone who attempted to put a stop to them. They lost eventually, but the post-war is considered by some to be bloodier than the main conflict. Arkansas and Tennessee finally admitted defeat, and started getting with the program. The southern NatCo and Mississippi did not. They held all of Memphis hostage, and—long story short—the union ultimately gave up and gave in. The city, and some surrounding lands, were absorbed into the half-state, half-independent nation. Again, long story short, it currently exists more as a territory than a state, and did later abolish slavery. You noticed that we crossed over into Colorado and Wyoming on our first mission without issue. Mississippi’s borders have only recently opened up. Until a few years ago, it was no one in, no one out. Now we can move back and forth, but we have to register. This team is technically on a diplomatic mission, which means that only the jet and the pilot registered—they don’t know that you and I specifically are on it—but we’ll have to be careful while there. If anyone we run into finds out that we’re not Mississippians, they may have some feels about it. It’s not illegal, but...

Leonard: Wow. This is a strange world. We had slavery for longer, but we kept the union intact. Though racism has lasted for the better part of two centuries after that.

Reese: I wouldn’t say we have all that much racism. It’s all a matter of perspective.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 1, 2398

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When Angela Walton was first alive, she was a pretty submissive girl, as was common in those days. She didn’t believe in the things that her family did, but she wasn’t outspoken about it either. Her father was patient enough to let her wait to marry a man she loved, but that was about as lenient as he could tolerate to be, and he lost that patience when her fiancé disappeared. She would marry who he chose, and that was final. It wasn’t until after her death that Angela started to find herself. The interesting thing about the afterlife simulation is that it wasn’t millennia beyond the technological limitations of the living world. For most of its history, it was only ever moderately more advanced, despite the fact that the devisers were from the future, and could have always included modern tech. They chose not to in order to keep the residents comfortable, and feeling safe. Teaching a mammoth hunter to use a microwave oven is probably just asking too much. So for the longest time, the virtual worlds pretty faithfully resembled the real world, because that’s all those people knew. That would change in the future, when science fiction began to open up people’s imaginations, but there was always one thing that was shockingly progressive.

According to Tamerlane Pryce, he put no effort into regulating the way society manifested itself in the construct. He claimed to have let the people decide for themselves. This is likely not entirely true, but not totally inaccurate either. Based on some few and far between studies that dead researchers tried to conduct over the centuries, it would seem that the act of death alone is enough to alter an individual’s worldview. That is, they gain perspective simply by passing on, and often lose a lot of the prejudices and hate they once lived with. The theory was that this process was fostered by the fact that everyone dies alone. When John Doe makes the transition, he does so removed from all the people who fueled his beliefs and preconceived notions. The people he meets now have either been there for some time, or they came from other parts of the world. That’s what philosophers imagine Pryce regulated—knowingly or not. He set up a system that grouped newcomers together through a filter of diversity, and studies have proven that living in a diverse area is the number one cause of acceptance and love. What this all means is that racism, sexism, and other biases are harder to hold onto when borders have been removed, gender roles have been ignored, and no one can rise to power without deserving it.

When Angela rose to power, it was after centuries of hard work. She had to shed her old identity, and her old personality, and pretty much become a completely different person. If not for the fact that she looks the same as she always has, no one who knew her before her death would recognize her now. She doesn’t take other people’s crap anymore, and she doesn’t just do as she’s told. If you want her to trust in your choices, you have to prove that you’re worthy of making them, and if you don’t, she’s going to decide for you. Maintaining a normal job in a mundane world is a skill that Marie honed for four years before the rest of her team showed up. She learned to listen to the words of lesser men, because she would lose it all if she didn’t. Angela has yet to learn this lesson, and her meeting has demonstrated just how far she has yet to go. None of Marie’s training could have prepared her to suffer through all that bullshit. She speedwalks to the bathroom at her first opportunity, and retches into the toilet.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 18, 2398

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They’re sitting in the bunker again, just as helpless as they have been most of this week. Fairpoint has not gone back on his word, but it’s Saturday now, so he can’t get in to see Heath and Angela-slash-Marie until Monday. All they can do is wait and hope. God, Mateo hates relying on other people to get things done. Fairpoint is not part of the team, and he can’t be trusted. In the future—and Mateo isn’t sure if he remembers why he knows this already—there will be a new member of this team that can disguise others using her temporal power. When they look at each other, they’ll see their real faces, but when others look at them, they’ll see whoever the team wants them to see. They will be able to turn themselves into anyone, which is a power that he could use right now. He would waltz into that police station, looking like the president of the United States, and order them to release his friends. Then he could end religious war, racism, and all the other global issues. Yeah, it would probably be that easy.

“He doesn’t want kids,” Marie says out of the blue, breaking the silence. She doesn’t look anyone in the eyes, though. She stares straight ahead.

“Heath?” Leona asks.

“It’s like Fairpoint said, Heath is not a zealot,” Marie goes on. “But that doesn’t mean he isn’t religious at all. In his culture, certain people are allowed to have children, and certain people aren’t.”

“What’s...the criteria?” Leona asks tentatively. Is that okay to ask?

Now Marie faces her friend. “Skin color. He’s too light. His bloodline ends with him, because it’s been diluted.”

“That’s...not okay, Marie,” Leona says.

Mateo and Ramses decide to stay out of the conversation.

“I know. Believe me, it was rough learning that about how he was raised. Lighter skinned people have a place. They have responsibilities. So it’s not like he was shunned. Genetics is really complex. It’s not as easy as saying, you can’t have a baby with a white person, though they do say that. And before you think they’re the worst of the worst, plenty of white denominations have similar rules, and some of them are pretty horrific about it. There’s been a history of...I don’t even wanna say the word.”

“It’s okay, we get it,” Leona assures her.

“Anyway, light-skinned babies come from dark-skinned parents all the time, and they just have to assign them certain roles because of that, and disallow procreation to keep the rest pure.”

“How do they feel about you?”

“They’re fine with me,” Marie insists. “They don’t have a problem with white people—though, they would change their minds if they knew my father was a slave owner, as was my arranged betrothed. He promised them he wouldn’t have any kids, and they accepted the risk.”

“What will happen to your baby?”

Marie is silent for a long time, and nobody tries to force her to continue. “I do not have a baby,” she explains. “I have a clump of cells in my uterus.”

“Marie...” Leona doesn’t know what else to say. There is probably nothing she could say.

“I’m not going to carry it to term. I’ve told you I’m happy, but that’s only because of him. I’m not happy here. This is the worst reality we’ve been to. At least the warmongers in the Fifth Division were honest about who they were. They didn’t hide behind divine mandate, or passive aggressive pseudo-tolerance. You’ll see. Stay here for another few months, and you’ll see.”

“We can get you out,” Leona told her. “You and your baby, we’ll get you out of here.”

“And then what?” Marie questions. “Heath can’t come with me down the fourth dimension, so I’ve lost him. There is no guarantee the baby will be like me either. I wasn’t born like this, and we don’t really understand how all that works. I didn’t even think I could have children. I told him as much. I didn’t lie, but I suggested he would have nothing to worry about. Now I have this thing inside of me, and I can only think of one halfway decent outcome.”

“I’m not going to try to convince you to make any particular choice,” Leona begins. “But I’m going to tell you that if you decide to have that child, I’ll love and protect it to my dying breath. Mateo and Ramses can make the same assurance, as I’m sure Olimpia would. Angela has already proved as much. It’s important you know this.”

“Thank you,” Marie says. “I’m pretty convinced already, and I plan to make an appointment with the doctor once I get my identity back, but it’s nice to know you’re by my side.

Leona leans forward, and opens her arms, but doesn’t initiate the hug. She waits for Marie to make that choice too. “I love you.”

“I love you.”

“Were I you,” Mateo says to all of them.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 12, 2398

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They could spend a lifetime comparing every little difference between the Third Rail, and the main sequence. The Beatles don’t exist, just like a certain movie, except no cognizant singer is going to revive the catalog. Geography is shockingly similar after considering how deep in the past the point of divergence must have taken place. They have evidence of this from the completely foreign botanical world. The trees and plants may look like the kinds they could find back home, but upon closer inspection, they’ve clearly evolved and been bred differently. Even the buildings have a slightly discrepant architecture. It took them a little time to recognize this, because they’ve seen variations before. Every world they go to—be it a planet, a virtual construct, a parallel reality, or even another universe—has had unique design schemes, and this one is no different in that it’s also unique. Now that the team has been here for a few days, they see that technology isn’t as stilted as they once thought. The people here seem to have advanced in some ways faster than others. You couldn’t call it steampunk, but it’s in that same vein.

As far as energy goes, the culture managed to pretty much skip over fossil fuels, and focus on renewable sources. Different regions have different strengths, but wind power is pretty popular. They also have no apparent problem with nuclear power. You’re never more than fifty miles from the nearest nuclear power plant. Despite these developments, space travel is practically non-existence. There are tons of satellites in orbit around Earth, but they haven’t even put a rover on Mars. From what little Angela was able to gather in her capacity as self-appointed team historian, war has been the number one issue globally. Civilization just survived World War VI not thirty years ago. Why haven’t they destroyed themselves in a nuclear holocaust? Religion. Yes, it’s religion that saved them, if you can believe it. All ancient religious texts speak of some kind of sun that’s compressed and trapped in a box, and the venerated few charged with containing and protecting it from evil. While atheism and agnosticism are recently on the rise, superstition regarding these sunboxes only increased once scientists realized that real sunboxes were within their grasp. Never before had a faith been so spot on in regard to something that might happen in the future, with certain sects being eerily detailed with their descriptions of how a sunbox might work.

Unfortunately, there was a major downside to this. Even though multiple religions provided people with the same prophetic warning about nuclear bombs, they failed to generate any other reason for unity. Different kingdoms, nations, and races glommed onto different denominations, and dig their heels in deeper when they perceive a threat from some other. That’s why they keep fighting, and why racism may be worse today than it was in the main sequence circa early 21st century. Angela and Mateo are even more convinced now that they are not the only time travelers here. At least one of them either created the reality itself, or capitalized on an opportunity to mould it to their liking. They may have always wanted society to be like this, or things just got out of hand. Regardless, the team feels compelled to fix it. It’s going to take them longer than any mission has, so they better prepare themselves, do their research, and take their time.

Microstory 1875: Or Dig a Bigger Grave

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I didn’t have any friends in high school. I had a stutter, so I didn’t like talking to people. I would wish I liked it, and I think the other kids would have been nice enough about it, but I was too self-conscious. One day in literature class, the teacher had us read a story together. Each student would take a paragraph or two, and then she would call on the next kid. I was so scared, and didn’t pay any attention to them, as I was just trying to figure out how to not embarrass myself. I couldn’t even start. I couldn’t say the first word, so I asked the teacher if I could opt out. She said it wouldn’t be fair to the other kids who never had that option. A cursory glance at my classmates suggested that they couldn’t care less, because they didn’t have speech impediments! She refused to listen until my hero swooped in to defend me. She scolded the teacher for being insensitive and unfair, and I never had to read out loud again. I was also in love for the rest of grade school, and into university. We happened to go to the same institution, where she would smile and wave at me on the occasion that we  passed each other, but we didn’t speak and I didn’t ask her out. After we graduated, she married someone else, and moved to a different country for work. Maybe a decade later—no, it was more like fifteen years—the internet created this new thing called instant messaging, and I pretty quickly reconnected with her on the most popular platform. I was over her by then, and mostly over my stuttering problem, but it was cool to be nostalgic a couple times a week when I had time. After a few years, I found myself scheduled for a business trip in her area, told her as much quite innocently, and was immediately invited to a small dinner party. And small, it was. She and her husband had only invited one other guy; a coworker of hers.

The dinner was great, and so was the company. It was nice, showing her how much my life had improved, and being able to finally have the nerve to thank her in person for what she did for me that day. It was a nice moment, which will forever be clouded by the darkness that followed. The other dinner guest had been sweating and rocking for a time, but trying to power through. But then, after convulsing for a few minutes, he fell off his chair, and died right before our eyes. We were all shocked, but I sprang into action. After checking for a pulse, I grabbed the phone, and desperately asked the couple what the emergency number was in their country. It wasn’t like I could just look it up. They didn’t want to tell me, and I eventually got them to admit that they were afraid of the authorities believing that they had anything to do with it. I argued with them, but they would not relent. They said he was already dead, and there was nothing we could do to undo that, so I might as well help move the body. I continued to argue but they told me they could blame it on me, since I was the one who brought the tea. I questioned that, and soon realized that this was no accident. It was murder, and my tea was the weapon. They revealed that they had secretly added something called yew seeds into his cup, and they told me they had to do it because he sexually assaulted her at work numerous times. I didn’t want to help them, but I didn’t think I had a choice. Once we were finished digging the grave—which I did mostly by myself—they apologized, and admitted that I drank a lower dosage of the poison, which meant I would die too, which was why they made me make such a large grave. That was the week I learned that I was at least moderately immune to yew seed poisoning. Bonus, I didn’t even go to jail.

Microstory 1874: Statistic

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Hi, my name is I’m not supposed to tell people that. Mama and daddy said I shouldn’t tell people anything, but I don’t get why not, because I like people, and they seem to like me. They always smile at me when we pass them, pushing my own stroller. I think they think it’s cool how I get out and push it myself. A lot of other kids still don’t like to walk. I see them reaching up to the nice lady, so she’ll pick them up, and sometimes she does it, and sometimes she doesn’t. As soon as I figured out how to work these things under my butt, I do it all the time. Shh, don’t tell mama I said butt. I’m not supposed to say that. There’s a lot of things I’m not supposed to do that my parents don’t like. I don’t remember them, though. They’re always yelling at me like I’m supposed to know something already, but I don’t always. For like, there are kids in my class—well, there were kids in my other class, but I don’t go to that class anymore, ‘cause my parents took me out. I don’t think it’s a class, is it? We learn things, but people call it something different, I don’t remember. I’m not old enough for real class. I see it on TV, big kids sitting at really tall desks, and they’re writing things down. I can use a pencil, but I can’t, like, write a book, or something. I don’t know what they’re doing all day. I can read books, and some other kids just look at the pictures, but I like the letters. I like how each one means something, and when you put them together, they can mean something else! Is that what people are doing all day with their pencils, they’re writing the books I read? What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, I was in a—preschool! That’s what they call it! They said, you’re not in real school yet, this is just preschool, which I don’t know what that means. It’s got the word school in it, so I think it’s school. What was I saying?

Okay, so I was in a room, and there were lots of other kids in it, and then my dad got real mad, and he said some things, and they said I couldn’t say those things too, but I can’t remember what they were anyway. This was a loooooooong time ago, like, many days. So they took me out of that room, and now I think we drive to a different building, and there’s a different room, but everybody looks like me. That’s what I noticed, there were other kids in the other room who looked different. They had different skin colors, and I saw one boy in a dress, and the other kids made fun of him for it. I didn’t really know why it was funny. I don’t see that boy anymore, or the other kids with other skin. I guess that’s fine. I don’t really know. Oh, that’s what my daddy said, he said, don’t talk to those colored kids, and don’t—hold on, I’m tryna ‘member. It was, stay away from that faggity fag. I don’t know what that is, but since I’m in a different room, I don’t think that happens anymore. I like to learn. I mean, I like to have fun, but I like to learn too. There’s so many things in the world, have you seen them? The other day, I was alone in the house. Well, I wasn’t alone, but my daddy was gone, and my mama was asleep, I think. I went into a room I never been in before. I saw my daddy go in there, but he wasn’t there then, so I went in. There were all sorts of things there that I didn’t know. I’ve never seen them before. There were books, though, which is what the big kids write all the time. I pulled one off the bottom shelf, and it was heavy, and I couldn’t read it, because the words were really long, and it was hard. I’m back in here today, because I think if I just keep trying, I will figure it out. But see, here there’s something shiny on the table. It’s black, and really heavy too, and there’s a hole, and what does this butt—

Microstory 1804: Good Opinions and Right Choices

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I was raised in an extremely hostile environment. My parents were racist, hateful, and mean. When my older brother was first growing up, he tried to rebel against them. He didn’t go full liberal—because he didn’t know what that meant—but he didn’t agree with the kinds of things they would say. And they weren’t super obvious about it. They didn’t go around claiming that black people were inferior. They just used very unclever cover words like urban and hoodlum. They weren’t as inconspicuous as they thought they were, though, and my brother wanted no part of it. Unfortunately, they decided they weren’t going to give him a choice. They verbally abused him until he stopped talking all that lovey dovey nonsense. The world didn’t use terms like snowflake and libtard back then, but they would have loved it if they had been alive to learn them. Anyway, when I was old enough to start possibly making my own decisions, my brother realized how similar we were. He taught me to pretend to be like our family. I let them think that I was all about letting poor people die on the streets to save the dollar in my pocket, and not getting upset about the injustices we would see on the news. I did a really great job, blending in as the good little conservative boy that I was expected to be. I did too good of a job, actually. They were so proud of me. My brother and I had about the same grades in school, but since they were so disappointed in him, it was like I was the second coming of the messiah. I also had to pretend to believe in the messiah. I wasn’t an exceptional student, or person in general, but I could do no wrong, and my parents did what they could to give me the opportunities they felt that I deserved.

They paid my way into a preparatory school, which led me to a really great college. I hated every minute of it, but I figured I would take my free education, and do something positive with it. The problem was that I was so used to pretending to be an entitled prick that it was too hard to turn off at this point. I let them get me conscripted into a secret underground brotherhood, which was designed to foster a network of good ol’ boys who help each other go places, and get out of jams. It was so rough, being around people with such wrong opinions. I know people say that there’s no such thing as a wrong opinion, but those people’s opinions are wrong. There is a right way to think about how the world should be run, and a very bad way. It was impossible to walk away, though, and not because the only way out would have been in a bodybag, but because it was so tempting to accept their gifts. With their help, I was poised to step on a lot of heads, and make a lot of money. At that point, I didn’t really care that everyone who was helping me get there disgusted me to my core. Because maybe they didn’t. Maybe they weren’t so bad. None of my brothers were violent or outwardly intolerant either. They were great at hiding it, and some of them probably weren’t even that conservative at all. That’s obviously how the secret society formed, but we all make our own choices. I had to make a choice too. I had to do something to become my own man, and stop letting my family dictate how the world should see me. The brotherhood fed into a militia. Not everyone joined it, but it was an option. I continued to pretend, and took the path towards that anti-government group. They accepted me, and armed me, and it wasn’t long before they decided to plan an attack on the capitol. Before they could, I warned the authorities, and got the place raided. I finally made the right choice, and it was my last.

Microstory 1728: Jim Crow

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Your Honor, my name is Jim Crow. My first name is not James or Jacob, or anything like that. It’s actually Jim. My parents were named Beckett Crowley, and Geraldine Devlin. When they got married, instead of my mother taking my father’s last name, they decided to shorten it to Crow. When they had me in 1984, they named me Jim. Believe me when I tell you that this was no accident, nor coincidence. My parents are two of the most racist people I know, and they knew exactly what they were doing. They believe in white supremacy, and they believe in segregation. They may even believe that all black people should be exterminated. They’ve hinted at such evil thoughts on more than one occasion. I literally witnessed them spitting on a young black girl just because her family wasn’t around, and no one could stop them. When I was a child, my mother told me a story she made up, about how the people of Africa so displeased the Lord that he glued dirt to their skin, and forced them to live in filth from then on. Their skin isn’t black, it’s that there is actual grime all over their bodies. I never bought into it, obviously. Had I grown up during the actual time of segregation, I might have seen no other choice, but I developed my sense of right and wrong during the 1980s. My relatively small city in Maryland was not at all without its racism, but I had something that some people in the past did not. I had Star Trek. I remember seeing Whoopi Goldberg on The Next Generation. Here was this black woman who had standing on the ship...who people trusted, listened to, and cared about. That very night, as young as I was, I thought long and hard about who my parents are, and what they were trying to teach me. I made a conscious decision to reject their hatred, and come to my own conclusions. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of informing my parents of my intentions.

They started to punish me. They withheld dessert, and when that didn’t work, they took away my dinner, and when that wasn’t enough, they stopped letting me have water. They eventually realized I was going to die if they didn’t do something, so they changed tactics. They developed their own Jim Crow laws. I was allowed to eat, but I had to make it myself, and I had to find somewhere else to do it. An old lady lived next door, so she let me use her kitchen. I did try to explain to her what was happening, but she was senile, so she barely understood, and never remembered. She introduced herself to me every day. She wasn’t abusive, but about as racist as my parents, so I didn’t want to spend much time over there. Still, she had a bathroom I could use too, which was nice, because I wasn’t allowed to use mine anymore. Basically what my parents did was show me what it was like to experience segregation. I can imagine the non-racist parents of a racist child doing the same thing to teach them a lesson, but my parents didn’t see it that way. They figured I would grow tired of the restrictions, and finally admit that it was both easier, and better, to be white. Of course, their methods only enforced my conviction that they were completely wrong about everything. When I was seventeen, they started to see that they were losing me, so they maneuvered the legal system, and had me declared unfit for independence. I was a ward of the state for the last twenty years under false pretenses, and it has taken me this long to get out. That, Your Honor, is why I’m only now getting around—as you put it—to changing my name. I haven’t been allowed to until now. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for you to grant me this.

Microstory 1708: Auriga Itineraries

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When I graduated from college, the first thing I wanted to do was reward myself with a trip to Europe. I wanted the full experience; the hostels, the backpacking, the food. I wanted to be surprised, and have an adventure. It was one of the most expensive mistakes of my life. The hostel was disgusting, and I felt unsafe at every second. As it turns out, I’m not much of a hiker. And I seemed to always get bad advice about where to eat. I was listening to the wrong people, and making the wrong decisions. What I didn’t use better was the internet. I didn’t look up reviews of places, and find out where exactly I should go. I didn’t learn enough about customs and conventions, and I was totally lost the whole time. I never want that to happen to you, and while you could go off and look up all this information yourself, why bother? Hi, my name is Malone Lamb, and I would like to be your next trip planner. At Auriga Itineraries, we know that when you’re on vacation, all you want is to relax and have fun. You shouldn’t worry about being overcharged, underserviced, or mistreated. So, what is it we do here? Well, we help you get to where you’re going, and have the best experience possible...for your budget. You pick the place, we handle everything else. Want to go to Asia? We can do that. We’ll find the best flight with the best airline. Africa more your speed? We book flights there too. Europe? South America? Even Antarctica. For us, nothing is off the map. We know where all the happening spots are. We know where you can enjoy the most delectable local pleasures. (Or the usual tastes of home, if you just want a break.) So come on down to Auriga Itineraries, where we...roll you to your destiny.

How was that? No, I don’t think it’s racist to have African people doing their traditional dances behind me. Well, it’s a watermark, because I can’t afford to buy the stock footage. Do you have any idea how much that costs? If it were illegal, then they wouldn’t use a watermark at all, the video just wouldn’t be available until you click purchase. Obviously the idea was to shoot on location, but I’m just starting out, so I can only afford this green blanket. What do you mean, you don’t know what the business does? I told you the other day. I can’t fit all that in the commercial, it’s only thirty seconds long. I think I said everything that needs to be in there. We plan people’s vacations; booking flights and hotels, finding attractions and activities the client would like. We tailor every trip to their particular proclivities. I don’t know how we’ll find out, I suppose we’ll ask them questions. Yeah, I guess I could come up with a questionnaire, but I don’t know how to do that, do you? They should make a company that does what I do, except they help you write questionnaires and stuff. Look, I don’t pay you to poke holes in my advertisements. I pay you to get me on TV so I can start drumming up some business. Yeah, the check’s gonna bounce, because I don’t have any customers yet! That’s why I told you to wait a month! Of course other companies do what I do, I never claimed to have invented the industry. What sets me apart is that I handle every case personally. Yes, you’re right, I shouldn’t say that they’ll come down to us since we operate only online. See? This is good, these are good notes. I could do without the criticisms and judgments, though. I’m trying to do something with my life, and help people who might need it. If I could just get one client, I know that word will spread, and they’ll start showing up by the bucketful. Now help me tweak this commercial.