The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 19, 2398

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Leona got lucky back in the timeline that they used to just call Reality Two. K-State University assigned her a roommate for her first semester in college, which was the spring of 2018. Andile Mhlangu was a year younger, but already a sophomore, having skipped the third and seventh grades. Her former roommate was a night owl partier, who didn’t like how strict Andile was with her schedule. Andile was actually okay with the incongruent living arrangement. She grew up with four siblings, so she knew how to study and sleep amidst a lot of noise, and a little chaos. The old roommate felt bad, though, and got tired of tiptoeing around, so she decided to go live on her own. She reportedly got herself a note from her doctor, claiming to have social anxiety, which is what allowed her to secure a single dorm room, despite having missed the registration deadline by months.

Andile, meanwhile, needed a roommate of her own, or she would have to start paying for a double as a single, which is kind of a bullshit rule that the university shouldn’t have had. Fortunately, Leona was there to fill in after graduating from high school a semester early. The two of them didn’t become great friends, but they got along very well. They kept pretty much the exact same schedule, maintained comparable work loads, and had no use for the noise. They occasionally had dinner together, but didn’t know each other’s secrets, or anything like that. They continued to be roommates for the next three years after that. Andile decided to stay there for grad school, so they moved off campus together. Even then, they weren’t great friends, but Leona didn’t want to risk being assigned someone crappy, and Andile still couldn’t afford to pay full rent anywhere.

After Leona received her bachelor’s degree, she was accepted to grad school in Colorado—once more starting in the spring—so she had too move out of the apartment, but she agreed to pay Andile her half of the rent for the next semester anyway. They remained connected through social media after that, but still from a healthy distance. A few years later, Andile paid back the extra rent, with unnecessary interest, after getting a great job at a prestigious laboratory. Then she disappeared; fell completely off the map. There were two theories: one, that she was abducted or dead, or two, that she was working for the government, or some other clandestine organization. The second option wasn’t all that crazy. She was sure smart enough to be doing something like that, and she was in a good position to be recruited. When Leona became a time traveler in 2028, she theorized that Andile was, in fact, a time traveler as well. It might have been true, but no one she met along the way had heard of her, and the investigation ran cold, especially since she was so busy with her own stuff. Then the timeline reset, and the new version of Leona didn’t even meet Andile in the first place. She hadn’t thought much about her until yesterday when Kivi dropped her name.

Winona was surprised to hear from Leona, and not be yelled at about something, but not surprised when she heard that it was for a favor. Then she was surprised again when she learned that the favor was providing Leona with Andile’s location, but quickly realized that it made sense. Senator Morton locked up Andile for a reason, and while the Honeycutts were apparently not cognizant of everything that Morton knew, it was entirely plausible that her imprisonment was for the same reason as the team’s. There are at least three sides to this war, including Leona’s, the Honeycutts’, and Morton’s. How those two relate to one another remains a mystery that Winona refuses to divulge at this time. That wasn’t good enough for Leona, who demanded something for all the trouble. Winona agreed with this assessment, and was half-prepared to comply with the request to find Andile, but half not. She was reluctant to hand over the information, citing a desire to protect Andile from further disruption of her life. The plan was evidently to get her out of town, much in the way a witness protection agency would. Leona has a hard time believing that.

It’s taken a day, but Winona has finally come through, and now Leona and Mateo are at the safehouse. They open the gate for the really tall front yard fence, and knock on the door not sure what kind of person they’ll find on the other side, or how she’ll react to this development. Mateo ran into Andile once when he came to visit Leona that first semester, but that was well after he started jumping through time, and again, this was in an old reality. Neither of them expects her to recognize either of them, but especially not him.

Andile smiles when she opens the door, as casually as she might if she were expecting a friend, but not for a few hours, once she’s finished cooking a meal. “He told me an old friend would be stopping by.”

“Who told you that?” Leona questions.

“This guy. He called himself a seer.”

That makes a bit of sense, but it doesn’t answer their real question.

“How did you get here? Did the seer tell you how to travel?”

“Let’s talk alone.” Andile pulls her inside gently. She offers them a seat on the couch. “I didn’t believe him when he first approached me, but he started out making simple, yet hard to explain, predictions, so I started to believe. I started to trust him. He didn’t tell me that I would end up in this world—there was a lot he didn’t tell me, in the end—but the last thing he said was, once you’re safe in the brown house, an old friend will be stopping by. The next day, I found myself in this reality, and now I’m sitting in here. It’s brown, wouldn’t you say?”

“You found yourself in this reality...in the year 2398?” Leona asks.

Andile thinks that’s funny. “Oh, no. Noooo. It was 2026, just like it was where we’re from.”

“So how did you get here?” Mateo asks, “Or have you just lived long enough?”

“I only spent a few years there. My friend brought me the rest of the way,” Andile says cryptically. “It wasn’t 370 years, like it was for most people. To us, it was more like 370 days.”

Now that is a surprising response. “Andile, who is your friend?”

Andile hesitates for a moment, but resolves to answer. “Leona, it...it was you.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 18, 2398

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Once they received a message from Leona, telling them that she had managed to get on board The Olimpia all the way in Russian waters, Marie asked the others to not say anything about what happened to them. The whole ordeal with being locked up in a fishbowl for three days was a fluke, and it would just cause needless concern. They were rescued, and all back safe and sound. There was no need to bring it up again.

The rest of the team has returned now. Leona figured it was possible to duplicate anything almost indefinitely as long as they didn’t completely destroy the original object. He shouldn’t need to cut a hole in the center of the lantern. If he just poked the base of it, a new one would be born, and they would both retain their powers. As it turned out, this wasn’t one hundred percent true. Possibly as some kind of inherent function of the quantum duplication knife, each lantern stabbed loses its special ability to illuminate system flaws. What it doesn’t lose, however, is its temporal energy. It’s still stored in there, just unusable, like tearing out the processor in a cell phone, but keeping the battery intact. Temporal energy is amazing and insane, and capable of teleporting them to the other side of the world, but it’s also just a really great power source. The teleporter that Ramses designed only works on immortality water, and it’s not capable of processing raw energy. So they had to take the long way around, but they were able to do it in the air, and that was better than driving up into Russia, and making their way over the land to Finland.

They walk into the condo, happy to be seeing each other again. Marie, Heath, and Kivi are sitting at the kitchen counter. Leona starts to get a weird feeling about it. They all look fine; too perfect, really. Sitting there like this, they’re reminding her of the kids in a teen comedy about a rager they threw before having to clean everything up in preparation for their parents’ return. “What did you do?” she asks them.

“What are you talking about?” Marie asks.

“Something happened,” Leona presses. “What was it?”

“Everything’s fine, we’re glad you’re back,” Marie insists.

Kivi is about to explode. “We were captured by some black ops guys, and taken to this glass prison cell in the middle of a warehouse, where they left us for days—probably to die of starvation, or perhaps even boredom—until Winona Honeycutt came in with, like, an entire army, and took out all the bad guys, and rescued us from being electrocuted by a menacing scowling man, who I guess just wanted to cut his losses, because I’m sure he knew that Senator Honeycutt would want to have us back.”

Leona stares at Kivi for a minute, then turns her attention to Marie. “Why are you keeping things from me?”

“I just wanted our family back. I was afraid that you would go back to the Capital, and we would end up being separated again. I know I’m the cause of the latest issue, with the Fountain of Youth. I just wanted to fix it. I didn’t think it through.”

“Oh, and we met a new friend,” Kivi keeps going. “Her name is Andile, and she—”

“Andile Mhlangu?” Leona interrupts.

“Yeah,” Heath confirms, “do you know her?”

Despite his low intelligence, and poor memory, Mateo actually recognizes and remembers the name. “She was Leona’s college roommate...like, a dozen timelines ago.”

Microstory 1872: Losing Sleep

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I was a little monster as a baby. I sometimes kept my mama up all night and all day. The doctors could explain the crying—it wasn’t much more than a normal baby’s—but they couldn’t explain why I never went to sleep. Except I was crying more, because unlike most people, nothing could stop me. According to her stories, she hired a nanny to take shifts. She could have raised me on her own if not for my little peculiarity. As I grew up, I started figuring out how to express myself through other noises besides screaming, but I never did learn how to sleep. In my school, the younger children would take naps. The teacher ended up moving me over to the bookshelves, and gave me a little reading lamp, so I could keep myself busy. I wasn’t the only one who needed the extra accommodations. A boy in my class also didn’t need to nap, but in his case, it’s because he slept all the way through the night. I called him my opposite, but my mother noted that a true opposite would be in some kind of coma. There’s just something different about the way my brain works that makes it so I don’t need any sleep to function. Not only that, but I can’t sleep at all. I’ve never done it even once, which is sad, because the whole dreaming thing that people talk about sounds positively fascinating. I asked the boy to tell me his dreams, so I could live vicariously through him; which is a word we learned through a book that had no place in that classroom. He said he couldn’t remember his dreams, but the next day, he was able to regale me with his stories. He said just wanting to remember them made it so that he now could. Years later, he would admit to me that this had been a lie. He had come up with the stories on his own, because he didn’t want to disappoint me. That was so him, from start to finish.

College was difficult for me, because the schoolwork was so easy. Well, it wasn’t easy, but I had more time to study than the other students. Everybody hated me, but it’s not like I was an overachiever. I was just bored, and as much as they liked to party, at some point, they would have to go to bed, and I would still be up, so I had to do something to pass the time. I tried to have a roommate my first semester, but that didn’t work out, because I would disturb her sleep, and that wasn’t fair. Once the boy and I were married and living together, my situation saved us a little money. I was able to be productive for more hours of the day, and hell, he only needed a twin bed. Anyway, my coworkers were as jealous as my classmates. It’s just that I found it easier to do my paperwork in the dead of night when the hemisphere was asleep, and not work so hard during regular business hours. Then came the time for us to grow our family, and I was hesitant, because there was no way to know what kind of child would come out of me. Would they enjoy the same benefits? Would they have some kind of corrupted version of it that left them tired all the time? I didn’t think we could risk it, and my husband was okay with that. We chose to adopt instead, which was no problem, because there are so many other good reasons to adopt. We went to the agency to submit our application, and after some time, we were selected for a child who we were told required special needs. For reasons they couldn’t understand, this little girl never slept. Obviously, we knew we had to make her part of our family. I mean, who better than me to raise a woman like that? It was decades before science progressed enough for us to take a DNA test. Wouldn’t you know it, she was an exact match. I mean exact. I still don’t know how, but she is my twin.

Microstory 1540: First and Last Blood

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I have never been to the ________ before. Or should I say that I’ve never been to any sort of medical ________ for any reason. I haven’t even ever needed to go to the ________ nurse for a tummy ________. I’m twenty-five years ________, and I’m only now starting to realize how ________ that is. It’s not something most ________ are aware of; how often they don’t have ________ problems. I should have kept it to myself, but my old college ________ is in town, telling me about her recent ________ surgery, and it came up. Now she’s ________ by me. She tells me she’s seen this movie, and that I have super____. I’m supposed to start walking through ________, and lifting ________ above my ________. I don’t know about all that, but if it’s true, I don’t suppose it could ________ to let her cut my ________ real quick—or try to, anyway. If I’ve just been lucky all my ________, then the worst that can happen is I need to wrap the wound up in a ________. But if she’s right, who knows what will become of my ________? Maybe I should be a ____hero. I can’t believe I’ve never thought to ________ this before. We leave the ________, and head to my ________, because we don’t want anyone seeing us do it. She grows more excited the ________ we get, and she can barely contain herself by the ________ we reach my door. I roll my ________, and take a kitchen ________ out of the ________. I hand it to ________, and before I can lay down some ________ rules, she slides the ________ across my ________. It ________. I don’t know what I ________ was going to ________, but not this. This hurts. This is what ________ feels like? ________ feel this all the time? I have to say that I’m not a fan. She seems even more ________ than me, and that’s saying a lot, because this is my first ________ ever. I tell her it’s okay, that we can ________ it up, but she’s watching the ________ flow out of my ________, and she can’t handle it. She desperately tries to cover it up with a paper ________, but it soaks through, so she grabs another, and another. Then she uses a ________ towel, but it’s no good either. She calls ________ services, but I don’t think they’re going to make it here in time. I don’t know how much blood the human ________ is meant to hold, because of course, that’s not something I’ve ever considered before, but this looks about that amount. The ________ is drenched in a matter of minutes, as is much of my living room ________. She apologizes, and tells me she was ________ about everything. I still don’t understand what’s happening. Is this why I’ve never been ________ until now? Am I actually more susceptible to injury then other ________, and some unseen force has simply been protecting me this ________ time? I’ve never just not been hurt before, but I’ve never gotten close. I never fell off my ________, or ran into a ________ ________. This must be why. Something out there has been guid____ me through life just so this very thing wouldn’t happen, and now I’ve gone and ________ it. The last drop of blood leaks out of the unstoppable cut, and the world turns black.

Microstory 1382: Social Psychology

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Roommate: Oh my Gosh, this is so weird.

Psych Major: It doesn’t have to be weird.

Roommate: So, you want me to make up new problems?

Psych Major: Yes, don’t talk about any real problems. I am not a licensed therapist yet, so it’s not really within my purview to ask you about your real life. I mean it, you’re supposed to come up with something new. It’s okay if you have to take a little time to come up with a good cover story.

Roommate: Okay, just give me a minute.

Psych Major: We can do this later tonight, or even tomorrow, if you would rather. It’s not due until Friday. I do need some time to organize a little presentation.

Roommate: No, I’ve got it. Go ahead.

Psych Major: Okay. So, what brings you in today?

Roommate: I assassinated the king of South Canada, and I’m feeling really depressed about it.

Psych Major: Okay...

Roommate: Ha, I can come up with something more practical.

Psych Major: No, this is good practice. Except for the fact that South Canada doesn’t exist—which is probably for the best, honestly—that’s a technically possible scenario, just maybe not in our universe. So. Tell me. Why did you feel the need to assassinate the king?

Roommate: I asked him for help irrigating my corn, and he refused, so our crops failed, we couldn’t sell enough, and my youngest son died of starvation.

Psych Major: So, are you depressed about having assassinated the king, or are you more depressed about your son?

Roommate: Hm. I guess that’s a good point. I didn’t care for the king, and I’m glad he’s dead. But I loved, and miss, my son.

Psych Major: So, if you could go back in time, you would do it all again, just like that?

Roommate: I would, yeah. I wasn’t caught, of course, so I stand by my actions.

Psych Major: Do you have any other violent thoughts? Are there other people you feel deserve to die?

Roommate: Ah, I’m not falling for that trickery. I know you can’t report me to the police, because the crime has already happened, but you would be free to do so if I admit to the intention to commit some crime later.

Psych Major: That’s not quite how the law works, but I see your point. Still, ignoring what you’ve done in the past, if you really do feel like you need to hurt someone, perhaps we can work on channeling your frustrations, so they come out in more productive ways. Have you tried talking to these people who frustrate you?

Roommate: Not really.

Psych Major: I want you to pretend that Penka Penguin, sitting on that shelf, is your worst enemy. This is a judgment free zone, so tell Penka whatever you want. What would you want to say to her that you wouldn’t be able to without getting in trouble?

Roommate: I would look her in the eye, and tell her how irritating she can be, and how I feel like I can’t be myself around her.

Psych Major: I’m sorry to hear that. What does she do to make you feel this way?

Roommate: Well, she’s always talking about her classes, and how rewarding it is to be learning all these things, and I just feel inadequate because I’m only a business major.

Psych Major: You’re a business major.

Roommate: Yes.

Psych Major: No, I mean you, Roommate, are actually a business major. You’re meant to be making this up.

Roommate: Oh, right. I’m a...art history major.

Psych Major: Roommate, do I make you feel like what you’re studying isn’t good enough?

Roommate: I was just playing a character. I slipped up when I mentioned a fact that’s true about the real me.

Psych Major: I feel like maybe you slipped up when you started talking about how someone you know irritates you because she’s always talking about her classes.

Roommate:  Psych Major, I don’t want to kill you.

Psych Major: I’m glad to hear that, but maybe there’s a little bit of truth to what you said?

Roommate:  ...

Psych Major: We need to have a discussion. I don’t think being a business student makes you inadequate, and if I’ve done anything to make you feel this way, we should talk about it. Not a therapy session, but a real talk between us.

Roommate: It’s not that big a deal, and it’s certainly not worth failing your psychology assignment. 

Psych Major: I won’t fail, I’ll just cut this part out.

Roommate: I really don’t want to kill you.

Psych Major: What you said is what we in the business call parapraxis. It’s when your subconsciousness rises to the surface, and you accidentally vocalize your true feelings, even if doing so could damage your social health. Obviously the assassin bit was just a fabrication, because you having access to a king is an absurd notion. But then when I asked you about other people you’re having trouble with, your gut reaction was to think of the honest answer to the question. Then you said it out loud before you remembered we were pretending.

Roommate: That all sounded really smart. You’re kind of proving my point here, but I recognize that you’re not doing it on purpose. So let’s talk.

Microstory 1155: Jai Quelen

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When Jai Quelen was in the United States Army, he was always looking out for his fellow soldiers. Of course he did this in the physical sense, because he had a duty to do so, but he went beyond that, and protected their ethical standing. He was always concerned with filling out reports properly, and making sure the reality of a given situation was fully understood by those who were not there to witness it. This could have been annoying to them, but he wasn’t overbearing or nitpicky—he was a true advocate—so they were grateful for him. After he had served, he began college, and worked towards his undergraduate degree in Philosophy, with a focus on Ethics. Shortly before graduation, he was asked to participate in a presentation at a local middle school, to show kids that military service wasn’t only about guns and bombs. An eighth grader there named Cassidy Long took a liking to him, though of course, it was literally just a middle school crush. The feelings were not at all reciprocated, and in fact, Jai didn’t even notice she wasn’t really interested in service. He didn’t think much of it; meeting a 13-year-old when he was in his mid-20s, but he nearly killed himself when he encountered her again barely four years later—after she turned 18, and started working as a stripper—and developed feelings. He had moved on with his life by attending law school, earning his J.D. Degree, and then landing a job at Veterans Affairs. He wasn’t just surprised to see Cassidy again, but also that he recognized her. The age difference alone would have been enough to make him uncomfortable, but the fact that he knew her when she was so young was enough to push him over the edge. He had his service weapon against his temple when his roommate came home early, and got him some help. He spent a year in a mental health facility before he felt well enough to reenter the world. As it turned out, his attraction towards Cassidy was the least of his worries, and his counselors encouraged him to accept the fact that everyone who is at one point 18 years old was, at another point, also 13 years old. He moved on with his life yet again, deciding that the best thing to do was go back to school, and try to earn his PhD. Fate intervened once more, however, when he and Cassidy crossed paths a third and fourth time. He saw her in the grocery store, while she later noticed him in line for concessions at the movie theatre. They only learned of the coincidence when she connected with him on social media, and engaged him in conversation. Through all of this, Jai’s primary problem was loneliness. He was never that close with his family, and they did not approve of his career choices, which was how he ended up in Lawrence, Kansas in the first place. He finally let go of his hangups, and the two of them entered into a nonsexual exclusive relationship. They were living together, sharing rent and chores, and even sleeping in the same bed together, but they were not having sex. The nature of their unconventional relationship made things quite difficult for him when Cassidy disappeared from their temporary hotel room without a trace. Fortunately, that old roommate happened to be a practicing lawyer named Kyle K. Stanley.

Microstory 870: The Scoots

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Name a sleeping disorder, and I got it. Sleep apnea? Yeah. Insomnia? Sure. Kleine–Levin syndrome? Not sure what that is, but I bet I have it too. So it was no surprise when I woke up this morning, and headed straight for the fudge emporium, for no reason. I don’t even like fudge, so I wouldn’t have gone there if I were in right mind. I wasn’t sleep-walking, but I wasn’t fully awake either. It was more like someone was driving my body and all I could do was watch. When I got there, I was still tired as hell, so even though this mind intruder wanted to explore, I wasn’t capable of taking two more steps. Fortunately a fleet of those disabled-person scooters was sitting there by the entrance, beckoning to me. I sat down in one of them and started driving around. People looked at me and laughed, and I couldn’t figure out how they knew I didn’t really need this. Sure, some of them saw me walk in, but this place is giant, there was no way that everyone knew. I ignored them, and tried to get to the other side of this ordeal in one piece. I spent about an hour there, going through every single aisle at least twice; once one way, and once the other. Finally my mind driver let us head to the exit, no fudge in hand. When I got home, I tried to tell my roommate what had happened, but he just laughed too. “That wasn’t a fudge emporium, dumbass,” he said. “That was a sewage treatment facility, and you were on a forklift. They weren’t laughing at you, they were trying to get you to stop. I think the only reason you got out of there without being arrested was because you didn’t end up hurting anyone.” When I asked him how he knew all this, he gave me this weird look. “You’re not wearing clothes, dude. My uncle, Rob works there, and he livestreamed that shit. You need to get some help.”

Microstory 823: Bear to Cross

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Something you might not have known is that not all bears like to swim, or are very good at it. Years ago, I was trekking through the wilderness in Siberia when I came across this very small kamchatka brown here. He was trying to fish in the river as I was passing by. We waved to each other, but neither one of us was there to make friends, so we didn’t stop to talk, or anything. So I just kept walking down the trail, enjoying the quiet solitude, eventually turning away from the river. Later on, though, the trail meets back up with the same river, and even crosses it. As I was drawing nearer, I started to hear this splashing and growling upriver. At first, I assumed the same bear came down, and was having a hard time with the hunt. Or it was some other bear. Honestly, I can’t really tell bears apart. I’m not racist, though, I just want to make that clear. I have bear friends. Anyway, he’s not having trouble fishing, but with swimming. He had fallen in, and even though bears are meant to be excellent swimmers, this one never seemed to figure it out. I imagine he was the runt of the family, and wasn’t cared for, or taught by his mother, the way a bear should.

He was gasping for air, trying to get out, looking to grab onto anything in his path. He found it in a branch, and thought he was safe, but he wasn’t. Something about the way that branch is hanging, it’s like it was trying to pull him all the way under. If he lost air for just a few more seconds, I was afraid he wouldn’t make it. So I rushed up to him, and after fighting against the current, and making sure the panicky bear didn’t take me down with him, I got him out. We caught our respective breaths on the bank, but didn’t speak right away. I gave up my life in finance so I wouldn’t have to talk to people anymore, and he didn’t appear too interested in getting to know anyone any more than I was. Still, we exchanged a few pleasantries, and I handed him my old business card, which still has my cell phone number on it. I told him to look me up if he ever found himself stateside, which was exactly what happened a year ago. He didn’t know anyone in North America, and needed a place to crash, so he decided to bite the bullet, and ask me for the favor. Unfortunately, since I gave up my job, I didn’t exactly have a place to live either. I was crashing at someone else’s place already at the time. He tried to be affectionate, hoping we could go halfsies on a cheap motel room, but he was clearly agitated that he came all this way, and had no place to stay. To keep the peace, I agreed to the deal, and ended up just paying for the room myself. We’ve been roommates ever since. It turns out we have a lot in common. We both hate Trump and Putin.

Microstory 768: Salmon

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A lot of people wonder where the term salmon comes from. For the longest time, nobody actually knew, because it did not originate in the same reality. During one timeline, the powers that be decided to call upon one of their little pets, who was named Ed Bolton. He was living in the year 1809, but they pushed him forward one year to 1810. But he only stayed there for three seconds, at which point they pushed him again to 1811. Again, this was short-lived, as he was only there for three minutes, long enough to encounter his friend and roommate, who had been wondering where he was for the last two years. He didn’t have time to both figure out the truth, and explain it, when he was pushed forward two years to 1813. By then, his roommate had moved out of their unit, and somewhere else. It took Ed nearly three hours to find where this was, and then go to him, looking for help. But at this point, the powers that be pushed him all the way to 1816, where he spent three days discovering his friend had moved to the other side of the country. He continued to jump forward in time, hopeless, and completely alone; three weeks in 1821, three months in in 1829 and 1830, and three years from 1843 to 1846. Just when he was feeling comfortable in this new era, with some simple math, he realized he was destined to jump yet again, this time to 1867, where he was likely to spend the next three decades. Fortunately, he would not have to be alone the entire time. He found himself in the company of two other travelers, who were from the future. They immediately treated him with kindness and understanding, and he came to find out that they already knew him, for he was scheduled to run into them again, periodically over the next century. Each time he did, he knew them better, and they knew him less, for they were jumping through time in opposite directions. Through all this, at some point, somebody remarked that these friends were, in fact, going the wrong direction. But it was Edward who drew the analogy of salmon, who were known for traveling upstream to spawn in the same place they were first born. Now this moment—this seemingly innocuous moment—would have repercussions across all of time and space, spanning past, present, future, and all realities. Though earlier versions of the timeline left Ed Bolton free to live his life oblivious to time travel, they too would come to refer to travelers who had no control over their travels as salmon. Some call it inevitable, others fate or destiny, but this would not be the only example of something in a reality that does not yet exist having an inexplicable effect on prior timelines. It would not even be the most profound.

Microstory 410: Floor 33 (Part 1)

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I don’t know what people want from me. Never in my life have I hired or fired a single person. Have I been responsible for the company letting people go? I’m certain of it, but this was not my intention. In fact, there’s no way to find out whether anything I say has any impact on the labor force. I work in the corporate finance department. Obviously we handle the money, but it’s extremely complicated an nuanced. People send me data and I analyze it; that’s all. I determine what projects or departments are making us money, and which ones are failing to deliver, and also which new ventures we should pursue. I can’t help it if you happen to be one of the failures; that’s just how business goes. I do feel for these people, though, I really do. My job is to look at the numbers. I don’t know people’s names, and I don’t know how they’ve personally contributed to the success of our organization. Someone else is responsible for that information. I’m not saying this to absolve me of things I’ve done, but they have to understand that we don’t communicate with the managers on that level. We don’t mix the qualitative and the quantitative, and I dare you to reveal a company that does. This is the way man has been conducting business since the dawn of time. I’m absolutely not qualified to change things, for the better, or worse. I have been able to make myself a better person, at least. My old college roommate works somewhere else as a transcriber. Well, there’s no real way for the higher-ups to see how he makes the company money. Nobody buys the transcriptions themselves. They buy products which happen to include the benefit of his endeavors. So they keep shrinking his team and trying to add extra work at the same time, which pulls down productivity, which harms the company. It’s only because of him that I’m starting to suspect the same thing is happening here. What have we done that has harmed Analion? How have I contributed to our failures? Who was fired who should have stayed? Who has remained that should have left? I suppose the only real question is what can I do about it now? The answer, as always, is nothing.

Microstory 338: Close Friends

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Identity

I had a few friends when I was younger, but then my family moved. At that point, I was making decisions for myself as a free-thinking individual. Those friends from before were mainly a result of parental interference (which is fine, by the way). Suddenly, however, I had to make my own friends, but couldn’t because I was quiet, weird, and awkward. Fortunately for me, as a speculative fiction writer, I had plenty of characters to interact with, across an infinite number of worlds. Others with social anxiety are not so lucky, and I feel for them, because they want to belong, but too often feel that no one will accept them. Over time, I think I’ve encountered a higher number of people than the average guy. Since I didn’t belong to a clique like most, it was easy to get noticed by anyone and everyone. Though I generally don’t speak unless spoken to, I always answer questions, which makes me accessible. This put me in this weird position where I had a lot of people I could call upon for help, but I didn’t have anyone who just wanted to hang out. I’ve needed volunteers for scientific studies, I’ve gotten caught in dangerous storms, and one time I forgot to pay a speeding ticket and lost my license for a day. People I barely knew stepped up and helped me out of these jams, because they knew enough about me to know that I didn’t have anyone else to call. There were even two guys I would have considered to be my enemies. I ended up becoming a roommate to one of them, and hating him again for it. But the other guy gave me an employee discount at the sandwich shop, despite us never having spoken a word to each other since “the fight” a decade before. These are examples of what close friends are there to do for you. They’re unusual examples, but I wouldn’t give them up for a small group of hangout buddies.

Tribal Belonging

Microstory 235: Perspective Ten

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Perspective Nine

My pot dealer is an idiot. I mean, of course he’s an idiot; I don’t know what I should have expected, but it’s pretty irritating having to deal with him. He’s always trying to tell me stories, especially about his FBI agent roommate, but he bungles them up because he can barely remember his own name. I would like to find a new dealer, but this isn’t my world, so I wouldn’t know where to begin. I’ve actually tried to hint to him that I’m interested in taking my business elsewhere, but he lacks the brain capacity to understand subtext, and if I were to just straight up ask him, he would be offended. I don’t know why I should be worried about offending a stoner, but I guess a part of me is afraid that he’ll turn me in, even if it means he gets caught too. He’s that dumb. We live in a state where marijuana is completely illegal, and in a part of the state that’s too far from states where it is allowed. When I was first diagnosed, my doctor prescribed me certain medication, but warned me that it was only going to take me so far. She said that my best option was medical marijuana, but admitted that this put me in a pickle. My worsening condition has made it impossible to continue being driver, and so I had to drop down to an entirely different field. Because of the decrease in pay, I can’t just up and move to somewhere that can serve my needs, especially not since I’m still responsible for taking care of my aunt. And so I’m stuck with this doofus. I think I got lucky with him, though. I’m all right with further decriminalization of marijuana, especially for medical purposes. My problem with it is that everyone wants to smoke, which is disgusting. My dealer has an inventory of edibles which work just as well, and don’t muck up the air around me. And bonus, I get to eat brownies and cookies all day without feeling guilty about gaining a few extra pounds. Why people insist on lighting things on fire and putting them in their mouths is something I’ll never understand. The truth is that they think it’s fun, and the damage to their physiology is apparently irrelevant. I’m not saying that I want it to be me, but I do think if we changed the face of weed legalization to someone legitimate, things might actually change. If it weren’t so terribly obvious that the majority of people in favor of such bills were just wastoids in their parents’ basements, we might have something here. Promote your cause by pointing out the medical and psychological benefits of this medicine, and people who would otherwise be against you might actually start listening. I would give almost anything to not have to interact with this moron again.

Perspective Eleven

Microstory 234: Perspective Nine

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Perspective Eight

My roommate and best friend is a cop. Well he’s not really a cop but he’s a FBI agent. Now I know what you’re thinking, dude how could you possibly live with a pig given what you do? But he’s cool. We actually started doing weed together when we were kids. I moved on to pursue the business side of things and ever since then he helps me keep me covered. It’s a pretty choice deal. I don’t know how he hasn’t gotten caught yet or I haven’t but I’m not really that worried. I think most of the time he doesn’t deal with dangerous things that much but he come home the other day and tells me about how a guy kidnapped a girl and then she paid a cop to kill him. Or something like that. Like, I don’t really know if I got that right but I know something like that happened. Truth? It’s kind of hard for me to remember things when I’m in my testing phase. Now I don’t normally do drugs myself that’s not my thing. Not anymore at least. But I do have to sample my own product so I know it’s good. But I’ve grown up from being like that. But I feel like it’s, like, my job to foster the young youth ya know? But to make them understand how to smoke properly and safely. But they need to know that they shouldn’t go out driving and stuff because that’s dangerous and I had this friend when I was just getting into the business who was also trying to get the business and he just didn’t realize that he should probably stop getting high so he could keep track of his business affairs and he also didn’t quite never get the fact that he shouldn’t drive and he drove and he died. It was pretty sad I was at his funeral. He had the coolest collection of those cards where the little slave animals live in balls and are only let out so they can fight each other. And all I’m saying is that I don’t get how they live in those balls. Yeah sure it seems like they have some kind of shrinking technology but, like, it doesn’t seem like they use it to shrink anything else? It seems like it would be pretty handy to, ya know, make things go smaller. I was thinking the other day if you could shrink things then you should be a doctor and shrink yourself and then you could go into a patient’s body with a gun and shoot a tumor or something. That would be pretty cool. Have you noticed that the word tumor kind of sounds like a place, like people should live in Tumor, Germany or something. But I guess it would be weird.

Perspective Ten

Microstory 183: Bree Nolan

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Bree Nolan’s parents decided to not tell their daughter that she was adopted until she turned 11. The day after her birthday, they sat her down and began the discussion. She told them that she already knew, and pretty much always had. They were never really able to understand why it was that she knew this. She didn’t catch a glimpse of certain documents, she didn’t overhear a conversation, and she certainly never ran a blood test. Bree didn’t need any of those things. As an anomaly, she had the ability to sense genetic details of those around her. She knew that her classmate’s older brother was actually his father. She sensed something different about her teacher’s husband, which eventually lead to them learning that he carried a rare genetic disorder common among patients of a certain terminal disease. She could even tell the exact ancestral composition of anyone she encountered. Bree went out of state for college and found herself paired with Connor Higgins as a roommate. She concentrated and meditated, but found herself unable to discern any genetic information about him. Furthermore, whenever he was around, she could also not sense any information about anyone else. He was somehow blocking her ability, and together, they induced that not only were they both special, but that there must be others like them. They quickly became best friends, but also decided that it was best if they no longer live together. Connor spent his free time researching genetics, and even enrolled in a healthy number of classes in the field. While he was doing that, Bree swam through a sea of people, studying their genes with her mind, and taking note of the differences. Even though she was innately aware of their genetics, she did not have the intellectual background to understand it completely. They created charts, spoke with experts, and discussed their findings. After time, these two amateurs managed to learn a nice amount about what anomalies were, and what made them different. They even had some insight on the matter that Hankford Apolomure hadn’t realized. Bree and Connor joined Bellevue together, but spent a great deal of time off-site, much of it recruiting, so that his ability to negate other abilities did not interfere with operations. Years after Bellevue became a household word, a television network developed a mildly successful program called The Adventures of Conundrum and Treemaker, based loosely on Connor’s and Bree’s lives together.

Microstory 40: Take a Hike

Yesterday, I was in the middle of my four-hour walk when a girl suddenly came down a hill and sidled up next to me to ask what I was doing. Not really something you do in a civilized society. People tend to leave me alone during my hikes. When I told her what I was doing, she asked if she could walk with me. I reluctantly agreed, ya know, in case she too had a knife. I politely answered her questions, and asked her a few of my own; which is against my nature. It felt less like a conversation, and more like an interview. Nearly a half hour later, I tried to turn to the left, but she stopped me and asked where I was going. I was heading toward an industrial area, and she was clearly perturbed by it. But that was my plan. I’ll go out for an hour, maybe two, with no idea where I’m going. But I map out my longer hikes since I may have to make sure I get to a road that safely goes under a highway, or over a stream. And we were past the point of no return. If I took any other route, it would be too long before I reached home. She said that there weren’t any restaurants in that area, and she was hoping we would grab a bite to eat. I cautiously asked her if she was homeless. She nodded and hung her head. “If you needed money, you could have just asked. You didn’t have to walk all this way with me.”

“I was hoping to pretend like it was a date, and you would pay for a meal anyway,” she answered. I considered my options for a few moments. I explained to her that she would be risking coming home with me, but that I would be risking letting her into my house, and that I could either give her twenty bucks and walk away, or we could risk it together. She hesitantly agreed. I woke up today half-expecting my television and computer to be gone, but everything was fine, so I guess I just have a roommate now.