Microstory 2419: Underbelly

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Not to be confused with Underburg. Believe me, you don’t want to mix them up. Nothing could be further from the idyllic, beautiful, pleasant hellscape of suburban America. I don’t understand why anyone would want to live there. I grew up in a town like that, back before the arcologies. It might look nice in old movies and TV shows, but I was miserable. Ravensgate is a real city. It’s full of violence, crime, and the champions that serve as the only protection against these terrible forces. Choose your own adventure. Are you a hero, or a villain? I know this sounds like an ad, and it is. This is the entire reason I came to this planet. My friend casted first, and wrote back with tales of his exploits. He knew that I would like the Underbelly dome. I read all the comic books, and saw all the adaptations. I know what makes for a good superhero story, and I’ve always wanted to be a part of that. It’s funny, back in the day, all these superpowers were fictional. They seemed impossible. The strength of ten men, the speed of a train; normal humans could only dream of such fantastical abilities. And then, as technology progressed, we actually started being able to make them a reality. Nanotechnology alone gives us shapeshifting, invisibility, onboard weaponry, and more. Some things are still off limits, and if you want to have those gifts, you’re gonna need to log in to a virtual world. Flight is impossible. Well, it’s not impossible, but the Superman or Homelander kind is totally off limits. It breaks the laws of physics. A lot of comics have magic, and you can’t do that stuff either. You can’t just turn someone into a frog, or something. Street level heroing is what they call it. You fight bad guys, and help the innocent. Most of them are androids, but they’re as lifelike as any, so it’s easy to forget that, and feel genuine anger towards the former, and empathy for the latter. But I should probably go back to the beginning, because you’re not assigned the powers you end up with. You choose them yourself. But you don’t get to just select from a menu, and upload into your new substrate. No, you gotta design it yourself. You choose the physical attributes of the body. Are you visibly muscular, or are you secretly superhumanly strong? What hair color, eye color, nose shape? You choose it all, and you have to work through the design program to make it look how you want. They don’t give you any ideas about what kind of powers to include either. That’s all you too. You’re only limited to the technology available in the 26th century. You also design your own backstory, which might be decades in the past, or more recent. Maybe you’re a kid who’s just discovered his powers after reaching puberty, or you fell in a vat of acid during a university science experiment. Or you don’t have powers at all, and your character had to invent everything themselves. It’s up to you, but the more complex and complicated the scenario, the longer it’s going to take before you can get out there. I could write a book on this, but you really just have to come try it. You don’t even have to be a hero or villain. You can just be a regular person, trying to survive in the metropolis. Again, this is all you. Right now, it’s just Northwest Ravensgate and Southeast Ravensgate, separated by a river, but they’ve left the nearby domes unused in case this gets to be so popular that it has to expand into new cities. There’s a reason the dome and city aren’t named the same thing. We could really build something here. It may not be real, per se, but if you open your mind, it can be just as exciting as anything else in base reality. This only gets better with more visitors. We can’t do it without ya.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 19, 2501

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Leona, Olimpia, and Romana were on a trip together in Portland. They checked into a hotel for one night, but then they left to rough it in a cabin in the woods far outside of town. This was a bonding experience meant to strengthen Leona’s relationship with Olimpia, and create a relationship between Olimpia and Romana. The former seemed to be okay with the three-person arrangement that her parents had, but she hadn’t spent much time with their third. They weren’t intending on her becoming a second mother—especially not since Romana was approaching adulthood—but it was important for them to get to know each other better.

“Do you still know where you’re going?” Olimpia asked. They were on a hike now, straight away from their cabin.

Leona checked the satnav on her watch. “Absolutely, I do. Not far now.”

“I hear the highway,” Romana said. “We’re not in the middle of nowhere anymore. If we need to stop and ask for directions, I’m sure it’s fine.”

“That you can hear the highway is a good sign,” Leona said. “The surprise isn’t remote.”

“What is it?” Olimpia asked for the umpteenth time, knowing that she would not receive an answer this time either.

“Just be patient.” We’re really close. She wasn’t wrong. Ten minutes later, they were passing through the trees, and onto the edges of some town. “Welcome...to Kansas City.”

“We walked all the way back to Kansas City?” Olimpia questioned. “What did we do, teleport?” She laughed.

“Kansas City...Oregon,” Leona clarified.

“Is that even a thing?” Romana asked.

“Clearly. You may now look at your phones.”

They both pulled them out, but Romana was faster. “There’s, like, fifteen people here.”

“I know. Cool, though, right?” Leona said with her hands on her hips.

“This was the surprise? A few people moved here from Missouri, and were too unoriginal to come up with a new name.”

“Well, I thought it was interesting.”

Olimpia turned around. “I’m headed back.”

“Oh come on, there’s a pool hall,” Leona whined.

“There is a pool hall,” Romana confirmed, still looking at her phone. “It’s pretty much all there is at this point. There isn’t even a restaurant.” She dropped her hand, and stood there with a blank face.

“There’s a school too.”

“No, it closed down.”

“Since when?”

Romana lifted her phone again. “Today.”

“Oh.”

“They had to finish up some summer schooling, but now it’s over.”

“Well, I’m sorry I wasted our time. I thought we could take a picture in front of the town sign. Ya know, like what people do when they go to a small town that shares its name with their surname?” She looked out, and blocked the sun with her hand. “It should be somewhere on that other road over there.”

“No, they took the sign down too,” Romana explained to her. The county stepped in, because it’s an unincorporated community, instead of a real town. So they weren’t allowed to have a sign anymore.”

“Fine,” Leona lamented.

“It’s all right, I still got my steps in today.” Olimpia looked at her own watch. “Eleven kilometers, not bad.” She patted Leona on the back. “That’s reason enough to come here.”

“Can we just take some pictures at least?” Leona begged.

“Sure. Let’s walk closer and get some more steps.”

They took a few photos of each other near one of the few buildings, which must have been a barn, or something. They went to check out the pool hall, but it was very smoky, and gross, so they didn’t even play one round. They just left, and started hiking back to the cabin. Leona was more upset than any of them at how anticlimactic this was. She kept walking with a frowny face, which the other two kept trying to pull back up at the corners. Eventually, she was able to forget about the whole thing, and get back to normal. It was only one day, and the hike was still lovely, so it wasn’t like it was a total waste of time. Besides, they would be able to laugh about it later, and tell a decent story at parties. Or so they thought, until Olimpia fell.

They were on a narrow trail on a ridge, switching their order organically and unintentionally. Each new leader would warn those behind of obstacles or dangers awaiting them. Unfortunately, this meant that one of them would not enjoy any given warning. Before Olimpia had the chance to inform the other two of a loose rock in the soft dirt, she became the victim of it. At first, she believed that she was okay. She caught herself on a whip tree, and even had enough time to say, “I’m good” before the pole trunk snapped under her weight, and dropped her over the edge. She fell so far, Leona and Romana couldn’t even tell how far it was. She kept tumbling and tumbling down the hill, ultimately disappearing through the forest, but they could hear the sounds of her knocking against things as she kept going, and her screams.

“Stay here,” Leona ordered her daughter.

“You’re not going after her.”

“Of course I’m going after her.”

“You’ll die too! You think it’s gonna be easier for you to get down than her?”

“She started on her back, and gained too much momentum,” Leona reasoned as she was dropping her pack. She took out her trekking poles, which she so far hadn’t bothered using. “I have the luxury of being more careful. We can’t just leave her.”

“I’m not saying that. We need to call for help.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Leona said as she was starting down the hill. “We don’t know how long that’s gonna take, though. I need to go assess the situation. That’s why we brought radio transceivers in addition to the sat phone. I’ll stay in contact from down there. Call S&R.”

“Be careful,” Romana warned, as if that could ever help.

“Yeah.” Leona cautiously walked down the hill with her four appendages, but it was taking too long. If she were going up, she could just keep climbing and climbing, but facing forwards, she had to be mindful of where she placed the tip of her pole. It could sink into mud, or slide on a thick leaf, and then it would literally be downhill from here. Momentum was Olimpia’s problem, but it was going to be Leona’s solution. Now that Romana probably couldn’t see her anymore, she started to slide—not uncontrollably, but more like she was on a snowboard. She went as fast as she could, leaning back to keep herself from tipping over. She still used the poles to slow herself down a little, and occasionally catch herself on a tree. As she got the hang of it, it actually started to be less like snowboarding, and more like skiing. She could just about glide down like a pro, like this hill was designed for it. Then she hit an invisible root, which reminded her why boot skiing wasn’t a real thing. She did tip over, and fell right on her face. Her ass flew up over her, and sent her rolling farther down, and just like Olimpia before, she couldn’t stop herself. She kept going and going until she felt a sharp crack in the back of her neck, and the lights went out.

“Mama! Mama!” Leona could hear. It was Romana.

Leona fluttered her eyes open to see that pretty face looking down at her. “Roma,” she whispered.

“She’s awake,” Romana said to someone out of view.

Olimpia’s equally pretty face appeared above her. “How is that possible? Her neck was broken. I swear, it was broken.”

“Clearly not,” Romana argued.

“Help me up, daughter.” With Romana’s aid, Leona got into a seated position. She leaned back against a boulder on the edge of a creek, and looked up at Olimpia, who was absolutely covered in blood; not quite like Carrie White, but not entirely unlike her either. “How are you alive?”

“I don’t know,” Olimpia replied. “I guess we’re both lucky.”

“Where’s the rescue team?” Leona asked.

“They’re not here yet,” Romana answered. “They said that it would be a couple of hours.”

“That’s funny,” Leona began. “They would be your only way down here since I explicitly ordered you to stay up there.”

“I’m younger than you two,” Romana reasoned. “I have better balance. Even with these things.”

Leona scoffed. Ever since Romana’s boobs came in, she was always talking about them...like Leona ought to be jealous. “You’ll get sick of ‘em.” She struggled to stand up all the way. “I’m all right, I can do it,” she insisted when Romana tried to help again. She looked up at the sky as if she would see a helicopter on its way. “You need to wash yourself off. You survived something that you probably shouldn’t have, and we don’t need people asking questions.”

“What are we?” Olimpia asked. “Superheroes, or something?”

“I’ve never saved anyone in my life,” Leona replied.

“Yes, you have, you’ve saved trillions,” Romana said.

“What?”

Romana flinched, and took a beat. “What?”

That wasn’t true, yet it did sound right somehow. Leona turned back to Olimpia. “Get in the water.”

“I don’t wanna get dysentery.”

“Just don’t get any in your mouth, you’ll be fine,” Leona assured her.

“You could also use these,” Romana countered. She removed a pack of wet wipes from the side pocket on her pack, which she managed to keep on her person.

“Thank you,” Olimpia said, graciously accepting them from her. “I’m gonna need them all, I think,” she decided, looking down at the mess. “And a change of clothes?”

“I can afford it,” Romana told her, “and certainly. How do you feel about pink crop tops?”

Olimpia stripped down and cleaned herself up. In the meantime, Romana tried to cancel search and rescue, but that went against protocol. They said that they couldn’t just turn around and erase the mission from their logs. She could be under duress, or suffering from a concussion that made her confused. They received a distress call, and were obligated to go out and investigate. Welp, they would have to lie and say that it wasn’t as serious as they thought. Romana wasn’t lying about the crop top, though. For Olimpia’s larger frame, however, it was extra croppy; more like a bra. They opted to climb back up the ridge. It wasn’t safe, but they seemed to be some kind of invincible, and they were hoping to find Olimpia’s bag along the way. They did, which allowed her to change into her own extra set of clothes instead.

They found Leona’s bag back up on the ridge trail. After taking a stop to drink water, they simply continued on their way. Oddly enough, the rescue team didn’t show up, and never called back. Concerned, Leona called them again an hour later, but the line was dead. “The phone number you are trying to reach is unavailable, or has been disconnected. Please check the number, and try your call again.” They tried a few more times, and still got nothing. That was super bizarre, but not their problem anymore. They just returned to the cabin, and collapsed on their respective bunks.

The next day, they got back in touch with the boys back in the regular Kansas City area. They immediately confessed what happened to them on that ridge, which prompted Mateo to admit that something similar happened to them, though less accidentally. There was something going on between the four of them, and their neighbors, the Walton twins. Even though they had no clue what was happening, their instincts were telling them that Romana was a lot more fragile, and her durability should not be tested with stabbings, falls, or surge protector strikes. Still, she was one of them, and other than Boyd, and maybe Pacey, no one else was. The more they thought on it, the more convinced they were that they were in a simulation. They had customers and clients and employees, but none of them could relate any specific story about one of them. They couldn’t remember the last time they were at the dentist, or a conversation they had with a classmate. There was something wrong with their memories. That was what it all came down to. And Pacey. He knew something. They could feel it.

The girls boarded their plane, and went back home, or at least that was what they believed. They didn’t have any memory of that either. Not clearly. They returned with the impression that a sufficient amount of time had passed between Portland and Mission Hills, and it seemed like they were at the airport, and then on a plane, but they had no recollection of it. They needed answers, and they needed to find a way to get those answers without their memories being messed with again, if that was really what was happening at all. They didn’t know. They didn’t know anything. Maybe confronting Pacey wasn’t the right call. Maybe all they could do was go out and push the boundaries. If none of this was real, there would be clues. There would be little rendering mistakes, and coding copies. Ramses called this geometry instancing. If they were in a virtual environment, each blade of grass would probably just be a copy, repeated from a single block of code. Through enough examination, they should be able to detect this, even though they obviously couldn’t read the code directly. Hopefully, whoever was watching over them—if anyone—wouldn’t catch them in the act. Perhaps a distraction was in order?

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 18, 2500

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The ladies were gone. Leona, Olimpia, and Romana were on a trip together in the Pacific Northwest, predominantly the Portland area. Mateo could have taken time off of work to go with them, but he wasn’t invited. Instead, he was staying home. Ramses was spending a lot of time here too, hanging out to keep him company. They had planned on playing cards with a couple of driver friends, but both of them fell through, so now it was just the two of them. “You can play cards with just two people,” Mateo reasoned. “You can play with just yourself, if it’s the right game.”

“That’s depressing,” Ramses pointed out. “Let’s just find someone else.”

“This last minute?”

“It’s not a big party; they’ll be able to leave whenever they want to. What about those twins next door?”

“Angela and Marie.” Mateo leaned over in his chair, but couldn’t quite see through the window, so he stood up. It still wasn’t enough, so he just stepped over. “Yeah, they’re out there in their garden. Seems as though that’s all they do.”

“Maybe they would like a break,” Ramses suggested. Maybe they’re always out there hoping a couple of cool guys will invite them to something better.”

“I’ll see.” Mateo walked out of the house, expecting to do this alone, but Ramses was trailing behind him. “Hello, Waltons. Are you free this evening? We got a poker game going, and there are some extra seats at the table.”

Marie and Angela exchanged a look. “Do you have RPS-101?” asked the former.

“Is...that a drink?” Mateo asked.

They laughed. “No,” Angela said. “It’s a game. We have a board, if you think you might like to learn.”

Mateo exchanged a look with Rames, and then shrugged. “Yeah, we’re up for something new. It’ll just be the four of us.”

“Great.” Marie stood up, and started to remove her gardening gloves. “Marie Walton, computer programmer.” She shook Ramses’ hand.

“Computer engineer,” Ramses replied.

“I know.” She smiled.

“I’m an addiction counselor.” Angela shook his hand too.

“There won’t be any drinking,” Mateo explained, worried that maybe she was worried about it.

“It would have been fine if there were,” Angela promised.

The twins wanted to shower first, which was fine, because the gaming table wasn’t set up yet. A half hour later, they showed up with their game board. It was a giant wheel with 101 objects written in the wedges. The entire game was pure chance, with absolutely no strategy involved. One player spun the wheel, and randomly landed on one of the objects. The other player spun next, and if it was better than the first one, they won. It was the most boring thing that Mateo had ever experienced, and he couldn’t understand why they liked it so much. They couldn’t explain it either. They just had this peculiar fascination with it, like there was a secret dimension to the game that they simply hadn’t reached yet. Mateo wasn’t so sure, but he did find himself mysteriously landing on Sponge a lot. Maybe there really was magic to it. Despite this inexplicable intrigue, everyone agreed after a while that it was literally played out. They switched to regular old poker. They had to explain the game to the Waltons first. Well, Ramses did. Mateo knew the hands, but he didn’t understand it on the level that Ramses did. That was why he served as the region’s engineer. Mateo certainly couldn’t do it without him.

After hours of this, they took a break to get up, use the restroom, and scavenge for food. Ramses and Marie ended up in a discussion about their jobs, and it was kind of looking like they were never going to start playing again.

“There’s something I’d like to show you,” Angela said to Mateo. She tilted her head towards the east. “Back at our place.”

“Okay,” he said. Hopefully she wasn’t coming onto him. Managing a three-person relationship was complicated enough. They didn’t need to add a fourth. He followed her back to her house, and into what she called their study.

“Did you know that there are more than two kinds of twins?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you can have identical or fraternal—or in the case of two girls, sororal. You’ve probably heard of this distinction, but there are other variations. Precisely when the egg splits, or whether it was fertilized before the split, or after, makes a difference. There are other factors. You can even have two twins with two separate fathers!”

“Is that what you are?” Mateo asked, not sure where she was going with this.

Angela giggled as she took a file folder out of the top drawer of a desk. “No.” She opened the folder, and folded it under itself before handing it to him. “We’re not sure what we are.”

Mateo looked down at the top piece of paper. “I don’t understand what any of this means. DNA methylation, telomeres...”

“Down at the bottom.” Angela just pointed at the sheet in general.

Mateo read it out loud, “biological markers inconclusively suggest an aging abnormality that places Subject B roughly four years ahead of Subject A. Yeah, I still don’t know what that means.”

“Marie is older than me,” Angela tried to explain, “by four years.”

“How is that possible?”

She shook her head. “We don’t know. It’s not the only weird thing about it. We understand that RPS-101 is stupid and boring, but we wanted to play it with you two to see what would happen. You keep landing on Sponge. I keep landing on Heart. And there’s also the matter of the hemlock.”

“Excuse me?”

“We all drank hemlock.”

“I don’t know much, but I know that that’s toxic.”

“Yeah, it should be. But are you even a little queasy?”

Mateo turned away. “You poisoned me as some sort of test?”

“Do you remember moving here, to your house, I mean?”

“Yeah, of course I do.”

“I don’t. Neither does Marie. We’re just been here forever. All we do is garden.”

“And play Rock, Paper, Scissors, and drink hemlock.”

“Do you feel stronger when you go out in the sun?”

“Lots of people like the sun.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Mateo sighed. “I guess so. Is that not normal?”

“No, it’s not.”

“What does it mean, when you put it all together, that we’re superheroes?”

“Well, we may be super, but we’re not heroes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure your job is very fulfilling, but it can be done by a computer.”

That was a bit of a sore subject. While it was true that RideSauce valued the human touch, his role was also under constant threat of being automated. The only reason they hadn’t pulled the trigger was because customer satisfaction was a reflection of staff satisfaction, which was reportedly tied to their ability to receive help from real humans. If the pendulum ever swung to the opposite direction, even for only a day, his job would be gone so fast, a new tenant would be in his office space by lunch.

Angela took her lab test back, and returned it to the drawer. “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but there’s something going on around here. I feel like nearly everyone around me is fake. There’s a reason we ran these tests on you two. You, your wife, your daughter; they all seem like real people. You seem like the only real people. Everyone else is just sort of...weird. Wouldn’t you say?”

“No,” Mateo argued. “My assistant feels real, as does one of my drivers, Boyd.”

Angela grabbed a notepad from the desk. “Boyd. And what’s your assistant’s name?”

“You’re not going to poison my friends too!”

“Understood, but you only listed two more people. Can you think of anyone besides them?”

“Yeah, my rival...Pacey.”

“Pacey, with an e?”

“You’re not—I mean, you can poison him if you want, I guess. But you stay the hell away from my wife and daughter, you hear me.”

“Well, your daughter wouldn’t be able to survive it.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I dunno. Why did I say that?”

Mateo decided to sit down in one of the guest chairs. “If I’m being honest, there are some things I know or think about the world around me, and the people, which don’t seem true...but do?”

Angela flattened her skirt under her thighs and sat down in the other guest chair. “I think I know what you mean. Leona and I had tea the other day, and she made an off-handed comment about how I was once engaged to a man named Ed. That’s completely untrue, I’ve never been engaged, yet it still somehow felt right. I could picture him in my mind. He was dressed weird, like he lived in a different time.”

“Maybe it’s a past life.” He stood up and laughed as he put his face in his palm. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m even entertaining these scifi ideas. Past lives? That’s not a thing.”

“Aren’t they? We don’t know,” Angela pointed out.

“I designed a spaceship.” The two of them looked over to find Ramses standing in the doorway. “I thought it was just for fun, but...I think it works. I mean, it’s really detailed, right down to how the fuel is injected into the engine.”

“He showed it to me,” Marie said as they were both walking all the way into the room. “I can’t make heads or tails of it, but I can tell that he put a lot of thought into the design. If it wouldn’t work, it’s well-thought out at the very least.”

“We were talking,” Ramses went on. “I’ve never been sick. Neither has she, nor her sister. My memories seem...not fake, but too perfect, like they’ve been carefully curated for my mind.”

“Did she tell you about the poison?” Mateo asked him.

“Yeah,” Ramses said with a nod. “We took it a step further.” He bent over, and unplugged a surge protector from its wall, along with all of the appliances connected to it. “Do you care about this?” he asked Marie.

“No,” she said as she was taking it from him. She pulled it back like a baseball bat, and slammed it straight into Ramses’ face. He didn’t even move. It didn’t seem to hurt at all, and didn’t do any damage whatsoever.

Apparently inspired by the two of them, Angela grabbed a letter opener from the desk, and tried to jam it into Mateo’s neck. It didn’t hurt either, and didn’t break the skin. It did do damage to the opener, though, bending it into a slight curve.

“We are superheroes,” Mateo guessed.

“Or it’s the simulation hypothesis,” Ramses decided.

“Explain that one again?” Mateo asked, jokingly without laughing, because he hadn’t ever heard of it, though it did not sound humorous.

“We’re all living in a computer simulation,” Ramses began. “Usually, it’s used in an attempt to explain the nature of reality itself, and where we all are in general. But in this case, it could just be the explanation for where we are...the four of us.”

“Six,” Marie corrected. “We think Mateo’s family is part of this too.”

“More,” Angela corrected Marie’s correction. She lifted up the notepad. “Mateo came up with a few names of people he interacts with who also appear to be real.” She used airquotes around the last word.

“If we’re just in a computer,” Mateo asked, “how do we get out?”

“Typically?” Ramses asked. “You can’t. You can never really know what’s real, and what’s not. It’s not like the movies, where you can will yourself out of it, or where the developers hid secret powers that let you take control. If the simulation hypothesis is true, we have absolutely no free will. Not only can they shape our world to their liking, but they can adjust our minds as needed. We’re not necessarily real either.”

“So, what do we do?” Angel asked him.

“Our two main choices are to keep our heads down, and hope our creators see fit to at least keep us alive in whatever definition that should be for the simulation. Don’t make waves, don’t rock the boat; just play along.”

“Or we keep bashing each other with office equipment,” Marie offered.

“Or we try to talk to them,” Mateo suggested instead. “I told you, Angela, that my rival, Pacey seems real too. There’s more to it. He actually seems, somehow...more real.”

“You think he’s one of them? An avatar of one of the developers?” Angela figured.

“Might could be,” Mateo said. “But I don’t wanna do anything until my girls come back home. It’s not safe for them here, but it’s not like it’s safe wherever they are now. What if they’re on a different server, or whatever? At least if they come back, I can keep an eye on them.”

“Okay, then we wait to do anything,” Marie said. “They should have a say in whatever decision we make anyway.”

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Microstory 2070: Godlings All The Way Down

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I’m sorry about bummin’ you all out yesterday. I’ve just been thinking a lot about my past, and my life. Why don’t I tell you a little bit about it? ‘Kay? You can read it or not. Like Superman, I grew up in Kansas. And like Superman, I had superpowers. But unlike Superman, these powers weren’t useful for flying around, rescuing people. They gave me glimpses into other worlds, which allowed me to write their stories down, and pass them off as fiction. I eventually realized that some of these stories were taking place in a universe that was located inside of my very soul. You see, that’s what all inhabited universes are; the complex development of a person’s soul, who you might call a god. We are all gods with godlings, and all godlings are gods. It’s godlings all the way down. No one knows where it ends, and no one knows where it begins. Some may want to answer such profound philosophical questions, but I am not one of them, because it would not change the way I live my life, which has always been a little less than the best I can. I’m not what you would call responsible or productive. I’ve not written any stories for a long time, because that’s not me anymore. I no longer have access to those worlds. If I did, I would be able to find Cricket and Claire. My alternate self could. He probably knows exactly where they are, and I bet he’s telling their continued story without me. He used to be able to send me messages, which we called updates, but your boring planet locks all those out. My own story is still getting out to him, but I’m lost. Alone. With all of you.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 6, 2427

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Something interesting happened when Ramses started to program Lilac’s stasis pod to help her jump to the future faster. He expected to be able to start from scratch, and run his own program, but a link request popped up when he tried. He almost swiped it away, because it always carries over other default settings that he needs to alter himself, but it should not have done it at all this time. This was the only pod in operation for at least a light year. Right?

“There’s another pod?” Leona asked.

“Yes,” Ramses answers. “Well, there’s another stasis program running nearby anyway, which could turn out to be any number of other pods, as long as they happen to be on the same time differential.”

“How do you know this?” Olimpia asked.

“Pods like this are self-sustaining and modular,” Ramses began to explain. “They don’t have to be connected to each other, or to some singular power source or network, which is why I was able to just pull this out of the wall in Scorpius Station, and bring it with us. But sometimes you want them to be connected, so they can share preferences, and other settings. It helps for when you have to program thousands of sleepers in the same ship. When I activated this one, it alerted me to a currently running program, which I can evidently become a part of too.”

“So, it’s like when you take your phone into a restaurant, and it picks up the WiFi,” Mateo reasoned.

“That’s a good analogy, yes,” Ramses replied. “It’s offering to connect us to a network that we didn’t know was there.”

“This world does not look like it’s advanced enough to have stasis pods,” Angela pointed out.

“Well, no matter. Where is this other pod?” Marie asked. “Or pods?”

“There’s no way to know,” Ramses explained. “But it has to be close. I’ll look deeper into the specifications to get a better picture, but I doubt it’s more than a few thousand kilometers.”

“Oh, that close?” Mateo laughed.

“If it’s a facility,” Leona began, “we might be able to track it down. If it’s a single pod underground, it might be next to impossible. These things aren’t designed to locate each other. This feature only exists to keep everyone in a given population on the same timetable. The diameter of the Earthan moon, Luna is sort of the far end of the typical ranges you might ever need. You generally don’t even need to go that far.”

“Can you change the range?” Mateo asked.

“What do you mean?” Ramses questioned.

“Can you adjust the signal until it stops picking up the other program?”

“Oh, I see where you’re going with this,” Ramses said. “We might be able to pinpoint the location once we find an exact radius. You’re getting smarter.”

“It happens,” Mateo muses.

“Give me a little time. Like she was saying, this isn’t designed as a buddy locator. I’ll have to tinker with the innards.”

“What about me?” Lilac asked, arms crossed.

“Oh, right,” Ramses said. “I forgot why I was even doing this. Lee-Lee, while I’m working on this one, why don’t you get one of the other pods set up for her?”

“I can’t do that,” Leona contended. “If I set up a new pod, and start a new program...”

Ramses realized the issue. “The linkseeker on this first pod will find the second one instead, which could make it harder to locate the one we’re looking for.”

“So, I’m screwed?” Lilac figured.

“No, no. We’ll turn it off next year. I know you wanted us to wait to wake you up once we found your son, but we really do need to investigate this.”

“Okay,” Leona said. “Give Ramses a few hours to find the radius. Once he’s done, we’ll place you in another pod. We’ll wake you up next year, and try to actually look for the thing. I’ll want to spend some time inspecting our new ship anyway, but I promise we’ll get off planet by the end of the day. Is that okay?”

They carried out the plan. While Leona was programming the nanofactory to engineer an interstellar ship for them that was capable of reaching maximum sublight, but not of reframe speeds, Ramses was trying to find this mysterious other stasis program. He ripped the guts out of the pod, and just used whatever part of the machinery, since he didn’t need the entire apparatus to do the job. This would make it easier to triangulate a position. It actually didn’t take them the entire rest of the next day to complete the work. He found the radius, which was around 1200 kilometers away, but of course, that was 1200 kilometers in any direction. So he made a random jump 600 kilometers away. This dropped him into the ocean, and also out of range, so he knew he was going the wrong way. He went back to the center, and made a jump in the opposite direction. Now he was still in range, but the radius remained at 1200, so he had to lower it until the other program reappeared on the screen. He kept adjusting it, making ever shorter jumps several times until he found the spot. It was within about a hectare search grid. There was nothing there, and midnight central was approaching, so he went back to camp to wait.

The next day, they were glad that he was able to narrow it down that much, because that was as good as it ever got. Starting up Lilac’s pod severed the linked preferences from the first time, and they weren’t able to restore them, even when they woke her up, and powered her pod down. While Leona was working on their ship, and the Walton sisters were continuing to help the Welriosians, and Olimpia was helping the natives, Mateo and Ramses started a more direct search. It reminded Mateo of the time that he and Tarboda Hobson were in Madagascar in the Third Rail. Alyssa used her teleportation ability to search for whatever they might find there that could solve their problems. It was much quicker, but if the thing they were looking for were underground, it might be virtually impossible to locate, especially with their short window of availability. They were leaving today, whether the secret pod was found or not. Fortunately, they found it.

It was underground, but not in a bunker, or something. It was just buried in the dirt, part of the top corner exposed to the elements, probably due to natural erosion. They dug it out with their hands like a dog until it was exposed enough to be lifted out of the ground by hand. Ramses tried to wipe the viewscreen clean to see who was in it, but the face was obscured from the inside. There was no data on its occupant in the computer, so all they could do was cross their fingers, and open ‘er up. Vitalie Crawville leapt out of it with a crazed look on her face. She tackles Mateo to the ground, and tries to strangle him. Ramses spared no expense when he made these bodies. Humans, for whatever reason, evolved to have pitifully fragile necks, but it was relatively easy to engineer a superior substrate. Some called them superstrates. Vitalie could squeeze all she wanted, but there was no way she was breaking his windpipe. He didn’t fight back. He just lay there, waiting for her to recognize him. She did so after fifteen seconds, and got off of him right away. “Are you okay?” he asked her.

“Am I okay? Are you okay?”

Not a big deal. “I’m all right. How long were you in there?”

Vitalie looked back at the pod in disgust. “Hell if I know.”

“Someone put you in there against your will?” Ramses asked.

She took a deep breath. “Yes. Called himself...The Oaksent.”

“We’ve met,” Mateo said with a nod.

She looked around at their surroundings. “This world has been without my help. I hope it’s not too late.”

“Too late for what?” Mateo asked.

“To do some good. Do you know how far we are from civilization?”

“We’ll take you there.” Mateo offered her a hand.

She was confused for a moment. “Do you know how to be a navigator for a teleporter?”

“I know how to be a navigator,” Mateo answered, “and a teleporter.” He took her hand, and jumped them both to New Welrios.

“I wanna take a look at this pod,” Ramses said through his comm.

“Be careful,” Mateo warned him. “There could be a tamper-proof self-destruct.”

“A lot has changed about you, Mister Matic,” Vitalie noted. “Looks like I got some competition here.”

“You don’t,” he clarified. “My team and I have to go. We’re looking for a friend, and the only thing we know is that he’s not on this world. We’re doing everything we can, but a lot of people here don’t deserve to be helped.” He jerked his head towards the Welriosians who were milling about outside the entrance to the giant residential cave. “These ones were once innocent slaves. We saved them from the destruction of their planet, then we had to save them again once the natives got their hands on them. The others live on the other side of the planet. Their society is complicated, and there’s only so much effort we’re putting into their redemption. You can do whatever you want, Vitalie, or you can come with us.”

She smiled at him while she watched the people. “My name’s Vitalie. It’s The Caretaker, and wherever you’re going, you’ll find me there too.”

“You duplicated yourself?” he guessed.

“Dupe means two.” She paused, and tilted her forehead towards him. “I didn’t stop at two.”

“How many worlds are you on?”

She waited to answer. “All of them. Well, except for the ones who don’t need it, like all systems in the stellar neighborhood. I may or may not be on Earth II. I was still trying to decide when I left, so my alternates would have had to make that decision.”

“How did you get to each world, though?”

“The Nexus.”

“There’s a Nexus here?”

“I don’t think so,” she assumed. “You don’t need a Nexus to exit. You just need one to leave from.”

Mateo nodded. This was true.

Ramses suddenly appeared a few meters from them. Or rather, Vitalie’s pod appeared. It was standing up, but the bottom wasn’t stable, so it fell onto its back. He climbed out of it like a zombie from its casket. “This is not a stasis pod. It’s a medical pod with a—argh!” He ripped something out of a panel in the ceiling, “...stasis generator jury-rigged to it.”

“Is there a self-destruct?” Mateo asked him.

Ramses laughed. “No. They’re safe to use it as needed.”

“Do they even know how?” He looked at Vitalie. “Do you?”

She shook her head. “I can push a button. Is it that easy?”

“It’s easy enough to use,” Ramses said, “but difficult to maintain. A me will have to stay behind to help them, and with other things.”

“A you?” Mateo asked. “Did you just said a me?”

Ramses took a breath, and approached Vitalie surprisingly cautiously. “You’re a time traveler, aren’t you?”

“I am. That’s how I replicate myself.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why?”

“There’s so much work left to do here. They could use a superhero like you, but...they need a genius like me. So send me back in time, just a few seconds. One version will stay behind, and the other will go on with the mission.”

“Now, hold on,” Mateo started to say. “If we have a time traveler, why can’t we just go back to before they took the kid? We could render this all moot.”

“That’s not possible, is it?” Ramses asked Vitalie.

“That asshole said it wouldn’t be. I’ve not tested it yet. I’ve been talking to you.”

Ramses shook the device in his hands like you’re not supposed to shake a Polaroid picture. “There was always a chance she would eventually escape the pod, and she could go back in time and stop the Oaksent from putting her in it in the first place. Anything that ever exists, always exists. He doesn’t have the hundemarke, so he found a workaround to prevent her from being able to undo what he did to her.”

“I don’t understand,” Mateo said.

“Let’s call it a Time Lid,” Ramses went on. “I think I read about something similar in a story once. She can’t go back any further than the moment we let her out of the pod, and disabled the stasis generator. The past is completely beyond her access now. What’s done is done...is done, is done.”

“All we can do is move forward,” Vitalie agreed, but it wasn’t the same one they had just been talking to. It was Future!Vitalie. And she was standing next to a future version of Ramses.

“I guess you convince me,” Present!Vitalie mused.

Leona appeared, having been listening to the entire interaction through comms. “I couldn’t get away in time to stop you. Ramses, you don’t have to do this. Neither of you does.”

“It’s already done,” Present!Ramses and Future!Ramses replied in unison. Without communicating with each other, each of them placed a fist in an open palm to prepare for a game of regular Rock, Paper, Scissors. They had to play two dozen times before one of them finally chose something different.

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Microstory 1842: A Human Being Dies

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I used to wish I were a hero. When I was a very young girl, my grandfather took me to the town square. When I say he took me, I mean he stopped by the butcher shop, and let me run off on my own to throw a coin in the fountain. That was pretty normal back then, letting a child go somewhere alone. They knew about bad guys with bad ideas, but it just hadn’t happened often enough to warrant constant monitoring. Have you seen the kids with actual leashes? I mean, there’s being protective, and then there’s whatever that is. I guess I don’t really know their situation. Those kids could have developmental issues that make it impossible to teach them to stay close. Anyway, there I was at the fountain. I remember feeling like there were a lot of people going about their business, or enjoying the park, but when I think back to that day, I think I was completely alone. I must have been, right? Otherwise, someone would have helped me. I threw the coin in the water, closed my eyes, and wished to be a superhero. Thinking that not only would it work, but that it would work immediately, I turned around and began to run. I didn’t even get the chance to jump up and try to fly. I tripped on something pretty quickly, and slammed my face against the cement. I could feel the blood all over me, and the most excruciating pain I ever experienced—before then, and until today. I lay there like that for a moment before flipping over, and getting to my back, which provided just a little bit of relief. I looked up and watched the birds flying overhead, completely oblivious to the fact that a human was in mortal danger down here, and not even trying to teach me how to do what they do. I don’t know how long I was there before my grandfather ran over and scooped me up. “Don’t tell your mother,” he said to me. “We’ll get you cleaned up, and you’ll be okay.” I was indeed okay. But I was changed. I no longer hoped to be any kind of hero. Fact: heroes don’t fall on their faces. Even if they do, they always get up on their own.

That was decades ago, and now I kind of look at it as my origin story. That’s just another delusion, though, and I know that. I’m no hero, I’m just a regular person who saw people in trouble, and felt compelled to help. People do that, and that’s a lesson I learned over the years, though I wasn’t exactly conscious of it; I’m just realizing it in my final moments. Heroes don’t really exist, and they don’t need to. If you see a man get hit by a car while you’re walking to work, you stop and call for emergency services. Our species is ruthless, but we’re also compassionate and cooperative. We would not have survived this long without the instinct to help others. I didn’t think very hard when I saw the bricks fly out of the building they once formed like water from the tap. I didn’t know what it was, and still don’t; perhaps a missile of some kind. The war is supposed to be over, but some just can’t let go. It doesn’t matter why it started falling apart, just that there were innocent lives at stake, and I happened to be walking by. I ran in, and ran up the stairs. I started going through every room, clearing everyone out, and searching for anyone incapable of escaping on their own. I wasn’t the only one, I can tell you that. I saw a few others from the street who had the same idea, and I bet there were more. Fathers escorted sons through windows. Neighbors lifted debris off of neighbors. Everyone who could help was helping. Because that is what we do. When one of us hurts, we’re all worse off for it. No, I don’t die here under this rubble as a hero. I die as a human being capable of empathy, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Microstory 1698: Benedict’s Purpose

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Benedict Stewart was an odd duck, and though no one would argue he was the best person in the world, he wasn’t evil. He was a high school science teacher, who was forced to leave for engaging in an inappropriate sexual relationship. She was not one of his students, but she was pretty young, and his behavior reflected poorly on the school. She was a college student, who was there as a pre-service teacher, so she could gather enough supervised experience to become a certified instructor once her own schooling was complete. As her supervisor, he was considered to be in a position of power, even though he assured the district that he did not take it into account when evaluating her performance. The student teacher stuck up for him, and declared it to be a fully consensual relationship, which probably prevented the situation from becoming a news story, and also kept him from being fired. He would have been free to apply for work elsewhere, and while no job was guaranteed, he likely would have eventually found some place fitting. Instead, he chose to work at the soda bottling plant on the edge of town. It wasn’t as rewarding, and it was below his education and experience, but it was a decent living. His girlfriend, meanwhile, stayed with him for years, eventually becoming his wife. A week after the wedding, she was the victim of a drunk driver, and ended up in a coma. Benedict was distraught, and could no longer function. He became careless in his duties, and his boss had to let him go. The money wasn’t that much of a problem, as the drunk driver was the son of a wealthy businessman, who agreed to a hefty settlement in exchange for keeping this quiet. But Benedict was still alone, and he was still sad.

His boss was a good guy, who understood how traumatic this whole experience was. He hired him in the first place, fully aware of his past transgressions. He couldn’t let him keep his job for the time being, but he intended to kind of leave it open until Benedict got the help he needed. He recommended a support group, so he could work through his grief, and find some way to move on. Benedict got a lot of help from them, but he didn’t realize until later that this support group had a bizarre secret. It turned out to be the source of recruitment for a budding superhero organization, and they wanted him on the team. Him? Really? Why? Well, he wasn’t just any ol’ chemistry teacher. He was known for creating little gadgets to illustrate scientific concepts for the kids. He helped bridge the gap between all the sciences, including physics and biology, and even other subjects, to facilitate a more well-rounded education. So the leaders of the superhero group suggested he come up with some non-lethal weapons, and use them to protect the city. It would give him purpose, and help relieve the depression, and some of the suicidal thoughts he was suffering. So that was what he did. He wore a magnetic suit that could steal guns from an aggressor, a taser, striking gloves, a sonic eardrum burster, chemical explosives, a heat ray, blinding laser lights, and a slingshot. The idea was for each weapon to demonstrate one of the ten types of energy, excluding nuclear and gravitational, because he didn’t actually have any powers, and he didn’t have genius-level intellect. As time went on, and Benedict pursued missions for his team, he shed some of the excess from his persona, and focused on the more important features. He also learned that maybe the people who recruited him had been lying about being heroes all along. And now Benedict...would have to choose a side.

Microstory 1648: Regal Sea Goddess

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Image credit: Greg McFall (NOAA's National Ocean Service)

The penultimate universe I’ll discuss for this series doesn’t have a name, because there isn’t a strong enough defining characteristic. Yes, all relevant stories are about a group of superheroes, who fight against a group of supervillains, but there are many branes like that. The first of the heroes came about in the early 1980s. Her work was relatively shortlived, and her only responsibility was to go against regular criminals. Her decision to become the first would fuel the heroes of tomorrow, and also the villains, who were at first, pretending to be heroes. She basically became an excuse for people to dress up in costumes, conceal their identities, and operate outside of the law. People didn’t know what to think when Sea Goddess showed up on the scene in her colorful frilly outfit, and started fighting crime. They didn’t have the concept of a superhero. Comic books were predominantly about angsty teens, and exceptional athletes. They had heard of vigilantes, though, and they knew that what she was doing was against the law. Still, she seemed to be trying to do some good, so law enforcement just kind of stayed out of her way. They didn’t help her, but they didn’t actively try to apprehend her. It became an unwritten rule that if a cop happened across her that they look the other way, and act like it didn’t happen. Sea Goddess’ real name was Shanti Gideon, and she didn’t have some sad story about why she wanted to clean up the streets. She won a somewhat modest amount of money in the lottery, which allowed her to quit her boring job, and now she didn’t have anything better to do. Superheroing passed the time, and gave her purpose, and most people seemed to appreciate it. Obviously, not everyone.

Sea Goddess named herself for a species of underwater creatures called nudibranchs. She took on characteristics of the animal, primarily by wielding harsh chemicals. One of the chemicals put her victims to sleep, while another just tasted bad, and overwhelmed them to the point where they couldn’t fight anymore. She did have one lethal poison that she only used once as a last resort, and it was her final mission before she disappeared. No one knew what happened to her after that. Some believed that she was murdered in retaliation for the mobster that she killed when she was backed into a corner. Others thought that she was always part of some rival gang, and was reassigned to somewhere else. Most people rightly assumed that she retired, having regretted taking a life, and not being able to make up for it. Instead, she dedicated herself to helping others in more traditional ways, by donating to charity, and volunteering. Her identity was never at risk, and she told no one the truth about who she had been. The police reluctantly pursued the mobster’s killer, but came up with no leads, and eventually just let it turn into a cold case. Even if they thought she deserved to be locked up, no one wanted to be the cop who actually did it. Her legacy lived on after this, but it would be decades before anyone truly followed in her footsteps. A support group for people who had been traumatized, and were now lost in the world, was designed with levels. You level up, you learn more about the organization. The middle levels revealed it to be a source of recruitment for superheroes, but the higher levels revealed that it was actually a front for criminals. Upon realizing this, real superheroes had to rise up, and do everything they could to stop them. Once they did, however it wasn’t like their job was over. New threats came along, and perhaps Sea Goddess would have to come out of hiding.

Microstory 1644: Fickle Fortune

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Time is pretty complicated, and time travel makes it more complicated. There are those who don’t see linear time, or who have no use for it. Some can go back, some can skip, some can slow it down. Some can enter spatio-temporal dimensions, or even spatial dimensions. Some universes take this to insane levels, like Salmonverse, or parts of the Composite Universe. But there is one general constant, and that is that time still does move forward, one second...at a time. It’s just certain people that are manipulating it, or moving about in some weird way. You can probably kind of see where I’m going with this, and it’s that this universe today is not like that. If you’ve read enough comic books, or listened to/watched soap operas, you’ll notice some funny things going on. One particular superhero was a high school sophomore when he was introduced, and even though later stories could take place after decades, he’ll still be a sophomore. Or maybe they show him in college, but a new writer will come on board, and want to go back to those high school days, and no one in the story will acknowledge these discrepancies. It’s called the sliding timescale, and it’s generally used to maintain the general concept behind a character whilst being able to introduce real-world developments, such as technological advancements, or topical global conflicts. Superhero A didn’t have a cellphone when his first issue came out in the 1950s, but he does in the 2020s, even though he would be an old man by now, if not just dead. The point is that this is done for practical reasons. The artists want to keep the story going, and they want to keep revisiting the same characters, but they don’t want to be stuck in a particular time period, and they don’t really want anyone to die...at least not permanently.

Fickleverse is like that, except it’s real, and the residents are fully aware of it. They’re so aware that it doesn’t even seem strange to them. Time does not flow linearly, and it does not flow at the same rate—or even always in the same direction— for everyone, and this doesn’t generally bother them. Some children stay young for an extended period of time. Others will age too fast, often because some profound moment in their lives has transformed them into a different person, which only the illusion of the passage of time can meaningfully express. For some, they’re still driving around in petrol automobiles, and not presently cognizant of the fact that people in the next town over have hovercars. There are some other consequences too. In other universes, shows and movies will cast actors to pretend to be their character, but something will change, and that role will have to be recast. That will happen in fickleverse too. Your daughter might not just age before your eyes, but may even become a completely different person overnight. She’ll have the same name, and she’ll believe she’s your daughter, and you’ll believe she’s your daughter, but you will notice that she’s not the same daughter you had yesterday. You’ll just accept this, and you’ll love her just as much, because that’s how the world works. The interesting part about this, and how it pertains to the bulkverse, is that it’s unclear how time will affect a visitor, so it’s best to just avoid it. The Ochivari, in particular, can’t make heads or tails of how it works, and what their environmental potential is. Can the world be saved? Are the humans destined to destroy their Earth? When time can go in reverse as easily as it moves forward, there’s no way to know what has happened, let alone what will happen. So they just leave it be, and chalk it up to a hopeless cause.