Microstory 2170: Twist in My Life

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Oh man, big news today. I got a new job, sort of. I wasn’t looking for a new one, but it fell into my lap, kind of literally. The warden came by to inform me that he and the governor had been in talks with my employer for a special new contract. He gave me the paperwork while I was sitting in my recliner. I’ve yet to tell you who I work for, or what I do, and I still won’t give you specifics about it, but this wouldn’t be the first time they’ve loaned employees out to other companies for this sort of thing. They’re a consulting firm, and while I didn’t actually work as a consultant myself prior to this, I’m getting a sudden promotion into it for an entirely new sector of the industry for us. This new department will be helping other organizations who need to manage large groups of people. We’ll help them figure out how to sort them in the best way to be productive and healthy. They call it Team Dynamics. I may not be explaining it right, because I’m not in charge of that. I’m not the head of the department as a whole, just the first team. They’ll give me a new boss once they figure out who that’s going to be, whether they promote someone else internally, or hire from the outside. Until then, I’ll be officially operating out of the jail, but I can work from home when my team doesn’t have to meet in person, especially now in the beginning, before I’ve gathered the team in the first place. Which is good, since I’m still in recovery. My future superior may have different ideas later, but that’s the plan for now. This is all moving so fast, it’s crazy. I mean, we were talking about the prospect of this sort of thing, but I didn’t think that it would actually happen.

This is a huge opportunity for me. I’ve been in leadership positions before, but never formally. When I was a teenager, my scout troop started letting us join a second fake American Indian tribe. I don’t want to get into all that, but we were primarily in the “competing” tribe, so for this second one, I was one of the older boys. I helped the younger ones figure things out, even though we were all new. I started managing a team of new recruits when I volunteered after a huge hurricane when I was only eighteen, just because someone caught wind that I was good at computers (even though it was just about being young enough to be familiar with them) so I already had the list of volunteers in a spreadsheet, and all the real supervisors were away from the shelter when the newbies showed up. When I worked for a tax prep company, they put me in charge of the seasonal temps, even though I was also a temp, because the permanent employees didn’t want to have to do it. So I’ve never been a real boss before, and I’m pretty nervous about it. It will be my job to figure out, not only what kind of people need to be on the team, but also to locate the specific professionals. I’ll have to interview them, and make a hiring decision if they end up being a good fit. I don’t mind admitting that I don’t super know what I’m doing right now, so my first order of business is finding an advisor. This is what I naturally know how to do. I recognize talent in others, even if it’s not in a field that I’m familiar with. I assigned those other scouts to various jobs by recognizing their strengths, and also noticing what they weren’t very comfortable with. I’m nervous, but I’m hopeful. My sentence has been officially commuted by the governor, at least in terms of the jail time. I’ll still be required to finish my community service, and report to my parole officer weekly. I don’t have an issue with either of those things, though. I’m excited and hopeful about this unexpected twist in my life.

Microstory 2100: All Over the City

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Counting my alternate self, but only counting work on my original Earth, I have had 17 jobs for 42 companies at 48 locations. How is that even possible? Well, keep reading, and I’ll explain it to you. But first, let’s start at the beginning; a very good place to start, as they say. When I was in my twenties, I took a personality test. (Okay, I guess we’re not starting at the beginning, are we?) What I learned is that I exhibit traits from all sixteen personality types, but least of all Performer, and most of all Protector. When I see someone crossing the street, my instinct tells me to watch them to make sure they make it all the way to the other side. My head is constantly on a swivel, looking out for threats, and keeping an eye on people who may be in danger. Now, I’m not saying that I would easily jump between an innocent person and a bullet, but I do believe that I wouldn’t ever use someone as a human shield. I’m always worried about people’s safety. Somehow, my dad intuited this, and he made me get my lifeguard certification when I was fifteen years old. I think the class began the day after my birthday, or something really soon, so I could not have begun any earlier. The course translated well into a job, with my teacher becoming my boss, so that’s what I did for three years. I was young and frustrated with it, but when I look back, it was probably one of my best jobs. I just didn’t know how good I had it. As I explained in the previous post, I started doing volunteer work right after high school, and when I came back, I fell into a job working for a maintenance contractor. I don’t remember much about it, including how much I made, but I know that I took a business trip to build workstations at the client’s new site in Wichita. The other guys in the car were smokers, so that was pretty much hell for me. They were so inconsiderate, and disgusting, and I hope they live in misery now. In 2008, however, I started to work as a projectionist at a small movie theatre while I was already in college. There were actually a few different locations owned by the same people, but you couldn’t really call it a chain. I was the only projectionist the place had ever had, and probably ever did have after that. Most staff members who handled that were also managers, but I didn’t want that kind of responsibility. My bosses asked me repeatedly to be a supervisor when I was a lifeguard too. I eventually regretted declining both of those jobs. I would have made a little extra money, which could have come in handy later. I just didn’t trust my leadership skills yet. I only worked at the theatres for about fifteen or so months, and I hated every second of it. My bosses were all republicans, and they had this warped view of reality, which made them conflate busyness with productivity. It didn’t matter if you had already cleaned the counter fifty times in a row today. If there’s nothing else to do, then wipe it down fifty more times!

Whew, I’ve only talked about three jobs, and I’m already in the second paragraph. The time after I graduated from college was really tough on me. Years later, it may not sound like I spent that much time out of work, but when I was in the thick of it, it was torture. I applied for a ton of jobs, but no one was biting. Even when I could get an interview, I did poorly, because of my autism. I started volunteering at the elementary school where my sister worked, in the library. I also branched out to other libraries at the same time. I took a brief job in the mail department at the IRS, which only lasted a few weeks, then went right back to the libraries. Finally in 2012, I got my first big boy job at a tax preparation corporation, editing training documents for other employees. It was temporary, but it paid a whole ton of money; enough to let me move out of the house! It was over after several months. But then they called me back the next year! But that only lasted two months. They put me in charge of even temporarier temps, but paid me less than the last job. And then they never called me back, so screw ‘em! It was probably a few weeks before I secured another job, this time working at a warehouse for a computer manufacturing company. I had some six-degrees of Kevin Bacon connection going on, but I ended up not liking the guy on the other side of the separation, and I still don’t know how we were connected. That only lasted about fifteen months too. I went on vacation, came back for less than a week, and then the FTC raided the offices, and shut the whole company down. They were selling preorders to customers before they had engineered the product, and never making good on their promise (read:fraud). They tried to start up again after all the legal stuff, but ultimately didn’t survive. Maybe if they had asked me to return too, things might have turned out differently. Lol, no thanks.

I spent about a year unemployed, trying to take some classes to become a web developer, but I’m not smart enough for that, so it super backfired. I ended up taking a part-time job as a package sorter for a worldwide courier. It obviously didn’t exactly pay six figures, so I tried to get a second job at a grocery store, but it sucked. I was looking to add a few extra hours every day, not work twelve hours straight some days of the week. Plus, the boss was another guy who thought being busy was the same thing as being productive. If there was no bad produce to turn over, then he expected you to throw away perfectly good fruit, just so you’re doing something. What a dick, I hope he’s miserable too. I hate wasting food. I didn’t even ever put that job on my résumé. I lasted two weeks, and only gave him a few hours notice. Finally, here’s where the real work begins, and also where my numbers begin to rise. I worked for a temp agency, for a contractor, which had a contract at an engineering firm. I was on the mail team, and often moved around to a few different sites. I even drove the van. I was basically a floater. When someone was out, I would fill in for them, so while everyone else specialized in their own thing, I knew everything. Unfortunately, they ultimately decided that they didn’t need an extra person, so they dropped me after a year. I was only off work for a month before a replacement came along, though, working for their primary competitor. I was actually at the unemployment office when I got the call for an interview. The guy who would become my boss said that the reason he hired me, despite my many, many jobs up until that point, was because I said that I just wanted a chance to prove myself. Most other interviewers didn’t like that much honesty, but he did.

Now the company number is going to skyrocket. I was even more of a floater than I was before. Like the previous contractor, this one also had contracts all over the city, but unlike that one, I was assigned to most of them, instead of just the one. I went to over a dozen different places, sometimes staying there for a week, and sometimes only a few hours. I went to a few sites only once, but many sites a whole bunch of times. That’s how I’ve worked for so many companies, but only with a handful of jobs. A few of the sites were about an hour away, so I got a lot of money from the mileage reimbursement, especially since we would always subtract the distance where we lived from the “home office” even though I literally never stepped foot in there, and didn’t even know exactly where it was. Anyway, it was just like the job before, but more formal. When someone was sick or on vacation, or just if a site needed extra help, they would send me, or someone else on my team. One of the site supervisors was being hired by the site themselves, so I interviewed to replace him, and got the job. It was at a law firm, so I learned a little bit of law there. Three years later, the site was shut down when a competitor secured the contract with a lower bid, but my company didn’t let me go. They moved me around a couple times, technically in the position I was just before, but that only lasted a couple of months before I found another site. I wasn’t the supervisor anymore, but I told my then-boss that I wasn’t going to accept anything lower than my wage at the time, so it came with a raise, which was what really mattered to me. This was the best job that I (my alternate) ever had. The work is really hard to learn, but very easy to do once you learn it, so he’s actually happy there. So there you have it, all those jobs, with even more companies, and even more locations. I wonder what’s next...

Microstory 1952: The Office

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Myka: Are we really doing this?

Reese: Too late to back out now.

Leonard: Couldn’t we quit, just like any other job?

*they look at him incredulously*

Leonard: Let me guess, it doesn’t work like that on your world.

Reese: You signed a contract. You are required to give your employer one month’s notice if you intend to quit. I’ve never heard of a job that doesn’t work like that.

Leonard: How much notice does my employer have to give before firing me, ha-ha.

Reese: Two months.

Leonard: Oh. Where I’m from, it’s common courtesy to give your boss two weeks, but they don’t have to give you anything. They can have security escort you out immediately.

Myka: That’s sad. Anyway, Reese, this place is nice. I love how you lord over everyone from your perch up here. Did you have any say in how these offices would look?

Reese: Only a little. And this is your perch too. Leonard, your office is the one on my right. Myka, that’s yours on my left.

Myka: I still don’t know what I’m here to do. I’m not an agent, am I?

Leonard: I don’t know the answer to that question either.

Reese: None of us is an agent. Those will be provided by the government at a later date. I believe some of them are presently in training. Leo, they’ll probably ask you to join them at some point, as you will be in charge of the agents and operatives.

Leonard: I thought you were in charge.

Reese: I’m in charge of everyone. Once the paperwork goes through, you’ll be the Supervisory Special Agent.

Leonard: That is quite the step up from where I was. Whew. Okay, it’s good to have a little time to wrap my brain around that.

Myka: And me?

Reese: Facilities. You’ll supervise IT, building management, cleaning, kitchen... Basically everything that keeps the building itself running, you’ll be responsible for that.

Myka: So I should have been consulted with the layout?

Reese: *laughing* They used to use this place for something else. You can choose the layout of the bullpen, and other things, but you probably can’t tear down, or build any new, walls. I want everyone to understand that, while we’re doing this in preparation for a possible alien invasion—or some less obvious form of it—it could happen any day. We want to be ready to work as fast as possible. We may be making a lot of temporary decisions until something more sustainable can be put in place. We already have two fridges and freezers in the break room, though, and this...is a metal government credit card with no spending limit. Myka, buy what you think an office will need.

Myka: *takes the card* I’m on it.

Reese: And Leonard? Tell me what you think about this.

Leonard: *takes it* A new badge. Hm. It’s a lot heavier than the one I had before.

Reese: This is even heavier. *hands him a gun*

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 28, 2399

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Everyone tumbles out of the portal. They’re still in Madagascar, crowded in the hut, but it’s no longer only part of it. Every part of it is here and unbroken. Everyone seems to be pretty tired, but otherwise okay. “I left something by a particular tree,” Tarboda announces. “If it’s there, we’re still in the Facsimile.” He steps through the door, and disappears. He doesn’t just blink out of existence, though. The faint hologram of two parallel lines appears at his back, and fades away shortly after he does.

“I don’t think this is the Facsimile,” Leona looks around to make sure no one else steps out of the hut. “It’s the Parallel. Is this where Cheyenne wanted us to go?”

“I don’t care which reality it was, as long as it gets me away from you people.” Erlendr huffs, and steps through the door. Instead of parallel lines, his hologram is of four quadrants.

“Okay, we’re all going to different places, it looks like. No one leaves until we can figure this out,” Leona orders.

“Screw that, I’m outta here.” Fairpoint runs out of the door. Two parallel lines. He appears to have gone to the same world as Tarboda.

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do to stop this,” Aldona says. “I have to get back to work, so hopefully I’ve been assigned the Third Rail, and if not, I’ll make my way back. It’s what I do.” She leaves, ignoring Leona’s protests. She goes to the Fourth Quadrant, which is sad for her, but at least someone is there to keep Erlendr in line.

“Dad!” Bridget shouts, but Senator Morton is already too close to the edge. When she tries to pull him away, they both end up returning to the Third Rail. So that’s...good?”

“I’ll follow your lead, Leona,” her future grandfather, Labhrás promises.

Leona shakes her head. “She’s right, nothing can stop this. I’m feeling a pull to leave anyway, like being here is making me ill. Anyone else experiencing the same?”

There aren’t many of them left, but they all nod.

“Still,” Winona says, “on your orders.”

“Cross the threshold, soldier.”

Winona walks through, leaving behind a fading hologram for the Fifth Division.

Labhrás nods cordially, and leaves right after her, and ends up going to the main sequence, which may be the only one that makes sense since he’s supposed to go back in time and father Leona’s father.

Mateo frowns at his wife. “Winona’s alone.”

“I know.”

“So is Labhrás.”

“I’m not so worried about that.”

I’m just saying...”

“That either you and I are going to different places, or the math isn’t going to work out very well,” she figures.

He sighs, and holds out a hand. “Let’s try to stick together.”

She takes it. “Okay, we’ll try.”

They walk through the door side by side, staring into each other’s eyes. Leona’s hand slowly collapses into a sort of fist as her husband disappears. “Were I you,” she hears his voice call out to her from the aether. She echoes the words, but can’t know whether he got them.

She’s back in the white, where they were between leaving the Facsimile, and ending up back in that limbo hut. If this is what either the main sequence or Fifth Division look like right now, they could be in a lot of danger. That’s probably not it, though. Aldona was right. These are not random; they’re assignments, and Leona apparently doesn’t have one, which would have pissed her off if it had happened to her when she was in school. Another blur forms before her, and is taking a long time to solidify. It’s not Cheyenne this time, though. She looks a little bit like Alyssa. “Are you...Mrs. McIver?” Leona guesses.

She laughs, and holds out a hand for Leona to shake. “Ebora.” They  shake. “Trina Ebora.”

“Oh. All growed up. I kind of thought you led a normal life.”

“Pretty much, but I’m still a Keyholder, and I still have a destiny.”

“Are the keys...”

“A bloodline?” Trina assumes she was going to ask.

“Yeah.”

Leona starts listing them off. “So Iris is Summit’s mother, and Summit is....someone’s father.”

“Kyra Torosia,” Trina fills in.

“My husband went to a planet called Torosia once.”

Trina nods. “Named for her. It’s Durus. Well, it’s what Durus becomes. They put the past in the past, and start a new chapter, which is why it needed a new name.”

“I see.”

“Go on,” Trina encourages.

“So Kyra is—I’m guessing—secretly Vearden’s mother. Then Vearden is Cheyenne’s father, and Cheyenne is Cedar’s mother.”

“You got it.”

“So the Keyholders are you, your dad, whoever Vearden’s dad is, Arcadia, and Curtis,” Leona finishes.

“Perfect.”

“What do the Keys do?”

“The realities are collapsing, every single one of them. You have met, and will meet, those who claim that it’s inevitable, and they’re just helping it along, but they are the ones instigating it. The reason they don’t want to take the blame is because no one knows whose idea it was, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s happening, and in order to prevent quadrillions and quadrillions of people from dying, the Keys are going to transport everyone to a new universe.”

“The Sixth Key.”

“Right again.”

“What do you and the other Keyholders do?”

“The Keys need to welcome everyone in the Sixth Key. The Keyholders need to hold open the doors that will let everyone through.”

“And what is our purpose; me, my team, and...the others who aren’t on the team? It seems like they were split up across the realities too.”

Trina nods. “The Keyholders need protection while they’re fulfilling their destinies. Your friends and enemies are going to have to work together, but I believe they can do it. We couldn’t just choose any random ten people. They had to already have been involved in all this stuff. We don’t have time to explain that time travel exists, or that the Sixth Key does. You’ve all been hearing the rumors for a while now.”

“Where is Mateo?”

“Main sequence.”

“Who’s with Winona in the Fifth Division then?”

“You’re not gonna like it.”

“Who?”

“Someone you know who is from there.”

“Oh, that guy who tried to kill me. I still don’t know his name.”

“It doesn’t matter. He’ll do his job, or I’ll leave him in that reality, and close the door behind me and Winona.”

“That’s ten protectors for five Keyholders for five Keys in five realities. What am I meant to do?”

Trina reaches into her bag and retrieves a wrapped gift that fits in the palm of her hand. “You have the most important job of all.”

Leona accepts it, and starts to unravel the ribbon.

“You’re the Captain,” Trina finishes.

Leona opens the box. Inside is a metal plate. Engraved on it are the symbols for the six realities, and in the center is a tiny little wooden boat helm with six spokes. “Does it allow me to travel between them?”

“Yes, it will be your responsibility to make sure that everyone does what they must to make all of this happen. You can travel freely between realities, and you’ll at least have to do it once, because Vearden needs to get in place after his baby is born.”

“How does it work?” Leona asks. “Each of the spokes is pointing towards one of the realities.”

“See that red thing sticking out of the very center? Pull that off, and place it over one of the spokes. That will activate the device. You have five seconds to turn it to the reality you want to go to, and then five seconds to pull the tip back off once you arrive.”

“Or else what?”

“Or the device will deactivate permanently, and you’ll be stuck wherever you are.”

“How do I get back here?” Leona questions.

“You don’t,” Trina answers.

“Are there any limits, and are there any other rules?”

“You can take two people with you from one reality to another, just like regular teleportation mass restrictions. Don’t do this unless it’s necessary. You are not a ferry service. This is not meant for you to rescue people in trouble. It is not to be used for anything but official Key business.”

“No abuse of power. Got it. Anything else?”

“Yeah, take everything you know of your past and future, and throw it out the window. “Literally everything is in flux right now. You could hypothetically let everyone die in the collapsing realities, and it will not create a paradox. Your grandfather doesn’t have to survive, the Keys don’t have to survive. Success is not certain. We all have to put in the work. If we fail, you specifically will survive to remember what happened...alone in the infinite void. So don’t fuck this up.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 52,398

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The security room in the Constant has always been unlocked, which leads Mateo to believe that it’s only there for show. If any room needs to remain secure, it would be that one, so it’s probably just to make any intruder think that they have control. Today, he needs it, because he appears to be completely alone. He still doesn’t even know where the others hole themselves up in stasis. Surely someone is awake, though, right? Tamerlane even said that they don’t want him wandering around alone. He steps into the room, and approaches the microphone. He holds the button down, and taps on it. He can hear it out in the hallway, and other nearby rooms. “Hello? Is this thing on?”

No one responds.

“My mic sounds nice, check one!” he tests in a funny voice.

Still nothing.

“Okay, I’m gonna be in the master sitting room for the next ten minutes. If no one shows up by then, I’m gonna go exploring.” He pauses a moment. “I hope that’s okay.”

He sets the microphone back down, and walks down the hall to the master sitting room. He waits twenty minutes, actually, and no one shows up. So, true to his word, he leaves, and starts looking for something interesting to do. He ignores all the places he’s been to before, like the pools, and the gaming rooms. He wants to find something he’s never seen before. This is a big place, but how big is it?

Hmm. Not as big as he thought it might be. The Olympic-size pool and basketball court take up a lot of space, as does what looks like it’s supposed to be a go-kart track, but he can’t find any of the go-karts. He gets to thinking, though, that maybe he’s going about this the wrong way. He’s been trying to see how deep this facility goes, but he has no idea what it looks like on the surface in this time period. That’s where the real crazy stuff is going on, right? He’s imagining rivers of lava, and unending lightning storms all across the sky. There’s probably no way to see it, but he may as well go up to check. He has nothing better to do today until he figures out how to get back to his own time.

Mateo heads for the main elevator, and presses the call button, expecting it to just do nothing at all, but instead, it opens. He steps inside, and commands it to take him to the top floor. Again, he’s surprised when the elevator moves up for as long as it normally does, covering the entire kilometer distance. He’s in what looks like the little chapel outside of Lebanon, Kansas, but that shouldn’t exist for billions of years. Is this all a trick, or is this all real, and everything up to this point has been a trick? He goes to the window, and looks out, realizing upon closer inspection that they’re vacuum sealed, which the ones in the real chapel are not. It’s just a replica; a replica of something that does not yet exist. It will have to be destroyed anyway by the time humans begin to roam the world in this area, so what’s the point?

Outside is a wasteland, but there are no rivers of lava, nor lightning storms. It’s just barren and empty. There’s no dirt, nor even a sky. This world does not yet have an atmosphere. Right? That makes sense, right? Maybe that’s what she should be spending his extra time doing; studying astronomy and physics, so he doesn’t have to ask these questions. “Hey, Constance, are you there?”

“I’m here, Mr. Matic,” it replies.

“This world isn’t called Earth yet, so I’m going to take this opportunity to give it a name before anyone else does. Wadya think?”

“I think that this planet isn’t Earth, regardless of what you call it.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“As of yet, there is no planet Earth.”

“Explain.”

“In millions of years, the world we’re on will collide with its neighbor. The explosion will forge a new world, composed of parts from the two original celestial bodies. It will also result in the creation of the future Earth’s only significant natural satellite, which the world’s inhabitants will one day know as the moon, or Luna.”

“So, this is Earth, it’s just not done cookin’ yet.”

“No. Based on orbital patterns, and composite share of the resulting body, it is more accurate to say that the other planet is Earth.”

“So, does this one even have a name, if no one even knows it ever existed?”

“Scientists will one day hypothesize its existence, and name it Theia.”

“Theia,” Mateo echoes. “I like it.” He looks through the rest of the windows to get different perspectives. How weird to be on an alien world, yet still so close to home. He comes to the closet. “What is in here?” he asks himself. The AI doesn’t respond, because it knows that he’s about to open it anyway. Inside are vacuum suits. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Constance interprets this one as a real question. “I’m thinking that you should go back downstairs. You have seen enough of this. Best not to tempt fate.”

“Fate is fate; you can’t tempt it. It’s gon’ do what it’s gon’ do.”

“You know what I mean,” Constance argues, but still, it doesn’t do anything to stop him, though it absolutely could. It could lower the elevator on its own. It could alert Danica to the breach. It could even just lock the airlock, and not let him out, but it doesn’t, because it’s cool with it.

He steps into the suit, and let’s the automated robot hands on the door seal him up. Still, no one tries to stop him. He’s like Chris Pratt in Passengers, except this isn’t an accident, and if it were, this place would be designed to correct for it. Welp, anyway, it’s time to go outside and see what Theia looks like from the ground. “Wish me luck,” he asks Constance.

“I’ll be with you the whole time, even if it’s just to walk the suit back to base with your lifeless corpse still inside.” If it’s going to have an attitude like that, he should probably stop thinking of the AI as an it, and more of a her.

Mateo opens the hatch, and steps outside. He tries to hop around, but the gravity isn’t that low. He was on Mars once a long time ago, and it feels a bit like he remembers. He’s been outside of a ship in space a number of times, but it never gets old. He doesn’t go too far from the Constant, and Constance does stay in his ear the whole time. He just looks around a little, and kicks a few rocks. It sucks, being away from his friends and family, but this experience is certainly nothing to regret. Even assuming that all of the people in the Constant right now have also stepped outside for a walk, he can still count on one hand the number of people who have seen what he has. That’s pretty cool.

Danica’s voice comes through the earpiece, “you’ve had your fun. Come back in.”

“Be right there.” He starts to head that way. “And Danica...?”

“Yeah...?”

“I love you.”

Brief moment of silence. “I love you too.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 42,398

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Mateo’s stasis pod opens on its own again. It’s been ten thousand years, on the dot. “These people are nothing if not consistent,” he thinks to himself out loud. He steps out of the room to find Tamerlane sitting in a chair as if patiently waiting for Mateo to finish getting ready so they can go see a movie together. “Oh. Hi.”

“Hey, good morning.”

“Have you been awake long?”

“Just an hour,” he replies. “They don’t want you wandering around here alone, which makes sense, right? You’re just Danica’s cousin, who anyone who has ever glanced at the timeline can see almost always does the right thing.”

Mateo narrows his eyes at him. “Why are you buttering me up?”

Tamerlane chuckles. “Is that how it sounds? I apologize. It’s just frustrating to see them treat you this way. It wasn’t even this bad when Bhulan and I first showed up.”

“It wasn’t? What was it like?”

“Well, at first Danica threw us in hock, but we talked a little bit, and she soon decided that we weren’t bad news. We lived together for years before anyone started seriously thinking about doing something different in this reality than the main sequence. I mean, of course, we didn’t always know that it was a parallel reality. Danica figured that our respective arrivals were just something that was destined to happen. Only once we learned the truth did she decide to look into how things turned out for her counterparts. And that...”

“Broke her,” Mateo guessed.

“It broke her heart,” he corrected.

“I would sure like to talk with her, if she’s around,” Mateo requests.

“Our schedules have become incongruent. Your whole idea of shunting the unwanted temporal energy to a remote world was brilliant, but it changed how often we come in and out of our pods. I’m only here to keep you company for the day.”

Mateo holds back what would be an offensive grimace. A whole day with no one for company but Tamerlane Pryce? No, thank you. Even though he believes him when he says that he’s an alternate version, Mateo doesn’t see them becoming friends in any reality. They don’t have a lot in common, and that is okay. “If I ask you a question, can you promise to keep it just between the two of us?”

“Certainly.” No hesitation, or hint of sarcasm.

“Why do I need to come out of stasis at all? Is ten thousand years some kind of inherent limit, or what?”

“They thought you were just going to keep teleporting out of your pod anyway, and while teleportation doesn’t technically go against our no time travel rule, it’s close enough, and they would rather you just not do it at all. I see your concern. If you would like to keep coming out of stasis, I won’t say anything. If you want to be on a different schedule, I’m sure they would be more than willing to discuss.”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t really matter when we’re talking billions of years.”

Tamerlane nods. He doesn’t push it when Mateo strongly suggests that he would prefer to be solo for the rest of the day. He seems to trust him more than Danica and Bhulan do. Maybe he really is a different Tamerlane Pryce.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 20, 2398

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Marie has been staking out this apartment for the last two days. This is the kind of work that she used to do for SD6. She was taken off of all such assignments when her team showed up, and that became her only priority, both on a personal level, and for the government. This still has to do with time travel, but her team isn’t involved. They’re looking for people who have experienced an inordinate amount of time for a normal living human, or just have unusual brain chemistry. The orbital scanner that Ramses built, and which Mateo installed on a Snowglobe satellite, only mapped where these targets were at the time of the last scan. This information is now over a week old, so if any of them were just on vacation, or something, they’ll probably never find them. This may all be a waste of time. She hates this now. She hates everything she used to love or like. She’s just bitter and angry, and nothing seems right anymore. She shouldn’t take it out on the team, though, and she knows it. Hopefully they understand, and won’t hold it against her. Maybe getting herself a win will raise her spirits.

She has the extra mobile scanner that Ramses left in his hotel room. He didn’t have time to write up a manual, and the data burst he was able to send from the time bubble he and Mateo are presently trapped in didn’t say much about it. Even so, it seems pretty self-explanatory. Marie was able to adapt it to a tripod, and place it next to her other surveillance equipment. She doesn’t know which unit in the apartment complex is housing the target, but they’ll have to go through the front door at some point, and when they do, this thing should beep to let her know. It starts to beep. The scanner doesn’t communicate with the digital scope, of course, so she has to cross-reference the time codes to find who she’s looking for. Three people entered the building at about the same time, but two of them appeared to be together, and the scanner only caught one unusual brain. That’s not a guarantee, but it’s a safer bet. She pulls up the photo, runs downstairs from her surveillance nest, crosses the street, and enters the building.

“English?” she asks the lobby supervisor.

“Yes,” he replies. “But my shift is over. Divina will be out soon.”

Just as he’s saying that, the woman she was looking for steps out of the back office in her uniform. The scanner beeps. The two of them exchange a few words in Filipino, and then the man leaves. “Yes, can I help you?”

Marie isn’t prepared for this either. She doesn’t know what to say, so she just goes with the tried and true code words. “Yeah, thank you. Listen, I’m in the mood for some fish. Do you know of a good restaurant that serves salmon?”

The lobby supervisor starts to consult her computer. “There is a really great seafood  restaurant down the street, but I can pull up a comprehensive list for you.”

Hmm. That didn’t work. Marie holds up her scanner, which thankfully, doesn’t look like a weapon. Yeah, her brain is definitely unusual.

“I’m sorry, do you live here? We’re really only meant to help residents.”

“I’m a time traveler from the 19th century, trapped in your reality, hoping to find others like me. We have been looking for a way back home, but we don’t want to leave without first checking to see if anyone else would like to join. I believe you’re one of us.”

“Of course, ma’am. One moment, please.” She calls the authorities.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 19, 2398

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Angela is sitting at the computer, wearing her headset, resting her chin on the palm of her hand. She’s looking to the side of the computer, bored out of her mind. The job is not easy, and it doesn’t really have downtime, but there are lots of little moments where there’s nothing she can do but wait while the computer runs.

“Ange. Ange!” Marie alerts her through the headset.

“Hmm?”

“The script is done.”

“Did it go okay?”

“You tell me.”

“What am I looking for again, red text?”

“Yes, but there are other errors you need to look out for,” Marie reminds her.

“It looks good to me.” Angela moves her pointer over to close the window.

“Wait.”

“Wait, what?”

“You’re supposed to do something else before you exit out.”

Angela stares at the screen, and tries to recall what she’s talking about. “Am I supposed to...instantiate the panda?”

“No,” Marie laughs. “Confirm the bug report, so it ends the log at the last run. Otherwise, the next report will just start immediately after, and make it harder to find the one we’re looking for later.”

“Oh. Right, right, right, right, right.” She confirms the report, then closes the window, and then tries to back over to the library.

“No, what do you do next?”

“I know!” Angela defends. “I just accidentally clicked on the wrong window.”

“Sure.”

Angela switches over to the spreadsheet. “Why do I manually log the number of bugs every time? Isn’t that what the report is for?”

“The contract supervisor doesn’t want to read through all those reports, and in fact, isn’t probably capable of understanding them. All she wants is a productivity log, so she can show the client that we add value to their company.”

“This is dumb, it’s too much work,” Angela complains. “Can’t the computer just do this all for us?”

“Angela!” Marie cries. “We’re the ones who write the programs, which automatically do the things that the employees at our clients’ companies would be doing themselves! That’s the whole purpose of scriptwriting. It has to start somewhere.”

“Why can’t it start with an artificial intelligence?” Angela questions.

“Someone has to create the AI in the first place, which they do through scripts, and other tools. And the kind you remember from the other realities you’ve been to are far beyond what The Third Rail has achieved thus far. It’s gonna be another couple of decades before we have a program that can write new programs.”

“Is that what we’re working on? Are we working towards that?”

“Hm, I guess you could think of it that way. Once we deliver this particular script to the client, they’ll approve it, and probably ask us to train the individual or team who will be actually running it regularly. Right now, that person or people are doing all of it on their own. This will cut down on the time it takes for them to complete their job, and/or allow their bosses to give them additional work. Theoretically, we could write another script that’s designed to run before this one, or after it, which automates even more of that work. Automate it enough, and you might be able to fire the humans. You might clear out an entire department, or a company. That’s not what the client is asking of us right now, but it’s probably headed that way. That’s part of what drove automation in the main sequence. These people are just slower. The executives might realize this, and be hoping for it, or they might have no clue. It’s probably the first one, and what they really don’t realize...is that a script could one day take their jobs too.”

“It could one day take your job too.”

Marie laughs again. “Yes, but I’ll be the last to go. That’s why I picked this field. Someone has to write the job-stealing scripts, and until that true AI shows up, such a job is guaranteed. Basically, if my job isn’t safe, no one’s is.”

“Sneaky snake.”

“Yep.”

“Oh. I forgot I can refilter the executions, now that the bug tracker is finished.”

“That’s okay, we were talking.”

“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask; why do you have an office if you work from home? And why am I in your office, and you’re still at home?”

“Well, we can’t rightly both be there, and you need experience with my colleagues.”

“Oh. But I’m not going to be attending any meetings, right? There’s one on the calendar, but you’ll come in for that, right?”

“No, I need you to fill in for me. It’s best you start now, so you’re aware of the new inside jokes, and all that stuff.”

“What if there are old inside jokes that I wasn’t around for?”

“I haven’t been staring into empty space while the tasker is locked up,” Marie begins to explain. “I’ve been drawing up a cheatsheet for you. Though, sheet is a bit of a misnomer since it’s more like a novelette by now.”

“Argh, there’s so much to this!”

“You don’t...have to...”

“Don’t start again,” Angela warns. “I’m happy to do this for you. It’s just been a lot. This job is a lot.”

“I know. But it’s why we live where we live, and why Ramses was able to quit his job without giving it a second thought.”

“Yeah. Did you see this message from them? They’re on their way back.”

“I did. I think we have just enough time for one more test. I don’t like how the screen flickers about halfway through the process, and it’s still not as fast as I would like it. I think I know how to fix those issues, though. Scroll back down to Line 216.”

“Okay, boss.”

Angela and Marie end up running two more tests before they’re ready to call it quits for the day. By the time Angela gets back home, the rest of the team is already there. It’s time to come up with a new plan. Rather, they have to default to an old one. They probably need to move up the time table too.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 28, 2398

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Ramses is doing great at his job on a professional level, but not so much personally speaking. Two people on his work team hate him: the guy whose job he apparently usurped, and the guy who had been trying to usurp it since before Ramses was even in this reality. He doesn’t even care, but this gives him access to the resources his team may need to escape to the main sequence, and barring that, survive here. First and foremost, they need to understand the laws of physics. Is there something that’s constantly suppressing their powers and patterns here, or were they stripped of these characteristics upon arrival, and now they could theoretically get them back using some other avenue? He needs to run tests, and being in charge of this department should afford him the appropriate opportunities. All he needs to do is help his people do their jobs on their own, and not bug him all the time, or try to sabotage him.

“Bruno, can you come in here, please?”

“Is he in trouble?” Stockboy asks. That’s not his real name, but he started working here as a stock associate, and worked his way up to this position. He’s just biding his time until he can climb even higher.

“He’s not,” Ramses answers. “Bruno. Double time.”

Not only does he not speed up, but he actually slows down to a snail’s pace.

“You’ll be in trouble if you don’t get in here, though. I partially wanted to talk about the fact that my paperwork finally went through, so now I have full dismissal privileges.”

Now scared for his job, Bruno hops in, and closes the door behind him. “Sir,” he says through actual gritted teeth.

“Bruno, how long have you been working here?”

“Exactly 452 times as long as you have.”

“You believe that your six-year tenure here imbues you with some kind of...entitlement?”

“Sir?”

“You think you deserve to be in charge.”

Bruno looks like he’s considering his options, and ultimately decides to stand resolute. “Yes, I do. I’ve already proven myself.”

“Mr. Castillo, I am not a leader. My best friends tell me what to do, and I do it. Repair this, build that, invent something that has never existed before. And I love it, because it means I’m useful. I haven’t been feeling very useful for the last week, does this surprise you?”

“It does not.”

“I don’t want to be in charge. I don’t even want the money. I just need to maintain my position here. And I need you to stop making that so goddamn hard.” He picks up a stack of papers from his desk, and tosses them onto the floor in front of the man who is meant to be his subordinate. It hasn’t been very long, but he’s already exhausted with this nonsense. Ramses may have had a rivalry or two back in the day, but even a group of radical capitalists generally accepted the idea that one person’s success did not inherently mean another’s failure. This world, however, considers them to be one and the same. “My job is to make sure these time reports are filled out correctly. Your job is to fill them out, not deliberately screw them up to make it look like I’m an idiot. You may have forced others to complete your work, and then taken credit for it, but I’m not like that. I’m not going to try to pass this off as my own to illustrate my value. Nowhere does it say that I have to complete them, I am perfectly within my rights to delegate. So that’s what I’m doing. I don’t have time to do them, and I don’t have time to check your mistakes. So do them right, give them to me, and I’ll file them away. That’s called trust. I can google that word for you if you need me to?”

“You can what that word?”

Ramses sighs. “If you mess these up again, I’m blaming you, and the boss will believe me, because I’ve already told him that you’re continuing to do them.”

“Sir, forgive me, but if you don’t want to be the supervisor, why are you?”

“Because I’m on assignment from the corporate office,” Ramses lies. “In one year, that assignment will be over, and I’ll step down.”

“I need the money now,” Bruno argues.

“You’ll get it.” Ramses pulls a stack of cash from the top drawer, and drops it right on top of the reports on the floor. “Like I said, I don’t need it. That’s a pittance for someone of my calibre. I’ll even let you be my lieutenant. It’s not an official position, but the team will listen to you, and I don’t give a shit. All you have to do to keep making this extra income every month is follow my orders, stay out of my way, and keep this all quiet. Are you capable of that?”

Bruno bends over, and retrieves the cash to get a rough count of it. “I was making more than this when I had your job.”

Ramses rolls his eyes. “You’re not getting all of my monthly pay. The rest is my per diem. They sent me here, expecting me to use all of it in this capacity, but I’m prepared to sacrifice half of it to keep you on my side. You’re still getting your regular wages, dummy.”

He nods. “I can do that.”

“Good. That’s not an advance, it’s a free sample, since I obviously haven’t been here all month. You’ll get another one at the end of May.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Right. Clean that up, get out, and work overtime if you must to fix them.”

Microstory 1886: Gone Away

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I spent years looking for a decent job after high school. I mean, based on my skill set, I had a number of okay ones over the years, but none that would really support me the way I felt I deserved. When I did get that job, I was cheated out of some of what I was owed. It came with two weeks of vacation time, but in order to save money, my supervisor chose to not inform me of this fact. He went even further than that by claiming that I didn’t qualify for time off under this and that policy. When his boss found out, she was livid. By then, I had worked for the company for eleven years, which meant I actually should have started getting four weeks off per year. Normally, they didn’t carry over, but through some maneuvering, they gave them to me all at once. That was a total of nineteen weeks when all added up. The only thing was that I had to take them off by the end of the current year. Which essentially meant I had to leave right away. In fact, she tacked on an extra week to round out the number, and just not have me come back in until January of the next year. What was I going to do with all that time? It was over four and a half months. I wasn’t making a whole lot of money, so it’s not like that freed me up to go on a cross country tour, or a cruise. The best idea I had was to go visit my cousins who lived on the border. I didn’t get a chance to see them very much, so this was a great opportunity for a cheap, but still relaxing, sabbatical. I didn’t sublet my little house, because that wasn’t really a thing in the region. I just locked it up and left. I did ask my neighbor to bring my trash cans back up to the house one last time, which he agreed to do with a smile. I had my mail forwarded, and went on my way.

When I came back, the place was dusty as hell, but everything was otherwise fine. The trash cans were where they were meant to be, and some mail was already waiting for me in my normal box, as planned. I still had that last week of time off, so it was time to clean up. I used a lot of disinfecting wipes. Plus, there was some fruit in the fridge that I forgot to toss. And a loaf of bread in the pantry. And some other food in the fridge. Okay, it was a mess, but that’s not the point. The point is I had to gather all that up, and take it out to my cans. At first when I opened the lid, I didn’t know what I was looking at. I was in such shock, I couldn’t process it. I didn’t scream, or jump back in horror. I just stared at the body, trying to piece together what it was. Only after I realized the truth did the smell hit me. It should have been my first clue, I don’t know why it waited so long to waft up to my nose, but I did have to slam the lid shut, and step back. I still didn’t scream, though. I’m not that kind of girl. Assuming that I would be prime suspect, I contacted the authorities, and let them come out and investigate. To my surprise, they didn’t even consider me as the culprit. Even before they had all this evidence with my mail forwarding, and corroboration from my cousins, and other people, they believed me that I wasn’t the murderer. By the way, the victim was my neighbor, and they said he had been stuffed in there for about four and a half months, which suggested the killer did the deed around the time he was trying to help me out. I had to move, which was fine, because I was fired after three days of missing my return to work due to the trauma. I just couldn’t live in that house anymore, and I had encountered a few originally ignored job opportunities where my cousins lived, so I figured I could just go straight back. That was almost four decades ago. They never found the killer.

Microstory 1879: Mow Problems

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I was so excited when I first heard about Landis Tipton, and his miraculous healing abilities. It would spell the end of death for all of humanity. I know, I know, people think that humans can’t live forever, or we’ll have an overpopulation problem, but I doubt it would ever come to that. Yes, futurists were expecting life extension technology to develop in tandem with other advancements, which might alleviate such issues, but I still wasn’t worried. I knew that we wouldn’t all be saved overnight, but I’m young and healthy, so I was eternally optimistic about it, especially when it came to myself. As a friend pointed out to me, though, Landis has been predominantly concerned with curing terminal illnesses, and for good reason; those are the ones that aren’t normally fixed. Lots of people have died from terrible injuries, but many have survived them too. Of course you want to help the ones least likely to survive without you. Even so, it would have been nice to have some kind of solution to my problem when Death came knocking at my door. Or rather when it came banging on it. Because it was loud, unsubtle, and is taking much longer than I would have guessed. Though, to be fair, the magic panacea that researchers promise will one day come out of studying Landis’ abilities probably wouldn’t have helped me anyway. It happened too fast. I remember, I said that it was too long, but I was talking about the process. The incident was instant, and irreversible, and once it happened, I was incapacitated. I should say that I am incapacitated, because it’s still going on as I muse on my final thoughts. I can’t call for help—for reasons that will become clear once I explain—I can’t even move. The ironic thing is I was just looking up freak accidents on the internet, and one eerily similar situation scared me so much that I locked my dog in the house, instead of letting her supervise my work, like I usually do. She loves it, and she grew used to it, and she’s been stressed out because I took her job away. But I’m glad I did, because I don’t want her to see me like this.

It was a mowing accident, though probably not as bloody and disgusting as you’re imagining. It had nothing to do with the blades. Well, I guess it did, but they didn’t cut me. There’s no blood. I hate mowing, but the thing I hate the most about it is picking up the yard before starting to mow. Those sticks and rocks, ugh. I would rather just roll over them, damage my blades a little, and then get them sharpened in the winter. I’m lazy like that, and a huge procrastinator, which is what got my into this mess, because the tall grass is what hid the murder weapon from my view in the first place. It was a rock, and I can only speculate here, since like I said, it was so quick, but I think it shot out of the side, ricocheted off of my chain link fence at just the right angle, and headed right for me. But you said there’s no blood, you remind me. There’s not, because the rock didn’t just hit me in the head. It flew into my mouth, and lodged itself in my throat. I fell down, and began to squirm, because that’s all I can do. I understand I should try to stand back up, and slam my chest against the deck railings or even the mower—wouldn’t that be funny; the thing that tried to kill me could save my life—but I’m unable to even sit up. Maybe there is blood, because I’m choking on something wet. I don’t know if this is punishment for being so irresponsible, and letting the lawn get this bad, but at this point, I just want the pain to end. My second-to-last thoughts are of the people I love, and of my dog, but my very last thought is when did I last clear my browser history?