Microstory 2767: Spread Your Wings and Fly Away

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A former Custodian from the Spydome Network is processing Elise’s upload to a new substrate. His equipment is unlike anything she has ever seen before. Before she died, she was in her tenth body. She usually chose to look about the same as she did before, only sometimes making a tweak or two. Telman says that she can look like anything. When she asks which design software they’re using, he claims that they’re not using any at all. She apparently decides what she wants in her head, and the bioprinter converts it into DNA. She has a hard time believing this, because while brain-computer interfaces are old hat, what he’s describing is a whole different animal. Her brain is not capable of consolidating every single detail. She can only ever conceive of a general idea.

Telman assures her that it will work. The machine doesn’t need her to know exactly what she wants. She just has to have the finished product in mind. The way she sees it, she’s living on borrowed time anyway. They were told that if they died during the hunt, their backup bodies would be reactivated on their behalf, having never received any recent updates. So despite her disbelief, she follows through with the plan. She doesn’t have any hands, she kind of has to let people do whatever they want anyway. She watches as Telman locks her head into the mechanism, and shuts her down.

It’s the reawakening redux, though the process is faster this time. Instead of a pinprick, her consciousness returns just about all at once. She remembers everything leading up to the upload, including the gaps in her memory from before the decapitation. The first thing she does is wiggle her toes. It’s not easy, but that’s because her movement is limited, not because there’s something wrong, or because she doesn’t have any toes. Her memory focuses on one thing, which happened at the beginning of this. She’s in another chrysalis. She wriggles her whole body now, trying to look for down, like she did last time. It feels different, though. It feels...softer, more stringy.

She doesn’t vomit like she did before. She doesn’t feel like she has to. She’s stronger now. Without hardly doing anything, she feels stronger than she ever has her whole life. That’s one thing she shied away from before. Superstrength is a pretty easy characteristic to give a new body, but she never went overboard. It didn’t seem necessary. It could have been really useful centuries ago, but life just isn’t that hard anymore. That’s why they built Castlebourne in the first place, to simulate struggle.

This isn’t much of a struggle. She pulls the fibers apart, but she doesn’t slip out onto her head. She rotates her whole body so she can gently lower herself feet first. She deftly lands on the floor. It’s less gooey than the chrysalis, which may or may not make sense. Looking at it here from the outside, she decides it’s more like a cocoon.

“Oh my God, what is that?” It’s Rage’s voice behind Elise.

Elise turns. As she does, her back and shoulders move in a way that she’s not used to. They’re stiff, a little sore, but not something she won’t get past eventually. Wait, no that’s not it. It’s so much more than that. There is something hanging off of her back. What is that? What the hell is that? “What the hell is that?” She spins, trying to see it.

“Here, there’s a mirror,” Colley explains. He cautiously takes her by both hands.

Elise looks at herself straight on. Her breasts are larger now, but that’s about all that’s changed. Oh, and also her skin is a totally different color, and she has wings!

“That is quite the change,” Zelda points out. “How does it feel?”

Elise turns to see herself in profile. She shrugs her shoulders one after the other and back again until she understands which new muscles she needs to work. The wings extend farther than she thought they would. She has to step away from the wall to open them both. Like her skin, they’re a beautiful cool green and fuzzy. She admires herself, which is not like her, then looks over at the cocoon. “I’m a moth.”

“You’re the Ladymoth,” Minotaur says. “That’s what you said before.”

Hrockas, Azad, and Telman are standing off away from the group. Telman clears his throat. “I hope you’re pleased. If you’re not, that’s why this technology has not yet been made public. People are complex. They may not know what they want.”

“Oh, I want,” Elise says. She giggles as she flaps her wings lightly. She looks around and finds a door near the opposite corner. “Will that take me outside?”

“You want to fly?” Telman guesses. “Already?”

“Maybe you should take a moment to get used to basic movements,” Hrockas suggests. “You wouldn’t want to overdo it. The way the tech works, you are still not streaming anywhere, and we did not save a recent backup of you. If you fall out of the sky and perish, you won’t remember any of this.”

“Thank you for your concern,” Elise says to him. “Door, please.”

Hrockas sighs. “I understand. But before you go launching yourself off the ground, let’s travel to the nearest body of water, so you have a softer place below you.”

Elise accepts his suggestion. It’s not a bad idea for her to learn to walk around with all this mass first. Her body is definitely strong enough to manage it, but it’s teetering a little bit as she gets used to weight distribution. Some of them walk on ahead while others take up the rear. She’s walking beside Miracle for obvious reasons. “Did you use the cocoon to make your wings, or standard accelerated cloning?”

“I used bioprinting,” Miracle explains, “but I don’t have access to this. It’s next level. I hope you know how lucky you are. They use it on the Tangent, but it’s incredibly rare, and most of those people have no imagination. You did quite well.”

Elise flutters her wings a bit, but it’s awkward. She needs practice. “You like it?”

“I’m so jealous,” Miracle replies. “You have an amazing body.”

“Maybe I’ll give you a ride, if I’m capable. Moths are strong in some ways, but not in others. I may be quite fragile. We’ll just have to see.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Miracle insists. “I’ll get my wings back soon enough. I did want to ask, though, why a Luna moth?”

“Okay, we’re here,” Hrockas announces. “Get ready to save her, Azad.”

As everyone is spreading out to watch, Azad checks for threats.

Elise gets into position and prepares herself mentally. She takes a deep breath before looking over at her friend. “Miracle. You asked me why a Luna moth. Because when they fly, they look like this.” She leaps into the air and flaps her wings. She’s not awkward anymore. Her wings are completely in sync, and her navigation is on point. Wherever she wants to go, her body goes. She glides gracefully up, down, and all around. Now Elise understands why Miracle chose it, and she wonders why there aren’t more. There are flying humanoids on Altair, but it should be widespread. This feels like the natural progression of the human experience. She wishes she could share it. She wishes all of her friends could be moths, or have any wings of their own.

Elise flies higher and higher, several kilometers in the air. And then she falls.

Microstory 2761: Into the Drink

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This boat isn’t very big, so the crew isn’t a legion of men, but they’re still outnumbered. In the chaos of the initial attack, it’s hard to tell by how much, but fortunately, they have some fighters on their side. They trained as much as they could in each other’s fields, but Zelda and Jolanda are still the best, and have to take the brunt of the combat. Elise has done some martial arts in her day, but doesn’t have any experience fighting moving opponents. Colley is a pacifist, but can defend himself, or someone else. He hides in a corner with Laise, who has absolutely no fighting experience whatsoever.

Meanwhile, the only means of making any headway in this fight is getting the zombie pirates over the edge, and keeping them at bay. They don’t drown, they don’t die, but it does take effort for them to try to climb back aboard. So once they’re over, the living humans end up with the upperhand. The zombies are relentless, however. They also don’t get tired. Their only hope is that this is a nighttime problem. After all, why did they only attack at nightfall on the day they finally lifted the boat? Once the sunrise comes, they’ll cower back to the depths, and the hunters will finally be able to rest.

There it is, that reddish-orange glow over the horizon. Elise can’t stop glancing at it even though she knows she’s meant to be keeping an eye on her sector. She’s holding an oar from the rowboat, and has to keep swatting pirates away. Any second now, there should be enough light. They’re like vampires. In some franchises, it just takes a little more time. The sun has to be a little higher. It often depends on the dialogue.

Three hours later, they’re still at it. Funny enough, despite their collective fatigue, they’ve all kind of grown used to the job. They fight in shifts. Five of them man their sectors of the boat while the other two sleep or rest below deck. They started out with a sixth person down there on high alert, but the zombies never tried to somehow break through, so they categorized it as a non-threat. It’s almost time for Elise’s break. Her eyelids are low as she almost carelessly bonks the zombie on the head again. It’s not scary anymore. Part of it is the sunlight, but part of it is the sheer tedium of it all.

There has to be some way out of this. There’s always a way. There is always a loophole. They may have a random, bizarre weakness that is impossible to know unless you came across the lore earlier, or you have to fix something for them in order to break the curse. The hunters need time to figure it out. They can’t just keep fighting. Maybe Elise can call upon her research skills during her break to search the cabins for any clues. Maybe the zombies simply have unfinished business, and they can help finish it, symbolically or physically. Oh, but that bed down there looked so good. It was short and narrow, and probably not soft, but right now, it might be the best thing in the world. Maybe she’ll just lie down for a quick nap, and then get to work.

Thirty minutes pass, which is twenty minutes after she should have been relieved.

The zombies aren’t geniuses, but after they get knocked down, they realize that that’s where a hunter is, so they move to try a different spot. The hunters sometimes use that to their advantage if they need to get closer to one another. It takes time to control where the next intrusion will come from, but it’s possible. Rage has done that. Now she’s within better speaking distance of Elise. “Where the hell are Colley and Laise?”

“Iono.” Elise can’t even bring herself to say all the words separately. “Laise was s’pose ta take over my spot.” She stands there with a puzzled look on her face.

“What?” Rage questions. “What is it? Do you see something out there?”

Elise swats another zombie. “Her name is Laise. My name is Elise. Do you think we’re related?” The zombie has managed to take hold of the oar, and is trying to wrestle it from her, which they do from time to time when she gets too complacent and lazy. She mindlessly pulls and pushes on it while she waits for Rage’s answer.

Rage is only staring at her. “No, Elise, I don’t think you’re related.”

“Oh, okay. Fair question, though,” Elise decides.

“You’re tired,” Rage argues. “Go ahead and sleep. I’ll take care of two sectors.”

“That won’t be necessary!” Colley cried from the top of the steps. He and Laise have pulled a big sack up from below, and are starting to drag it across the deck. “I know you’re all tired, but we have a way to end this once and for all so we can all sleep!”

“What is that?” Rage questions. Then she has to turn around and fight because a zombie has made it over the bulwark. Laise runs up and provides assistance.

“A mouse trap,” Colley explains once the zombie is taken care of. “Everyone huddle up, and put your backs together! We need to get the zombies into one place!”

“You want us to let them onto the boat?” Jolanda questions from the stern.

“They’ll just keep coming unless we take control! I can say no more than that, because I think we all know that the zombies are smart enough to understand us ! Trust me, we’ve been quietly discussing, and secretly preparing, for this for hours!”

They decide to trust the two of them. As they’re huddled together, the zombies climb aboard. They’re moving slowly now. They might be tired too, or Colley is right and they understand the humans well enough to know that something is up. They’re still not too smart, though, because they naturally group into a single mass, presumably to prepare for the next onslaught.

“Rotate counter-clockwise a little bit.” Laise is in the middle of them. “Perfect,” she says once they’re done shuffling. “Rage, Minotaur, you’re the tallest. You feel what’s at your feet behind you?” After they both confirm, she adds, “you know what to do.”

“Ready...!” Colley begins. “Everyone, run to the closest side to get out of the way!”

After everyone else scatters, Rage and Minotaur run forward holding the corners of a huge heavy net. They raise it over the heads of the zombies and pass them as fast as they can, managing to snag all of them all at once. Colley and Laise take this opportunity to start punching and kicking the zombies so they end up on the floor. The others join in too, of course, even though they still don’t know what the endgame is.

Laise goes around and starts shackling the zombies’ ankles one by one. The chains are already tied to the net, so even if they escape, they’ll be dragging a whole lot of weight. It’s still not enough, though, which is where that sack comes into play. Per Colley’s direction, all seven of them work to hoist the heavy sack up and over the railing. Elise is in back, and not really helping that much, but the job gets done. She touches it enough to know that it’s filled with cannonballs. Once the sack falls over, the net drags all the zombies across the deck, and over the edge too. Now there’s no escape.

Oh, no, it’s not over. “Guys,” Elise says, looking behind them. “Guys!”

When they turn around, they too see what she’s looking at. One of the zombies—the captain, by the looks of it—is still standing there. He’s holding his ooey gooey sabre, and standing on one leg. He cut off his own foot! And he’s got a gun.

A hot blonde girl flies out of nowhere on angel wings. She snatches the evil dead captain up, soars back up in the air, and drops him in the ocean kilometers away.

Microstory 2747: Staged

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Pribadium doesn’t have Sugar board the Teaguardian. Instead, she does what she said she would, and programs it for a relativistic loop to keep them busy. That way, they can’t interfere with their important demolition work. Pribadium and Sora then teleport over to Sugar’s ship so they can learn about what happened after the bulk portal closed.

Years ago, Tau Station was forcing its way through a haphazard breach in the membrane of the universe. They were trying to enter something known as the bulk. There are an infinite number of universes, known as branes, floating around this “hyperspace” where time has no meaning. Everything that happens within it is happening at the same time. Everyone who is crossing over using their own methods—the Crossover, the time knife, Ochivari wingsinging—it’s all happening at this exact same moment, relatively speaking. The bulk sees time as a spatial dimension, rather than a temporal one. So when Sugar, Runaway, and all of the survivors of the dimensional collapse, are floating around, trying to continue to survive, time is really only an illusion.

Not all of the space station made it through, but fortunately, every section that had life in it did. They were congregated in the auditorium. The tear in the spacetime continuum wasn’t large enough, and didn’t last long enough, to keep the rest of it intact. It came out on the other side twisted and mangled. The surviving section doesn’t even have any means of propulsion, except for a few stationkeeping thrusters, but they can’t naturally be controlled from here. Sugar and Pribadium have had to jury-rig a way in. In the meantime, the survivors have been getting by on the emergency food synthesizers. Metabolism is supposed to stop while you’re out in the bulk, but you will still get hungry, depending on how shielded you are from the equilibrium.

“We need supplies,” Runaway points out. “We need to be able to move. We need to look for a home for these people. Whatever we end up doing, we can’t just leave them here for all of eternity.”

“I agree,” Sugar says. “But the thrusters aren’t powerful enough. The amount of force required to move an object of this mass through an equilibrium isn’t a reasonable expense. We need to siphon that energy into a small vessel, pilot that out of here, and go look for help. The station will simply stay where it is while that’s happening.”

“So we need a ship?” Runaway questions. “We looked, there is none.”

“There are industrial fabricators, though. I can build one,” Sugar promises.

“You can build something large enough to carry all these people?” Runaway asks.

“Again, that would be a waste of power. This would only be a small shuttlecraft, for me and me alone. You will stay with your progenitors, and keep them safe.”

“I don’t like you going off alone,” Runaway admits.

“We gotta keep it tight,” Sugar explains. “I can do everything myself.” She pats Pribadium’s forge core, which she has hanging off her hip. “This has all of our research, some of which postdates my last memory as the original Pribadium. It also has an AI.”

“That’s not good enough,” Runaway contends. “I want you to have a corporeal person by your side. If you have to leave the ship in a brane that you visit, someone should be standing next to you. Now stop arguing, and let me find that person.”

“Huh?”

Runaway shuts her eyes. A moment later, she reopens them and walks over to one of her progenitors. She escorts him back, arms interlaced like a date. “Sugar Delgado, Vantu Hidayat.”

“Or Van. I was told you wanted help with something?” he asks.

“She will be going on an away mission, and needs a lieutenant. You are a jack of all trades. You’ve studied engineering, medicine, even temporal sciences, despite the fact that you’ve never heard of real time travel before.”

“I know all of that stuff myself,” Sugar tries to explain to Runaway.

“He’s not going because you need him to do things for you, but to do them with you. I thought we already went over that. I just didn’t want to saddle you with a moron like...never mind. Van is perfect. I don’t even need to let him answer whether he wants to go. I know him well enough to know that he will. That’s why I picked him.”

Van smiles. “I wasn’t planning on stuffing a habitat into an asteroid, and retreating into a virtual construct. I was building myself an exploratory vessel. I want to visit new worlds in base reality. I was told that aliens didn’t exist, but I had hope anyway. Now you two tell us that they’re real, they’re just in other universes. I am so in.”

“Well, it’s going to be a couple of weeks,” Sugar says. “I don’t have the ship yet. I suppose I can add one more seat to the design. But there will only be one bathroom.”

“Not a problem,” Van replies sincerely. “I can help fabricate too, not because you need it, but just to take some of the tedious burden off your hands.”

“Very well,” Sugar decides. “Let’s get to work.”

“And so we built the ship,” Sugar says, finishing her story to Pribadium and Sora. “We departed, ultimately finding a new universe with tons of resources, and a very friendly technologically advanced peoples, who helped build us this thing.” She indicates the capital ship they’re on right now. “I chose it because of its modular properties.”

Pribadium nods. “It can be a transport vessel as easily as a cargo ship. Then it can become a warship or a hospital. Why come here, though, instead of returning to Tau?”

“We tried to at first. Tau Station was different when we got back. Its...meta-time had changed, it’s so weird. It was attacked, boarded, and overtaken.”

“By who?” Sora pressed. “Aliens?”

“Yes, basically,” Sugar confirms. “The Maramon. They came in higher numbers and superior firepower. They wanted Tau Station for themselves, but they didn’t like what it was called, so they changed it to something else. Van and I barely got out of there alive, but we’re pretty sure the Maramon either killed the human survivors, or transplanted them across the bulkverse. We came here to seek your help finding them.”

“We have our own problems right now,” Pribadium tells Sugar. “Sora’s Doma Tertians still need a place to live, and as we all know...” She glares at Sora, lovingly but not too playfully. “...they can’t live here. They need to be transplanted too.”

“That can be arranged.” She used a finger sequence to call up a monitor, which switched to the feed from the hangar bay, where a smaller transport ship was sitting. A man, presumably Vantu, was running an inspection on the exterior.

“That’ll do.”

“Wait, you skipped something,” Sora points out. “What do they call the station?”

Sugar nods. “They call it...The Stage.”

Microstory 2732: Tree of Thought

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Pribadium gives Sora a go in the equilibrium chamber. He likes it because anyone can use it, whether they have been biologically or technologically enhanced, or not. It doesn’t even have to be alive. Bulk forces act on every object with the force equal to its mass. This allows everything to stay in place unless moved by some other force. Sora places his cup of tea in front of him and to the side, as if there were a table there, and it stays. Gravity doesn’t exist here, atmospheric pressure doesn’t either. It doesn’t move until he reaches back for it. He even leaves it upside down, and it’s fine. He says that he forgot to have fun. Elke’s arrival, while it sparked love in him, was filled with so much anxiety and longing that he stopped enjoying daily life. He spent all of his time focused on her, both before and after her death. He can barely recall what his hobbies were. He would have loved to play in an equilibrium chamber back then, probably. Since he’s no scientist, he goes off to another area of the outpost to find his bliss.

Pribadium!One and Pribadium!Two, meanwhile, have work to get through. Their mission is to pull this small pocket of space out of the universe entirely, and let it exist as its own miniature universe. Once there, they will be able to travel to other branes, just like The Crossover or Zoey Attar. They will be able to adjust their own laws of physics, and explore new worlds. They will break new ground. Neither of them has ever done this before, but Pribadium!Two has more experience. She offered to transmit the memories and knowledge into Pribadium!One’s brain, but the latter declined. She wants to be herself, and not mix each other together.

“No, that’s not gonna work,” Pribadium!Two warns over her shoulder.

Pribadium!One sighs. “I’m starting an arboreal progression. I’ve not yet gotten to the pruning stage. Do you not remember how we work? How much have you changed?”

“No, I remember the arboreal technique. I just didn’t think you needed to start with a seed, since I already have a ton of hard data over here,” Pribadium!Two argues.

“Yes, I saw your data, but you were mostly looking at it from the main sequence. Now we’re in the new parallel. We have to start from scratch. We can compare notes later. But that won’t be until after my tree grows, after I prune it, and after I climb it.”

“After we climb it,” Pribadium!Two tries to correct.

“No, I want to climb it myself. It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s that I’m trying to keep my work contained and isolated, so it stands up to future testing. I don’t want to be biased by your research. The very basis of science is reproducible results. If I can’t reproduce them without looking at your results first, they won’t hold up. In fact, why don’t you go down to the aux lab, so we don’t even occupy the same space.”

“Why would I go to the aux lab? I’m the one who needs the main servers for the simulations. You’re still a seedling!” Pribadium!Two contends

“Oh, the servers down there are fine,” Pribadium!One reasons dismissively.

Pribadium!Two shakes her head. “No, I have been upgrading the primaries.”

“You have?” Pribadium!One pushes her alt self aside to check her workstation. “Goddammit, I didn’t give you permission to make changes. Now I’ll need to reconfigure all of my preferences. Just because you technically have credentials, doesn’t mean you should use them. This is my lab. Yours is in another reality. Please respect that.”

“I suppose we need to come up with some ground rules before we proceed.”

“I suppose we do,” Pribadium!One agrees.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 14, 2558

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After a couple of hours, close enough to midnight central for the sling to factor in their timeskipping, Team Matic left Tartarus, and returned to Ramosus. They found themselves just standing there, blinking at each other, but not talking. While it took longer than expected, their experience on the colony was mundane, and didn’t amount to anything. The fact they were researching aliens was interesting, but the research itself was kind of boring? “Why do I feel so weird?” Mateo asked. “I felt a little weird there, but coming here has suddenly made it actually weird. Fully weird. Weird, weird.”

“I know what you mean.” Leona looked over at Ramses. “I think we need to run some times.” She breathed deeply, and couldn’t help but yawn. “Tests. Run tests.”

“Maybe it’s the cold?” Marie suggested. “Has the cold made me...”

“Loopy?” Leona suggested. “We would have other symptoms, like frostbite. We wouldn’t be able to stand if it were cold enough to affect us like this.”

“I’m sorry, guys,” Romana said. “I made the wrong choice.”

“No, no,” everyone said. She had nothing to apologize for. They would never know what was on the other side of the sling. It could be interesting, it could be boring, or it could even be dangerous. Whatever they found, they would get through it, and they would do it together. They were starting to feel like explorers, after all.

They all went to the medical wing of Ramses’ lab to get themselves checked out. They discovered something mild, temporary, but very strange about their neurochemistry. Ramses relied quite heavily on his automated machinery to do the work for him, because he wasn’t in a state of mind to operate them himself. “Um. I can’t read the data myself right now, so I’m going to rely on the summary to explain it to us.” Ramses tried to point at the screen, but gave up. He was too weak. “Basically, what it thinks is that our brains were running at optimum efficiency on Tartarus. If we had stimuli, we might have been able to be really productive. But since the environment was pretty much just snow, we didn’t have any problem to solve. I mean, we were lost, but we didn’t have any tech to work with, so our brainpower was wasted.”

“So it’s like a drug?” Angela figured, “and now we’re in withdrawal?”

“Yes. That’s the word the computer thing said,” Ramses agreed. “Don’t worry, though, I don’t think we’re dependent. It would be like if you went to your college quantum physics class, and they handed you a kindergarten math sheet. It’s easy, and takes the cognitive load off, and you might get a little lazy if they keep giving you the same silly tests, but you’re not going to get addicted to it. The day they hand you a real test, you’ll need a little time to readjust—which is what we’re doing right now—but you will ultimately be fine. Because in this scenario, you knew quantum physics before, so you know it now. It will just take time. Sleep too.”

“Is there anything we shouldn’t do in the meantime?” Olimpia pressed. “Should we not have sex, or should we not eat carbs, or should we get warm, or get cooled off?”

“Carbs would be very good for your prefrontal cortex right now,” Ramses answered. “Sex would be fun, but you might find yourself disinterested. Just listen to your body. If you’re cold, warm up. If you’re hot, cool down. It knows what it needs.”

So they left the lab, and returned to their separate abodes. They were mostly still sleeping in their joint pocket dimensions, because they didn’t have any better ideas. They certainly weren’t going to come up with any today. The next year, they woke up totally okay, and actually rather enthusiastic. They were all ready for the next adventure.

Romana asked not to pick this time, though.

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Microstory 2573: Successful Panacea Test Subject

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This is a happy story, so don’t worry about it. Unlike most of the test subjects that my former company used to see if the panacea could cure a host of diseases all at once, I was a part of the system the whole time. I’m one of the researchers, and I volunteered myself for the experiment, because I was finally one hundred percent confident in its effectiveness. I helped develop it, so I watched the predictive estimate numbers go up and up and up. That doesn’t mean they were low before. I mean, we weren’t testing on live specimens when the model only showed 10% confidence. By the time I strapped into the chair, we were at 96%. I all but demanded that we do it outside the presence of Mr. Tipton, but they wouldn’t allow it, and I get it. Science isn’t always careful, but people should be. I didn’t need him, though. They injected me with a number of pathogens, which immediately started trying to destroy me. Then they gave me the cure. It worked nearly instantaneously. I felt better, I could breathe again, and my energy was restored. I even felt better than I ever had before. I admit, part of the reason I asked to do it was because I also wanted the money. If the panacea fails, but the subject lives, they get the money. If it fails, and the subject dies, their family is given the money instead. That only happened once, but we obviously don’t like to talk about it. If the procedure succeeds, in addition to the cure itself, you also get three million dollars. I left the program after that, because, well...I had three million dollars, so I’m not sure how many tests they ran afterwards, but I’m guessing they spent a couple hundred million dollars on successes alone. We didn’t have many failures, though, because we were so cautious. I loved my job, but I could see the writing on the wall. It wasn’t going to last forever, so I might as well cash out, and set myself up to be successful in a world that might not have such a great economy anymore. I don’t know if the panacea is going to cause the collapse of civilization, but I know that I’ll be all right either way. I’m buying gold, I’m buying land, I’m buying food. I never thought of myself as a survivalist, but it would be pretty foolish not to. I just wish I could have snagged a few boxes of the prototype cure to keep for myself in case it all does hit the fan. Nah, that would have been too selfish anyway. I’m sure it will all be fine. Let us rejoice! The first lot of the cure ships out next week. Thank you, Landis Tipton, for everything you’ve done for us. You’re done now. You can rest. And hey, if you like underground bunkers and MREs, maybe look me up. You don’t need all those consorts any more.

Microstory 2572: Unsuccessful Panacea Test Subject

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My story is a bad and scary one, so strap in. I have always been a perfectly healthy and fit young man. I work out every single day, I do resistance training, and I eat well. I was lucky enough to be born into a family that both valued health, and understood it. We knew that eating fat doesn’t inherently make you fat, before the word kind of spread about that misinformation. We know that carbs are good for you, if from the right sources (with fiber), and at the right ratios. I know, I’m bragging, but it’s relevant, because I am exactly the test subject that the researchers needed. They wanted someone who didn’t just not need to be cured, but very didn’t need it. For this to work, I had to start out as the perfect specimen. And for lack of a better term, they then...fucked me up. They gave me so many diseases, I can’t remember the number; let alone which ones they were. Not every disease is transmissible like that, but they did their best with what they had. It should have killed me, and nearly did. The lab was located in a building owned by the pharmaceutical company, but that’s not where they conducted this experiment. I was only there for my initial testing. The final phase took place at the hotel, because that’s where Landis is. That’s an important detail, don’t forget it. While they could easily move me anywhere without anyone noticing or caring, they couldn’t move Landis without it being a national news story. A couple of years ago, the man took a fifteen minute walk in the woods with his team, and it dominated the news cycle for 24 hours. So they took me to the hotel, and put me in a room that none of the staff ever went to. It was just me, Landis, my doctors, and his doctors. Not even his personal assistant was there with him, and she follows him around like a tail. I don’t think she knew about it.

Anyway, they sat me in a chair, and pumped me full of poison, at which point I started dying. After they were happy with how much time had passed, they injected me with a prototype of the panacea. It did not work. It may have made things worse. It’s hard to tell, because I was in the most pain I had ever felt in my life. That’s why Landis was there, because while they weren’t sure if the panacea would work, they were fairly confident that he could fix me. Even that wasn’t a guarantee, because no one in the world has ever been sick as much as I was. You can’t naturally get that many diseases, because the first few will probably kill you if it goes any further. But that’s what they wanted. They wanted to understand the scope. Had even Landis not been able to save me, my family would have received the money, but since he was there as a backup plan, I did end up with it. Do you wanna hear the number? It’s 28 million dollars. That’s how much they gave me because the panacea failed. How did they calculate that? I just found out recently, actually, I didn’t know before. I don’t understand it, but they took a number called the VSL, which basically calculates how much an anonymous person’s life is worth. Then they doubled it for good measure. So I’m a millionaire now. My assets are quickly dwindling as I’m giving away more than I’ve saved or invested, but I have more than enough to live comfortably for the rest of my life. The question that haunts me, though, is how many others went through the same thing...and were there any who even Landis couldn’t save?

Microstory 2571: Panacea Researcher

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We’ve done it! We’ve figured it out. After years of grueling research and testing, we have created the ultimate medication. The most difficult part of the process was determining its efficacy on just about every disease out there. This required a ton of samples, and a ton of test subjects. People aren’t aware of this, because our subjects, and their respective medical professionals, each signed an ironclad non-disclosure agreement. This means that Mr. Tipton technically cured even more people than their numbers appear. Here’s what we could have done, and it would have been easier. We could have focused our research on curing one disease at a time, and waited only for approval for that one disease. Then we could have done it for the next. “The FDA today announced its approval for the P-1 drug to be used for testicular cancer. Patients eagerly await the next announcement after this” or some crap like that. It took us five years to finish this out, because we wanted approval for everything all at once. They’ve done studies in psychology, and determined that it’s far easier to wait for something when you’re in a group of others waiting for the same thing. The greatest extension of this is if everyone in the entire world is in the same boat with you. If you keep seeing people get their cure while you’re still waiting, you’re gonna be miserable, and we don’t want that. It would probably worsen your condition overall, as mental wellness has an effect on physical health. Plus, the logistics are easier.

We can package the drug as a true panacea (with some caveats, mostly dealing with conditions of state) without having to direct customers to a giant list of diseases to see if theirs is on it. Oh. It’s on it. We also didn’t want to make a different inhaler for every case. That would have been ridiculous. And yes, it is an inhaler. We kind of always knew that. It isn’t random, there are actually a number of reasons for it. Number one is that anyone can learn how to operate an inhaler with minimal training. Eye drops are about as simple, but people’s reflexes kick in, and they blink. An injection? You can forget about it. Either we trust customers to handle their own needles, or they have to go in to a facility. My boss really wanted something that we could send directly to the end users. Someone suggested a jet injector, but that’s an unjustifiable additional expense for something that you shouldn’t need all the time. The panacea cures whatever you have when you take it, and inoculates you for about a week afterwards. Some people at this company—who I respectfully leave unnamed—wanted the drug to be very limited by dose, and very temporary, so you would have to keep buying more, and more, and more. Fortunately, it doesn’t work like that. It’s pretty much impossible to create a dosage system. You need a certain amount of the particulates for it to be effective, but beyond that, it really doesn’t matter how much of it you take. That’s another reason why inhalers are great, because they’re imprecise, which is okay, unlike other drugs, which require very specific amounts. We can make huge batches of micronized agent, and divide them into our inhalers, without all this extra work of pressing it into tabs, or something. So yeah, it’s ready. We just need to mass produce it. You’re almost home. You’re welcome.

Microstory 2570: Head of Pharmaceuticals

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People ask me why I’m doing it. Why would I invest hundreds of millions of dollars into developing a panacea when “there’s more money to be made in the treatment”? To be clear, that’s actually a low number for developing even a single drug, and that’s because we were coming at it with a huge advantage of having a source for the cure, instead of having to start from scratch. So that was one reason why we calculated that it was worth it. Number one after that is that my name will go down into the history books as the woman who provided the world with the greatest accomplishment humanity has ever achieved. Of course, Landis will be at the top of the list, but no one’s going to remember his nurse, or one of his patients. He cured millions. I’ll cure billions. And I’ll keep doing it over and over again. We’re not sure if this drug will grant virtual immortality, but honestly, I don’t see why not. And if it doesn’t, we’ll work on that too. And we’ll be able to do that, because at that point, we’ll be the only pharmaceutical company left in existence. The other ones, who only ever hoped to sell treatments, will become obsolete, almost literally overnight. Unless they diversified into selling diagnostic equipment—or, I don’t know, something unrelated, like microwaves—they’re destined to have a bad time. Their stock prices are already tanking in anticipation for an announcement that we’ve made a breakthrough. People are actually saving money that they would usually spend on medicine, because they think we’re preparing to send them a fix tomorrow. Well, I can’t condone such behavior. Time is a huge factor here. They’re close—my researchers are close—and I have been funneling a lot of the money dedicated to this endeavor into bolstering mass production, but we’re not there yet. My competitors want to get in on this, and we will agree to that, because it will help with rollout, but I have demands, and it all has to do with what I said; keeping my name at the top. I curated the relationship with the Foundation. I made Mr. Tipton promises. I’m in charge here, and if that slows down production, then so be it. People will wait for months, because some have been waiting their whole lives, and humanity has been waiting for thousands of years—at the risk of being too specific. Pharmaceutical companies are known for being greedy and uncaring, and I’m not going to sit here and try to tell you that it isn’t true. We charge too much for insulin. We make our customers jump through hoops. We didn’t make the industry the way it is today (not alone, anyway) but I admit some fault. So in the end, that’s why I’m doing this. My competitors’ reputations are set. Nothing can be done to show them in a better light, except maybe if they get in line, and help with production in the right way. But no one will remember what we used to be. Once the panacea comes out, with our label on every single inhaler, that’s what we’ll be known for. And the world will be grateful. For us.

Microstory 2564: Protester

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This is ridiculous. I can’t believe how small our movement is. It’s growing, but not nearly fast enough. Landis Tipton is not all that he’s made out to be. Sure, curing all disease sounds great, but there are major issues with it that not everyone can see. First of all, we have no idea what long-term health consequences there are from being healed. He could be giving everyone cancer. Cancer is when your cells multiply out of control, and even if you claim that he has control over the repairs while he’s breathing on them, what happens five years later, or ten, or thirty? We don’t know. They haven’t done nearly enough studies on the subject. He just bought a freaking hotel, and people just flocked there like he was a god. Some people actually believe he is a god, which is another issue, though we don’t argue that in our literature, or during our demonstrations, because it’s a sensitive subject. What’s not sensitive, and what every single person needs to understand, is that so much of our economy is centered around health and wellness. I know it sounds cold, but disease and deaths are necessities in life. I’m sorry, but it’s true. Medical professionals, food vendors, funeral homes, insurance companies, nutritionists and dieticians, fitness trainers, pharmaceutical companies. Hell, even personal injury law firms. There are so many others. They all rely on a world that isn’t perfect, and they do not exist in a vacuum. When you take all those things down, what happens to everything else? It doesn’t work. It falls apart. Again, I may sound callous to you, but you have to think about the ramifications of your actions. Landis, and this goddamn panacea they’re trying to make, is going to do more harm than good, and I firmly believe that. Now, if we had a universal basic income, and if we had more robust automation, I might think it’s okay. But we are woefully unprepared for what’s to come. We are not ready for the paradigm shifting changes that this drug will make. We’re holding it at bay, because Landis Tipton is only one man so his impact on these sectors is minimal. But if that’s about to change, we are royally, totally, and fundamentally screwed. I don’t think you can imagine what’s going to happen to the world. No one’s gonna be able to afford the panacea when they lose their jobs. “Oh, we’ll make it free.” I’ve heard no confirmation on that, and it introduces a plethora of other issues. It will be a logistical nightmare. This has to be stopped right now. We cannot let it move on. We can let Landis do his thing, but his work schedule has to be severely shrunk, and research on this miracle cure has to end immediately! People think I’m crazy, and an asshole, but honestly—and I don’t really like to say this—but I’m smarter than you. I’m telling you, bad things are going to come of this. It will not lead us to the paradise you’ve been sold. Sell it back, it’s not worth it. Please. Please!

Microstory 2558: Documentarian

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I am a historian, if you can believe it. That’s what I studied in college, graduate school, and for my PhD. That’s what I wanted to teach at university. I was competing for jobs against some really great, knowledgeable people, and there just weren’t enough spots for all of us. In order to make a little cash while I kept looking for work, I started to make documentaries online. I called my channel Fourk History, because I made it with a four prong approach. The way I see it, not everyone trying to learn something is trying to learn the same stuff, and definitely not the same way. Instead of only making one video on a topic, I decided to make four. Quick aside, some people who start watching my videos don’t realize this, and call me “Mr. Fourk”. That’s not my name. It kind of sounds like a name, but it’s a blending word. That’s it. As I was saying, four videos. One video is one or two minutes long. This gives you a very brief overview on some historical moment. Watch one of these if you just haven’t heard of Daun Macht 1912, or the Peace Treaty of Alslierde. You don’t wanna look foolish in front of your friends, or you just want to be able to answer a question with a reasonable expectation of accuracy on trivia night. My seven- to ten-minute long videos go a little deeper. This is what you’ll need if you’re trying to answer one or two short answer questions on a homework assignment or exam. It’s not enough to write an entire paper, but it gives you a decent understanding of the topic. The longest video can take up to an hour, and this is what you need if you are writing that paper focused solely on this subject matter. The fourth and final prong is the full course, for people who are serious about history. It’s not a perfect analogy, because said course will be a convergence of multiple trio sets, for different topics. Like, you’ll get three vids on The Battle of Sandsbarry Wharf, and three different ones on the Siege of Green Hamlet. Both of these happened during the First Colshire War, which will comprehensively be a course, covering both battles and topics, among others. I don’t know why I’m bringing all of this up, but I think someone at the Landis Tipton Breath of Life Foundation liked my stuff, or at least found it useful, because they have asked me to document their story in an official capacity. I don’t work for them, and I have full creative control over the direction of my piece. This is the largest project I’ve ever started, but I know that I can handle it, because I’ve been writing and performing video essays and full lectures for years now, having long ago given up on teaching only one class at a time. I have eleven million subscribers now, so I know what I’m doing. I’m not saying that there’s some scandalous secrets at the hotel, but whatever the truth is—even if all is as it appears to be—I’ll find it. I’ve never explored the present day before, but that’s what’s so great about the opportunity. I’m here on the ground, watching history in the making.

Microstory 2555: Inhouse Lawyer

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Before I came here, I did not have any experience in healthcare law, or in nonprofit law. I applied to this job because I wanted some better work-life balance. My old firm was very demanding. It wasn’t arbitrary. We had a lot of big clients, who required constant aid, advice, and representation. The Foundation has had to overcome obstacles that no other organization ever has, and it’s my job to get them through it. The work they do here is unprecedented, and I know we all hear that a lot, but it’s absolutely true in this case. Pun intended. What Landis and the Director built here is nothing short of profoundly astonishing, and despite how massively popular it is among the general public, it also raised some eyebrows. Who are you? What led you to start something like this? What gives you the right? Why should your customers trust you? What do you mean some people don’t pay? What do you mean you pay some of them? How do we know it’s not a scam? Where’s your experience in healthcare? How do you find your customers? What are your criteria for accepting or rejecting an application? This is just a fraction of a fraction of the questions that I had to help the Foundation answer. It’s been the toughest challenge I’ve ever had, but it wasn’t stressful, because I believe in the cause. I’ve not always been able to say that about my clients, and my colleagues advise me not to feel that way, but come on, how can you not be a fan? I think, when you’re defending multiple clients, you can’t play favorites, but when it’s only the one, I don’t see any reason why I can’t see myself as just another important cog in the machine, rather than an outside associated party. Work has been steadily slowing down over the years. As we’ve become established, and the validity of the healings are hardly in question anymore, there aren’t so many more questions left. Mostly what we’re dealing with now is in regards to the panacea that the researchers are trying to synthesize from Mr. Tipton’s genes, or whatever it is that makes him work. I don’t represent the pharmaceutical company, but I did help broker the deal that led them to being the ones to advance this research, so we’re all obviously still involved. Everything will work out, though. If the panacea works, there is no way it doesn’t go through eventually. Don’t get me wrong, it’s more than just signing the right papers. Approval has been slow, but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Very soon, you won’t have to leave your house to cure what ails you. I don’t know what will happen with the Foundation, or my job, but I can’t wait to find out.

Microstory 2546: Midwife

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I am a Certified Nurse-Midwife, and the only one that this Foundation has ever seen. I have delivered every single child born of Landis, and many of the children of staff members who happened to get pregnant while they were employed, and chose our team instead of another facility. Landis makes an attempt to procreate with one of the legacy consorts once per night, which means that, on average, I deliver one baby a night. But of course, the timing doesn’t work out perfectly. Everybody is different, and every body is different. It has been known to happen that I’ve delivered two babies in one day. My busiest day was on October 7, 2023 when a perfect storm of storks arrived all at once. I’m mixing metaphors here, but I delivered six babies within a period of 24 hours. It was crazy, but an amazing experience. I’m obviously not entirely alone here. There is an obstetrician, and a host of other nurses and doctors. We’re a pretty streamlined outfit, but every mother here is very well-taken care of. Or I should say family. We take care of families here; that’s our mission. I don’t know much about the healing side of things. I’m pretty busy in the Legacy Department. I do know Landis, though. He doesn’t have the time or bandwidth to raise all of the children, and in order for it to be fair, the decision has been made that he doesn’t raise any of them. Researchers fought against this. They actually wanted there to be an imbalance, so they could measure any differences in development. But the psychological well-being of these kids is more important than their research. There are 815 of them right now, and they deserve stability and predictability, as any child would. They are each raised by a single parent, which that parent is fully aware of when she signs up for the program. She’s then reminded time and time again throughout the program that she will be on her own, except for the care that we provide as third party participants. Landis meets every one of his babies once. He holds them for 15 to 30 minutes, and then they move on with their lives. It might sound cold, but it would be impossible for him to be there for them all, and worse for him to give preferential treatment to a handful of them, or some arbitrary number. I can’t speak to his mental state, but outwardly, he has accepted this dynamic. I don’t think it’s easy, but I had nothing to do with the plan for the Legacy program. I just deliver the babies. Some of my colleagues have told me that it’s unethical, and honestly, they may be right; you’re having babies as an experiment. But I do stress to them that the children will be protected for their whole lives, and they don’t undergo tests. They don’t have their blood drawn, or receive shots, or anything that goes beyond the normal, conventional means of physical health. We had to fight the researchers on that too, but the kids aren’t lab rats. They’re people, and if they develop abilities later in life, they will come to that realization on their own, not because some lab tech sequenced their genome. I won’t have it, and I’m backed by the support of everyone at the Foundation, including Landis, as well as the mothers. Like I said, I don’t know if we should be doing this, but since we are, at least I know that we’re doing it the right way.

Microstory 2534: Phlebotomist

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People call me Landis’ personal phlebotomist, and it’s true that I’m the only one who performs that task, but the truth is that I do it for the whole staff, and even some of the patients. There are two other phlebotomists that are there to help me with other patients. People think that working for the Foundation means that you can’t get sick. They think that if something happens, he can just heal them up real quick, and then return to his normal work. He probably would do that, but we can’t have our workers getting sick just because they have that safety net. Our health insurance company, and other regulatory bodies, would lose their minds if they found out that we were being careless with our health and safety protocols. They really don’t care what it is we do here. Sick people don’t just frequent our building. That’s literally the whole reason that we exist, and like any normal medical facility, we’re expected to take precautions. I test the staff’s blood regularly, screening them for ever transmissible disease that they may have come in contact with during their work. That’s in addition to the masking, social distancing, and cleaning that we perform to prevent the spread. Landis could have operated out of a tent in the middle of a field like those lunatic religious liars, but he chose the hotel so people could keep their distances from each other. Seriously, it was part of his initial pitch. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I mean, what’s the incubation period of a given disease, and will his breath heal it if one patient contracted something from another just five minutes ago? They didn’t know the answer to that question before. Now, after research, we know that whatever is in Landis’ breath stays in the target’s body for about a week, but we still take measures to prevent that from happening. It would be irrational not to, particularly because we don’t offer second healings. Back to what I was saying, I do draw his blood too. I do it every day, and send it off to the researchers. It was very important to him that he hire someone to do this job in house instead of relying on a contractor. It’s not like it inherently prevents mishandling of his sample, but just in general, he prefers to be the one to pay his staff. We do have a couple of contract workers, and for legal reasons, they’re not allowed to live on-site. I don’t know whether that bothers them or not, but I’m glad that I get to stay here. Room service, house-keeping. It’s like I’m on vacation all the time. You can’t beat this lifestyle. It’s not why I got certified, but I don’t hate it.

Microstory 2525: Rich Patient

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I am no stranger to charity. I have always been on this side of it. I was born into a wealthy family of business moguls. I can’t tell you exactly what our family does, because we have our hands in a lot of different cookie jars. My ancestors liked to invest in ideas, and they were very good at telling the difference between the great ones and the stinkers. Most people in my family have kept the tradition alive, and invest in whatever they think will be the most profitable. They are not saints, but I wouldn’t call them evil either. We didn’t make our money on great instincts alone. Research is the name of the game, and we pride ourselves in supporting ethical and sustainable companies over get-rich-quick schemes that some of our contemporaries are involved in. You’ll notice, I sometimes separate myself from my family, and sometimes lump myself in with them. The truth is that I’ve never been that interested in this kind of work. It’s oh so boring. I like that we do research, but I don’t like to do it myself, so to maintain the integrity of our practices, I have simply chosen to opt out. I’m lucky to have parents who allowed me to do this, and did not insist on me following in their footsteps. They actually had a lot of children for this reason. It might sound so calculated, but really, they were just practical. Instead of having one kid, and hoping they turned out exactly how they dreamed, they played the odds. They knew that the chances of one of us being like them went up the more they had. It ended up only being four, so don’t think they went crazy, or anything, and lucky them, three of them are all in. It’s really only I who chose a different path. I’m not entirely removed. I’m entitled to a trust fund, just as my siblings are, which I use to support my philanthropic endeavors. And you know what? My siblings do the same, but in their own way. They don’t wanna have to judge people, and determine what kind of charity they deserve, or how much, so they just give me the money, and I donate accordingly on their behalf. It’s a truly symbiotic relationship. I’m still quite a bit different than them. I open my own car doors, which my chauffeur keeps forgetting, and I raised my own kids with no help beyond my husband, and a few babysitters here and there. A few years ago, I was diagnosed with a condition called Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis. That first word means that they don’t know what caused it. So it’s no one’s fault. I have had it all this time while the Foundation was running, but I hesitated to apply for a healing. I’ve never called myself old, but I’m no spring chicken either. I honestly could have died at any time while I pursued typical treatment. I just didn’t want to butt in. So many other people needed help, and I didn’t want to take anyone’s slot. I admire Landis for developing a fair system that didn’t prioritize people like me, but it still felt so icky. Then something changed. I had grandchildren. Two twin girls. I decided that I wasn’t just fighting for my life, but for the time I could spend with them. So I applied, and got my healing. I don’t know how long I would have survived without it, but...not long. I was likely weeks away from expiring. Did you know, because of all of my charitable donations, they wanted to classify me as a no-pay? I wouldn’t have it. It goes against my entire being. I insisted they recategorize me for pay-up, so I could contribute my fair share. I didn’t give them all my money, since I need to leave some for my family when I finally do die, but I think I helped keep the lights on for a few more days. It’s the least I could do.