Microstory 2451: Mud World: World of Mud

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Here we have another overly descriptive name, like Mountain Mountain or Substrate Development Dome. If you’re lookin’ for mud, they have it here. We got obstacle courses, wrestling, bogging. We got all sorts of sports. If it’s typically paid on the ground, you’ll be playing it on—see if you can guess—a muddy ground. Did you guess right? There are some places in Mud World that isn’t mud, and that’s because it’s SWAMPS! There are no boats, so you have to wade, or even swim, across in order to get from one sector of mud to another sector of mud. MUD! There is already a dome that’s dedicated exclusively to swamp and wetlands, but this one has both. That’s okay, there’s room for all of us. If you come here, you’re gonna get muddy. I know, big surprise. Like, there are only a bunch scattered points of respite from all the mud called King Hills where you can play King of the Hill. A few people can probably stand on the top of it, but there’s only supposed to be one. If you manage to secure it, you better not rest on your laurels, because I guarantee that someone else is gonna come challenge you within the next three seconds. It’s not that everyone is trying to get out of the mud, it’s just fun to push people around, and get pushed around...back down into the mud. If you don’t like mud, you’re not gonna have a good time. You walk through the doors, check in, and then walk down some stairs to the area. Once you get down to the bottom (and in the mud that I was talking about earlier), the stairs collapse, and the nearest other stairs could be miles away for the next group of visitors. You could try to get to one of those quickly, but why would you do that? You’re walking through mud! And mud is great! I don’t know how else to explain that this is a Mud World: World of Mud. I’m not just calling it that for fun, by the way; it’s the official name, which I’m guessing you know because you’re here, and if you’re here, then you must be interested in mud. Which is a good thing, because we got plenty of mud here. MUD! Okay, that’s enough—it’s enough mud! ENOUGH MUD! I’m done with the mud! It’s over! If you’re done with mud, walk over to the nearest exit, and step into a shower. Ah, that feels good. Nice to get all this mud off my body. The water is warm, the jets go every which way. You can stay in the shower as long as you want, they got loads of them; as far as the eye can see. I mean, you can’t see the other showers, they have partitions. Well, they do have group showers. If you wanna wash off in full view of others, that’s your business, and theirs. It’s not 2025, where everyone is sexually unhealthy, and self-conscious. When you’re done with the shower, they have hot tubs too. After you’re done tubbin’, please get back in the shower, because hot tubs are gross. I’ll take a pool of mud over a hot tub any day. HOT TUBS! And-or you can dry off, and leave the dome. You can leave the dome for good, or come back another time. Or hell, you can turn around right that instant, and get back into some muddy shenanigans in the mud. One last thought before I go: MUD!

Microstory 2335: Vacuus, January 31, 2179

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Dear Condor,

Father has not yet written to me. It’s fine, I’m not disappointed. I don’t know him at all, so I can’t know what I should expect out of him. I just wanted to give you an update before it happens that I’m going to be out of communication range again. It won’t be too long, but it’s out of my hands. You see, when researchers first discovered Vacuus, they thought to send probes here before they sent people. Unfortunately, they lost contact with these probes, and were never able to gather much information about the planet. They obviously decided to just send a manned-mission without enough information, and that’s because the ship they were using was self-sustaining. If, for some reason, it wasn’t possible to reach or land on the surface, it wasn’t like a death sentence. We could have been living on it this whole time. It’s still orbiting us right now, and people regularly go back and forth. I could have gotten a job up there instead. In fact, I told you that I’m the only one doing what I do, but that’s not technically true. Someone is up there right now, using their own instruments to track nearby cosmic events. They just don’t do it for the same reasons, and have other responsibilities. It’s not for safety, they’re mostly studying the effects of deep space survival as it pertains to remoteness from the host star. I kind of forget about them, because we don’t really interact. Anyway, that’s not really important. The point is that, once we arrived here, we discovered why communication with the probes stopped working. It’s because of a periodic meteoroid shower called the Valkyries, which causes a blackout. These meteoroids are very close to one another, and interconnected via weak, yet still impactfully disruptive, electromagnetic fields. It has to do with the ferromagnetic composition of them, and the occasional electrostatic charge that builds up when they scrape against one another. This can last for years, but it’s a relatively rare event, and has only happened twice since Earth sent the probes. What’s not all that rare is when one of these meteors becomes dislodged from the shower, and we end up between it and all its friends. If we’re in the right position, it’s pretty as it’s streaking across the sky, but it’s problematic too. We don’t always know when it’s going to happen, and we don’t always know when it’s going to affect us, but it too knocks out signal transmission, though for a much shorter period of time. Our astronomers have devoted most of their careers to studying these phenomena. At first they thought that the shower was falling apart, but they now believe that the stray meteoroids eventually find their way back to the shower. Earth is aware that this is going to happen, and have upgraded their protocols to account for it. So if you send a message, it will end up being stored in a nearby buffer until the relay station receives word that signal transmission has been restored. I’m sorry to spring this on you so last minute, but if you reply, I doubt that I’ll receive you for a while. Please let your father know as well, thanks.

Hopefully not for long,

Corinthia

Microstory 2275: Now I Can’t Remember What

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This is finally Nick again. Kelly is typing this for me, but it’s my words. I’m really struggling to keep my eyes open. It’s not even that I’m falling asleep. It just kind of feels really uncomfortable to hold up my eyelids. They feel like huge weights on my face. I do occasionally fall asleep when I don’t want to, though, so it may take us a long time for us to finish this post. I would tell you to be patient, but this isn’t live, so by the time you read this, you’ll have known how long it took us to finish. I’m still in the hospital, as you can imagine, and I’m in quite a bit of pain. I’ve limited myself to regular OTC stuff because I don’t like how narcs make me feel. Before I could advocate for my own healthcare needs—back when I was on the brink of death, and totally out of it—they had me on morphine, or something or other. They continued to give this to me after my surgeries, because that was protocol, and I couldn’t tell them otherwise. It was probably for the best during this period, however, because the pain would have been unbearable, and the hallucinations were worth it if I could remember them. I started being able to remember them before I was lucid, though, so I can tell you about them, if you’re curious. The most common one was that every time I tried to shut my eyes to sleep, a cacophony of unintelligible voices would start to talk over one another in the hallway. I asked them to be quiet, but I think in the real world, I wasn’t saying anything at all. These people obviously didn’t exist. The scariest hallucination was when—sorry, I actually did fall asleep in the middle of this sentence, and now I can’t remember what I was gonna say. Maybe I’ll recall for a future update. I would have written it down earlier if I could have. I can barely move. I’ve not gotten out of this bed since they brought me in. Kelly has had to do things for me, even though she doesn’t work here. I’m hoping I’ll be able to stand up by tomorrow, and then shower on my own shortly thereafter.

Microstory 2219: It is Always Fatal

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I might try to say more tomorrow, but today is not a good time to spend a lot of time curating a good post. We’re reeling from today’s news. We knew that it was bad. I mean, just look at him; it had to be bad. But we didn’t know quite how bad. There are five types of infections. When Nick first arrived in this universe, he contracted a virus, and shortly thereafter, he got a bacterial infection. These might be the two most common. There are some people who just get the cold every year, whether they take a vaccine for it or not. Fungal infections are fairly common too, and they often go untreated, because symptoms are sometimes rather mild, albeit fairly gross. He also managed to suffer from a fungus when he used some unclean showers in Iowa, but before that, a parasite took hold of him when he was exposed to the wrong plant at the nursery where he worked. All of this happened during the first quarter of this year, and he thought that he was out of the woods for a while. Sadly, that has turned out to not be true, though we didn’t know until today that the disease that he has is yet another infection. You see, all four of the types of infections that you’re familiar with can potentially be deadly. None of them is totally safe. But there is a fifth type that you have probably never even heard of, and the worst part about it is that it is always fatal. It’s called a prion, and while some prion diseases can be treated to some degree, they are the least understood class. The good news (or bad, depending on how you look at it), is that everything I’ve been doing with him has been everything that the doctor would have ordered had he diagnosed this before. Managing symptoms is the only possibly helpful course of action. Now that he knows that it’s there, he can study it more, and tweak some of Nick’s medications, but that’s about it. The horrible truth is that he is going to die from this. He may have a few months to live, but the doctor doesn’t see him making it through the New Year. I’ve written more than I planned on. I better end it here, so I can get back to taking care of him. We’ll see how much time I have tomorrow, or if I’m even emotionally up to it.

Microstory 2131: Little Cell

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My fungal infection is evidently extremely contagious, so I’m in prison now, in a special wing of the facility for this very thing. Most of the other guys are in here to protect the other prisoners, though to varying degrees. I think a couple of them just need to be protected from others, for at least a period of time. The FBI is very serious about what’s happened to me. They know that this is the fourth time in as many months that I’ve been sick, so they’re not messin’ around. They sent investigators to every place I’ve been to, in Kansas City, Iowa, and even down in Alabama. I didn’t think that they would find anything, because it should be the proverbial needle in a haystack, but they actually confirmed the source of my infection. When I first escaped to Iowa, the ID makers (who, you’ll recall, kidnapped their daughter when she was little) set me up in an abandoned warehouse. They found traces of mold in the showers that I used to clean myself while I was staying there. So it was in me for a month before I started showing symptoms. Because of this, everyone I’ve come in contact with since then, including law enforcement agents, court staff, and even the teenage girl, who is now in witness protection, has to be tested. That’s going to take some time, which is going to stress me out quite a bit. I’ll just be devastated if it turns out that I infected someone else. Even the ID makers would be bad news. I just don’t like hurting people, and anyway, my lawyer says that they would be able to use it to their advantage in their own criminal case. All I can do is wait, and hope that I was careful enough so as to not infect anyone else. It’s not guaranteed that I did. I’ve never been a fan of being around other people, so I instinctively keep my distance, even when there’s no reason to suspect that anyone is sick. Hopefully it was enough.

For the time being, I’m just in my little cell. There are no windows, because that would expose the outside world to me, and vice versa. The bed is less comfortable than the ones in jail. The food isn’t as good. The correctional officers aren’t as nice. They know that my situation is different than everyone else in here, but they don’t really care. They’ve been trained to not treat people great, so that’s what they’re used to. As far as I’ve seen, they’re not abusive, but I would honestly be less surprised if I learned that they actually were. I don’t interact with them very much, as you would expect. I don’t get yard time, and I take all my meals inside the cell. If I want to work out, my only choice is a pull-up bar. Of course, I’m supposed to be resting and recovering right now, but I wouldn’t use it anyway, because I hate pull-ups. A nurse comes to check my vitals every two hours, and a doctor visits twice a day. The nurses take my blood occasionally too, to keep testing it. They think that I’m going to have to stay in here for the rest of the week. Even if I stop exhibiting symptoms, I could still be contagious. Fortunately, the judge agreed to give me a computer with internet access. This will allow me to start my job today, which is really important, because I don’t want to be fired on my first day. A big thanks to my parole officer, Leonard who fought for me. Obviously, since you’re reading this on a Monday, you know that I’ll be able to continue to post to my website too. There’s nothing stopping me from going to whatever site I want, but I want to commit right now to only using this for work and writing. Okay? You can verify that by monitoring my activity, I assume, prison officials. No funny business, I promise.

Microstory 2130: Not Lookin’ Good For Me

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Things are not good. At first, I thought I just overdid it with all the walking and shopping yesterday, and that surely exacerbated the issue, but that is not what’s making me sick. It couldn’t be. Exercise might make you nauseated, and certainly tired and sore, but my symptoms are a lot worse than that. I was restless all night last night. I’m not sure if I got any sleep, but I was pretty out of it the whole time. Things started to come back to me as more time passed after waking up, reminding me that I never truly got any sleep, though I wasn’t ever fully conscious either. I was sweating throughout, and coughing regularly. There’s a rash kind of all over my body that I think I’ve probably had for a few days now, but didn’t give much thought to before. I was really hot and chilly at the same time this morning, so I was guessing that I had a fever, but at no point during my shopping did I think to buy myself a thermometer. I first took a shower to clear myself up, but that did no good, so I filled up the tub, and let the steam wrap me up. Then I had to shower again, because that’s what you gotta do. It was a relief while I was in the water, but it didn’t last one second on the bathmat. I knew that I had to do something to actively fix this, so I called my parole officer, who basically ordered me to go to the pharmacy down the street. They have a clinic there for quick visits, which are only meant to give you an idea of what’s wrong. They don’t provide treatment, but they can give you recommendations. They’re quite certain that I have an infection, though they can’t tell me whether it’s bacterial, viral, or parasitic again. They sent my blood to a lab, but that could take time to process, as you can imagine. I don’t have any insurance yet, so I can’t go to a regular doctor, but fortunately, I’m a felon! That means the state has to provide me with minimal medical care. I’m going to the jail an hour and a half early to speak with the medical staff there. We still need to figure out what this means, because regardless of my specific diagnosis, it’s not lookin’ good for me. I’m likely contagious, and can’t be allowed to roam around the general population. The solitary cells aren’t equipped to handle me either. Even if all I need is water and rest, it’s a legal issue to just throw me in a hole, and let me fend for myself. The prison that’s about an hour away has a special medical ward, but I’m really hoping that they don’t make me go there. I know that I won’t really be in prison, but it’s close enough that I don’t want to do it. My parole officer is looking into house arrest options, or just a postponement of my sentence, but they’ve already accommodated me for a lot, so I don’t like my chances.

Microstory 2103: My New Dirty Job

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I’ve been looking for work. Unlike when I was in Kansas City, and in my past life, I no longer have standards. I used to have certain limitations, which stopped short of cleaning, food preparation or distribution, and interacting with people too much. I think I’m going to still shy away from that last one, since I don’t need to be exposing my wanted face to a whole bunch of people every day. I’m also not good at smiling, whether it’s real or fake. I can grimace. If you need someone to grimace awkwardly, and make everyone in the room feel incredibly uncomfortable, I am your man. What I don’t like about the other two things is that my health and sanitation standards are higher than anyone else’s. That sort of stuff is hard to be around, because it will never be good enough for me, and people find that rather annoying, if you can believe it. But ya know, you don’t know how to wear gloves. You seem to think that makes you impervious to cross-contamination, but that’s not how it works. If you pick up a big piece of poop, throw it in the toilet, and then go back to fixing my sandwich, you’ve just put poop in that sandwich. I don’t really care that it didn’t get on your hands, do I? That was never my concern. Of course, this is an exaggeration, but it’s plausible, since most people seem to think that clothing is some magical barrier that prevents bacteria and viruses from being transmitted, but I’m here to tell you that it’s not. Trust me. I know pathogens. I suppose that all has more to do with food, which is why cleaning doesn’t bother me as much. I mean, it really bothers me, but I can immerse myself in it, and then come out clean on the other side. This temporary place where I’m staying has a perfect system for me, especially with my new dirty job. I’m a janitor, which is kind of always where I thought I would end up. Now all I need is to become an unarmed security guard, and I will be able to check everything off my list of jobs I either wanted, or thought I would have to take. This isn’t so bad. I can clean myself off at the end of the day in the group showers, and then step right into the tub shower. That way, I don’t have to dirty up the tub. I know that sounds like overkill to you, but I prefer it. The washer and dryer combo unit are right there too, which allows me to clean my uniform every night before I have to use it again the next day. It’s not glamorous, but it will get me by...for now.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 3, 2399

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Alyssa wraps her towel around Leona Matic’s body, wishing that she had a robe instead, and peeks her head out into the hallway. It’s kind of annoying now, not having a bathroom directly attached to her room. Then again, this was how she grew up. She had to share one with her brothers and sister growing up. What’s awkward here is that she still looks like Leona. It’s not her face, though; she’s a temporal illusionist, so it’s not the first time that she’s looked like someone else. It’s the rest of the body. Seeing it, washing it, using the toilet. It all feels like a violation. Leona told her that it was fine, partly because this isn’t even her original body anyway, but that hasn’t made things any less weird.

By the time she makes it to the shower room, Mateo has come around the corner, holding his own shower stuff. “Oh, sorry. Go ahead.”

“There’s more than one stall in there,” she points out.

“That’s okay, I’ll just wait.”

Alyssa frowns, but doesn’t enter the room.

“Have you talked to Ramses about switching to your old body? When does he think it’ll be safe?”

“Oh, it’s safe now,” she replies. “I just don’t really want to switch back just yet...”

“Why not?” He starts thinking about it when she doesn’t answer. “Oh, you like the idea of being able to teleport and survive in the vacuum of space.”

“I haven’t tried to do anything yet, I’m kind of scared, but yeah. Is that wrong?”

“No, it’s not wrong, I’m sure—” He stops talking abruptly, and a look of horror appears on his face. “Oh, no.”

“What? Did I already mess something up?”

“No. No, you didn’t do anything wrong. This is their fault. They should have seen this coming. In fact, Ramses shouldn’t have let you even attempt to transfer to Leona Reaver’s body, because something like this may have ended up the consequence.”

“What? What consequence? Tell me.”

“It’s hard to explain, and I definitely don’t understand it, but when we were resurrected from the afterlife simulation, the man in charge added a code to our minds that gives us our time skipping pattern. We can’t delete the code, or modify it. We can’t even get rid of it by switching to new bodies, because it’s a part of us. Every time we transfer to a new body, it somehow becomes a part of it too. Again, I don’t get how it works, but that body you’re in right now has the code...and now so do you. You are now like us, and it apparently can’t be undone.”

“So once you five start jumping through time again, I’ll go with you?”

“Yeah, unless Ramses can finally figure out how to stop it, which he might actually, because he didn’t really have time to work very hard at it the first time it happened, and now we’re in this world, which has different rules.”

This is big news, and a huge game-changer for Alyssa. It explains why all these people already knew her from the future. She would not officially join the team if something like this hadn’t happened. They wouldn’t have asked her, and she wouldn’t have been able to keep up. She needs some time to process. Without saying another word, she just walks through the door, and spends a good forty minutes under the hot water. The good thing about this being a medical facility is the shower seat.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 15, 2398

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Marie gets out of the shower with a yawn. She looks around to make sure that no one saw it. Fortunately there’s no one else in the room, except for one person making some noise in the locker area. She wraps her towels around herself, and heads that direction, where her locker is anyway. Esmé is going through a lock-and-load montage. “Officer Sharrow, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m gearing up.”

“Gearing up for what, war?”

“We don’t know what we’re going into. I like to be prepared,” Esmé reasons.

“You’re our diplomat, did no one tell you that?”

Esmé sighs, annoyed. “You haven’t been with the division in a while. I don’t trust Nero anymore. He’s lost his edge.”

“Specialist Cleary has passed all of his recent evaluations. I asked him to tone down the weaponry. Perhaps that’s what you’re picking up on.”

She shakes her head. “It’s more than that. It’s before you came back. ”

“He was—forgive me—cleared by his superiors, and that’s good enough for me. It should be good enough for you too. Respect the chain of command.”

“Like I said, you weren’t there. He made a bad call in the field, almost got his partner killed. I don’t expect you to understand since you’ve obviously gone soft as well.”

That was out of line. She’s the team leader here, and the expert on their targets. Esmé can’t talk to her like that. She slams Esmé’s face against the locker in front of her, denting the metal. Esmé tries to elbow Marie back, but she sees this coming, and ducks. They continue to fight for the next minute, Esmé trying to pull all of her weapons back out, only to be disarmed immediately. Finally, Marie slams Esmé’s back against the bench, and knocks the wind out of her with a heavy blow to the chest. She puts her lips right next to Esmé’s ear as she’s trying to regain her breath. “You wanna go work as a disposable in the Military Authority, I’ll put in the transfer papers myself. You wanna do something that matters, you’ll follow my orders. This is my team, this is my mission, these are my people we’re approaching. Some of them are bad, but most of them are good, and if you go in there guns blazing, they will freak out! You may find yourself sitting next to your internal organs if one of them has the power to teleport them there, so don’t give them a reason. You’re the diplomat, so be diplomatic. Am I understood, Officer?” Disposable is an offensive term for an enlisted officer in any military branch, particularly someone who fights in the infantry.

Esmé continues to struggle with her breath, but she manages to eke out the affirmative. She stands up, and starts to gather the scattered weapons for armory return.

“I’ll see you in the briefing room.” Marie puts on her clothes, and then leaves shortly after Esmé.

Specialist Cleary is already waiting for them in there, as is Kivi, who Marie goes up to. “You’re not joining us, are you?”

“No, but sort of,” Kivi answers. She takes out a tablet that’s showing a map of the world, indicating all the last known location of the errors from Ramses’ global brain scanner. “Winona wants us to always be nearby, in case you need backup. I’ll be using my psychic power to find whoever it is my mind wants to find, but if you need me, we’ll be there. All you have to do is decide where we’re going first.”

Marie doesn’t look at the map. She’s unsure about all of this.

“I won’t be there to babysit you. It really is just a contingency. My team’s mandate is to find people. The orders don’t say anything about who to find. People go missing everywhere, so they figured we might as well work in the same city at the same time. We won’t even be sharing a safehouse.”

“Okay.” Marie looks down at the map. Any destination seems fine, they have little reason to choose one place over another. Someone appears to be in Giza, which makes sense, given what they know of the pyramids. There’s a whole diplomatic issue with Egypt, though, especially if they’re going to be shadowed by a tack team. One target appears to be on an island in the Philippines, while another is just in the middle of the water. Unless, is that...? It is, it’s the Mariana Trench. That makes sense as well, but unless they’re at or near the surface, it’s a no-go at the moment. They just recently asked for a submarine, and it didn’t work out so great for the people who loaned it to them, so asking again would seem heartless. It would probably be met with a belly laugh, and a resounding NO. Perhaps they could ask someone else.

Their investigator, Agent Doric Filipowski comes in. “Where are we headed? I may need to prep field assets.”

Marie looks up with a stalling smile. She quickly takes one more glance at the map, feeling the need to make a decision before it starts to look like she doesn’t know what she’s doing. “Paris. We’re going to Paris.”

“Mais bien sûr!” Doric declares. He pats Esmé playfully on the shoulder.

Esmé winces.

“Are you okay?” he asks her.

“It’s fine, I slept on it wrong,” Esmé answers. “J’ai toujours du mal à dormir avant une mission.”

Marie almost feels bad about their fight. Almost. Before she can dwell on it, her phone rings. She looks at it. “Holocall from the AOC.”

“Let’s go in here,” Kivi suggests, pointing to the executive office.

As Kivi is closing the door behind them, Marie magnetizes her device to the wall, and answers. She steps back to get in frame. “Leona, what’s going on?”

“Have you spoken with Mateo?” Leona asks.

“Not since he told me about Fairpoint’s transfer. Why, haven’t you?”

“You have the map of the errors handy?”

“Right here,” Kivi says, stepping forward.

“Zoom into the Mariana Trench, go back two days in the data timeline, then step through the history.”

“Okay.” Kivi does as she’s asked, letting Marie see the screen. They watch as the error appears, disappears, stays gone, and then reappears. The AOC passes over the spot every ninety minutes. Sometimes it detects this specific error, and sometimes it doesn’t.

“This error wasn’t there before,” Leona says after they step through history a few times, “back with that first scanner. It only showed up two days ago.”

“Is this a pattern?” Kivi questions. “It’s not every other orbital pass, or...”

Marie looks away to think. “It’s morse code. Every time the error appears means a dot and every time it’s gone means a dash.”

“What does it say?” Kivi asks.

“Were I you,” Leona replies. Mateo is the error.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: September 14, 2398

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Ramses is back in his own body. That’s the first thing Mateo wanted done when they returned to Kansas City from their nearly three week-long ordeal into the bulkverse, and between the realities. They didn’t switch bodies, though. Ramses took his place where he belongs, but Erlendr was left in the Insulator of Life. He’ll be trapped there until he can be delivered to his fate in the afterlife simulation, where Past!Leona murders him with a zeroblade. Now no one is in Leona Reaver’s body. It’s destined to return to its native reality as well, so it can die for real—fortunately without the consciousness that once inhabited it, however. They have to figure out how they’re going to make that happen, just to be safe. They don’t want a doomed substrate floating around that someone might end up in without a chance to escape before fate intervenes, and destroys it forever.

Trina’s body is currently not being used either. Its original consciousness found itself in a new home in the main sequence, and lived a complete life from then on, choosing not to undergo any significant life extension treatments or enhancements. So that’s done, and will likely not be undone. Unlike Reaver’s body, Trina’s isn’t destined for anything. If they wanted to, they would be able to keep it indefinitely, but they’re not going to do that, because it’s unnecessary and macabre. Maybe if they were discussing an adult substrate, it would be one thing, but they don’t want to leave themselves open to the option of transferring someone into the body of a child. That’s just creepy. They might regret not having the alternative later, but they will burn that bridge when they come to it. Trina deserves to be put to rest in all her forms. They’re on their way to a memorial service, one that her brothers, Carlin and Moray can attend, since they could not be present for the first one.

In this region in the main sequence, normal people are not allowed to dig the graves for their family and friends. It’s a liability issue that requires paid employees to take part in the work. For religious reasons, the law can’t really stop it from being a thing, so that’s what they’ve chosen to do. They’ve selected a non-denominational cemetery, since Trina wasn’t old enough to come to her own decision about what faith she would follow. This is a sacred space where any interreligious squabbles people might have with one another are put aside. Everyone has the right to bid farewell to their loved ones. Carlin and Moray are young, but they’re both old enough to wield a shovel. They’re mainly responsible for the digging, but Mateo and Ramses are helping as well.

Now the youngest, little Moray has grown tired of the work, and they’re not even halfway through. He climbs out of the grave, embarrassed and ashamed. “It’s okay.” Heath has shown up without anyone realizing. “I got you.” He gently takes the shovel from the boy, and hops in to continue the digging.

“Thank you for coming,” Marie says to him.

“I’m not here for you.”

That’s when they notice that he did not come alone. Vearden and Arcadia are here too, arms locked together. Are they together, together? “We’re here for you, even though we don’t know you very well,” Vearden says.

“Have you two been living in the condo the whole time?” Kivi questions.

“Yeah, it’s an unfilmed updated reboot of Three’s Company,” Arcadia jokes softly.

Marie doesn’t know what to think of all this.

“We assumed that you ran off to a far corner of the Earth,” Leona tells them. “We never thought to look this close.”

“That’s what we were planning to do,” Arcadia says. “Starting at the Bran safehouse seemed like the most logical first step.”

“We didn’t know that someone would be coming back to it, especially not so soon,” Vearden adds. “We talked, and agreed to share the space as outcasts.”

“No one cast anyone out,” Marie argues.

“Let’s not fight today,” Heath requests.

Marie looks at her bare wrist. “Well, I’m free tomorrow, and everyday after that.”

“I’ll come back when I’m ready. Today is just about Trina and the McIvers.”

“How did you even find out about the service?” Mateo asks.

Heath can’t help but glance over at Angela, not sure if she wants to keep their link secret or not. They all look over at her. “Someone had to maintain contact. It’s a safety thing. Rule Number Thirteen, never get separated from the people you love. Please don’t ask me to pick sides.”

“Thank you,” Marie says to her alternate self, taking her by the hand affectionately. They smile mildly at each other.

Heath takes note of the tender moment, and then gets back to work.

Twenty minutes later, the job is done. The gravediggers move off to shower at the facilities, returning with the formal clothes they had brought. Heath didn’t have any extra clothes, because he didn’t come knowing that he would help, so the sexton provided him with a spare set of ceremonial robes to keep the dirt and grime covered. Leona was never officialized as a ship captain. She was chosen by the crew at a time when a leader was needed, and accepted by all who have joined the group since. The state would not usually acknowledge such a distinction, but it made an exception after a conversation with a certain U.S. senator. She performs the ceremony in this capacity, so the whole memorial can be kept in the family.

All three siblings speak to their relationship with Trina, but no one else speaks, because they did not know her well enough for that to be appropriate. At the end of the ritual, each attendee tosses a handful of dirt over Trina’s casket. To make up for having to quit earlier, Moray insists on finishing the burial all by himself, determined to stick to it no matter how long it takes. While the others return to the Lofts for the reception, Mateo hangs back so he can drive Moray home later. He gets it done quickly, then Mateo waits for him to take another shower. The reception is nice, and bigger than they thought it was going to be. Heath, Vearden, and Arcadia came with a bunch of food of their own. It’s considered a celebration, but a rather subdued one. They don’t drink and laugh and tell stories, or dance. They mostly listen to the siblings who knew her best, particularly Alyssa, who is able to relate stories she heard during Trina’s final moments. At the end of the day, the outcasts go back to the condo, and everyone else retires to their apartments.

That night, Ramses gets out of bed, and sneaks out of the building. He takes one of the cars, and drives back to the cemetery. He digs up Trina’s grave, steals the body, and then fills it back up exactly as it was, so that no one will notice. He takes Trina’s corpse to their building, and leaves her in a secret refrigerated room in the basement that he never told anyone about, in case he needed to store hazardous materials. When he wakes up the next morning, he has forgotten all about it.

Microstory 1869: Warehome is Where The Hotplate Is

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The first thing I did when I got out of college was to apply for a bunch of jobs at warehouses. I didn’t even bother trying to leverage my degree into something “better” because if there’s one thing my entire education career taught me, it’s that even when I work hard at something, I only ever barely make it. So I really needed something entry level, and there were a few other jobs that were off the table. I don’t do cleaning, and I don’t do food services. Cleaning—ironically, but not surprisingly—makes you dirty. And I don’t want to see how the sausage is made. Warehouse work seemed like the ideal environment. If I could just find something lowkey and small, I wouldn’t have to deal with all the stresses of other jobs, or bring my work home with me. I could just sit around and wait for item requests, and then fulfill them. Well, I severely overestimated the number of opportunities like that. They were all busy, busy, busy. We weren’t running, or anything, because that was dangerous, but I wasn’t ever not filling an order. But I didn’t bother looking for anything better, because that sounded like a lot of work. As always, I was an average worker. I was at no risk of getting fired, and at no risk of being promoted. Those guys got paid more, but they also had much more of that stress I was telling you about, because they were responsible for other guys. I just wanted to stay in my lane, and make enough money to afford my not quite rent-controlled apartment. That’s what did me in decades later. I never earned enough to do any significant saving, and when my rent went up, I got out. I realized, though, that I had a backup place to live. There was a nearly secret room in the warehouse on the upper level, which they didn’t use for anything anymore. Always at a comfortable temperature, and big enough to fit a mattress, a hotplate, and some safe space between the mattress and the hotplate. You know where I’m going with this, don’t you? No. You don’t.

I spent about a week looking for a new place, all the while trying to make my living space as nice as possible. I put up some decorations; I like lemurs, so I had a lot of pictures of lemurs. I learned some clever recipes. I even bought a few new things to be more efficient with what little space I had available. Mostly what it did was get me to reassess my needs. I hadn’t watched TV that whole time, and I didn’t miss it. I spent a lot of time reading, which was not a hobby I enjoyed before. See my earlier statements about school. I decided to stop looking for a new apartment, because this was doing me just fine. I had a nice routine, which allowed me to sneak up there without anyone noticing. The perfect thing is that it wasn’t just any room. It was, like, an industrial shower, or something. I don’t know what they designed it to clean, but I don’t think it was people, yet the plumbing was still on, and I found it worked just fine. There was a less secret toilet down the hall that I just couldn’t use until I was sure the place was completely empty. With all that nearby, it was months before I felt bold enough to loosen up a bit. I stopped tiptoeing around, and being careful with the sounds I made. I even ended up venturing downstairs once, curious what the warehouse looked like without lights. I found a bunch of my coworkers down there, playing cards in their pajamas. They greeted me warmly, like they knew I was there the entire time. They said they did know, and then they took me down to a secret section of the basement that was totally finished, where they all lived in more luxury then I ever had in my apartment. So I moved again.

Microstory 1830: Extreme to the End

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I am an adventurer. I like going to the most extreme places on Earth, and participating in the most extreme sports. I kayak on rapids, and run marathons, and even learned how to dance fight. That last one wasn’t especially dangerous, but it wasn’t sitting at home on your couch either, let me tell you that. I’ve climbed the highest mountains, and dove the deepest oceans. If I’m not risking my life, I’m not happy. I can’t say how many times I’ve been seconds or centimeters away from death, but I like to tell people that that is my comfort zone. One day, I thought it could eventually get me, but if the story is crazy enough, my legacy will live on without me. Until then, living on the edge makes me feel alive, and I wouldn’t give it up for anything. That’s why I’m so disappointed in myself right now. I did all these things, and expected to die from something amazing, but that’s not what’s happening. It’s so boring, and pathetic, and embarrassing. I would say I’ll never get over it, but that’s an understatement, because this is it. Someone is going to find me like this, and that will be my entire story. They won’t talk about the time I ran with the bulls, or when I swung over the streets like a certain red and blue costumed hero, from one building to another. That one landed me in jail, and it was my proudest moment. My fan base grew, like, a thousand percent that day. I can’t bear to lose them. I know—again—I’ll be dead anyway, but that shouldn’t mean they all start making fun of me. They should continue to watch my stuff, and talk about me. They should flip off their mothers once she closes the door behind her after scolding them for watching those dumb videos. They should aspire to be me no matter what.

I slipped in the shower, how pitiful is that? I was just trying to step out when I lost my balance, and knocked my head against the porcelain. I don’t mind dying, but not like this, dammit! I struggle to grab my phone from the vanity. It falls right into the toilet. I didn’t bother buying something rugged or waterproof, because I’m not about that virtual life. I live in the moment, in the real world. It’s dead, and I don’t have any other way of reaching out for help, which means the end is near, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. But maybe I can make it a little better. Maybe I can die as I lived, like a freakin’ badass that people look up to. I turn the water back on, and shove the blood down the drain, but it just keeps leaking from my head. But it has to stop at some point, right? No one can know that it started here, or the ruse won’t work. It’s still coming? Seriously!? This isn’t fair! I’ll wrap a towel around it to keep it from dripping on the floors. Must. Get. To. The. Window. This is gonna work. It’s a foolproof plan. They’re gonna find me on the pavement, and they won’t know why I did it, but they’ll call me a hero. Because I am a hero. I crawl across the tiles, onto the hardwood floors of the hallway, and then onto the carpet of the guest bedroom. Some blood does drip from the towel, so I wipe it up with my hand, and keep going. Yeah, I’m not leavin’ a trail. This is definitely gonna work. It’s getting harder to move, but it’s not much farther now. Damn, the window is locked, and I’m getting woozy. I don’t think I can figure out how to open the latch in this state. It’s too complicated. Why do they make windows so complicated? That’s all right. Better even. Going through the glass will just make me look awesomer. I get to my feet, and slam my head against it. It cracks, but doesn’t shatter. I strike it again. It breaks, but not all the way. One more time...and I’m free. Oh, wait, no. I live on the first floor.

Extremus: Year 30

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This is a new timeline. Olindse didn’t change her own past, but she changed the future when she skipped over however long it was, and came here. Thatch asks what’s going on, but she ignores his questions. She steps out of the extraction room, and looks at the keypad, because it’s the closest thing with accurate temporal data. “It’s February 26, 2299,” she says.

“Why?” Thatch asks.

“We were about to get caught. Future!Me showed up to save me. Now she’s gone, and I’m here, and I’ve been missing for the last eight months.”

“Oh boy,” he says. “We’re going to have to come up with a good lie.”

“Not we, me. You have to go back home.”

“You’re asking me to go back to my death.”

“You’re gonna die anyway...in seven years, and three months. That happens whether it’s in 2294, or 2306. It’s up to you whether you want to do it in hock, or if you’re going to have one last nice conversation with Halan Yenant before your nurse turns off your life support. Go back and do some good, or stay here and ruin everything.”

He frowns. “Do he and I really have a nice conversation?”

“The best,” she says, not really knowing exactly what went down that day. “The way he tells it, he wishes you two had had more like it.”

“Well...one is better than nothing, I guess.” He nods gracefully. “Do it.”

Olindse sends the only person on this vessel who understood what it was like to be a Vice Admiral whose advice nobody cares about back to the past. Alone again, she returns to her stateroom to take a shower. She’ll have to explain her absence eventually, but there’s no reason she can’t be well-rested and clean when that happens. When she wakes up from her nap, she forces herself to get dressed, and go out to face the music. She thinks she’s come up with a pretty decent lie. The only logical possibility is that Yitro secretly showed up and recruited her for the mission, and for whatever reason, deposited her back on the Extremus months later. Once the time shuttle finally does return, and Yitro is actually back to dispute the lie, things could get complicated, but she’ll burn that bridge when she comes to it.

It’s pretty late, so Captain Leithe probably retired to her own stateroom for the night. Even so, Olindse takes a quick look on the bridge to make sure, then she heads over to get this over with.

The Captain commands the computer to open her door. “Vice Admiral, hello. What can I do for you?”

“I would like to explain.”

“Explain what?”

“My absence.”

“You were gone?”

“What?”

“Olindse, if you need a break to go to the simulator, or the park, that’s fine, you don’t need to ask for permission, or apologize. I’ll find you if I need you.”

“You didn’t notice that I was gone?”

“Well. I’m a little busy.”

“Yeah, but...”

“Seriously,” Kaiora says, “you served your time as captain. Sure, it wasn’t a full shift, but you still deserve to be retired. You experienced the same rigorous coursework the rest of us did, and you were in charge during some of the most insane and stressful years this ship has seen. Just have fun and relax. Don’t feel bad about it.”

Olindse can’t help but grimace. Wow. Just...wow. “Um. ‘Kay.”

Kaiora nods. “So, I’m gonna work on my Quantum Colony planet for a little bit and then head to bed. You’re welcome to join, if you want...on the game, not...the bed.”

“That’s all right, Captain,” Olindse replies. “I’ll see you later.”

“For sure.”

Olindse steps away from the door to prompt it to close, and begins to hyperventilate. She teleports herself back to her stateroom so she can have her panic attack in peace. Eight months. Eight whole fucking months. She was gone for all that time, and no one noticed! How is that even possible? Do they really think that little of her? Is she really that expendable? All that bullshit Kaiora just tried to feed her about deserving to retire because of her prior work was just a lie. If she really felt that way, she would have realized that she hadn’t seen Olindse for the last eight goddamn months!

Olindse paces the room, trying to let go of her anger, but it won’t leave her alone. No, this will not do. Great, she doesn’t have to explain her absence, but that also means she can’t confide in anyone about this. She has to keep it to herself completely, and bottling up her emotions has never served her well. Resolved to get past this, she activates her teleporter again.

The journey to the Extremus planet will ultimately take 216 years. In that time, the population could grow as much as thirteen times its original complement. Until then, there are tens of thousands of unoccupied cabins that won’t see a resident move in for a long time. Some may never be inhabited, as the engineers obviously constructed more than they thought they would need to accommodate the full breadth of the mission. While spreading out is fine, there is a limit to where civilians are allowed to live. When children move away from home, they can put some distance between them and their parents to exercise some independence, but they can’t go all the way to the stern. Many sections are closed off for use, and will remain that way until such time that they are needed. One block of cabins is the furthest from anybody, and is being used for rage rooms.

Virtual reality is generally considered to be indistinguishable from base reality, but people still like being where physical laws are immutable, and where most of their actions cannot be undone. It’s possible to design a simulation where users can destroy objects without fear of consequences, and then logoff, and go about their day. That program probably does exist somewhere on the servers. People don’t really want that, though; not for this. They want to know that the things they’re destroying are real, and that there’s a chance that something they do in one of these rooms could potentially lead to someone having to go to the infirmary. It’s dangerous, and that’s what makes it so therapeutic. The bylaws did not originally account for this section to exist, so for now, it’s not illegal. For the most part, the government and crew turn a blind eye to it, but they could change their minds later, especially as the administration changes hands.

Olindse walks up to the counter, and demands an arsenal of blunt instruments, such as bats, golf clubs, and metal pipes.

“Okay, you’ll need some protective gear too,” the clerk says.

“No,” Olindse insists.

“I’m afraid it’s policy.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Of course, Vice Admiral.”

“Then you know that I can have this place shut down by this time tomorrow. So go over there, grab me some instruments, and stay the hell out of my business.”

He hesitates to answer, but not too long. “As you wish, Vice Admiral.” He hands her the duffel bag.

“Thanks,” she says as she’s taking it from him. “Oh, and I was never here.”

“Of course, sir.”

Olindse walks down to her assigned room, and walks in. It’s full of absolutely ancient technology—some from Earth, and some from Ansutah before the evacuation. Computers, clocks, old media, objects so old that Olindse doesn’t even know what they were used for. There’s a piece of drywall leaning against the real wall, along with an uninstalled glass window. Bottles, cans, pots, and pans. Clothes to rip, and paper to shred. She looks the room over to see what catches her fancy. All of it. Every last object here is about to meet its end. When she’s done, nothing will be even moderately recognizable. She just has to decide where to start. “This’ll do.”

The door opens, and the lights come on. Olindse wakes up abruptly, covered in cuts, and feeling sick. She must have raged herself to sleep.

Captain Kaiora Leithe walks in and offers a hand. “What are you doing here, Admiral?”

“I don’t have to answer that,” Olindse contends.

“Can you at least let me help you up?”

Olindse squints at the hand. She reaches up as if to accept it, but slaps it away instead. “Go to the devil.”

“Are you drunk?”

“I think I found a bottle of something with alcohol in it last night. I don’t know why it’s illegal, I feel so good right now.” She throws up on her own chest.

Kaiora picks a bottle up from the floor. “Damn, Olindse, this liquor stuff is 277 years old. It was poisonous when they made it, and it’s even more poisonous now. It’s probably from the history museum.” She tries to take control of Olindse’s teleporter.

“What are you doing?” Olindse complains, fighting back.

“You need to go to the infirmary. I don’t know what’s gotten you so upset, but you’re gonna die if you don’t receive proper medical treatment.”

Olindse makes one last pull away from the Captain. “And who will care?”

“I will.”

“I was dead for eight months and you didn’t even notice.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Exactly.”

Kaiora looks away, and accesses her brain’s memory archives. “I probably haven’t seen you in eight months. Were you gone that whole time?”

Olindse shoves a finger in Kaiora’s face. “Bingpot!”

“Oh my God. What happened to you? Were you taken?”

“I think we’ve established that you don’t give a flailing fuck.”

“We’ll talk when you’re sober.” Kaiora remembers, as Captain, she has the ability to transport anyone she wants to anywhere she wants, without their permission, and using her own teleporter. She sends them both to Dr. Holmes.

Since alcohol is illegal and rare, alcohol poisoning is not something that happens on the ship very often. It does happen occasionally, and the medical team believes they encounter nearly every single time someone tries to drink, because the moron doesn’t usually have any experience, so the consequences are not something they can sleep off on their own. Admiral Thatch was perhaps the only exception. Earth once made a serious effort to develop a hangover cure to relieve drinkers from some of the harmful side effects of intoxication, but this was around the time that a state of abstinence was sweeping the world due to its rejection by younger generations. Legislatures quietly made the medical treatment itself illegal, so as to not encourage anyone to regress. A different administration may have handled things differently, but research halted, and the world moved towards the recreational drug-free condition it’s in today. The research was picked up again several decades later, and the dream was ultimately realized. By then, there weren’t many people around to need it, but it did come up sometimes when alcohol was forced upon a victim as a weapon, or a form of torture. Dr. Holmes keeps a stash of the stuff on hand.

She injects Olindse with the treatment, causing her to begin to fall asleep within seconds.

“How long will this take?” Kaiora questions.

“A few hours.” Dr. Holmes pulls Olindse to her side, and places a body pillow against her back. “If she were simply drunk, it would be quicker, but she’s on the verge of death, drinking something that old. You could not have brought her in too soon.”

“Call me when she’s awake,” Kaiora orders. “I’m going to retrace her steps.” Privacy is important on Extremus, but so is security. The ship logs the movements of everyone on board. It erases most people’s histories after a month, but VIPs are kept indefinitely for safety reasons. They’re harder to access, though, even for the Captain. She’ll have to file a formal request with current Head of Security, Ramiel Krupin.

“Are you sure about this, sir?” Ramiel asks. “I mean, an Admiral. That’s...”

“She disappeared for eight months, I need to know where she was.”

“Can’t you just ask her?”

“She’s sick. She’s...lost credibility.”

“All due respect, sir, that sounds like a contrivance. I’m going to need you to spell it out for me.” He hands her a tablet. “And I’m going to need you to do it in writing.”

“This is a matter of ship security. I need that information.”

“You need to have a good reason, or you’re not getting it.”

Captain is the highest rank on the ship, even against admirals, even against the civilian government. If anyone is in a position to declare this to suddenly become a dictatorship, it would be Kaiora Leithe. No one else comes close to having the power to pull that off, not even First Chair. She wouldn’t do it obviously, and neither will any future captain, or they would never be selected in the first place. That’s why Halan Yenant’s decision to alter course was such a terrible crime, because he abused his power to do it. Still, even with all this clout, there are precisely two ranks on this ship with the power to overrule anything a captain says. One of them is the Chief Medical Officer, and the other is Head of Security. “Fine. I’ll investigate this myself.” She storms out.

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Microstory 1418: Take As Needed

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For a few months, adhocracy in Springfield was successful. Some were responsible for transporting water, while others tended the garden. Some were responsible for preparing the food, which they then handed off to the distributors, to make sure everyone had their fair share, and only that. The families of the future source mages continued to live on the perimeter of the habitable zone, and protected the town from time monsters. They were the only ones exempt from contributing to food production responsibilities. Only a few families chose to isolate themselves from the community. They either already had their own backyard gardens, or built them after the Deathfall, so they wouldn’t have to rely on anyone else. They were allowed to transport as much water from Watershed as they could carry, but they weren’t sent there with a special child for protection. They had only themselves to rely on, but they were still required to follow the basic laws. There was no constitution, and though they figured town probably had a charter written up at some point in its history, it didn’t survive until today. No, the laws they needed to follow were the basic ones that everyone over the age of ten understood. They didn’t have to go out of their way to help people, but they weren’t allowed to harm them either, and the line between these conditions was often thin. Whatever belonged to any given individual was theirs to do with what they wanted, and no one had the right to take that from them. Unfortunately, this didn’t mean there weren’t complications. For instance, not all families treated each other with respect, and they were often found fighting amongst themselves. Inter-family relationships created a new level of complexity that put some ownership into question. Who would handle these internal disputes? The Baby Barrier was there to keep threats out, but there was no one on the inside who was in charge of making sure everyone was safe from each other.

They realized that the adhocracy was a nice idea, but the reason bureaucracy was more common was because it allowed policies to be carried out and enforced. They needed a more formal system, so people knew what was expected of them. The bureau-adhocracy. That was a mouthful, though, so they kept the name as it was. Now there was a police contingency, which settled disputes, and conflicts as an unbiased third party, and actively prevented people from breaking the rules. These modifications to the system changed over time. Month by month, year by year, a real system grew from the simple peace. Leaders began to reemerge, and people started to want someone to tell them what to do. This was working just fine, but society wasn’t going anywhere. Nobody shared art, or ideas. They were still limited to a small perimeter of protection, yet each family was somehow also so isolated from everyone else. There were other considerations too. People weren’t taking showers or baths anymore, because transporting water was such an arduous task. If they wanted to develop a piping system of some kind, well, that was going to take a lot more organization, and an adhocracy wouldn’t cut it. Yes, the Springfielders wanted their town back, and they wanted to thrive. So by the end of the era, the Adhocracy was not really an adhocracy anymore. They elected officials, and drew up a real charter. But they kept the name. They were worried that, if they started calling the government something else—whether accurate or not—dissenting voices would rage against it, just because some people don’t like to be told what to do. That wasn’t to say there weren’t disagreements, or that this would all last forever. By the year 2025, technology advanced enough to make the so-called Baby Barrier obsolete, and this caused Springfield to split in two.