The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Sunday, July 28, 2143

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Mateo decided that there was no need to rush off back to his home universe. Leona would still be there waiting for him, and theoretically, no time will have passed for her. He possessed some of her memories, which meant he could recall her meeting his daughter, Dubravka, but he had never actually met her himself. She grew up in Ansutah, and spent her latter years in a different universe that he had never heard of, so this was a gift he would never get again. She couldn’t return with him since she had work to do, along with her cousin, Dar’cy—though they had never considered themselves related to each other, due to some timeline discrepancies.

They spent the whole day together, getting to know each other, and catching up. By the time it was over, Mateo was so calm and confident that he only needed to meditate for a few hours to be ready to slip back home. Meliora was impressed, having often spent days priming passengers to go with her. She was not born with the natural ability to travel the bulkverse, like Limerick, and she didn’t use technology, like The Crossover. It was something she learned to do after centuries of study and discipline, and even then, it wasn’t something she could simply do at a moment’s notice.

Things weren’t quite what they should have been when the two of them made it back home. It was indeed 2141, and only seconds had passed since Past!Mateo left the group with Nerakali and Imzadi. Those he left behind looked around for him for a bit, hoping he would come back immediately, but that wasn’t what happened. Mateo and Meliora were stuck in some kind of observation dimension. Time was moving at the same speed, and they could hear everything their friends were saying, but they couldn’t talk back, or interact with them in any way. “It’s okay,” Mateo assured her.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Meliora lamented.

“I’m not worried about it,” Mateo said. “We’ll get out of here eventually. Until then, let’s just watch over them.”

“Like a creeper?” she asked.

“If that’s your truth.”

“What is going on with you?”

“I’m a new person. Amber didn’t just give me my memories back, she helped me let go of my insecurities, and my guilt. Even though Hitler was a terrible person, I always felt a little gross killing him. I spent my whole life never having murdered someone, and then it happens. And then it happened so many times afterwards. I buried my feelings, but they were always there...until now. Now they’re gone, and I feel totally good about it. I no longer hold a grudge against Zeferino, or Arcadia. I’m no longer mad at the powers that be for having turned me into this. I’m just...”

“Chill?” she finished.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I’m just chill.” Intellectually, he knew that not being worried about anything could get him into trouble. After all, risks were still there, as they were a part of life. But it was a nice change of pace, knowing that everything would turn out okay, if that wasn’t true. “I have you to thank for it. I was already feeling a lot better after I got my soul back, but your meditation technique really pushed me over the edge. Meeting my daughter helped too, I can’t forget that. She’s where she needs to be, as is Imzadi. They’re good, Leona’s good, the two of us are good. It’s all good.”

“Is Leona good?” Meliora questioned. “She looks depressed.

Leona was lying in bed on the mobile home, fully clothed. She wasn’t sleeping, or reading. She just lied there, still.

“Nah, she’s good. She’ll be fine.”

It was true, Leona was fine. Ramses showed up, and asked for her help engineering some time travel something or other for The Sharice Davids. It was something that needed to be on the ship, but also needed to be kept secret, or something bad could happen in the future. This proved to be slightly more difficult than they thought, so they had to come back a year later to finish the job. Mateo and Meliora continued to watch them, as if they were stars in a really boring television show. Nothing interesting happened until they were finished with the temporal displacement drive, and someone showed up to complicate matters. Only one of them seemed to recognize him. “Tal’at?” Sanaa questioned.

“Hello, sister.”

“Sister?” Leona gasped. “You have a brother?”

“Yes.” Sanaa was regarding Tal’at with moderate unease, but not hatred.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why don’t you ever talk about him?”

“Do you talk about it every time you poop?”

“You don’t really think that’s the same thing, do you?” Leona asked.

“She’s always been jealous of me, and my life,” Tal’at explained.

Sanaa nodded ever so slightly, and made no move to contradict her brother’s statement.

Tal’at went on, “I was born with a freedom she always wanted. I didn’t have any psychic powers, and that allowed me to pursue whatever life I wanted.”

“I live the life I want now,” Sanaa argued.

“I know,” Tal’at agreed. “It’s not come without consequences, however.”

“What do you mean?” Sanaa asked. “What consequences?”

“Our great grandmother,” Tal’at started to explain. “She’s the psychic in this time period, and your presence is interfering with that.”

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense.” She was never supposed to become a time traveler, but the consequences from her having done so were always assumed to be limited to her having lost her telepathic abilities. At some point, she got them back, and it would appear this caused more problems. “I didn’t mean to.”

“We all know that,” Tal’at acknowledged. “The problem still must be corrected, however, and I was dispatched to see that that is carried out. We’ve let you go on for a while, because we didn’t have very many options. We didn’t want to solve a time travel problem with more time travel—that felt so...hypocritical—but now we think we’ve found a good compromise.” He looked at the walls of the ship’s corridors, almost like he was admiring them.

“The Sharice?” Sanaa guessed. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“It has an interesting future,” Tal’at replied.

“Yeah, it’s destined to be destroyed,” Sanaa confirmed.

“We’ll program you to be released before that happens.”

“You’ll program me to be released from what?”

Tal’at grinned, and banged on the wall twice with his fist. A secret door fell open, like a broken grade school locker. “I had it installed before you guys got here. That’s why Ramses had to wait until last year.”

“What is it?” Sanaa asked, getting annoyed about this whole thing.

“It’s a temporal stasis pod,” Leona answered.

“You won’t even think five seconds have passed,” Tal’at said, like that should give her comfort.

“I was here in the future,” Ramses began. “I was here when this ship is destroyed. She wasn’t rescued.”

“You sure about that?” Tal’at widened his grin. He reached into the pod, and flipped the ceiling down, revealing a bunch of mechanics that most people couldn’t recognize.

“It’s also an escape pod,” Leona realized. “If programmed appropriately, it should clear her of the blast and debris.”

“Then what?” Ramses pressed. “This isn’t going to get her back to Earth, or even Proxima Doma.”

“It will take time,” Tal’at said, “but that doesn’t matter. In fact, we want it to take time. The other Sanaa is destined to travel through the time cave in 2254. This Sanaa can’t wake up until after that, or she’ll just end up interfering with her own past self’s psychic responsibilities.”

“This is crazy, it’s crazy. It’s stupid, and I’m not doing it,” Sanaa complained.

“It’s either this, or you’ll be shunted.”

“Do you mean shunned?” Ramses asked.

“Time shunting,” Tal’at clarified. “You don’t have that in your reality? She’ll be placed in a pocket dimension, where time loops every day, or even every minute. And she won’t be let out until 2255. Do you want that? That’s your only other option. Either you jump right to the future, or you let yourself be tortured while you’re waiting. Kai Parker did it, and it made him even crazier than he already was. So I recommend...the pod.”

Sanaa huffed. “What do you think I should do, Mateo?”

“Mateo?” Leona asked, looking around. “You’re communicating with Mateo.”

“Yes,” Sanaa answered, acting like she had already been over this, which she hadn’t.

“Have you been able to connect with him this whole time?” Leona pushed.

“Of course,” Sanaa said. “You knew I could reach out to The Superintendent’s universe.”

“Well, yeah, but you didn’t say anything. How is he? Is he okay?”

“He’s fine, don’t worry about it. He’s here, he’s been watching us from an observation dimension. Meliora doesn’t know why they’re stuck there, but the barrier weakens every time we jump to the future, so they’ll probably be free next year.”

Mateo didn’t know that she could read his mind from there, but he wasn’t surprised, and he wasn’t shocked, and he certainly wasn’t going to let the development harsh his mellow.

“I’m not tryna harsh your mellow, dude-broh,” Sanaa said. “Just give me your opinion about the time pod, broh.”

“Do you trust your brother?” Mateo asked. “I mean, would he possibly be doing this to hurt you?” They were both talking out loud, but technically she couldn’t hear him. She was just listening to his thoughts.

“Yes, and no,” Sanaa answered. “He would not do this to hurt me.”

Mateo shrugged. “Then get in the pod, man. Sounds fun.”

“You get in the pod,” Sanaa snapped back on instinct.

“All right, cool.”

“Get out of the pod, Mateo,” Meliora ordered, shaking her head in disappointment.

“Did he get in the pod?” Leona asked Sanaa.

“He’s just screwin’ around, he’s out.”

“What about you?” Tal’at asked her. “Are you out?”

“Who am I to question the wisdom of Surfer!Mateo?” Sanaa reasoned. Poorly.

“I don’t know what that means,” Leona said, “but you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. We’ll find another way. Hell, the easiest way would be to just call Nerakali, and have her ferry you to the future.”

“I can’t read Tal’at’s mind like I can other people’s. All of our family’s non-psychics learn to ward their thoughts. Still, I can tell that he’s keeping something from me. There’s something he can’t say.”

“Is it that his intentions aren’t entirely pure?” Ramses figured.

“It’s that there’s more to this plan than just getting me to the future,” Sanaa corrected. “It’s where this pod ends up that’s the point. I do have to do this. I don’t know why, but this is where I get off.” She stepped into the pod, and stood there, waiting.

 Tal’at nodded gently. “Seal it up, make sure no one finds her, just like you did with whatever it is you built here.”

“Wait, you don’t know?” Ramses asked.

Tal’at stepped over to another wall, and reached down to open a portal like it was just a really big zipper. “We understand the value of discretion. It is your secret to keep.” He stepped through, and sealed the portal zipper behind him.

“Go ahead, Lee-Lee,” Sanaa said to Leona. “Start this thing up, and...let me go.”

“Do you have any idea where you’re going?” Leona asked. “July is almost over. For us, it’ll be 2256 in three weeks.”

“I don’t know,” Sanaa said honestly. “I don’t know if we’ll ever see each other again. But that’s okay. You helped me become a better person, and now maybe time will give me the chance to use what I’ve learned to help others.”

Mateo smiled and nodded, like a proud big brother who had to help raise her.

“Don’t give yourself so much credit, Matty,” Sanaa said.

Leona and Ramses inspected the pod, and made sure it would do what Tal’at claimed it would. Sanaa trusted him, but they didn’t know him, so they needed to see for themselves. After some more farewells, they closed the hatch, engaged temporal stasis, and covered it up with more walls, so no one would ever find it.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Friday, July 27, 2142

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When Ramses Abdulrashid returned to the main sequence in 2140, he had every intention of completing his loop mission. He didn’t have all the facts, though. He knew this time period would be ideal, but that didn’t mean every day would be available and perfect. He discovered that there was too much activity surrounding The Sharice Davids in its hangar. It had not yet been retired, and people were still stationed there, even though there was little chance of it being deployed. He spent the next two years enjoying life in the reality where he grew up. It was nice not to have to run an intergalactic empire. No one asked him to give them powers, or alter the powers they had, or whatever. It was a lovely little vacation, and it was now over.

“You want our help?” Leona asked.

“For old time’s sake,” Ramses offered. “I don’t need it, but it might be cool to get the band back together.”

“Our lead singer is on his solo tour,” Leona informed him.

“Lead singer?” Sanaa questioned.

“It’s a metaphor,” Leona tried to explain.

“No, I get it,” Sanaa confirmed. “But...lead singer? I kind of feel like he’s more the triangle player, or perhaps the tambourine.”

“Ha-ha-ha,” Leona said.

“Well, when is he coming back?” Ramses asked.

“He could have been gone for centuries,” Jeremy reasoned. “He should have been back yesterday-slash-last year.”

“That’s not where his journey has taken him,” Leona reasoned right back.

“He could be dead,” Bran warned.

They all gave him the stink eye.

Bran scoffed. “Oh, like that’s not a possibility.”

“Let’s try to think positively,” Ramses put forth.

“Wait, you can see him?” Angela asked, looking to make sure he wasn’t wearing his own Cassidy cuff.

“Yeah, am I not supposed to?” Ramses wondered.

“It must be your superpowers,” Aeolia figured. “Anyway, we don’t require Mateo to help Ramses with his mission, and Nerakali hasn’t given us one of our own this year. So I’m in, and so is Kallias.”

“It shouldn’t be everybody,” Ramses said, uncomfortable. “It could draw too much attention.”

“Jeremy and Angela, stay with the Imzadi,” Leona ordered politely.

“Are we still calling it that, even though Imzadi is gone?”

Leona ignored the remark, because it didn’t matter. “Sanaa and I can help you engineer whatever it is you need. Bran and Aeolia can stand guard, and keep people away from us. They’re essentially invisible, but are also very...convincing.”

“And what is it we will be doing?” Sanaa asked. “I haven’t agreed to anything.”

“The Sharice Davids. It’s been decommissioned, but will rise again in half a century. I need to get on it now, to install some secret upgrades. It’s called the ol’ Bill and Ted Gambit. I’m going to be on that ship in the future, and in order to save my life, I activated a special kind of temporal displacement drive, but the TDD didn’t exist, as far as anyone was aware. I didn’t even know it was there. I’ve had to remember to go back in time, and build it for myself, but no one can use it before that moment, or a trio of evil future people will know about it, and it won’t work for me.”

“Sheeeeeeee-iiiit,” Sanaa joked. “That’ll ya had to say. Let’s do it.”

“Good luck,” Jeremy called out to them. “The two dum-dums are just gonna play games, and try not to forget how to breathe.”

“Okay, cool!” Leona called back.

“That’s a cool suit ya got there,” a young woman noted. She looked familiar, but Mateo must have only had interesting memories of her.

“Oh, you want it?” he asked as he looked around to figure out how to get out of this thing.

Imzadi’s hologram reappeared. “You have to keep it so you can get home.”

“I’m not worried about it,” Mateo said.

“I am. You may not care to go back, but I do,” Imzadi complained. It was probably getting frustrating dealing with a sociopath. “You’re not a sociopath.”

“I don’t like that you can read my mind,” Mateo said.

“Why? Not boring enough for you?”

“Do you two need some time to squabble alone?”

“No, it’s fine,” Imzadi told him. She pretended to sigh. “We’re here to help. What is the mission?”

“We’re fighting an evil religious organization that controls millions of people,” one of the other young women explained.

“Oo, that could be interesting,” Imzadi said to Mateo.

“You think I’ll get my soul back if I just have a little fun?”

A third woman stepped forward. “You’ve lost your soul? We can get you that.”

“He’s just being metaphorical,” Imzadi clarified.

“Well, maybe you just don’t know. A salorex can manipulate your soul. It should restore your soul, and if not, and the soul doesn’t exist, then no harm done. Hi, I’m Amber. These are my friends, Sheridan, Heather, and Zoey.” Zoey was the one who looked, and now sounded, familiar. “I...I don’t really know these other people.”

Curtis stepped forward as well. “They’re—”

“I don’t care.” Mateo wasn’t interested in hearing the names of a half dozen other people. He was just going to forget them.

“Right,” Curtis said. “No soul, okay.”

Mateo went off with these random people to fight some evil other people called the Thuriamen. He had a real hard time being motivated, which was his whole thing now, but luckily, Imzadi was able to take control of the supersuit. He kept the helmet on the whole time, and sort of just stayed along for the ride. He even nodded off once or twice. If Mateo wasn’t careful, the survivors would go on to tell stories about this day, and turn him into some kind of hero. To prevent this, he insisted that the others start simply referring to the entity in the suit as Imzadi, and leave him out of it completely. They all understood and respected his desire for anonymity, presumably for their own respective reasons.

Once they broke through the stronghold, and gained enough control over the right resources to command the dimensions—as the natives put it—Amber, Zoey, Zoey’s love interest, Seth, and Missy escorted Mateo to some kind of factory, or something. Dubra and Dar’cy wanted to go, but changed their minds, deciding to wait until Mateo could remember how much he cared about them. In the factory, they found golden collars that workers were manufacturing before evacuating to avoid being caught in the crossfire of the war. Now that it was safe, and they were alone, Mateo was able to climb out of the back of the suit, and stretch his legs a bit. Imzadi activated a holographic face in the helmet, and continued to walk around in it.

Amber found a collar that had already gone through quality assurance, and installed it around Mateo’s neck. “Is it comfortable?”

“It is what it is,” Mateo answered.

“Okay.” She got Imzadi’s attention, and pointed to a vault. “The diadems should be locked up in there. Would you be able to break through that?”

“I might be able to short-range teleport into it,” Zoey suggested.

“The door’s too thick,” Seth argued.

“You don’t know that.”

“I got this,” Imzadi assured them. She took hold of the wheel, and put all her strength into turning it. They could hear the insides breaking apart as she was opening it, but that was fine, they didn’t need this to be a functioning vault after this. Once they were finished helping Mateo, they claimed they would destroy all of them. Theoretically, it would restore Mateo’s drive to enjoy life, but that wasn’t what they were designed for. The Thuriamen wanted to literally control the masses, and this was their way of accomplishing that.

The door opened, and Amber went in to retrieve one of the diadems.

“Should you be the one to wear that?” Seth questioned. “Mr. Matic, do you trust her? It seems like you two just met.”

“These things require years of training,” Amber explained. “You can’t just slap it on your head, and start manipulating people on day one.” She slapped it on her head. “Unless you’re a soul psychic.” She closed her eyes.

“It is no coincidence that these things are amber-colored,” Zoey whispered to her boyfriend.

After a minute, Mateo started feeling something. It was a warm comfort around his neck that spread upwards, and started massaging his head. It then went down, and covered the rest of his body. He started waving his arms around, and swinging his legs. It occurred to him that this was dancing. But he wasn’t the one doing it. Amber was controlling his movements.

“Just testing it,” Amber clarified, eyes still closed. “Here we go.” She exhaled deliberately, and got to work fixing his brain.

Mateo didn’t just get his interesting memories back. He also started oscillating between all emotions. Happiness, sadness, anger, rage, love, hate, fear, shame; everything. Some felt bad, but they were all a welcome relief, and the more he got back, the more his memory of not having them felt like torture; like the worst thing that had ever happened to him. Bad feelings were terrible, but they were a part of life, and when he didn’t have them, he was nobody. He was nothing. That was a hell he would wish on no one. He got his memories of orgasms back, and then he had a real one, which might have been embarrassing, but he just felt lucky to be alive again. He also realized that he had met Zoey before. She was at his wedding, and had later transported him back to his home universe, utilizing the suit that he was wearing right now. That was not too long ago from his perspective, but must take place in her future. The suit would need to be cleaned first.

He couldn’t tell exactly how long the process took, but everyone was still standing about where they were when he closed his eyes in ecstasy, so it must not have been too long. Unlike when Nerakali blended someone’s brain, when it was over, he was still sporting a dumb smile, and not screaming at all.

“That looked like fun,” Seth noted. “Can I try next?”

“Shut up,” Zoey said playfully.

“Oh my God, it was great.” Mateo tried to take off the collar, because it was time.

“No, no, no,” Amber warned. “You can’t take it off yourself. This is a mind-control device.” She swept her palm to the side, which served to release the collar. Then she removed the diadem, and set it carefully on the floor. “Imzadi?”

The android walked over, and crushed the evil device underfoot. Mateo threw the collar down, and let her crush that too. It was going to take more than that to destroy the whole institution, but this was a decent start. Imzadi couldn’t read his mind anymore, but she seemed to be thinking the same thing. He smiled at her and nodded. “I don’t need you to get home. You stay here and take care of the rest. These people need you.”

Her hologram face smiled back.

“I would rather get back home in realtime, though. Zoey, where’s your knife?”

“My knife? This thing?” She reached into her boot, and pulled out a pocket knife. It was absolutely not what he was talking about. The thing she used to tear rifts in the spacetime continuum was larger, more frightening, and glorious.

“Oh, you haven’t gotten it yet. I don’t know where you find it, or what. It’ll let you travel the bulkverse.”

“I know what knife you’re talking about.” Seth turned to his girlfriend. “You seem to be able to cross dimensional barriers, but not from scratch. You need to make a hole first. The time knife would do that for you. It’s not useful to anyone else, because the larger the hole you need, the harder it becomes to tear, and then they still have no way to navigate. It’s perfect for you, because your body somehow metabolizes bulk energy.”

“Do you know where this knife is?” Missy asked.

“Missy, why do you only have one arm?” Mateo couldn’t help but ask.

“Why do you have two?” Missy joked.

“I have no clue where the knife is,” Seth answered. “We know someone who does, though. Jacob.”

“I’ll have to worry about that later,” Zoey decided. “There’s a lot I need to do in this universe first.”

Mateo started to disrobe. “Still. You should take this. I imagine future you will need it to survive the hypervacuum of the outer bulkverse.”

“Hypervacuum?” Missy questioned. She laughed.

“Yeah, I assume it’s more of a vacuum than a regular vacuum.”

She laughed harder. “It’s not a vacuum,” she corrected. “It’s an equilibrium.” Whatever that meant.

“Are you going to go back to your universe naked?” Amber asked.

Mateo carefully handed Seth the suit. “Make sure that’s cleaned. I don’t know if it’s dry clean only, or what.” He redirected his attention to Amber. “Might as well. Hashtag-freethenipple.”

Imzadi walked over and turned around, so Mateo could retrieve the homestone from the suit. “Good luck.”

“I’m sure we’ll see each other again.” He lifted the stone up close to his heart, and squeezed it. Nothing happened. He squeezed again. Still nothing.

“We may actually need to find that time knife sooner, rather than later,” Seth suggested. “How do you people feel about musical theatre?”

Before anyone could answer, a silhouette appeared in the middle of their little conversation circle. It slowly gained color, and tuned focus, until Mateo could see that it was none other than Meliora Rutherford.

“Melly?” Amber asked, surprised.

“I got your psychic message,” Meliora said.

“Oh, yeah,” Amber said. “By the way, Mateo, the two of us are now bonded for life. That usually takes time of getting to know each other, but the salorex sped up the process. I’m here if you need to talk...psychically speaking.”

“Cool.”

“I can get us home,” Meliora told Mateo. “It will take time, though. Have you ever meditated before?”

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Microstory 1166: The Officiant

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The Hundemarke is a special temporal object capable of creating a fixed moment in time. While active, it will prevent any time travel that could interfere with the events as they occur around it. Humans, in their incessant drive for violence, generally use this device to kill someone completely dead, so they can never return in some other reality. They fail to see its other applications, such as the protection of life. In the year 1829, a seer predicted the birth of a woman who would come to be known as The Officiant, and went by no other name. She had the strange ability to detect love; more specifically, love between soulmates. Now, for the most part, emotion is not a characteristic of time or space. It’s important, and it’s definitely real, but it bears no impact on the way things work on the quantum level. The Officiant’s proverbial sixth sense did not appear to be a time power, except that she could sense this love across time, and draw herself towards it at will. It was something different; something special, and perhaps even unique in any universe. The seer realized how vital the Officiant could be, and he didn’t want to see anything interfere with that. She wasn’t at more risk of being erased from history than anyone else, but if that were to happen, it would have worse consequences than it would for someone else. He sought out, and ultimately found, the Hundemarke, and used it to hold the Officiant’s birth and early life in place. She needed to live long enough to understand her own power, and mature enough to use it wisely. Once that development was complete, she was free to live her life as she pleased, though of course, he knew what she would do with her gift.

She became ordained as an administer of marriage. She did not do this through some religion, some human legal body, or any recognizable institution. She did not even have it done to her by some other individual. She simply declared to time itself that she was the Officiant, and had the authority to canonize a marital union. While time is not a conscious entity, it does enjoy more control over reality than anything else, including light and gravity. No one could dispute her power; not that anyone would want to. The danger the seer worried about didn’t have anything to do with some nefarious time traveler who purposely went back in time to try and erase the Officiant before she was born. The danger was in the butterfly effect; in minor or unrelated changes preceding her birth that could alter the course of events enough to as to incidentally change the outcome. The worst of the worst temporal manipulators had no problem with her. She never went up against them, or really even expressed distaste for them. She wasn’t exactly unbiased, but she was not concerned with their activity either. Her job was to oversee all marriages between people like her, and it was the only responsibility she had. It’s unclear how old she was before she died, but she did die. Anyone wishing to enter into a marriage would have to seek her out within her own personal timeline. They don’t always realize that they’re doing it. She sometimes just shows up, and doesn’t explain that she’s not just your average minister, or boat captain. Fortunately for her and her need to breaks, marriages involving time manipulators aren’t extremely common. It’s not that it doesn’t happen at all, but since so many of them spend so much of their time on the go, their chances of meeting someone, and settling down, are just that much lower than for a normal person. Still, she kept herself busy, and the work never felt tedious.

Microstory 325: Love

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Family Support

Sophie Love Highfill, on her first night at her new home. Yes, her real middle name was Love.

I’ve heard people explain what’s happening when someone feels love. They speak of brain chemical messengers, hormones, and other bodily reactions. They seem to think these explanations are sufficient proof that love “isn’t real”. Legitimate scientists, however, don’t lose their fascination for a scientific phenomenon after learning how it works. I’m going to tell you a little bit about my spiritual beliefs, and I call it spirituality because none of your religions make any sense to me. I’ve spoken on this before, but with a fictional slant, so here is only how I truly feel. I believe that nearly everyone has a soul, and those that don’t are known to as sociopaths. The soul is a tangibly intangible some sort of nothingness from another dimension with a connection to other souls on the quantum level. Animals are born without souls, but can obtain them later through the love of a human. We call these pets. Trying this method with a sociopath is more difficult, but not impossible, which is one reason compassionate caregivers are so important to a person’s upbringing. Our souls are in constant flux by the input they receive from the people and conditions around them. When a person dies, their body decays, their consciousness dissipates, but their soul recedes deeper into its dimension to live on forever. At this point, the soul is unchanging except by the general state of humanity. Your goal in life is to fuel the soul collective with goodness. The afterlife is not a place. Your soul persists either through eternal bliss, or eternal itch. It’s up to you to decide which it’s going to be, but keep in mind that your choices have an effect on humankind. Every ensouled person needs love, and deserves it. Ignoring all specifics, the only reason any ensouled person is bad is ultimately because of a lack of love. Love everyone, including yourself, and you’ll be well on your way to happiness.

Civilization

Microstory 92: Manifest Infinity (2 of 2)

Several years ago, the prototype of what was deemed to be The Perfect Race was discovered by a group of Fostean invaders. They kidnapped this individual and took it back to their galaxy. After much debate, they paired it with a second scientific endeavor. They were learning how to tap into the souls of living people and interact with the universes that lie inside. The inhabitants of any given universe is made in the image of its god, which meant that the godlings of the perfect creature were even more perfect than it, because they developed—from their perspective—by way of natural evolution. The Fosteans continued to hinder the intelligence of the prototype, but were unable to change the genetics of the people within its universe. These people were inescapably dependent on the original genetic arrangement of their god. One day, the laboratory was attacked by a group of insurgents, one of which was actually an Earthan human. In this man’s attempt to retrieve his friend’s daughter, they were both transported to the universe that was inside of the perfect prototype. Since time moves at a different rate in different universe, they spent over a thousand years there, while still tied to the timestream of our universe, where less than a minute had passed. This turned out to be a blessing, for this man and his ward lived adventures in the lower universe, and altered the course of their behavior. They instilled in them a sense of right and wrong so that they would choose neither to be soldiers for the Fosteans, nor exterminators for the rouge Lactean scientist faction. Instead, once they were all brought into our universe, they were found to be the most generous and loving race ever encountered.

Microstory 16: Murder is Murder

I am a murderer. I have intentionally killed dozens; possibly hundreds. The definition of murder is unlawful and willful killing of someone with a soul. This is why you can’t murder an animal. We might call that animal cruelty, but we kill game and livestock all the time, and only some people are bothered by it. What people don’t know, however, is that a few animals do indeed have souls. They aren’t complex souls like those of humans, but they still have them. Dolphins, elephants, and mice are a few examples of animals with simplex souls. A soul can be shared between a human and an animal, which means that all your pets have souls too. There is one creature that most would not expect to have souls. Spiders. The problem is that they have twisted, evil souls. They are utterly bent on the destruction of all life in the universe. Just because they aren’t logically capable of such a thing, doesn’t make their motivations any less real. I consider it my duty as an ensouled individual to kill as many spiders as I possibly can. Many scorpions believe this to be their duty as well, and they regularly sting and eat spiders that they encounter. You still probably wouldn’t call this murder, and that’s great for me. As long as you keep thinking that there is nothing wrong with it, I get to keep going with my mission. I will never stop, until I myself am dead, and then one day after that.