Extremus: Year 104

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Tinaya never did figure out how to get back into the Bridger Section so her son could make a mirror call to the past. Security there is tighter than it ever has been, but that’s okay. Silveon was spiraling, and he wanted guidance, but he will be okay without it. He has his family and friends. Well...he has one true friend and peer. He has not bothered to make friends with anyone else, because they’re all so much younger. It wasn’t just romantic connections that he was potentially forgoing when he sent his consciousness back in time. He really is going to be okay, though. He decided to reassess his priorities, and recommit himself to his mission to help Waldemar. Even though Audrey is the one who is closer to him now, they’re all still friends, and Waldemar needs all the guidance he can get, even if he doesn’t know it. This mission is more critical than ever, because today is the day that Waldemar announces his campaign. If he goes through with his speech, he will be the only one in the race, and that’s because the position he’s vying for doesn’t exist.

“First Chair?” Tinaya questions.

“Yeah, that’s why he said,” Silveon confirms. “He’s been working on this operation in secret. That must be what this press briefing is about. He didn’t specifically say as much, but what else could it be? He still won’t give me any details, but I suspected that it was about finding another girl to get pregnant, so I guess I’m relieved.”

They both look over at Audrey, who responds, “I’ve been laying it on pretty thick. He can pretty much have me whenever he wants. Before you ask, I am on birth control now. I don’t want to get pregnant again, and he doesn’t want that either. The way he sees it, this is the best outcome. He gets the sympathy votes for the dead kid, and bonus, he doesn’t have to pretend to raise the thing. Silvia’s job is done.”

A twitch of a smile flashes on Silveon’s face at the sound of the baby girl who was named after him. It falls back down, however, when he realizes that she’s also talking about her sex life with the enemy. “Just be careful.”

Audrey nods solemnly, but doesn’t say anything.

“How is he gonna pull this off?” Tinaya asks, getting back to the matter at hand.

“He took a page out of your book, mama,” Silveon goes on. “Speaking of the way he sees it, the way he sees it, you were able to abolish the position, so he should be able to revive it.”

Tinaya shakes her head. “I was able to abolish it because I was First Chair. It was in my best interest to keep it, which means I was sacrificing something. I actually rose in popularity that day. He’s asking to bring it back so he can gain power. It’s the exact opposite of what I did. And anyway, I thought he was destined to become captain.”

“We’re in uncharted territory,” Silveon replies. “We have changed so much in the chain of events, but I don’t think I’ve done much to change him. I suppose I managed to lure him away from the captain’s chair, but I couldn’t take away his ambition. He has evidently set his sights on civilian government instead.”

“And he’s going right to the top,” Tinaya says, “to a job that he would first have to create in order to get it.”

“That’s from your book too,” Silveon says sadly. “Before you, there was no such job as Director of Population Maintenance.”

Tinaya exhales exasperatedly. She came to hate that title. It’s too broad. She was there to promote population growth, but it could easily be reversed to oversee population control, and that should never be the objective.

Arqut shifts awkwardly. It was he who came up with the title in the first place, and he too regrets it. “I’ve already submitted a provision to the charter that, if the need for the job arises again, it should be changed to Director of Family Planning. That way, the change will outlive me and-or my tenure as Superintendent.”

“Thank you, honey.” Tinaya turns back to the kids. “How do we stop him, or should we?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Silveon replies. “I’m starting to think that everything we do is a waste of time. Maybe what we should really do is flip to Plan C.”

Audrey shakes her head as she suddenly looks exhausted.

“Wait, what is this Plan C?” Tinaya questions. “Plan B was straight up murdering him. Would you also kill his mother? What’s Plan Z, then, destroying the whole ship?”

“They don’t go in order,” Silveon explains. Plan C is not selected because Plan B fails. It’s a secondary alternative, equally as likely as the first alternative. It involves shifting focus away from my relationship with Waldemar, and towards the creation of the resistance.”

“Unlike before,” Audrey adds, “these resistant forces would be composed of those who have forewarning on what’s to come. Rather than being reactionary, and fighting an uphill battle, like we did in the original timeline, we would be in a place of advantage. That’s the hypothesis anyway.”

“It sounds too late for that,” Arqut reasons. “If he’s already campaigning, has enough damage not been done?”

“It’s the perfect time,” Audrey contends. “Imagine going back to 1922 and trying to warn people that Hitler’s a bad guy. They would be all, who the hell are you talking about? We were always going to have to wait before the right circumstances triggered Plan C. Though your logic is sound, we do have a short window. Gaining power is one thing, but gaining popularity could make forming this preemptive resistance all but impossible. We have to decide now.”

“We?” Tinaya echoes. “We’re just the old fogies. We can give you advice, but you’re the ones with the intel, and it’s become quite clear that we barely know anything about what you’re doing here, or why. How many of these letter plans are there? Hopefully not the full twenty-six.”

Silveon and Audrey exchange a look.

“I don’t even wanna know,” Tinaya says before they can elaborate.

“I will say,” Arqut begins, “at the risk of overstepping, there is no coming back from Plan C. Once you go down that road, you lose all friendly ties with Waldemar. He may not find out that you’re a part of it right away, but he will one day. You’ll recruit someone that you were wrong to trust. Or someone will turn on you. Or you’ll just slip up and say the wrong thing to him. Once you become his enemy on the outside, you lose all hope to change him. Plan A doesn’t have to lead to Plan B, but if Plan C fails, it might. Success means either putting him in hock, or in the proverbial ground. There’s not much wiggle room.”

“That’s why I hate it,” Audrey tells them. “That, and we already tried it. Sure, maybe we started too late, but I’m not sure a time advantage gives us that much of an edge. It will just make him angry. Leona’s Rules of Time Travel, Number Fifteen, don’t antagonize the antagonist. Just like killing him, there’s a reason it’s not Plan A.”

“There’s a way to have the best of both worlds,” Tinaya suggests cryptically. “You could continue with your camaraderie with Waldemar, trying to keep him on the best path while recognizing that his personality is out of your control, and you can’t stop his thirst for power. Meanwhile, completely separately, there is a slow-burning faction of dissidents, ready to keep him in check from the outside. You wouldn’t be involved with them. You would feed them information, but get none in return. This would allow you to keep focus, and keep them from ever needing to be activated.”

“That’s shockingly diabolic of you, mother,” Silveon points out.

“Yeah,” Audrey agrees.

“It is.” Arqut is less impressed, and more disquieted. “Who would do this? Surely not us, we’re an obvious connection.”

“No, we’re too old anyway,” Tinaya says. “I have one or two people in mind.” There’s a knock at the door. No doorbell, no proximity alert; just a knock. It surprises and confuses all of them. “Thistle, what gives?” Tinaya asks to the aether.

“The Thistle Central Systems Intelligence is presently offline for maintenance. For basic assistance, please state your query using clear and unambiguous syntax.”

“Do you think they found out that he’s real?” Tinaya asks as she’s heading towards  the door.

“He’s real?” Audrey asks, quickly having to accept the fact that no one would answer her.

Pronastus Kegrigia smiled from the other side of the doorway. “I believe that I’m supposed to be here?” Yeah, he was Tinaya’s first idea. They know they can trust him, because he’s the one who took care of little Silvia while they were waiting to deliver her to Verdemus. He’s always felt like the anti-Waldemar—just as ambitious, but with an ethics book in his hand. Once Tinaya and Arqut are dead and gone, he may be the only person left on the ship who would be conceivably powerful enough to counteract anything that Waldemar might try to do. It’s also hard to keep secrets from him, which Tinaya recognized from the start. She knew that it was better to keep him on her side than let him end up in opposition.

They get Pronastus up to speed, but they leave a lot out. They take Tinaya’s advice to her son seriously, and just claim to have knowledge of the future. Nobody is a time traveler, and nobody is older than they look. Waldemar is a known future threat who can’t be allowed to assume full control over this ship. That doesn’t mean he can be stopped by any means necessary, and it doesn’t mean his power can be blocked entirely. Pronatus will have to carry a heavy burden, navigating this new mandate with his regular future duties as some kind of official pathfinder for Extremus. He literally asked for it, though. He came to this suite looking to help, and they’re going to take him up on his offer. There is still plenty of time for him to back out. He’s young, and Waldemar has not yet shown himself to be a genuine threat, at least not in this timeline.

It’s time for the press conference, so they head to the briefing room, but separately of course. Audrey is expected to stand next to Waldemar, quietly like a good partner. Silveon has an invite because he’s a friend, but there aren’t enough seats, so he joins the people who are just standing against the back wall. Pronastus told them that he is going to use his pathfinding powers to sneak in, but doesn’t elaborate on what that will entail. Waldemar is not there when they arrive, but everyone else is. Lataran waves Tinaya and Arqut over from the front row, having saved them seats.

Captain Jennings is the last to walk in. He sits on Lataran’s other side, in a seat that is always reserved for him, even if he’s the one standing on stage. He doesn’t know what any of this is about, and he doesn’t know all that much about Waldemar, but due to the latter’s sad history with baby Silvia, he was granted permission to hold this conference. Obviously, they can’t just let anyone stand up there and say whatever they want, but you don’t have to be super famous to make an appointment request either. Children have presented their book reports, and shared interests clubs have used this space to attract new members. It’s always broadcasted, but people don’t have to watch if they don’t want to. It’s usually not quite this full during such mundane announcements and speeches, which speaks to Waldemar’s social magnetism. He’s getting better and better at drumming up intrigue, and people are all terribly curious as to what he’s about to say. Some are members of the press, while others are just well-connected, and work in related fields.

Finally, Waldemar steps out from the backroom, and approaches the microphones. Audrey mousily walks in, and stands obediently at his flank. She’s changed her clothes into something more stylish, and quite frankly, more revealing. He does like her body, even if he can’t form a healthy emotional attachment to her. He clears his throat, and taps on one of the mics. “Thank you all for coming, ladies and gentlemen. I understand that you’re all very busy, and I won’t waste too much of your time. There has been a lot of talk lately about what I’m going to do with my life. I didn’t receive high marks in school, and I did not choose a specialized track. I considered pursuing a career on the crew, even maybe to one day become a captain. In the end, I just wanted to keep my options open. This has led many of you to believe that I have my eyes set on the passenger government. I’m not ruling that out, but it’s also not my concern right now.” Waldemar looks over his shoulder at Audrey.

She breathes deeply through her nose, and forces a smile, but hopefully most people see it as sincere.

Waldemar smiles widely, and looks back at the audience and cameras. “This is about what truly matters...family. I have gathered you all here today to declare my undying love for Audrey Husk, and to announce to the world that we...are getting married.”

Shit.

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Microstory 2429: Capital

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This is the Capital City of Castlebourne. It doesn’t have any other name besides that, which is unusual, since they seem to have an appreciation for word puns in their other names. I suppose they just wanted to be real serious here, which is probably a good thing. Where I’m from in the Goldilocks Corridor, our planet didn’t have a capital. It was just a village where we made soap. That’s really it. Several years back, we were visited by the resistance to the Exin Empire. They wanted to know if any of us were willing to join the movement, and fight alongside them. We didn’t understand why we would even consider that, because for the most part, the empire left us alone. They asked us for soap, we gave them the soap, and they left. They never abused us, or attacked us, or anything. The resistance started educating us, though. They taught us about the other worlds, which were being forced to do other things to serve the Emperor. They showed us images of these other places, involving big machines that could produce their own wares in a fraction of the time. We were stunned. Some of us didn’t believe it. Some of us still don’t, and presumably still live on our home planet. We were making soap by hand. It was hard work, and the only reason we didn’t complain before was because we literally didn’t know that there was any better way. We were intentionally kept in the dark. Well, anyway, no, none of us joined the resistance. We were soap makers, we didn’t know how to fight! But then a few years later, another new ship showed up, and promised to take us somewhere where we wouldn’t have to make soap anymore. We asked them what work we would be doing, and they kind of laughed. No work, they said; we wouldn’t have to work at all. This was another concept that we didn’t have any frame of reference for. You work, it’s what you do. Not even the war-fighting people said anything about a life where we wouldn’t have to work. After some further education, most of us agreed to go with these other people. We flew away, and landed on Castlebourne. They didn’t lie to us, we don’t have to work. It’s taken some adjusting, but we’ve gotten used to just being alive and happy. I still wanna work, though. It still feels like the right thing to do. So I came to Capital to see how I could contribute to the governing body of our new society. I don’t have much experience, but they were all so welcoming to me. I’ve not been assigned anything yet, but they’re working on finding a place. I’m sure it’s difficult since I don’t have any skills. As for the dome itself, it’s gorgeous. Our village was dull and lifeless. I didn’t realize how much of a struggle it was for us just to survive. In contrast, this place has trees and other plant life. Tall buildings with hundreds of people work to make the world a better place for us refugees. For whatever reason, we were allowed to know how to read, but not everyone here had that luxury, yet the government is helping, and they’re doing it in style. I can’t wait to get my new job, and get to come to this beautiful dome every single day for the rest of my life.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 9, 2491

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When Team Matic landed on Castlebourne for the second time, they discovered that automators had constructed tens of thousands of dome habitats in Vendelin Blackbourne’s absence. They believed this to be a runaway computer problem, but it turned out that Hrockas was making use of these domes to turn this planet into the number one destination for all vonearthans. Even so, after Ramses halted production in the middle of development, they never restarted building more domes. They decided to focus on the ones that had already been made. After all, 83,838 should be enough to tide over the whole population of the galaxy for decades, if not centuries. That 0.3 dome, which was left unsealed, was the last ever made, and it now served a special purpose. This was now where the Vellani Ambassador landed after each mission. Passengers were unloaded, and moved into a maze of self-contained quarantine habitats. It was here that they remained for a period of forty hours while they were tested for contamination, and to get them acclimated to this world’s surface gravity.

Fortydome was built away from most others, not particularly intentionally, but they were taking advantage of its remoteness to protect the rest of the population. There were only two ways in or out; via the vactrain, or up through the opening of what the refugees were calling The Bowl. Hrockas was considering changing the official name since it indeed resembled a bowl, and wasn’t technically a dome. At the moment, the Bowl was empty. Team Kadiar deliberately made it so by not executing any missions in the days leading up to Team Matic’s return to the timestream. Number one, it was good to have the whole place cleared out for major cleaning and disinfection protocols, and the original crew may need the ship for their own goals while they were around. This appeared to be the case today.

“They didn’t give you a name?” Leona asked.

“They spoke on behalf of their superior officer,” Romana replied. “They were very cagey about it, but it was quite important to them that Mateo be there on this day, and they insisted that their intentions were pure.”

Leona looked over at her husband, who looked intrigued. “You have heard of lying, right?”

Mateo shrugged. “I’ve heard of taking a leap of faith.”

“I’m not going to stop you from going, but I’m not going with you,” Leona said. “There’s a chance that you won’t even make it on time. Ramses and Hogarth have not yet modified the slingdrive to stay out of the fourth dimension.”

“You’re not gonna stop me, though?” Mateo asked, unconcerned about anything else she mentioned.

Leona looked back at Romana. “The VA is theirs now. We have no alternative. A captain without a ship is no captain at all.”

“You have never been the captain of the vessel,” Mateo reasoned. “You’re captain of a crew. We still need a leader.”

“Everyone’s become so capable,” Leona argued. “You don’t need me anymore.”

“I will never believe that,” Mateo tried to explain.

“I appreciate that. At any rate, if you think you should go, I think so too. “You can’t be alone, though. You might as well feed two birds with one worm, and spend some time with your daughter. There...there’s your order from a bona fide captain.” Leona disappeared.

“I suppose we don’t need an engineer anymore either,” Mateo pointed out.

“No, you don’t,” Mirage agreed from her speakers.

“Still...someone should say it,” he decided. “Yalla.”

Mirage engaged the subfractional engines, and launched into space. Once they were clear of the edges of the dome, she activated the teleporter, and jumped right into orbit. She then fired up the reframe engine, and sent them into interstellar space.

“Wait, why are we going so far away?” Mateo asked. “Can’t we use the slingdrive from anywhere?”

Mirage appeared as a hologram. “There’s a lot of quantum interference from Castlebourne, and I want to get away from the other time travelers. We’ve realized how sensitive it is, so this is protocol. It won’t be long now.”

“What about us?” he pressed. “She and I metabolize temporal energy.”

Romana took off her jacket, and plopped it over the back of a chair as she was walking towards a wall. The door of a standing pod slid open on its own, and she stepped up into it as she spun around 540 degrees like a ballerina. She smiled at her father. “That’s why we’re not gonna be here.” She jerked her head over to what looked like another pod. Before Mateo could walk towards it, he witnessed Romana’s door close back up. She quickly disappeared.

“It’s based on Dubravka’s timeslipping power,” Mirage explained. “She’ll be back in five minutes. “You need to get in yours too.”

Mateo did as he was told, entering his pod, and stepping back out of it what felt like seconds later. They were now orbiting an alien planet, evidently 16,000 light years away. Someone intercepted the Ambassador while they were on a rescue mission last week. They relayed a message containing these coordinates, and reportedly fully agreed to let Tertius erase their memories of the meeting from their minds. Mateo watched it through the floor viewscreens. “I think I’ve been here before.”

“The locals call it Ex-18118,” Mirage revealed, now back to her disembodied self.

“Yeah, I left Korali here. She thought she would be dead by now, but...hopefully that’s not true. If I’m not here to reunite with her, I don’t know who it could be.”

“Her child?” Romana suggested.

“Maybe.” He took a deep breath in preparation. “Exact surface coordinates?” They appeared on screen. “Okay.” He spread his arms wide, and wrapped them around Romana. They stood there in the hug for a few moments before he teleported them down to the rendezvous spot.

They found themselves next to a calming clear pond. This was exactly where he left Korali five decades ago. Did she just never leave? “Thanks for coming.”

It was her, still alive after all this time. She looked just as young as she was when he last saw her. To his knowledge these people didn’t have anti-aging technology or powers. They lived and died, just as people on Earth did in the early 21st century, and before. “How are you...?”

“I’m good.”

“That’s great, but I mean...” He trailed off again.

“I know what you wanted to say. How am I still alive? Still young? Still painfully sexy and gorgeous?” She reached behind her back, and came back with one of the standard codexa that stored the central archives from the stellar neighborhood. There was no way to know whether this one was the core compendium, the grand repository, or the aggregate records. Leona gave her a copy of all three, only leaving the virtual stacks out of Korali’s library. “It’s the compendium,” she said as if reading his mind. “This tells me how to stay practically immortal.”

“That’s possible, all the way out here?”

“As it turns out,” Korali began, “the planets in the Goldilocks Corridor were terraformed with the same plant life that you can find on Earth. I have everything I need, right within a few square kilometers. I just needed the information, which you graciously gave me.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing, just living off of the plant life?”

Korali giggled. “No. I’ve been real busy. Once we felt sufficiently powerful, we left this settlement, and returned to civilization. We staged a coup, and literally took over the whole world. They didn’t have weapons, so it wasn’t even hard.”

“That wasn’t our plan for you.”

“I know, but we had to make changes. We read the aggregate records too. Some interesting stuff in there. As it turns out, Oaksent isn’t special. Everything he made he stole from someone smarter. What he’s done here has been done a million times before, just with some extra scifi shit. Same story, different dick.”

“So you’re against him now? Full-on?”

“I probably hate him more than you do,” Korali contended. “You’re just a visitor. I was actually oppressed. I’ll never be able to thank you enough for opening my eyes to the truth. You didn’t have to, you could have just killed me. That’s what he would have done in your shoes.”

“So, this is some sort of resistance base?” Romana asked.

Korali darts her chin to look at Romana like she didn’t realize she was standing there the whole time. “It’s nice to meet you.” She held out her hand. “Korali Stinger.”

They shook hands. “Security Officer Romana Matic of the Vellani Ambassador.”

“Any relation?”

“I’m his daughter.”

Korali took a moment to absorb the new information. “Hm.” She went back into the conversation. Not exactly.”

“How do you keep them from blowing you out of the sky?” Korali asked.

Korali held the core compendium codex back up. “Like I said, we learned things. Thanks again for that,” she said to Mateo.

He nodded politely.

“Anyway,” Korali went on, “no, we’re not a resistance base, we’re a refuge.”

Both Mateo and Romana were surprised, and suddenly uncomfortable, because it felt like maybe this conversation was a little less friendly than it started. “Oh.”

“Hey, it’s okay. Why are you worried?” Korali laughed. “Do you think I feel threatened by Castlebourne’s involvement in our affairs? Do you think I think there’s not room for the both of us in this galaxy?”

“Is there...” Romana asked, “room?”

“Of course!” Korali replied. “I’m here to ask you for help! Those motherfuckers are constantly attacking us. They don’t even know where you are. This was a great idea when I came up with it, but it’s a lot of goddamn work. You seem to have some magical form of faster-than-light travel that the central archives don’t even speculate about. You show up daily, and leave mysteriously. I think it’s time we retire Ex-18118, and just let you handle it. But I wanna be involved. I’m not planning on retiring myself.”

“Well, that’s out of my hands,” Mateo admitted. “I’m not part of the project. I don’t exist.”

“I’m aware of that,” Korali said. “I asked you here because I told you that I didn’t want us to wait 47 years to see each other again. We obviously failed that, but at least it hasn’t been 48, right?”

“So this is just a social visit?” he asked.

“Pretty much. I’m glad you brought her, though. Are you who I need to speak with?” she asked Romana.

“The rest of the crew didn’t come with us,” Romana answered. “None of us would be able to make such a decision unilaterally.”

“It’s urgent, but I wouldn’t call it an emergency,” Korali determined. “When you’re ready to discuss a partnership, you know where I live. I’m guessing you’re not interested in telling me where you do.”

“Not my call either,” Romana told her.

“We’ll be right back.” Mateo took Romana’s hand, and jumped them back to the ship.

“Mirage, why have you been so quiet?”

“She has technology,” Mirage said as a hologram. “She would be able to hear us.”

“Even though our comms work through bone conduction?” Mateo questioned.

“Even with an inducer,” Mirage began, “there is some sound leakage. She has a device that can detect faint sounds, and greatly amplify them.”

“She’s trying to eavesdrop on us,” Romana noted. “That’s not a good sign. It sounds like she was one of them. Are you sure she’s switched sides?”

“I’m not,” Mateo acknowledged.

“Her allegiances have shifted, but not to us,” Mirage said. “This is a resistance base, not a refuge. I mean, I suppose you could argue that it is, but its purpose is to consolidate control into a new empire.”

“She’s Bronach 2.0?” Mateo shook his head.

“Not from what I can gather. She wants power, like him, but she doesn’t want to oppress people. She believes that Earthan technology and knowledge is the best path forward for the Corridor. She’s probably brought you here so we stop taking all of her people away. You see, every single person we escort to Castlebourne is a potential member of her army. They’re expressing dissatisfaction with their lives, and that’s who she’s been trying to target. They’re the ones that she could theoretically fold into her competing society instead.”

“We’re in her way, but at the same time, she needs us, because Castlebourne currently has over 300,000 people.” Romana started to work it out in her head. “So she won’t attack, but she’s trying to play us.”

“I don’t understand how her strategy will ultimately lead to you transporting people to her planet, but maybe I’m not smart enough,” Mateo said.

“No, I don’t know either,” Mirage said. “She may be intending to change her tune after developing a rapport, and arguing that people from the Goldilocks Corridor belong in the Goldilocks Corridor. I don’t think she knows how far away we are, she may just be guessing that we’re near Earth.”

“This is good to know,” Mateo began, “but I meant what I said down there. This isn’t my decision. We have to go back so you can brief your team.”

“You’re right, but we can’t leave without saying goodbye.”

“I’ll handle that,” Mateo glanced over at the local readout for the slingdrive’s coherence gauge. “Just plot a course to safe territory with the reframe engine so we can wait it out until it’s time to make another jump.”

“Aye, Captain,” Mirage joked.

He smirked, and saluted her.

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Microstory 1643: Fighting Fire With Accelerant

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Like a lot of human cultures that manage to evolve, and survive past their early Great Filters, the people on one version of Earth figured out how to defeat death. They did it both biologically, and technologically, which is standard. The outcome wasn’t as favorable as it is for others. While inventing immortality is in no way inevitable, it’s pretty hard to miss unless you’re deliberately trying to avoid it. If you do, there is every chance that you will run up against your next Great Filter, and die out as a species, so be careful. Still, some people don’t think that death is something that should be overcome, and this side of the argument wins about as often as it loses. This is about an Earth where that didn’t happen initially, but it became that way after they already started to walk up the path of immortality, and actually go pretty far along it. Right around the time that scientists and engineers were coming up with the right solutions, the world was suffering sociopolitically. Leaders were being elected in multiple countries who did not have the best interests of the public at heart. Fascists, is what they were, but unlike their predecessors, they were a lot less obvious about it, and a lot more insidious. They started manipulating laws slowly and quietly, so as not to sound any alarms. While they were doing that, they instigated social unrest, which led voters to believe that the secret fascists were their only hope. Eventually, they just did away with voting altogether, first by postponing it due to extenuating circumstances, and then simply refusing to let go of their power. Meanwhile, longevity researchers were allowed to keep working, but when their work was sufficiently complete, there were significant downsides to releasing it.

Once the rich took notice of the new technology, they took control. The wealth disparity increased drastically, raising the richest of people to almost godlike status, and dropping everyone else to ants. It was bad before, where tyrants could pass their unearned power on to the next generation of tyrants, but now the threat was insurmountable, for the original tyrants could conceivably be able to maintain their power literally forever. A great war began, and nearly resulted in the destruction of the human race. They survived, but everything changed. Instead of finally making longevity treatments and upgrades free for public use, the victors simply made all such enhancements illegal. The standard lifespan was eighty years, and it was against the law to live past it, even if one managed to be healthy enough to surpass it. All seventy-nine-year-olds were executed, and many people were executed before that if the new government felt threatened by them in some other way. They weren’t about to let a fascist plutocracy rule the lands again, and their anger clouded them to the fact that the only way to enforce their will was to become the fascists. Anyone who attempted to show them this reality was—you guessed it—executed. Of course, once a given technology exists, you can’t put that toothpaste back in the tube. Another resistance rose up in response to the consequences of the first one. They lost, and were wiped out, but this only served to galvanize a third resistance to try again. They won this time, and were able to make immortality free for all. Unfortunately, when they looked around, they realized that almost everyone was dead, and it didn’t really matter anymore. Most of the few immortals left standing would later find ways to let themselves die, and leave the uninhabitable world behind.

Microstory 1229: Khuweka Kadrioza

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Out of all the Maramon, which were also known by humans as the white monsters, Khuweka Kadrioza was probably the very best. Even amongst her group of rebels, who were against the war, she was the most compassionate for their progenitors. The Maramon were created by an imaginative child with almost unimaginable power, who didn’t understand the basic concepts of life. For most, life begins, they suffer struggles, they get hurt, and then they die. He was far too young to recognize these truths, and so when his ability to conjure entire beings into existence kicked in, they appeared without them. Maramon are so difficult to kill that later generations didn’t even have a word for death until centuries of development. They didn’t war, they didn’t have traffic collisions. They didn’t have any problems with resources until their population rose to untenable numbers. But they did have strong feelings about the humans, and were convinced that it was their responsibility to deliver any human they encountered to what was essentially their species’ analog to heaven. Again, they didn’t consider this to be death. Humans were their gods, and to them, gods did not belong in the same realm as them, so they needed to be removed. It was only after the first Maramon died that they realized what was truly going on, but by then, their instinct to attack humans was quite nearly impossible to resist. Khuweka had no problem with this resistance. It’s true that she was lucky enough to be born inside the counterculture, which knew that humans were just a different species; one that was genetically not too terribly dissimilar. But there’s evidence to suggest she would have come to the right conclusions on her own, if only to a smaller degree. She didn’t need to spend time with humans to know she didn’t hate them. She never understood this weird veneration-slash-animosity that all her fellow Maramon seemed to feel. It wasn’t hard for her to see individuals as just that; individuals. So she continued to work with the resistance, operating against the Maramon establishment, and protecting what precious few humans they came across. But she also felt apart from everyone else; again, even when she was around other dissenters. She felt fortunate when she followed a group of people out of the universe entirely, and ended up traveling to other worlds, all of which were dominated by humans. Of course, this wasn’t much better, because the people in these other worlds wouldn’t likely accept her either, because she looked scary and threatening. Finally, however, she found the right place to be. She was in a world where all sorts of crazy and unpredictable things happened on the regular. When people saw her, they assumed she was merely the product of something they called a base modification; just a human who had been randomly transformed into something else. It didn’t matter that they didn’t know the truth, because it didn’t bother them either way. Society there quickly lost all sense of prejudgment, and let people’s actions speak for themselves, rather than presuming their character upon first meeting. She was home, and she never looked back to where she came from.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 15, 2192

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As instructed, they didn’t approach any of the people giving each other butterfly signals in 2191. First of all, they didn’t know what it meant. It seemed shady, but it could also be some strange new form of greeting that they weren’t privy to since they only existed one day out of the year. They couldn’t even be sure if the people were trying to say butterfly at all. To communicate the word in sign language, one was meant to wave their hands, as the flapping of wings, which none of them was doing. Vitalie, of course, was entirely convinced that this was some underground resistance movement, presently working against the Arianrhod occupation. They should have done better at keeping themselves informed about the events they missed during their interim years, on the arc, and elsewhere. If any rebels attempted to fight back sometime in the past, they definitely lost, and Ulinthra would have buried it. Now they had too little intelligence to go on. That night, they got together to discuss how they were going to proceed, ultimately deciding to wait until the next year, so they could have a fresh start.

“All right,” Leona began near the end of their latest breakfast meetings. “Brooke, you’re sure these heart trackers aren’t also listening devices.”

“I’m certain,” Brooke answered with a formal nod.

“Then on to Vitalie.”

“On to me?”

“I know your power doesn’t work with Ulinthra, and we think she has some time power blocker, but we’ve not until now had reason to use it elsewhere.”

“We should have tested it at some point,” Ecrin said.

“I’ve tested it,” Vitalie said, as if it were obvious. “I can go anywhere on Earth. It’s not easy, because I think that blocker she uses has minimal effect on me no matter what, but like you said, there was nothing to see.”

“In that case, you think you could stomach a trip to one of the common areas, like a shopping mall, or restaurant?” Leona asked.

“I could,” Vitalie said.

“Do you think you could take one of us with you?”

“I could take both,” Vitalie answered. She looked at Brooke with guilt. “Sorry, I don’t think I could take you.”

“I’m used to it,” Brooke said, not feeling left out.

“Then let’s go back,” Leona said, “and find someone giving what we think is a butterfly sign—”

They were suddenly in the marketplace.

“I didn’t mean right away,” Leona said.

Vitalie shrugged. “No use in waiting.” She took off her shirt, and started swinging it around like a lasso. “We’re invisible, by the way!” she shouted.

“Are our bodies just slumped in our chairs, back at the unit?” Ecrin questioned.

Vitalie pointed at her. “Uh, you fell to the floor. Don’t worry, you’re not hurt, and Brooke is carrying you to the couch.”

“Do you maintain a presence in both locations simultaneously?” Leona asked out of scientific curiosity.

“It’s like I’m wearing bifocals. I just adjust my focus to one or the other. It takes less than a second, and I can always kind of see both at the same time. I don’t think you can do that, though.”

Leona nodded understandingly. “Let’s walk around while we’re invisible. Keep your shirts on, though.”

“They’re not real shirts, Leona,” Vitalie needlessly reminded her.

“Look for a butterfly,” Leona continued. “Call out when you see it.”

It was a half hour before Ecrin saw two people give each other the secret sign. They seemed to be doing it a lot less than they did yesterday. A lot can happen in a year, and there was no way of knowing what these people had been through. Vitalie allowed the man and woman to see them, but no one else, so they could have a secret conversation.

“What does it mean when you do that?” Leona asked of them, trying to be careful about broaching the subject.

“When I do what?” the man asked.

Leona mimicked the movement. “When you interlock your thumbs like that.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He tried to leave, but Vitalie teleported Ecrin’s image right in front of them. “How did you do that?”

“You first,” Ecrin said.

He looked around in paranoia. “Not here.”

Ecrin swept her hand downwards, like a model at a game show. “Lead the way.”

“What are you?” the man asked after leading them to an empty storage room.

“We can’t be here physically,” Vitalie explained. “Ulinthra planted tracking devices on our hearts, so we have astrally project to have this conversation.”

Someone in the early 21st century would have needed that term explained to them, but enough science fiction had become science fact since then. While astral projection was not something other people could do, it was a concept that audiences these days would find easier to grasp. “Who is Ulinthra?”

“That’s Arianrhod’s real name,” Leona said.

His and the woman’s eyes widened as they looked at each other. “How do you know this? Do you use your...ghost powers to spy on her?”

“We go way back,” Leona replied. She looked to the other two, hesitating. But the cat was out of the bag, and they needed allies. “We’re time travelers, and so is she. If you’ve ever tried to do something against her, there’s a reason she always wins. She’s already been through it.”

He lifted his chin to think this over, not sure if he believed it, but wanting to entertain the possibility. “Then we have to be unpredictable.”

Vitalie shook her head. “She’s already lived through this day. Every time you try to be unpredictable, you could just be making the same unpredictable choice you did in the first timeline.” She surrounded the word in airquotes.

“I assume you don’t use real names,” Ecrin said, briefly changing the subject, and recalling her time in the IAC, where everyone had a callsign. “What are your designations?”

“I’m Gatekeeper,” the man said.

“Holly Blue,” the woman finally spoke.

“Are those butterflies?” Vitalie asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“We always suspected Arianrhod to be a fake name,” the woman now said enough for it to be clear she had an Irish accent. “It’s the name of a Celtic goddess, and means silver wheel. Who breaks the butterfly upon the wheel?”

“No one,” Leona understood. “Not if the butterflies fight back.”

“Assuming we believe you about the time travel thing,” Gatekeeper tried to begin, but was stopped when Vitalie walked right through the wall, and soon thereafter appeared through the other wall. “Okay, that’s pretty convincing, unless we’re having the same delusion.” He looked to Holly Blue, who indicated that she had seen it too. “You mean to tell me Arianrhod can go back in time, but only one day?”

“It’s not that she can do it,” Leona explained. “It’s that she has to. She experiences every day twice. And only twice. She can’t control it.”

“Well, what hope would we have?”

Vitalie then started in on the explanation of what they were doing with the penny; how their only hope of changing the timeline was by using Ulinthra.

The two revolutionaries understood the logic, and recognized the flaws. “What did you flip today?” they asked.

“We didn’t flip today,” Leona replied. “Our biggest problem now is that we don’t know what we can do against her. And we’re afraid of what she’ll do in retaliation. Whatever move we make, it has to be a final blow, because the consequences last time were too great.”

“But you said that was reversed?”

“They’re not gonna reverse the next one,” Ecrin said.

“We may be able to get something done,” Vitalie started, “if we work together. Now that we know about you, we stand a chance. How many are there in your group?”

Holly Blue and Gatekeeper looked at each other again. “Three,” he finally said.

The two of us, and one other,” Holly Blue added.

“How is that possible?” Leona asked. “Only three of you signed up?”

“Lots signed up,” Gatekeeper said. “They’re all dead now.”

“You act like you already know each other. Why the hand signal?”

“It’s not just to prove we’re rebels. We also use it to indicate that we need to talk, and that the coast is clear to do so.”

“Where’s the last one right now?”

“Monarch is our designated survivor,” Gatekeeper explained. “No one knows who they are. He or she stays out of sight until something goes wrong. If we all die, it’s up to them to start it back up again, which they’ll probably soon have to do. You seem like lovely people, but you’re still just three recruits.

“Barely recruits,” Holly Blue noted.

“Isn’t there something else you can do?” Gatekeeper asked. “Someone you can talk to? You said there are other time travelers. Can they help? Can you contact them?”

Leona knew a few people with potential. Unfortunately, Ulinthra never let her touch land, so she couldn’t dig a grave for Mr. Halifax. The Forger might be willing to help? Ecrin probably knew many choosers, so this was a good question for her to answer. She looked at her inquisitively, completely forgetting that Ecrin hadn’t been involved in her own personal thought process.

“What?” Ecrin asked.

“Do you know someone? Maybe you know someone that we don’t? Maybe someone that Ulinthra doesn’t know?”

“Ulinthra has the memory of countless versions of herself, from indefinite timelines. I don’t know who she knows. There may be someone, though. You’re not gonna like it, but he may be our best chance. There’s one thing we’ve not yet discussed, but I think we all know it needs to be on the table.”

“You’re talking about killing her,” Vitalie realized.

“I’m not killing anyone,” Leona said. “Not again.”

“That’s what I’m saying. You wouldn’t have to. When I was working for the coalition, there was a team we came across. They were deadly travelers, and we spent a lot of resources trying to catch them. I stepped into the field myself to work on it, even though I was mostly in administration.”

“Who is it?” Vitalie was intrigued.

“The leader is called The Maverick; his team, The Mavericks. Not very original.”

Leona nodded her head solemnly. “I met one of them once. Darrell, or something. He helped Gilbert go back into the extraction mirror, for his death.”

“Darrow,” Ecrin corrected. “We would probably want to deal with him only, since he can be reasoned with. The other two can be rather..insufferable. But we all have to agree to it, including Viceroy.”

“Viceroy?” Leona didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Yeah, the other one in our group...since we’re using butterfly codenames?”

She meant Brooke. “Right. Viceroy, yes. We’ll ask her, but I don’t see her taking issue with it. I suppose I always knew it would have to end like this. If the powers that be don’t step in, we may have no way of getting her to Beaver Haven.”

Vitalie was totally on board, as were Holly Blue and Gatekeeper, who assumed that was what everyone was going for anyway. After going over some secret protocols with their two new allies, the three of them jumped back into their own bodies. They needed a couple of things to reach the Maverick, though, so Ecrin went out in physical form to shop. She came back with a cloak, and a dagger. She hung the cloak up on the door, and used the dagger to cut a symbol into it twice. They looked like bird tracks. Once she was finished, she jabbed the dagger into the cloak, sticking it into the door.

Within seconds, the cloak started billowing out, until the figure of a man appeared inside of it. He reached behind him and pulled the dagger from his back before turning around. He smiled and shook his head when he saw it was Ecrin. “I bet you just loooved doing that.”

“I don’t love that you’re here,” Ecrin said. “But we need your help. We just don’t know when.”

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The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 14, 2191

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           As Leona and her friends were frozen in place, watching the screen that was just playing the disappearance of entire arcology hanging tower, four other people stepped up beside them. It was the Warrior, Nerakali Preston, another man, and another woman.

“This is going to be a lot of work,” said the man.

“Did the entire planet see it?” Nerakali asked.

“We cut the stream before it could reach Mars,” the Warrior replied, “but we think it got as far as Luna.”

“Shit.”

“What’s going on here?” Leona asked them.

“Miss Matic, it’s nice to see you again,” the man said to her. “When I learned a few of our people were so close to the incident, we wanted to drop by first, and make sure you were okay.”

“We’ve not met for me yet.”

“We have,” he said with a smile. “I’m The Repairman. Your memories have been messed with, but it’s already happened for you.”

The other woman presented her hand. “And I’m The Stitcher. He and I do pretty much the same thing. The work just sometimes takes more than one person.”

“This time we need to the whole team.”

“The whole team for what?” Vitalie questioned. “What is it you do?”

“We fix noticed temporal anomalies,” the Repairman began to explain. “When normal humans witness something outside their comprehension of the way the laws of physics should work, we step in and make them forget that it ever happened.”

The Stitcher continued, “historically, it’s been enough for Nerakali to modify people’s memories. With something so pervasive, like this, or the Deathspring, it requires more drastic measures. Which is where we come in.”

“Drastic measures, like...?” Ecrin trailed off cautiously.

“Quantum overlap. We can merge realities. There’s a microreality out there where Ulinthra doesn’t massacre thousands of people, and those people don’t slip into a massive portal. We have to sort of...borrow that chunk of timeline, so people move on without a care. It’s not always pretty, but we try to make it as seamless as possible.”

“And Hogarth?” Brooke asked.

“Hogarth?” the Stitcher repeated?

“One of the Durune precursors,” Nerakali informed her.

“Ah, yes. Was she in the tower?”

“At the very bottom,” Leona said.

“If she wasn’t on one of the top floors, then she would still have been there when the tower fell. The Savior only rescued those who were in danger of people killed by the weapons,” the Warrior explained.

“Well, where did it go?” Ecrin asked.

The four visitors looked to each other. “We don’t actually  know,” the Repairman ended up saying.

“How could you not know?”

“There are other forces at play,” the Stitcher said.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Nerakali began, “it’s unlikely the people in that tower are dead. Very few choosers would be capable of generating a portal that large. Whoever it was wanted them alive.”

“Yes, but for what?” Leona asked, knowing she would receive no answer.

“We have to go,” the Warrior said definitively. “When you return next year, you four will be the only ones with any memory of this. We’ll even erase Ulinthra’s, so she doesn’t try it again.”

“If she doesn’t remember punishing us, she’ll just punish us some other way,” Leona pointed out. “Actually probably the same way, with some other tower.”

Nerakali shook her head. “She won’t. She’ll think she’s already done something to you, and I promise it won’t be as bad.”

Much to both hers and Nerakali’s surprise, Leona gently took Nerakali by the arm while she was trying to leave. “What do you know?”

Nerakali’s eyes darted towards the Warrior, who would have already killed her in the past of his timeline, or he wouldn’t have had her time power today. He didn’t look sorry about it, and she didn’t seem to have any sore feelings against him either. “Everything. This won’t be the last time you see me, so to stop you from asking me that question yet again, know this one thing.” She paused, struggling with the truth. I used to live in another dimension. The first thing I learned when I fell to your plane of existence...was how I was going to die. I’ve always been at peace with it, and have really just been going through the motions.” She smiled warmly, and tipped an imaginary hat. “I’ll see you on The Warren.”

“Anatol,” the Stitcher said, “please open a portal for us. We’ll start with Kansas City, and work our way through the spiral.”

 The Warrior drew a black hole in the middle of the room, through which the four of them disappeared.

The reality correction team was not lying when they said Leona, Ecrin, Brooke, and Vitalie would be the only ones to remember what happened to the hanging tower come next year. Common knowledge was that a software error caused one of the Panama arcs to be built with one fewer hanging towers than others of the same style. People accepted this completely, and just ignored the asymmetrical blank space on the bottom of the platform where it was meant to be.

Ulinthra seemed to be under the impression that she punished the group for Harrison’s murder by taking away a few of their amenities, like their synthesizers, as well as embedding tracking devices on their hearts. She didn’t explicitly say this, but these devices were almost certainly capable of killing them if they got out of line. Still, the group took a vote, and decided to recommence their plans to work against her by flipping a penny every day. Leona called Ulinthra to confirm what they were allowed to do, and where they were allowed to go, but of course, this was just a way of forcing Schrödinger’s cat to make up its damn mind about whether it was dead or not. When Vitalie flipped the coin, it landed on heads. This left the question of what they were going to actually do. It wasn’t like they had created a list of offensive maneuvers. Their only move was to steal the teleporter gun plans. They did still have those, but since their movements were now being tracked, it would be nearly impossible to access the nearest synthesizing machine, and build another one. Plus, they were now missing their engineering ringer, Hogarth, and Leona didn’t have the time or resources to make a full-functioning gun.

“There’s only one thing we can do from our current position,” Vitalie said.

“And what would that be?” Leona asked, having no clue what she was talking about.

“We have to tell the truth,” Vitalie replied.

“The truth about what?”

“About everything. About us, about her, and what she can do. We have to tell the world what we are. Isn’t that against some time law?” Vitalie asked.

“In a way, it is,” Leona said. “We’ve talked about this. While there is no formal law prohibiting revealing our powers—which is why you’ve always been free to tell your loved ones, if you so wished—if you take it too far, Beaver Havens steps in.”

Vitalie nodded once. “That’s exactly what we need.”

“Brooke had it right before. We would be locked up, instead of Ulinthra, and she would be free to continue.”

“Right now, Earth is not my concern,” Vitalie said. “Right now, we are the ones in the most danger. At the moment, I would rather be in prison than this arc.”

“Are we really considering sending ourselves to jail?” Brooke wasn’t convinced. “Even if that’s the safest for us, that doesn’t change the fact that we’ve exposed all choosers and salmon. There’s a reason they would lock us up.”

“We could find a way to threaten exposure. We’ll do just enough to get their attention, but not actually say anything,” Vitalie suggested.

“I don’t see how we could fake it like that, and besides, Brooke can’t go,” Leona reminded them. “Anything we try like that will automatically exclude her.”

“Well, don’t make decisions on my account,” Brooke groaned. She was getting tired of feeling like a burden.

“I’m all out of ideas,” Vitalie said, literally throwing up her arms. “I came up with the penny thing. I guess I didn’t consider what we were meant to actually do on head days. If you’re not willing to go to prison, then I can’t even.”

Leona looked over to Ecrin. “You’ve been quiet. What is your opinion on this whole thing?”

“Do you think the penny thing is just dumb?” Vitalie asked as well.

“No,” Ecrin replied clearly. “We have to be able to take action, and the penny is our best vehicle for that. But Brooke can’t go to prison, and I’m sorry, Brooke, but we are going to take that into account with everything we try. You guys are missing the obvious answer, though.”

Leona tried to think. “What would that be?”

“You keep looking for some time power solution. But look at where we are. No one in Panama wants to be controlled by the Arianation. In fact, most of the Arianation on the whole wants nothing to do with her. It’s just that her followers are too powerful.”

“Okay...”

“We need to connect with the resistance movement. The human resistance movement; the ones who don’t know she has powers, and are trying to get rid of her.”

“Great. Do you know where they are, or who they are? Because I haven’t heard a single mention of such a group.”

“I don’t know anything about them,” Ecrin admitted, “but I know they must exist. They couldn’t not. There must be a way to find them, though. All we need to do is figure out who is hurting the most from her being here.”

“I’m sure they do exist,” Leona agreed. But they would be squashed in a second, because Ulinthra will always see it coming. Always”

“That’s because they don’t have our penny advantage.” She smiled at Vitalie. “We find them, we tell them—and only them—what we know. Beaver Haven won’t care if we just do that. We don’t even have to be there. The humans will do the work for us. In one year’s time, this could be all over.”

“Or it isn’t over,” Brooke argued. “Because even without her power advantage, Ulinthra still has a lot of loyalty. Overthrowing governments is always difficult.”

“I think we should try,” Ecrin said.

“I do too,” Vitalie said, always ready for a fight.

Leona didn’t see how this could make any difference. People had been fighting against her this whole time, and even Ulinthra wasn’t invulnerable. She only ever lived through each day twice, so once she gathered all intelligence on her enemies, everything would be altered as soon as she made a single move. Once she changed the timeline, she would lose that foreknowledge. Yet she was still not only in as much control as she had been, but more. In just the last few years, she was already making moves against the smaller Class D arcstates, like Rwanda, and Ecuador. She was showing no chance of slowing, and her opposition was showing no hope of keeping her at bay. “Brooke, if you agree with me, the penny will need to be the tiebreaker.”

Brooke stared into space for a pretty long time. “No need.” She looked at Leona with a hint of embarrassment. “I think we should go for it.”

“Okay,” Leona said, knowing she had been beat, and deciding not to argue the matter further. “Since they took our synthesizers anyway, we have a great opportunity to do some recon. Let’s go shopping, in pairs. Don’t talk to anyone, don’t ask anyone how they feel about the Arianrhod regime. Just observe. One thing we’ve been missing these several days is social interaction. We need to know better what it’s like to live in one of the arcs when you don’t know the king personally. Look for recurring tattoos, or multiple people wearing the same ribbons on their belt loops. It could be anything; just as long as it’s suspiciously prevalent, but not glaringly conspicuous. Again, do not approach anyone. We’ll report back to each other at the end of the day, and decide what to do about it tomorrow, if anything.”

They went out to look for clues, and returned that night having all noticed the same literal sign; the one for butterfly.

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