Microstory 2156: Whoopdee-Friggin-Do For You

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2

The power is out. It’s out all over the metro. It was that way in jail, which made things pretty miserable in there for several hours, but it’s no picnic out here either. First, I lost a day of jail time, which I will have to make up for at some point. They had to release us, because of the air conditioning problem. It’s particularly hot these days, so leaving us in there would have constituted cruel and unusual punishment. This post will be really short, because I had to go so far to find phone service. It’s pretty bad, hopefully it will be fixed later today. I flirted with just letting it go, and waiting until later, because that would have been easier. It’s taking a lot, just to get this out. Still, I didn’t want to leave you totally hanging, especially since I have a schedule to keep, so I drove clear to the other side of Kansas City to post this one little thing. Don’t worry, I’m not breaking the law. My parole officer, Leonard is with me. He had some of his own work to conduct, so it wasn’t a complete waste. We can’t spend much time out here, though, because he has to get back to check in with his other parolees, and I have to figure out what I’m gonna do for dinner tonight. Everything in my fridge is spoiling as we speak, because I had to open it for one bottle of water, and that let a whole bunch of warm air in, which won’t ever be cooled until the power comes back on. If you’re in the area, stay safe, and try to find a shelter nearby. They set them up in such events, and they are powered by generators. They’re not only for the unhoused. If you don’t live in the area, and your life is a-okay right now, then whoopdee-friggin-do for you!

Microstory 2054: Technically The Top Floor

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Workspace Labs text-to-image Duet AI software

Believe it or not, the free clinic was pretty good. I guess I don’t have to tell you that. My target audience lives in this world, right? It would be hard to get this message back to my version of Earth, where free clinics aren’t great, because society doesn’t care about the people who have to use such services. Anyway, a lot of people here need it, so it was really busy, but they were good at prioritizing patients. I’m feeling sick, but there was a girl in there who had nailed her hand to her thigh. Well, I guess I don’t know that she did it to herself, but she obviously needed to be treated before me either way. Once I was in the room, the doctor was patient and understanding. She also didn’t question who I was, or where I came from. I mean, she did ask those questions, but she didn’t push it when I couldn’t answer them. She prescribed me some medicine, and gave me a large sample until I could afford to actually buy the medicine. She also gave me the card for a social worker, who is known for being really caring of people in my situation. I kind of have to wait for that, though, because he deals with a lot of sensitive people, and I don’t want to get him sick. In the meantime, though, no more sleeping in the park for me. One of the nurses is letting me stay in her attic. At first, I was worried about that, because I’m already sick, and I’ve always had trouble with allergies, but she was underselling it. Yeah, it’s technically the top floor of the house, and it’s slanted like an attic, but it’s fully finished, clean, and well-ventilated. It also spans the whole length of the house, so my living space is larger than anyone else’s room. It almost feels like I belong here. Maybe I was too harsh on this world, calling it Boreverse, and all. I’ve not had a home for a long time, not really. Even the 20 years I spent waiting for Cricket before felt like a resort stay; not something permanent. And the five years we lived together with Claire still felt like we were just looking for a way out. That’s not to say that I want to keep living here. I still need to get back to them. But at least I’m not out in the cold anymore, so to speak.

Microstory 2053: Cold, Or Whatever

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Workspace Labs text-to-image Duet AI software

Welp, I made a mistake. I really should have focused on shelter. One thing they don’t tell you when you first start to travel the multiverse is that each world comes with its own set of special diseases. Even if two worlds have the same thing, and call it the same thing, they’ll be different strains. When I first entered Havenverse, I got sick, and now that I’m in Boreverse, it’s happening again. Whatever this is, I’m sure it’s very common and unexciting to the natives, but it could actually kill me. According to the internet, there are free clinics. One of them isn’t even that far, but it’s unclear how good it is. Your mapping service allows people to rate businesses, but not review them. It seems as though they never thought of that. It doesn’t even use the star system either. You either hate it or love; nothing in between. But they don’t actually tell you how people rated it either. They then take the ratings, and categorize them according to a vague unnumbered list of impressions, like seems okay, or not great. In addition to being boring, this world also appears to be rather unhelpful. Wish me luck anyway. I’m headed there now to see if anything can be done about this cold, or whatever. Hopefully they won’t turn me down because I don’t have an ID. I don’t know what I would do then. I guess I would just die. I don’t look it, but I’m pushin’ 60, I guess.

Microstory 2052: Day Two

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Workspace Labs text-to-image Duet AI software

I have to write this one really quickly, because I’m running out of money, and I know that I really shouldn’t be spending it on the internet, when what I really need is food and shelter, but I figure that I can get those things for free if I’m smart, or just later. First, while my immortality is gone, I’m still running on the energy that I got back when a window to the bulk briefly opened up. I probably won’t have to eat for at least for another week, maybe two. The weather is surprisingly mild here. They say it’s January in Kansas City, but it doesn’t feel like that. I don’t think the temperature—or the weather in general, for that matter—has changed once since I arrived here yesterday. Either your calendar is a lot different than the ones in other universes, or geography is. Maybe the continents drifted differently? Could this version of North America be closer to where the equator would be—wait, no, that doesn’t make any sense. I would have noticed that just by looking at a globe. The equator is the equator, regardless, and we’re about as distant from it as I recall. This is just super weird. Anyway, where was I? Oh, I had a little money in my pocket from Havenverse, and luckily, they use the same kind of bills here. I think that’s kind of how it works, though. Westfall is a special section of a universe-traveling machine called The Crossover. Westfall is seemingly random, and doesn’t send you clear across to a distant brane that’s unlike your own. The whole point is that you usually don’t even realize it’s happened. A lot of things are gonna be the same, like currency, and history, but apparently not weather. Still need to find a job, and a place to live, though. If anyone has any leads, hit me up in the comments. At this point, I’ll do pretty much anything. But I don’t deal with food or cleaning. Or waste or sewage. Or animals, because I’m allergic. And I really don’t like to work with my hands, or lift really heavy objects. I don’t want the environment to be too dirty or cold. I’m also not very skilled, so it needs to be entry level, but still pay extremely well. Other than that, I’m up for anything. Let me know, I’m gonna go take another nap in the park.

Microstory 2025: Mississippi

< > Table of Contents

After working at the Auxiliary Support Branch shelter for hurricane Katrina survivors for three weeks, my papa was required to take a day off. He and the other volunteers would usually only get five or six hours of sleep every night, and the people in charge were worried about it becoming unsafe. He had made some friends there, but they had already taken their required time off. He was part of a group of holdouts, which means he resisted doing this, but the bosses weren’t going to allow him to stay any longer. He got into a car with four other people who decided to drive along the coast. They couldn’t think of anything better to do. The hurricane had destroyed so much, companies weren’t showing movies, or doing county fairs, or anything like that. Driving was the only activity. They ended up driving so much that they crossed into two other states. The first stop they made was in Mississippi, where they had lunch outside. He couldn’t remember where they ate, but I remember him telling me that he thought he had a burrito sandwich, which I guess would be a little burrito between two slices of bread? He laughed when he told me this story, like maybe he just made that part up. Once they were done, they were going to just drive back to drive back to Slidell, Louisiana, but they decided to keep going. It was kind of cool that he got to see Alabama. Remember that he was born there, but his family lived in Montana at the time, so he didn’t have any real memories of it. They saw a lot of destruction during this part of the trip; more than they had in the shelter, and it really saddened them. It does sound very sad.

Microstory 2024: Louisiana

< > Table of Contents

It was a couple of years before papa took a lot of time off from work all at once again. He would sometimes take one or two days off, or he would do his volunteer work on the weekends. He would hand food out to people who couldn’t afford it, and he would build houses. He did a few runs to raise money for different charities. He was always working, even when he wasn’t working. In August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina formed in the Gulf of Mexico. When it hit land, it destroyed a bunch of homes, and people even died. The news called it devastating. None of us was even alive yet, but my papa was. He asked for an emergency vacation, and his boss let him have it. Papa spent an entire Thursday learning new skills with the Auxiliary Support Branch. If you have an older friend or relative who donated blood, they probably did it through ASB. They provide volunteer aid all over the continent, and they were in charge of something called disaster relief after the big hurricane, along with the government. The next day after his new training in Chicago, they called to tell him that they needed him to fly to Louisiana on Saturday. So without much warning, he did that, and was sent to a shelter for people who had just lost their homes. Because of his experience as an engineer, he was put in charge of Facilities. It wasn’t an official job, they just needed someone, and there was so much chaos, volunteers just had to do whatever they could to help. He made sure that each resident had a cot to sleep on and blankets, and that there was enough kitchen stuff to feed everybody, and stuff like that. He spent so much time there that he had to take time off, even though this was time off. We’ll talk about that on the next slide.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 16, 2399

« < » > Table of Contents

Generated by Canva text-to-image AI software

The building has been inspected, at least with a cursory glance. They didn’t hire a professional to go through the entire thing, and check or mold, or whatever it is they do. All the doors are open now, though, which will allow drones to go through, should Leona deem there to be some need for that. While she’s been dealing with other things, Mateo has been in charge of helping the volunteers check the rooms, and now it’s time to go in the opposite direction. A building this tall has to have a deep foundation, and there should be space down there too. It may not be furnished, or even clean, but there will be potential in it. The elevator turns out to be large enough for all of the now two dozen volunteers, so he invites everyone to join, including the kids. It’ll be a little adventure.

When the doors open, they find themselves in a wide expanse, which may cover the entirety of the building in the first two dimensions. There is nothing here but support columns. It’s made of concrete, but really clean and unused. Maybe this is meant to be used for offices. Underground, though? That seems unnecessarily cruel, especially since there should be plenty of space in the common areas on the bottom floors above the surface. “Come on,” Mateo says. “There’s nothing to see here. Let’s keep going down.”

They go down one story. This one is just as expansive, but it looks different. It’s filled with stuff. As they step onto the floor, and spread out, they find compartments that mirror the kind of rooms up above. Each room is equipped with four bunk beds, and is separated from its neighbors by only half walls. Metal bars come up and go across, suggesting that a modest amount of privacy can be created from curtains. There are rows and rows and rows of these bunks. “What are they for?” a teenager asks.

“Emergency shelter, in case of a tornado?” someone else suggests.

“Look at this sign,” one of them says. “ROOM CAPACITY: 34,768.”

“Okay,” Mateo says, stepping back towards the elevator. “Let’s try one more.”

They get back in, and go down one more story. It’s the same, doubling their current known underground capacity. Mateo looks over at the buttons. There are twelve stories total, numbered zero through negative eleven. “Who here is good at math?” he asks the group.

A girl snakes her way forward.

“Assuming that every floor is just like this one, subtracting that first one that was empty, how many people can fit in the shelter?”

She takes a moment to perform the calculations. “It would fit 382,448 people.”

Mateo shakes his head. I was kind of worried about that. “That’s not much more than half of the population that can fit above. That doesn’t sound like a great shelter.”

“Well, we don’t know what we’re looking at here,” a man pointed out. “The other floors could be bigger, or maybe they can’t make an elevator this big that goes down as many floors as there are, and we’re expected to get off, and get on another one.”

They keep riding the elevator down, stepping out for a moment just to check that it’s equipped with all the same stuff. Floor Negative-10 is different. It’s just a giant open area, like the first sublevel. There’s only one more to check now, and while this is all rather exciting, they don’t expect anything different. They would all be wrong. “I recognize this,” Mateo says. “This is a fusion reactor...a big one.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 24, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

Mateo wakes up woozy, tied up and rocking on the metal floor. It was the heat that woke him, frying him from above, and scorching him from below. It’s probably the hottest part of the day, and he can’t move to find shelter. He immediately finds that he’s tied up, his hands together, and tightly bound to a railing of some kind. A salty breeze slips in between the bars, enough to burn his eyes, but not enough to cool him down. He’s on a boat. He pulls himself into a sitting position, but he can’t hold it for long. Whoever did this didn’t care how hard it would be for him to get comfortable, didn’t realize, or did it on purpose.

Two feet approach him, which are presumably attached to a body, but he can barely see above the ankle. He just can’t turn his head enough to get a good look, and even so, the sun would probably blind him. He hears two claps, and then the feet walk away, only to be replaced with two new feet. A voice he recognizes says, “afternoon, soldier.”

“I’m not a soldier,” Mateo groans back. It’s hard to talk, he’s so thirsty.

“Oh, we know,” Ebraim replies.

“Are you gonna kill me?” Mateo asks him. “It’s okay if you are. It wouldn’t be the first time I died. I always manage to come back, I’m sure I’ll figure it out again.”

Ebraim gets on his hands and knees to cut the zip ties. He clears his throat authoritatively as he’s pulling Mateo up and over into a more tenable sitting position. “The way you say that, you almost sound like one of us.” He nods and breathes loudly through his nose, looking over toward the other side of the boat. “Every man here has died at least once.”

“I’m not a soldier,” Mateo begins, “but I am a fighter.”

He coughs involuntarily. “I believe you. That’s why you’re here.”

Mateo looks around. “It’s why I’m where, and doing what?”

“We’re presently in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, traveling at eleven knots, bearing Southeast deeper into the middle of nowhere, and you’re with us, because our mission happens to be a six man operation, and until you came along, we only numbered five.”

“But you know that I’m not one of you.” Mateo is still struggling to enunciate.

“We don’t need you to have any experience,” Ebraim explains. “We just need another warm body.”

“You mean you need a human sacrifice,” Mateo guesses.

Ebraim chuckles. “You’re so smart, why are you lying about who you are?”

He adjusts his position a little, and smacks his lips. “Water.”

Ebraim doesn’t break eye contact as he lifts his left hand, and snaps his fingers twice. A man Mateo doesn’t know yet places a bottle in it, which he transfers to Mateo.

“I just needed a new life.” When in doubt, be honest, but maybe not too honest. He does not intend to throw the forger under the bus, or say one word about his own team. It just needs to be believable, and only moderately close to the truth. He also shouldn’t add too many details. “I needed a new identity. The forger asked me if I wanted military credentials. I was in a pretty bad way at the time, and it seemed like an all right idea. I didn’t really think through the consequences. He gave me this little card that said I’m blah, blah, blah. I tucked it away, and didn’t worry about it. I didn’t think it would actually come up, because what I didn’t realize is that he also put my name in the system. It actually looks like I bear rank, and have a record. It’s only recently come back to bite me in the ass, I’m really sorry.”

Ebraim laughs again. “Ah, hell, we don’t give a shit about that. Way I see it, if the military doesn’t kill you, it screws up your life. The only way out is to lie, steal, and cheat. I’d be a hypocrite if I thought only people like me deserved to break the rules. I’m not a good man, but I’m not a hypocrite.”

“This isn’t a sanctioned mission?”

He helps Mateo to his feat, and starts to lead him into the inside part of the boat, whatever it’s called. “It’s sanctioned by the five of us. I suppose that’ll hafta be good enough. You don’t mind, do ya?”

“Why are you talking differently now?”

“My mama’s southern side comes out every now and then,” Ebraim replies. “I don’t work as hard to suppress it among friends.”

Now Mateo laughs. “I reckon we ain’t friends.”

Ebraim smiles. “Well, we’ll see. Let’s start small. Allow me to introduce you to the rest of the team.”

Microstory 1735: Foals

< > Table of Contents

There once was a man named Albany Foals, who came from a distant land in search of someone to love. He was a charming and nice man, who everyone liked to be around. Women from his country would come to him every day, hoping to give him their hand in marriage. People loving him was not the problem. He didn’t love them back, and he was beginning to believe he was never going to. After exhausting the list of potential soulmates, he decided to leave, hoping to find someone worthy of his affection elsewhere. He traveled many miles, across rivers, around mountains, and through prairies. The more he walked, the happier he became, but it wasn’t the walking; it was the distance. He was farther from people he had ever been before, and this was providing him with relief. Excited at the prospect of living like this forever, Albany settled down in a field, and began to build a magnificent shelter to call his own. He would live off the land from now on, and not worry about finding someone to love. Before he was finished, though, he grew lonely. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps he really did need to find someone to love, and his contentment at being alone was more about being away from the people he had grown to despise. Still, he couldn’t be sure, so he finished the shelter, and lived there for a short while. Once the loneliness overwhelmed him, he walked away, leaving behind a note for any other travelers that the house was free for their use. He continued in the same direction as before, eventually ending up in a new country. They welcomed him warmly, and he started to regain his confidence. This might actually work out. Surely there was someone here who could make him feel as joyful as he saw others who had found their own husbands and wives.

Unfortunately, Albany experienced the same thing in this country as he had in his own. No one was evil, nor repulsive, nor even all that incompatible. There was just no spark. His heart didn’t beat faster upon approach. He did not dream about spending the rest of their lives together. Many women would have been a fine choice, but none of them would have been perfect, and this saddened him greatly. Disappointed in his perceived failure, he turned around, and set out on the path towards the house he had built for himself. Hopefully no one would have taken it by now. It had been years, but it was remote, and moderately hard to find, so he could get lucky. As he walked, however, he started to get an idea. Wouldn’t it be great if someone did turn out to have taken the house, and that she was his one true love? Maybe that was the story here. Maybe he was destined to go through all this turmoil so he could find what he was looking for only after giving up on it. She would be kind and quiet. She would be able to take care of herself, but like to be doted upon anyway. Ah, no, this wouldn’t happen. Marauders took his house, and picked it clean. Vandals dirtied the walls, and ripped up the floorboards. This was not a love story, he figured. He wasn’t that lucky. He arrived to find someone was indeed living in the house, and it wasn’t who he expected. It wasn’t a human at all, but a horse. He was short and young, with thin legs, and fearful eyes. He didn’t run from Albany, but he was clearly apprehensive and concerned. Albany named his new little horse Griseo, and began to take care of him. They lived together in that house, never bothering to interact with any other humans again. Albany did find love. It wasn’t the kind he was looking for. But it was exactly the kind he needed.

Microstory 1640: Give Me Shelter

< > Table of Contents

I’m going to be contradicting myself a little bit, but this is a pretty extreme case, and a significant exception to the general rules. I mentioned Guardian Races once, but didn’t get into what they are. They take on various forms, so it’s just a catch-all term that refers to any species—or even a small group of people—who, in some way, takes care of another species, usually secretly. Since I’ve established that aliens are possible under certain conditions, and with certain caveats, it’s easy to see how one of these alien races can become this for humans. Indeed, even humans can become a Guardian Race for an alien planet, which would have evolved using one of the methods described in the previous story. Or, it can be something radical. The humans on this version of Earth evolved, developed technology, and fell to the Ochivari’s sterility virus. But it didn’t happen all at once. A lucky few conspiracy theorists caught on to what was happening, and made preparations. They protected themselves against the virus in secret underground bunkers that were completely self-sufficient. They had plenty of resources down there, but they did not have a lot of space. So while the rest of the population was slowly dying off, the survivors deliberately kept their population low. Each couple was expected to have two children, and no more than that. The population would increase with each generation, but no single generation would exceed the maximum. They were able to get four generations using this method before the math got to be too annoying. They didn’t want anyone to have any children with anyone that they were related to. Everyone in the fifth generation was an only child, with only one couple deciding to not have kids at all, leaving the final number at eleven. These remaining eleven didn’t want what happened to their people to happen again to someone else, so they hatched a plan. Fortunately, they were in a position to do it.

The bunker wasn’t first filled with scientists and doctors. They had to learn about all that along the way, using an extensive library of knowledge that they had the wisdom to take down there with them. Over the century, the descendants kept progressing, and pushing the boundaries of science ever forward. Their predecessors were close to finding the trailhead to immortality, so all they had to do was finish the work. They figured it out while the last generation’s parents and grandparents were still alive, but they all chose to stay behind, and eventually die. This was when the eleven left the bunker, and ventured back out onto the surface. They didn’t stop there, though. They made great use of their now infinite lives, and continued to advance. They built a ship, and launched it into outer space, where they began to explore the galaxy, predominantly searching for other lifeforms. They didn’t find any other intelligent races, but they did come across a promising world. Using their science, they protected and coaxed a single cellular organism in the primordial waters along, making sure it evolved into multicellular life, and pressed on from there. They didn’t genetically engineer anything, but they helped one evolutionary branch survive everything that would have otherwise prevented it from ultimately evolving intelligence. They helped them pass all of their Great Filters, and become an alien race. The eleven immortals stayed with their children for over a billion years, all the while remaining hidden. They prevented their creations—which called themselves the Sheltren—from making the same mistakes that Earth did, and ensured that the Ochivari would not come for them as well. Once the Sheltren were sufficiently advanced themselves, the eleven revealed the truth, and celebrated their accomplishment. The Sheltren were grateful, and motivated. If they could be half as dedicated as the humans had been with them, the universe could become a wondrous place. The Sheltren did not remain in their universe, however. Inspired by their own Guardians, they found a way to travel the bulkverse, and become a full race of Guardians, so they too could protect other planets from the Ochivari, and other threats.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, April 1, 2025

« < » > Table of Contents

Declan was going to be vital to their survival in a world with no people, and therefore no civilization. None of the others knew how to build a shelter, or even start a fire without any tools. Darko Matic was evidently Declan’s trainer for years, and while their primary focus was the martial arts, they also developed a well-rounded education, including survival skills. He struck a fire with wood and rocks, no problem, and instructed them how to build sufficient single-person shelters for themselves. Still, once camp was complete, there was no competition when it came to whose shelter was superior. Being told how to do it ad hoc, and having the experience to build it right, were two different things. They were good enough to keep the elements out, however, and they all reportedly slept pretty well that night. It was April 1, 2025 when they woke up, according to the Cassidy cuffs.

“Anybody else have a countdown,” Mateo asked as he was watching his screen, “as well as what I can only guess to be a tracking beacon?”

“Yeah,” Leona said. “Jupiter said we would have us complete tasks for him, rescuing people from this reality. The beacon must be leading us to our first challenge.”

Ramses stretched, and rubbed his eyes like a cliché. “I would say getting through yesterday was the first challenge.”

“He didn’t want this world to be as it is,” Declan reminded him. “He wants people to rule over, and I don’t think he has it here.”

“If he wants to rule,” Mateo began to reason, “and he has the ability to travel between each reality at will, why wouldn’t he just take a bunch of people, instead of one or two at a time, which I presume is how the challenges are going to work?”

“His abilities are surely limited,” Leona presumed. “He’s probably traveling through time, looking for a workaround.”

“Don’t give him any ideas anyway,” J.B. warned.

Leona was working on her cuff screen. “Okay, so without satellites, it’s hard to tell how long it’s going to take us to get to our challenge, but based on the countdown, and the distance, I imagine we have about an hour and a half to eat before we have to head out.”

“Eat what?” Ramses questioned.

Declan lifted his teleporter cuff. “You leave that to me.”

He returned twenty minutes later with a shirt full of fruits and roots, plus a dead rabbit over his shoulder. Predicting this would be the result of his efforts, Leona had built a spit over the fire. An hour later, with full bellies, they started walking towards the beacon. There were a lot of obstacles in the way, namely trees, but there was also a deep ravine they had to walk around. Being the man they were learning he was, Declan estimated that they walked a little under five kilometers to their destination. When they arrived, eleven minutes were left on the countdown, so they sat down for a rest.

Before the timer reached zero, things around them started to change. Streets and buildings flickered in and out around them. Leona recognized it after a few times. “This is Country Club Plaza.”

“That checks out,” Declan confirmed. “It’s about as far from Mission Hills as it should be, in the direction it should be, based on our walk.”

“Guys,” Ramses said, holding his arm up like he was trying to block the sunlight. “These devices are AR. There’s someone up there, right under the beacon marker.”

The rest of them lifted their arms to see what he was. Sometimes a building would appear in a flicker, blocking their view, and sometimes just the person standing on top of it was visible.

“She’s gonna fall!” J.B. cried.

“I can get her,” Declan said, fingers hoving over his teleporter cuff.

“What are you waiting for?” Mateo asked desperately.

“She’s not really here yet,” Declan replied. “I have to time it just right. Count me down, Lee.”

Leona waited a moment before beginning. “Six, five, four, three, two, one!”

Declan pressed the button. The flickering stopped, and the figure standing in the middle of the air began to fall downwards. He caught her before she got too far, and they both started to fall together. Before they hit the ground, they disappeared again, and reappeared a few meters away, but upside down, so momentum was propelling them upwards. Once they were at equilibrium, Declan teleported them once more, safely to the ground.

The woman turned around to get her bearings, and catch her breath. Both Mateo and Leona recognized her immediately, of course, and simultaneously said, “mom?” It was Carol Gelen, and this was the day she was fated to start her ten day walk towards death.

“Leona!” Carol said inquisitively, but not as if it had been long since they had seen each other. “Where are we?”

Leona waited to respond. It was a little too late—and there was no reasonable way—to cover this up. She just didn’t know exactly what to say at first. “Mom. I’m a time traveler, and we’re standing in an alternate reality. We’re not sure what changed, or when it changed, but there don’t seem to be other people here.”

Carol studied her daughter’s face for a moment and a half. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Leona questioned. “That’s it?”

“I trust you, Leona. If you say this is another world, then okay.”

“Aren’t you worried?”

“You seem to know what you’re doing. You look a little older; maybe a few years? I assume you’ve been doing this for awhile.”

Leona looked over to her husband, who was Carol’s son in yet another timeline. “You could say that.”

Carol smirked. “And who is this?”

“This is my husband, Mateo Matic.”

Carol lifted her hand, and shook that of her once-son’s. “It’s nice to meet you. I guess it really has been awhile.”

“Guys?” Ramses was looking at his Cassidy cuff again. “There’s another countdown. It says the window’s closing.”

“We have forty-two minutes to get her back to her own reality, before she’s stuck here,” Leona posited.

“How do we get her back?” J.B. asked. “Do the cuffs explain? I’m not super experienced with technology.”

“Yes,” Ramses confirmed. “I can see the steps we need to take to send her home. Just tap the right arrow.”

“Now, hold on,” Mateo said. “Who said we’re sending her back? Jupiter said we have a choice.”

“She can’t stay here,” J.B. argued lightly, looking around at the wilderness.

“She can’t go back either!” Leona fought back.

“Leona,” Carol scolded. “Relax.”

“You don’t understand, mom. It’s dangerous.”

“That’s no reason to forget your manners.”

Mateo looked at his once-mother sadly. She had no idea who he really was. Their situation was like something out of a comic book TV show. It was even worse than when he ran into them at the Pentagon in 2005, because now he was married to what the multiverse could theoretically consider to be his own adoptive sister. Time demanded that Carol Gelen be on that plaza rooftop in forty minutes, so that Paige Turner could unwillingly return from the future with a pathogen that will apparently only be deadly to the second individual infected by it. Mateo didn’t want that to happen, obviously, and neither did Leona. They didn’t even really have reason to believe Jupiter himself had any interest in her dying. Perhaps that was why he extracted her from the main timeline in the first place. They just need to figure out what to do about it. There was no question that they needed to save her life, but this world wasn’t much safer. She wouldn’t survive here alone. There had to be some kind of loophole. There had to be a way to get her back home without also sending her to an inevitable death.

“Do we wanna talk about this over here?” Ramses asked.

“No,” Carol disagreed. “Unless telling me about my future is going to destroy the universe, I wanna hear whatever it is you’re discussing.”

Leona looked at her sadly as well. She had no right to keep the truth from her, and she knew her mother well enough to know that when she said she wanted to understand, she meant it. “Have you met a young woman named Paige Turner?” she asked.

“No.”

“You didn’t see anyone in the parking lot up there?”

“I saw a few people,” Carol answered, “but I didn’t meet anybody.”

Leona consulted the countdown. “In less than an hour, time itself is expecting you to be back on that rooftop, presumably after you pick up your lunch from your favorite restaurant in this part of town?”

Carol checked her own watch. “That sounds about right. I’m a little early. I thought I would enjoy the day before pick-up.”

“Destiny says that a friend of ours is going to appear on that rooftop. She’ll be carrying with her a disease that a frenemy of ours forced her to bring back to this time period. The idea is to infect everyone now, so that when the disease shows up later, the population is already immune to it.”

“Okay, I guess I get that,” Carol said, “but how many people will have to die from it before herd immunity takes care of it?”

“Just one,” Leona replied, tearing up.

Carol lifted her head, absorbing the information that wasn’t being said. “Oh. But this will ultimately save lives?”

“Not really.” Leona fought back full tears. “It sterilizes people in the future, but they’re immortal by then anyway, so our species doesn’t actually die out; they just stop having biological children.”

“But if I don’t go back, the...immunity process doesn’t happen.”

“No, it still does,” Mateo jumped in. “Paige doesn’t have to infect you at all. You die, because you’re too close to her when she shows up. It’ll still spread on its own, and there will be zero deaths from it.”

“So, this Jupiter guy rescued me?” Carol guessed.

Everyone looked amongst each other. “We don’t really know,” Ramses chose to answer. “He brought you here, but his motivations aren’t a hundred percent clear. It could be a Sophie’s choice type of thing. We either choose to leave you alone in this world, which isn’t exactly full of supermarkets and houses, or send you back.”

“She doesn’t have to be alone.” Holly Blue was walking up to them. “My son and I will protect her.” As she drew nearer, she presented a device in her hand that kind of looked like an electric shaver, but instead of a regular blade on the top, it resembled the one specifically designed to cut nose hairs. She placed the tip against one of Declan’s Cassidy cuffs, and began to hack into it. “When the next window opens three years from now, we’ll slip back with whoever it is Jupiter brings in. All she needs to do is hop over her death moment.”

“Why don’t we save everybody?” Declan asked his mother.

“At least two people have to continue the pattern, so they can save everyone else,” Holly Blue explained. “J.B. has to be one of those people, and a Matic has to be another.” She continued working her hacking device. “There.” She pulled the trigger, which served to release both Declan’s cuffs at the same time. Unfortunately, there appeared to be some kind of failsafe. The cuffs fell from his wrist simultaneously, but before they hit the ground, they flew back up through the air, and secured themselves around Holly Blue’s wrists instead. “Also, there’s that.”

“Did you, or did you not, know that was going to happen?” Ramses asked. He took the hacking device from her, so he could examine it himself.

“I was worried he had programmed a contingency. Jupiter was a little not quite upset enough with me when he learned I was planning to rescue Declan. I should have known it was too easy.”

“Okay,” Declan said, “give it to me. I’ll put them back on myself, so you can be free.”

“No,” Holly Blue argued with her son. “I’m not letting you go back to this. You have too much potential to be wasting your time on this mission. No offense,” she said to everyone else.

None taken, really.

Declan looked sadly at his own mother, who could all but read his mind. She smiled back. “Someone has to protect Carol, and I wasn’t able to bring a lot of resources with me, so you’re far more equipped to handle that. It’s just three years, then you can both go back to the main timeline, and you can finally do what you’ve been wanting to all along.”

“Darko never said I was ready.”

“There’s no way he would say you’re not ready once this is all over,” Holly Blue assured him. “Let’s consider this your final lesson.”

Declan didn’t want to trap his mother on the Bearimy-Matic pattern, but this was the best of all terrible outcomes. Carol really did need someone to stay with her for the next three years, and he was the best for the job—not just out of everyone who happened to be here—but the best overall. The time window closed a half hour later, leaving everyone with no choice but to stay in their current predicaments. At the end of the day, Mateo, Leona, Ramses, J.B., and now Holly Blue jumped forward in time, leaving Declan and Carol to fend for themselves. They returned to a shelter complex impressive enough to drive Robinson Crusoe to tears. There was a third person with them who had been there for about a year, whose name was, for whatever reason, Hello Doctor.

« < » > Table of Contents

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, March 29, 2022

« < » > Table of Contents

As soon as the final bullet landed in its target, everyone stopped. Two sides of the battle dropped their weapons, and watched Anatol Klugman as he was dying. People were dying all around them, but it was as if they knew this death was different. Were they somehow aware that Mateo had pulled the trigger, with a weapon that wouldn’t exist for nearly a century and a half? Anatol fell to the ground, and exhaled his last breath. And then, just like that, everyone else disappeared. Arcadia had said that this battle wasn’t even meant to be part of the Franco-Prussian War. The hundemarke had created the battle that would create the hundemarke. But if the hundemarke were never allowed to exist at all, the war wouldn’t exist in this time period either. It was ended months ago in this new timeline. It didn’t make any sense, but then again, when it came to the hundemarke, nothing really made sense anyway.

Anatol’s body lied there alone. The screen slowly turned black. And then, so did all the others. Some of them had been shaded red, which meant Jupiter wanted to paradox them by killing killers before they could kill with the hundemarke. The screens shaded blue, however, were ones he wanted to persist, even in this new reality. None of them was safe, though. They were all turning black, because none of them ever happened.

Jupiter watched the whole chamber turn, and with it, his apparent plans for world domination. “What did you do? What? Did? You? Do?”

“Leona?” Mateo said in the form of a question, but he didn’t really know what he was asking of her.

“I think you did the right thing,” Leona said. “I know it doesn’t sound like me, but...”

“I agree,” Ramses added. “Hard reset. The hundemarke is responsible for so much death. The world is a better place without it.”

“Are freaking kidding me?” Jupiter was seething. “The moment that you destroyed was everything. It occurred in the first reality ever.” It was like he was experiencing true grief. “Three temporal objects were created on May 23, 1871. First, the hundemarke. It creates fixed moments in time. The second, was the Sword of Assimilation. It can transfer time powers. Well, actually, I think it can transfer any special property from one individual to another, but in terms of our world, time powers are the only things that matter. The third...” He couldn’t finish his sentence.

“What is it, Jupiter Preston?” Declan prompted.

“Don’t call me that!” Jupiter cried. “My name is Fury.”

“I thought it was Rosa,” J.B. said.

“My alternate goes by that name, but I’m Fury.”

“Keep explaining,” Leona coaxed.

Jupiter composed himself. The third object that was created on May 23 was the Omega Gyroscope. It was...kind of a toy that one of the soldiers was carrying with him. I guess he planned on giving it to his son, or something? It can manipulate reality in any way imaginable, and any way unimaginable. It can do literally anything.”

“Well, that sounds dangerous,” Mateo figured. “I’m not sure it’s a bad thing it doesn’t exist in this timeline.”

“You don’t get it.” Jupiter was shaking his head profusely. “The Omega Gyroscope is responsible for time travel.” He waited for a reaction before continuing, “it led to everything! It led to everyone you’ve ever known existing. It led to the Saviors of Earth, to the salmon, to the Gallery. This world is nothing without it. It’s..nothing!”

Mateo approached Jupiter, and placed his hand on his shoulders. “It’s not nothing. It’s what the world should be. It’s what nearly everyone believes the world is...until someone like us shows up, and reveals the truth.”

“You still don’t understand, Matic. You erased time travel from history. We may not be in what we were calling The Parallel, because it might not be running parallel at all. You might have just destroyed the timeline you come from. We could be stuck here forever. You know how many trillions of people you just killed?”

“I know how many people I killed,” Mateo defended. “I killed one person here today. At least in terms of traveling through time, I only killed one person. Every time you go back, even just one second, you’re collapsing the timeline you came from, right? So I’m not any more of a killer than any of you. Don’t try to guilt me. I stand by what I did, even if it means this is just where we live now.”

“Yeah,” his friends backed him up in relative unison.

“And I’m not so sure we can’t call this the Parallel,” Mateo went on. “I just carried out Arcadia’s plan, and I hardly think she would have wanted to undo the creation of this gyroscope thing, if it’s so important to you people.”

“She wasn’t going to do that,” Jupiter argued. “She was only going to erase the hundemarke. There is a moment that we mapped that could have prevented the one, but not the other two, from existing. She was going to act on that moment, but you preempted it. You stopped the whole thing. You essentially went back too far.”

“I’m sorry you lost,” Mateo said. “I guess, if time travel doesn’t exist, there’s nothing you can do about it now.”

“Oh, to be sure, time travel doesn’t exist in this timeline, because we’re still in the miniature Gallery chamber. But when we step out, we’ll integrate ourselves fully into the timestream.” He held up his primary Cassidy cuff. “We’re just the only six people with time travel capabilities right now.” He reached out to the keypad, input the code, and opened the door. The basement was a total mess. Furniture was strewn about the floors. Leaky pipes were hanging from the ceiling. Exposed wires were sparking. A little fire was burning in the corner that probably wasn’t going to get much bigger. The walls were blown out.

“I’ve seen this before,” Leona said as she was stepping out. “This is what it looks like in our timeline...sometimes. It spontaneously switches back and forth between perfectly pristine, and destroyed.”

“I guess now we know where that temporal anomaly comes from,” Mateo said with a smile. “I think that’s pretty good evidence that this really is the Parallel, and not all there is.”

“Maybe,” Jupiter was forced to admit the possibility. He started tapping on his cuff screen.

There was a sharp gust of wind, and the fire disappeared, but other than that, things looked about the same. “What did you do?” Declan asked.

“I wanted to test the new pattern,” Jupiter answered. “Nailed it too. This is March 29, 2022.”

“What is the significance of this date?” Leona asked.

“I just said it. It’s your new pattern. It combines yours with Jeremy’s. You were designed to jump forward one year at the end of every day. He only lives on Tuesdays and July. There are certain instances where these dates intersect, and now that is all you will ever know.”

“What is the point of that?” Mateo questioned. “What are you getting out of this?”

“Well, I did have plans for you, which is why I chose all five of you to come with me to the Parallel. Those have since changed, but I see no reason to change everything. You’ll still remain on this new pattern until I decide otherwise. I guess we’ll find out if you were right about the old timeline staying intact.” Without another word, he teleported away. Not that it mattered. They would eventually figure out how to break their connection to him and his primary Cassidy cuff, and when they did, they would be free of all control. The powers that be had no jurisdiction here, and as the man said, there weren’t any other time travelers either. This could have been everything Mateo had been searching for since this all began.

“Let’s get out of here,” Ramses decided. “We need to find out what the rest of the world looks like in this reality.”

They struggled to climb up the stairs of the basement. Even though they were made of concrete, and remained mostly structurally sound, they were covered in debris. Large chunks were torn off as if bitten into by a dinosaur, and the whole thing could come crashing down eventually. The steps didn’t lead them to the first floor of Fletcher House. They had to pull themselves up a wall of dirt and dead grass, and push other vegetation out of the way. When they finally emerged from underground, they saw little else but a meadow at the edge of a forest. They should have been standing in the middle of the suburbs, but it was all gone. They didn’t know what to think.

Declan pulled one of his pant legs up, and removed a cuff from his shin. He started fiddling with the screen.

“You hid that from Jupiter?” Leona asked.

“It’s just my backup teleporter cuff,” Declan started to explain. “I keep it there in case my primary one is damaged, not if an evil clone steals it from me.”

“That could come in handy,” Ramses noted.

“No, it won’t.” Declan wrapped it back around his leg. “Well, I could use it to transport us from here to over there. He shut one eye, and pointed to the distance. “If we wanted to travel the globe, we would need at least one satellite to do it. There aren’t any satellites, though.”

“There aren’t?” Leona was the most shocked by this, but obviously everyone understood how strange this was.

Declan went on, “my mother dispatched a very small and undetectable constellation so I could navigate the world. If those failed me, however, I should still be able to hack into any number of other artificial satellites up there. It’s like when you go hiking, and can’t find a single WiFi signal. There’s nothin’ up there. At all. This world is not space-capable.”

“Thoughts, Leona?” Mateo prompted.

She started to pace around, and work through the problem. The others gave her time to come up with a theory. “One thing I wondered when I first learned about time travel, is whether it explains some of the more wondrous things that humankind has accomplished. Were they responsible for the world’s pyramids? Stonehenge? The moai on Rapa Nui? When I was on Tribulation Island, I spoke with The Historian, and it turns out...no. Humans built those magnificent structures, and they did it with their present-day technology, and that technology was as advanced as it should have been given the constraints of logical progression.

“Still, time travelers do exist, and they do make an impact on the past. They spread future diseases, and save lives, and open people’s eyes. Perhaps they make subtle changes to our species’ development that not even the Historian has noticed, because there are too many variables. If time travel doesn’t exist here, maybe that was enough to slow progress. I mean, Horace Reaver went back in time and made a lot of inevitable technology happen just a few years earlier than in his original timeline. That sort of thing may be happening constantly. Of course, we still need more information.” She looked around. “We’ve yet to see anyone here. That could indeed mean the human race died out centuries ago, and all that’s left is this basement. Or it just means they live on the other side of that hill, and everywhere else on the map, but they haven’t gotten into orbit yet.”

Mateo smiled, and looked over at Declan. “You can’t teleport to China, but you can see over that hill. Why don’t you scout around, and see what else is in the area? It’s not an order, I wanna be clear. I recognize you don’t owe us anything.”

“I want answers too,” Declan said. He removed the teleporter cuff once more from his leg, and placed it on his arm, higher than it normally would be, because of the Cassidy cuff that he was unable to remove. “Well, that’s gonna be annoying.” With a smile of his own, he aimed his special device down West, where the golf course used to be. He appeared on top of the hill, though he was far enough away to be barely visible. Fortunately, Jupiter didn’t disable the feature that let them communicate with each other through the Cassidy cuffs. “Nothing here. I’m gonna keep going. Go ahead and search for shelter, and make camp. I don’t think we should go back down to the basement.”

“Roger that,” J.B. replied.

They watched Declan’s silhouette disappear. He fell out of comms range after an hour of running a circular grid search, and didn’t return until long after nightfall.

“Did you find anything?” Leona asked.

“Nothing. We’re alone for miles and miles.”

“I’m sure Jupiter’s pissed,” Ramses figured.

“Good,” Mateo said.

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 1075: Lourdes

< > Table of Contents

Have you ever heard that cliché where parents tell their young child that the family pet is going off to live on a farm? Well, most of the time, that’s a lie, and the pet is actually dead. In this case, however, it’s not a lie, because I live on that farm as well. We currently have four hundred acres of land that we dedicate predominantly to the preservation of animals. We take in dogs, cats, birds, and even fish, whose owners are not able to care for them. People send us animals from all over the country, trying to prevent them from going to kill shelters. We allow them to be adopted, if someone drops by looking for that, but we don’t advertise this aspect of our business exhaustively. Of course, we don’t make any money from doing any of this, and it costs a lot to feed the creatures, and maintain the facilities. That’s why we’ve always also had a revenue-generating component in an attempt to offset our overhead. We sell horse rides, and cow-milking events, and we have a petting zoo. Unfortunately, we’ve been experiencing diminishing returns for years, and by the end of this year, we would have probably had to completely shut down. Everyone in town knew that this was about to happen, so they rallied around us to help, but there wasn’t much they could do. At best, they were able to prolong the inevitable for a month. That is, until Viola died. As you know, she was born into a very wealthy family. They probably had the most money of anyone here. At least they used to. In her will, she stipulated that a huge sum of cash be donated to our farm. I’m not at liberty to discuss the numbers publicly, but it’s enough to keep us open. This wasn’t her money; it was her parents, but they respected her wishes, and it’s been suggested that they enhanced the final amount. We just couldn’t believe it. Because of us, they are now living a lot less comfortably, and our lives have never been better. We just found out about it last week. If you had interviewed me before that, I wouldn’t have anything to tell you, because I didn’t otherwise know Viola. She seemed to know quite a bit about us, though. Not only did she have her parents send the money, but it also came with a pretty detailed business plan that could help us use the donation wisely, and keep the farm afloat indefinitely. I mean, you should see this thing; it’s a real business plan, and it doesn’t even require us to get a loan from the bank. It goes over other businesses we could start, like turning it into a destination venue, and a bed and breakfast. I don’t know how to repay them.

Microstory 1033: Warren

< > Table of Contents

I was always a very gullible child, and it’s something I’m proud to be over now. Any number of factors went into me having severe trust issues; some of it probably genetic, but most of it had to do with how I was raised. I was born to an incredibly loving family, but I was also very sheltered. My family didn’t ever want to worry me, or disappoint me, so they just held onto every lie they thought would make me feel better. I was in double digits before a classmate callously, but methodically, explained to me how it would be physically impossible for Santa Claus to exist. I once missed an entire week of school because someone told me the government came up with a new holiday that lasted for six days. Conversely, I’ve come in to school on an embarrassing number of Saturdays. Still my parents skirted the issue, and didn’t try to do anything to help me get past this huge character flaw. I am nearing high school graduation, and I would not have been prepared for the real world if not for Viola. The worst thing that I ever let happen to me was the day after the end of middle school. I was walking my dog around Master Creek when I ran into a couple of kids from school who were acutely aware of my naïveté. You may think it’s bad that you can’t maintain healthy relationships, because some trauma has caused you to be too suspicious of others, but try having the exact opposite problem. Trust me, mine was worse. You don’t know what bad is. These kids convinced me that they found plants that were a special kind of lettuce that was genetically combined with sugar cane, which made it sweet. Well, I think you know where this is going. The plant turned out to be poison sumac. Don’t blame the kids, though. Both of them had experienced rashes on their skin before, and knew how easy it was to treat. What they didn’t realize is how much worse it can be for certain others, and when ingested.

They freaked out, but did the right thing, by calling emergency services, and getting me to a hospital. As you can see, I survived, and though I wouldn’t recommend it, I’m better than I ever was. Other than the bullies—who grew up to be two of the most generous and kind people you’ll ever meet, in part thanks to the horror they were responsible for—one other classmate came to visit me in the hospital. Yes, it was Viola Woods. She had heard what happened, and seemed to have some drive to keep it from happening ever again. She was perfectly normal when she walked into the room, but my mother thought one or both of us had a crush on the other, and wanted to give us some privacy. That was when Viola changed. She started breathing very deliberately and deeply. She shut her eyes on every exhale, and stared into mine with each exhale. Once she had completed her preparations, she placed her hands under my neck, and spoke. She gently, but firmly, ordered me to be more careful. She told me that some people can be trusted some of the time, but no one can be trusted all of the time. She told me to educate myself in a number of subjects, so that when I hear fake news—yeah, she used the term long before it became a political buzzword—I know how to debunk it. It may seem silly, but everything changed for me that day. I swear to God, I could literally feel my brain rewiring itself, absorbing all of her instructions as irrefutable. This was just advice, I cannot go against her commands. The last thing she did was give me a peck on the lips, which immediately relieved me of the pain the poison had caused. Then we never spoke again. I don’t know what she is, but she couldn’t be quite human. I’m not even convinced she’s really dead, because I don’t trust the people who are telling us that.