Microstory 1696: Symbiotic Death

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For the most part, the commensalistic relationship between a human and their nevilere is a loving and happy one. As stated above, they’re like a pet that you keep with you throughout your entire life. There are almost exactly as many nevileres as there are humans. Nature didn’t keep the populations so even like this, but in modern days, with doctors and other medical professionals keeping track of such things, it’s been pretty equal. Occasionally something can go wrong, but that does not mean that there is no way out of the problem. It’s sad, but death is a part of life. When a nevilere embeds itself in its host, it will enjoy an extended lifespan. It won’t die until the human does, and it won’t ever survive beyond that, unless it’s removed from the hump in enough time. This is a dangerous and risky procedure in any situation, and most humans don’t want to think that their lifelong symbiotic organism friend was later given to someone else. Plus, the nevilere probably wouldn’t survive for much longer anyway, and even if it did, it would probably be depressed, because it would have become just as attached to its original host as the host was to it. There are some cases when the nevilere dies before the human does. This universe didn’t come up with a lot of the more violent or dangerous sports; there is no such thing as boxing, or even SCUBA diving. Doing harm to a nevilere—be it one’s own, or another’s—is considered more heinous than murdering a human. So people are generally a lot more careful around each other, but that doesn’t mean that accidents don’t happen. If a nevilere dies before the human is sufficiently old, it will often leave the survivor in great despair. It has been known to lead to suicide.

Luckily, there is hope. Someone else’s nevilere can birth an offspring without the host having anything to do with the process. It can then donate it to the other host. The challenge is coaxing it to do this. Nevilere are smart, but still just animals. Nevilere experts know how to provoke conception with vibrations, tickling, and other techniques. It’s a little weird, but it’s necessary, and no weirder than any other form of animal husbandry. Not everyone would choose to go this route. If they were to lose their nevilere, they would never dream of trying to bond with another. This is all right, but there is a little bit of stigma attached to it. Being asymbiotic, as people call it, can sometimes make other people feel uncomfortable. They don’t know whether something unavoidable happened to it, or if you intentionally did something to harm it, and of course, being flawed human beings, they can assume the worst in you. Overall, however, people of Nevilereverse are compassionate and patient with each other, and they try not to judge. They value facts and understanding. It is unknown if this has something to do with the nevileres themselves, or if being part of such a profound symbiotic relationship has taught the human race to choose kindness over cruelty. Either way, it’s had a generally positive impact on their impact on the environment. While they do have a history of burning fossil fuels, and otherwise harming the ecosystem, due to a delay of innovation, they’ve done fairly well for themselves, and their planet. After careful study and deliberation, the Ochivari ended up deciding to leave them alone, and let them develop without any interference. While many cultures end up walking the path towards transhumanistic upgrades, the Nevilereversals were not able to figure out how to bring their nevilere with them, so they remained forever organic.

Microstory 1646: Symbiosis

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Nearly all evolved life is human, or at least based on human DNA, if only a little. There are variants of humans, some of which are created through genetic engineering, but they can also be brought about by minute changes in a given environment across the bulkverse. They actually evolve to be slightly different. They’re still human, but they’re probably genetically incompatible with other humans, and they sometimes have noticeable differences. There’s one noteworthy example I won’t spell out for you, but basically the males of the species keep something inside their bodies, which are usually kept on the outside. They’re able to do this because a component of their blood allows them to regulate temperature more efficiently, and keep different parts of their bodies at different temperatures. It’s a survival trait that appeared as a response to wild external temperature fluctuations, which forced the evolutionary line to prioritize vital organs over extremities. Anyway, that’s not what this story is about. It’s about an entirely different population in an entirely separate universe. First, let me give you a quick overview of symbiosis. A symbiotic relationship happens when two specimens of two unrelated species will live together in some way. This can be as simple as a bird making its nest in a tree without harming the tree, or as horrifying as a parasite that burrows into an insect’s brain, and turns into a zombie. Some forms of symbiosis are good, some are bad, some are necessary, and some are just not a problem. Every human carries with it trillions of bacteria in their microbiome, a lot of which are critical to survival. Without these particular bacteria, the human would die. They process food, and protect the skin. But Nevilereverse takes that a step further, and evolved a version of humans that are host to a much more complex species, which are called the nevileres.

A nevilere is a medium-sized rodent that will live in a hump on the back of the human, just under the neck. The evolutionary road that brought the two species to this point was a long and windy one, but the gist of it is that the nevilere started living in the hump for obvious reasons; as protection against predators, but it also does the same for the human. It can send an electrical signal through the human’s nervous system, which alerts it to nearby danger. Some say this warning is more than just the result of hypervigilance, and is actually prescience, but the science doesn’t fully support that. It doesn’t rule it out either, though. In the modern day, such danger is less of a problem. There are generally no predators lurking in the city streets, waiting to pounce. It does happen, of course, and the would-be victim still benefits from the warning, but for the most part, the relationship has become commensalistic, in that it’s beneficial to one, and not harmful to the other. The relationship remains tight, however. When two people come together to procreate, their respective nevileres will procreate as well, and not long after the human baby is born, the nevilere offspring will be placed inside the baby’s hump. This is interesting, because the baby nevilere will always be the same sex as the human baby, and this will remain true forever, even if the human turns out to be transgender. It will actually spontaneously switch sexes as a response to the change in hormones that the human is producing. This was how the Nevilereversals evolved, and it makes perfect sense to them. A healthy human will love their nevilere. It’s like a pet to them, but the bond can be even stronger, because it will not die until the host dies.

Microstory 898: Gerrafy and Nanomouse

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Research log, July 31. A lot of people know that only one species of giraffa exists in modern day, but what I’m the only one who knows is that that is not true. There is another, extremely rare, but very much alive species that I have named the gerrafy. The few I’ve encountered were seven meters tall, but they were all female, and—based on giraffe sexual dimorphism—I believe they can reach upwards of eight and a half meters. I discovered the first specimen living in the depths of none other than the Amazon rainforest. If ever you were going to find an animal no one knew existed, it would be there, so I was not surprised. What I was surprised to find was a second hitherto unheard of species of mouse that I believe to now hold the record for the smallest in the world. The African pygmy mouse comes in at a length of only a few centimeters, but the shipayan nanomouse is barely one centimeter long, and I do not currently possess a scale sensitive enough to measure its weight. Even more interesting, these two phenomenal species seem to enjoy a symbiotic relationship between them. The gerrafy protects the nanomouse from predators, while the mouse rids the gerrafy’s fur of parasites, and other pests, which seem to be particularly fond of the oils its skin excretes. I’ve by now found a couple dozen specimens of gerrafy, and I’ve yet to find one that does not keep a nanomouse with her at all times. I’ve also never seen one of the mice away from its gerrafy companion. One would think there would be a population discrepancy between them, but I have not seen evidence of that yet. I will continue to study these beautiful creatures. I’ve taken one pair of them to the abandoned Museum Salinas, which was the only location I could find large enough to accommodate the beast. They have broken free of their cage, and are racing down the hallways. I believe they have made their way into my colleague’s truck. I will update tomorrow.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 22, 2137

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There were only seven of them now. Well...eight, if you counted Dar’cy, but she was only sixteen months old. Marcy didn’t necessarily count since she wasn’t part of the original group, and her expiation was already complete. Mateo didn’t really even count either, because he certainly wouldn’t have to do an expiation for himself. At least he assumed he wouldn’t. Maybe the last one would be a sudden death round where he had to stop himself from being taken out of time. After today and tomorrow, there should only be five expiations left. Hopefully only four, though, since he had always really hoped Arcadia would not go so far as to take Leona from him. It wasn’t really clear, though, and he didn’t want to put any ideas in her head.

“My grandfather,” Marcy began as they were eating breakfast, “was a runner, along with his later wife, Agent. While she went on to produce the web broadcast for the City Frenzy, he kept running it. And he never stopped. Everyone who had tried that crazy race kind of had their own thing. Some were also dancers, while others were into martial arts. Some did parkour, while most were just trying to get through it as fast as possible. There were even a few walkers, who made the organization a lot of money, because people kept watching long after the majority of the racers were done. Alexi Lanka was different, though. He had a lot of anger, from his upbringing, from some trauma, and likely some neurological imbalances. Running gave him a way to clear out his energy, so he didn’t have enough left over to do something he regretted. When he hurt his leg in the last competition Kansas City ever did, his family feared for his temperament. If he couldn’t run, what would he do with himself? How would he behave now?

“Well, things ended up better than anyone thought. His physical therapist happened to enjoy gardening in her freetime. She decided to sort of step outside her purview, and get him into it as well, even though he hadn’t shown any particular interest in something like that before. As it turned out, gardening was a million times better at handling Alexi’s anger than any amount of exercise ever could. He took to it passionately, and no matter what he did with his life, it had to do with plantlife. He worked at an arboretum, and on a farm, and at a nursery, and all kinds of other places. During his time in between jobs, he even made frequent trips to South America to help protect the dwindling rainforests.”

“I guess we’ll be gardening then,” Aura said.

“Yes,” Mario agreed, “but under what exact circumstances?”

“She’ll probably force us to plant poison ivy, hemlock, and other horrible things,” Darko presumed.

“Nothing so ridiculous,” Arcadia explained, having been there for God knows how long. “You’ll just be doing what he did.” She lifted her bag from behind the log and set it in between her legs. “I have some seeds for you, and you are going to plant them. Then I’m going to bring someone in who can adjust the speed of time, so the plants grow faster.”

“You can’t just do that yourself?” Mateo asked.

“I cannot,” Arcadia answered. “I’m immortal, I can teleport, and I can manipulate memories. That’s it.”

“But you’ve done so much more than that. You created that merge point which Leona and Brooke got stuck on the other side of.”

“That wasn’t me. Whenever I need something like that done, I extract someone to do it for me. Ya know, I guess I can do that too. Immortal, teleporter, memory manipulator...time extractor.”

Maybe Mateo could use this knowledge against her one day. She wasn’t acting like she had slipped up by telling him, but that she couldn’t see it becoming a problem for her. Maybe it never would.

Arcadia continued, “Mateo, you remember after the Gilbert expiation, when we briefly met in that other dimension?”

Oh, he hadn’t told anyone about. They had made a pact to never talk about the expiation when they all went back in time in other people’s bodies, and changed their own histories. “Uh...y—yeah,” he stuttered.

“Oh, right, that was meant to be a secret. Sorry.” She seemed a little sorry. “Well, to those of you who’ve never been there, we went to The Garden Dimension. This is where we keep samples of every plant that has ever existed, in any reality. Time travel can often have an unnoticed effect on biological evolution, and a few people don’t really like that part of it, so they protect these specimens.” She presented a few random seed pouches from her bag. “I asked the Horticulturalists to come and give you a workshop on a few of the more unusual breeds that don’t exist anymore, but they declined.”

Darko scoffed. “They declined? When has that ever stopped you.”

“Oh, all the time,” Arcadia told him. “I rarely force people to do anything. From what you see, I’m a big control freak one hundred perfect of the time, but that’s not who I am normally. These expiations are important to me, but they do not define me. This is only the third time I’ve done them.”

Mateo believed that, but didn’t say it out loud. “So those seeds are from that other dimension?”

“Yes,” Arcadia said, slapping her knees and standing up. “We’re gonna see how they fair on a different planet.” She nudged that bag with her foot. “Choose whichever ones you want, and where you want to plant them. There are some documents in here too, which give you a rundown of what plants can survive next to which others. You wouldn’t want a black kudzu right next to a North American minkle, would you? Am I right? Up top.” She held her palm in the air, and she wasn’t going to let them go until someone didn’t leave her hanging.

Mateo broke down, as it was painful to watch her frozen there—dumbfaced—and gave her a pity highfive.

These expiations were actually kind of fun, and people were seemingly rather into it. It might not just have been that they were a little lighter; not so intense, but also that they had more of an obligation to help someone who wasn’t one of them. Fail your family, then okay, they’ll forgive you. But if you fail a stranger who who was trusting you...that  can hurt. People crowded around the duffel bag, and started looking through the seed pouches, all of which came with example photos. Leona immediately snatched up the descriptions, charts, and graphs that explained just what the plants were, how they needed to be tended to, and what problems could arise if they were too close to others. The two she found most interesting had actually developed a symbiotic relationship between them. The cotton fandin would carry the seeds of the lakwheat, along with its own, through the wind. In return, the lakwheat’s thorns would protect the cotton fandin from certain animals that eat it, but don’t propagate it. Of course, those two needed to be planted near each other, which Marcy was more than happy to do.

A few hours later, everyone was really happy with what they had created. They now had a large dedicated garden, probably about the size of a three school buses next to each other. Right now, it just looked like a big patch of dirt and straw, but Arcadia was evidently bringing in someone who was going to help. With the snap of her fingers, a woman appeared. She was wearing one of those chain things that connected her wrists to her ankles. One of the primary security guards that Mateo had encountered over the decades was escorting her.

“What the hell is this?” Aura asked, noticing Marcy becoming particularly protective of her child.

“She’s who we need to speed up time,” Arcadia replied, not seeing a problem. “I assure you, she is perfectly harmless in those things.”

“Obviously she can’t be harmless, or she wouldn’t be in them at all, or here,” Mario pointed out. “If she can accelerate the garden’s time, she can use it against someone. What did she do? Who is she?”

“Well,” the woman said, “who I am is standing in front of you, so you could just ask me directly.”

“Okay,” Darko said, “who are you?”

“My name is Jesimula ‘Jesi’ Utkin, and I only want to help. I’ve only ever wanted to help.”

“You look familiar,” Leona said. “Why can’t I place you?”

Jesi nodded in understanding. “Our friend manipulated your perception during that Easter Island showdown; the one where you killed Keanu? I was there. We were all there. Dozens of copies of each of us were there.”

“Oh,” was all Leona said.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Arcadia said. “I won’t let her harm anyone, least of all the baby.” She nodded to the guard, who began removing Jesi’s chains. “She’ll do her thing, and then she’ll leave. If she tries anything, anything, I’ll be right here.” She addressed Jesi. “I’m also not alone. I have some help tucked away, and they’re not as nice as me,” she warned.

As Jesi was preparing to use her time powers, Mateo’s mind drifted to Horace and Paige. They probably knew who she was, and had dealt with her a long time ago. Would they be comforted knowing where she was now? Where were they now? That was something he felt he deserved to know. No, that wasn’t enough, he needed to see them, to make sure they were okay. Proof of life.

Jesi approached the garden with her arms raised. Everyone else instinctively stepped back. She developed a semitransparent bubble that was warping the space around it, then she made it grow until the target area was completely covered. They watched as water formed inside of the bubble, providing nourishment for the seeds, and then the seedlings, and then fullgrown plants. They started to rise in the air, spreading out, covering every square inch with colored beauty.

“That’s enough,” Arcadia ordered.

Jesi popped the time bubble, and lowered her arms. Then she presented her wrists to the guard so he could take her away, feigning humility. Mateo didn’t know exactly what she had done to deserve to be locked up, but she admitted to being part of Paige’s kidnapping, so she was certainly no angel.

“All right,” Arcadia said to the guard. “Take her away.”

“Wait, one last thing,” Jesi pleaded.

“What is it?”

Jesi looked at Mateo, for some reason. “Don’t worry about the 2025 pathogen,” she said. “I took care of it.” What?”

“The guard pushed a button on his remote, and they both disappeared.

Now they were all just staring at Arcadia. “Okay, get back to work,” she demanded. “You have to nurture and protect these plants until the end of the expiations. If anything significant happens to them, Alexi is never coming back.”

While the rest of them were tending to the garden, Mateo pulled Arcadia aside. “What was she talking about, with the 2025 pathogen?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Arcadia said.

Fine. He could deal with that later. “Listen, I need to see Horace and Paige, to make sure you’ve not killed them, or something.”

“I promise that I’ve not.”

“Still...I need you to do this for me.”

She nodded. “Very well. But not now. Tomorrow will be better; for you, for me, for them. And it will fit nicely with your last charity expiation.”

“Very well,” Mateo echoed.

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