Microstory 2659: Nightmare Fuel

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Zombiedome is obviously full of zombies, but Malika has been here before, and it was never this bad. It feels like every square meter of the surface has a zombie in it, though it probably tapers off in the distance. A player would not be able to move around, let alone have any hope for survival. There also aren’t any buildings, which Malika says isn’t right either. It would obviously be a ridiculous setup. If there’s nowhere to run to or hide behind, it’s not really a game. There’s something very wrong here. If Jiminy spent a third of his time in this dome, how could he have dismantled all of the infrastructure without the Custodians, or the executive administrative authority, noticing? It really doesn’t matter, though. The undigitized organic humans are in trouble.

“What do the residences look like?” Mandica questions. “All we can do is split up and check every one in order. When you find the right one, holler.”

“No, that’s a poor use of time. When there are this many of them, the zombies aren’t enemies; they’re the weather,” Reagan argues. “We could never kill them all. Many of my people are posthumans. They will protect the others. We have to find a way to close the portals. Look at all of them. Something is keeping them open and stable.”

“Do you have some way of finding the power source, or the controls, or something that can help us put an end to this?” Jaidia asks him.

“Oh yeah, let me just take out my transdimensional window detector. Shit, I think I left it in my pure gold airplane.”

No one responds. They just keep hovering, watching the horror.

“I’m sorry. I’m just trying to think of how to fix this,” Reagan says.

“Can y—ear me?” Elysia asks. She’s speaking through comms, but it’s garbled.

“Yes, but barely,” Jaidia replies. “Are you still in Seagate? We’re in Zombiedome.”

“I see you, I’m on my way,” Elysia says. She starts out as a flying dot over the ground before getting bigger and bigger as she draws nearer. “Report.”

“We’re hoping to find the source of all this,” Mandica says. “It has to be some kind of machine. Maybe it’s integrated into the dome’s own power systems—”

“This isn’t Zombiedome,” Elysia interrupts.

“What? What other dome could have been filled up this much already?”

“Well, it is, but it’s not our Zombiedome. That’s why I could hardly reach you when I was near the portal, and why we can’t talk to the EAA from here. We’re in a...different reality, or something. That’s why Jiminy was able to accomplish all this without anyone noticing. It’s a different world, parallel to our own. Which means our only priority is shutting it down. Once we close the portals, the military will only have to deal with the attackers that are already on the other side. But there’s a problem.”

“That’s not the problem?” Malika questions.

“They’re not just coming from here. There are also portals linking to an alternate Bloodbourne, and even an alternate Botfarm full of crazed androids, as well as a number of simulations which were originally privately held intellectual property. We have to close every one of them. All nightmares have descended upon the real Castlebourne.”

“But bottom line,” Reagan begins, “the military has been deployed.”

“Yes,” Elysia confirms. “They’re prioritizing domes which have the most UDOs in them, like State of the Art, and the residences. Your people are being cared for. We are not alone in this. The villain opened portals in our domes first to keep us busy, but he underestimated how fiercely non-superheroes would protect the innocent. We mostly designed our bodies with the best powers, but transhumanism is perfectly legal anywhere else. So let go of your anxiety, and focus on our task. We’ve been given this assignment because of how fast we can move. Any ideas of where it would be?”

“I don’t think it would be here. It’s too random,” Jaidia decides. “If they’re drawing from multiple domes, and there is a central command center, we have to think like Jiminy, or maybe even Morgana. Would he be in this dimension, or the real one?”

“We have to understand what he wants,” Malika says. “If he just wants to destroy the world, as bad as this is, it’s not a good permanent solution. Most people will survive it. If you truly didn’t want them to, you would go after the backup terminals, and all consciousness maintenance infrastructure. You would do it quietly and meticulously. You wouldn’t just throw monsters at as many people as possible.”

“They’re only a distraction,” Jaidia agrees. “He’s banking on our drive to fight back. That’s why we all entered Underbelly in the first place. He obviously has a thing for Pinocchio. I say we look for him in Collodidome.”

“No, there’s a reason he dressed himself up as Morgana, and did it in two domes. He’s either in Ravensgate or Loegria,” Malika counters.

“He only did that to get under Mandica’s skin,” Jaidia argues.

“Why would he need to get under her skin?” Elysia jumps in. “He hasn’t gotten anything from her. I think he was just playing a part. I think that was a distraction too.”

“Well, he can’t be in Loegria anyway, because that’s where he died,” Jaidia adds.

Malika shakes her head. “That’s exactly why he would be there, because we left.”

“We left to go to Ravensgate, and you thought he could be there instead!”

Reagan flies between Malika and Jaidia. “Guys, he’s not in either of those places, or Collodidome, or if he is, then he’s on this side. It’s the safest place for him. There’s no authority, he controls everything, he can draw an ungodly amount of power. The portals are coming from here, so it stands to reason they’re being controlled from here too.”

“I’m the key,” Mandica utters quietly.

“What?” Elysia asks.

“When you were all dead, it was just me, Vanore, and Jiminy. He said that I was the key. He said it like that, he emphasized the word. He needs me to open something. I don’t know what, or why it has to be me, but he’s been keeping me alive for a reason.”

“He stabbed you with a sword in the jewelry store,” Elysia tries to remind her.

“Right next to the Philosopher’s Stone,” Mandica reminds her right back. “He knew it was real. He probably put it there. And that sword? That was a special sword too. He used it once, and then never again. None of this makes any sense unless you frame me as being the ultimate target. But why? What’s so special about me?”

“You were a UDO,” Reagan answers. “That’s pretty special these days.”

“You said it yourself,” Mandica responds. “There are others like me in the residences; your people who chose not to back themselves up. They were closer.”

“We’re not vonearthans,” Reagan explains solemnly. “We are descended from a generation of ancestors created in a lab under vastly different conditions. We all received special shots when we came to this region of space. Our biology is different. They’re not even sure if we can procreate together. They consider it unethical to test it.”

Mandica stares at him for a moment. Without saying a word, she leans backwards and dives towards the ground. She pushes herself to supersonic speeds, which is incredibly dangerous inside of a dome, but she needs to break away quickly. Her friends can’t know where he’s going. She doesn’t know where he’s going. It just needs to be away from here; away from this whole mess. Before she’s reached the ground, she collapses her wings into her body. She shuts her mouth and plugs her nose, then slams herself into a bunch of zombies as hard as she can, absolutely pulverizing their bodies, and leaving her covered in their undead viscera. Now that she smells like the other zombies, they begin to leave her alone. She blends in with them, making her way through the crowd to a more distant portal. It can’t be the one she landed near, because that is where they’re going to look for her. It takes hours to meander through, like a neutrino in a star.

After she walks through the portal, she doesn’t know where she is right away, but it’s a good thing she didn’t wait even one second longer, because it closes right behind her. In her absence, her friends managed to figure out how to shut them down. They may have found the controls for the interdimensional technology, but they didn’t likely find Jiminy, nor what he’s truly after. He’s not going to make it easy on them. She’s going to take a page out of his book, and do the same. She’s going to rob him of the one she does know he wants. She’s depriving him of her.

She discovers she’s in Party Central, which is a great target to send a bunch of zombies and monsters. It was on Trilby’s green dome list so she was free to come here back when she was just a boring and delicate human. She still needed to be careful of falling disco balls and spiked punch, but she has had to be worried about freak accidents her whole life. She finds a fur coat on the ground. It’s covered in blood and guts, but that’s okay, because she fits right in with all the party-goers who were just attacked. People with guns and other weapons are here, cleaning up the last of the monsters. They’re not dressed in military garb, but some of them match. Her guess is that they’re from Mêléedome or Shmupdome. Those were on the red list because their only point is violence. She ignores them, doesn’t talk to anyone, and goes on her way.

She finds a public water closet where she takes the opportunity to clean up, throwing all of her clothes into the trashbot, which she pats on the head in remembrance of the one who got her here. After the shower, she grabs one of the robes, and walks back out. No one is paying any attention to her. They’re all still reeling from the assault. She continues to walk until she finds a remote building that is currently under construction. There’s an incinerator here to dispose of unrecyclable materials, so she switches it on, sets a timer, then dives in. It’s agonizing, but she needs answers.

Unlike the other times she’s died, she comes back to life this time with some memory of what happened to her. She doesn’t have many details, but she knows enough to get by. Jiminy was the lieutenant for a dangerous man named Pinocchio, who was once in charge of wherever Mandica goes when she dies. After being stripped of power, he eventually downloaded himself into base reality, where he continued to carry out his nefarious plans, predominately in the Spydome Network, until he was caught and locked away. Mandica is sure that Jiminy wants to break his boss free, and this stone and Mandica are collectively the way he does that. She can’t let that happen. She has to stop fighting, and start hiding. So she crawls out of the furnace, gets cleaned up again, and then simply attends the nearest party. This is where she lives for the next five years.

Microstory 2266: Those Little Lifestyle Differences

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Things are changing again. Dutch is totally okay, but none of us wants to go to the hospital again for any reason, whether it’s from overreacting, or something serious. Our security team has all but insisted that we find a doctor to come to our house whenever we need it. We will not be advertising this person’s name, nor any support staff that they’ll find themselves in need of. I didn’t want to take money away from the charities for ourselves, but I don’t think we have any choice. We went to the hospital for Dutch in secret, but we still got caught up in a media frenzy. Now I know why generational wealthy people have always paid others to do things for them. It’s not because they’re incapable, but because everything seems to paint a target on their backs. I never thought that I would become this person, even with all the money in the world. I believe in the common good. But we’re all still in danger from the outside world, so if we have to be a little isolated, then these are the things that I’ll accept. I’ll have security guards operating down the hallway. I’ll have a medical professional either live here, or come to work in this house—every day, or however it ends up working. I can’t start sliding down the slippery slope, though. I have to find ways to stay grounded, and connected to regular people. I don’t want to become everything I hated about the richest people in my universe. Sure, there’s plenty they did that was just despicable and ruthless that I’ll never have to worry about, but it’s those little lifestyle differences that I’m now realizing are what you really have to be on the lookout for. Don’t let me become a jerk, please.

Extremus: Year 83

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It only took Omega and Valencia a couple of weeks to figure out what went wrong with the Nexus, and solve it. Apparently, Vitalie’s use of the network while traveling through time did screw things up, but she wasn’t the only one responsible. A Mark II Nexus, being one that was constructed by the people who invented them in the first place, could handle this complication. It would have been able to compensate for the temporal interference, and sort of reboot itself. The one that Omega built is just as good as these in most respects, but there are some notable differences; differences which the average person would not be able to detect. After careful examination of all the parts and systems, they were able to correct the issue, but only for this particular machine. They’re trying to get to the one on Extremus, which never received the correction. If they could just establish contact with someone on board, the current temporal engineer could probably get it done if they walked them through it, but even their communications are down. They need a creative solution. In three months, they’ve yet to come up with one.

“We can go to Earth first. From there, we can make contact with someone who can help us,” Spirit suggests.

“Do you know of anyone in particular in this day and age?” Tinaya questions.

“No,” Spirit admits. “The historical records don’t go this far.”

“What about Team Keshida?” Belahkay offers.

“Gatewood isn’t in the directory,” Omega explains as he’s pointing to the screen. “I don’t know why not. Maybe they cloaked themselves, or...they moved. A few of these Nexa are in weird places in the galaxy, which could be controlled by friends; maybe even Keshida, but maybe not. I wouldn’t feel comfortable reaching out to them. The Exins think that Verdemus was destroyed. We cannot disabuse them of this misconception, so we cannot risk connecting with any mysteries.”

“I can do it,” Aristotle volunteers for the umpteenth time.

“Remember what happened the last time you tried?” Lilac asks.

Aristotle nods. “I was young, and ignorant.”

“It wasn’t that long ago,” Niobe reminds him.

“I have the tools that I need now,” Aristotle insists.

“The timogramen,” Tinaya realizes. “You’ve learned something about it.”

“Not me,” Aristotle clarifies. “Vaska never stopped studying it. She understands how it works now. It interferes with temporal manipulation when not accounted for, so all you have to do is account for it. You have to know how much timogramen radiation is in your system, how much there is nearby, the temperature and barometric pressure,  the position of the sun and celestial bodies, the precise distance of the destination, and a few other minor factors. But she thinks she can do it. She’s been building something.”

“She’s been building what, a timogramen detector?” Valencia asks him.

Aristotle bobs his head. “She calls it a temporal radiation compensator, but like I said, it has to include a whole lot more in the calculations. Plus, it has to be calibrated for what you’re actually trying to accomplish. If you’re just trying to teleport, it’s one thing, but where I’m going, it’s a whole different thing.”

“Wait, but that’s true,” Tinaya begins. “We teleport on this planet without issue.”

Valencia sighs. “It’s not without issue. The relays just seem to work okay, because most of the time, people are only making short, simple jumps. But we’re doing a lot of maintenance on them. The old relays, before the explosion, were no better.”

“What do you mean, did something happen?” Tinaya asks.

“The Captain. I don’t have the whole story, because I’m not in the loop anymore, but just before the mirror exploded, she tried to hustle the kids through. They evidently didn’t make it to where they were going. I’m not sure how Lataran eventually made her way back, but she was gone for a year. The Ship Superintendent has to step in.”

Tinaya looks over at her husband. “Arqut, is this true?”

“I guess I forgot to tell you about that. The second lieutenant assured me that it was only temporary. She seemed to know something, and it seemed better not to press it. A year later, she showed up.”

“Without the kids,” Tinaya figures. She looks at Aristotle and Niobe now, who are also hiding the truth. “Why does it feel like I’m the only one in the dark here?”

“I am too,” Spirit assures her.

“As am I,” Belahkay agrees.

She’s kind of used to it at this point. There were a ton of things that Lataran didn’t tell her about while she was First Chair, even though she initially expected to be privy to everything upon being elected. Their persistent link to this planet was one of those secrets. Full transparency has never been assumed on the ship, and in fact, would be a dangerous goal to seek. Ignorance Tolerance is a subject that students study nearly every year. When it comes to time travel, no one is entitled to know everything, and children have to learn to deal with it maturely. This is where they memorize Leona’s Rules for Time Travel. She decides to let it go. “Where’s Vaska?”

“Her lab is in the megablock,” Lilac replies. “She likes to work near a lot of other people, like she did on Gatewood.”

Tinaya grabs Aristotle by the hand, and teleports him back down to Verdemus without a word. She sends a quick message to Vaska, who drops a pin. The two of them walk across the courtyard, and enter the lab.

“Miss Leithe, it’s been a while. How have you been?”

“I’ve been all right. Just trying to get home.”

Vaska’s gaze darts over to Aristotle.

“I told her about what you’ve been working on,” he divulges.

“Well, it’s ready. I mean...it’s ready to be tested.”

“Show me,” Tinaya requests.

Vaska opens up a cabinet behind her, and takes out a fairly large box. “It’s just a prototype, so it doesn’t look pretty, but I’m confident in its functionality.” She sets the box down, and removes the lid to reveal a plethora of gadgets, gizmos, and innerworkings. In addition to the expected wires and antenna, there are gears turning each other around, like a timepiece. Tubes are ready to transport fluids between an exposed logic board, and some other apparatus. Two buttons that kind of look like they were originally from a mechanical computer keyboard are rhythmically going up and down in an alternating pattern. LEDs are blinking, and a small display is showing status data. Vaska extends a tiny spyglass to have it standing straight up towards the ceiling. She lifts up what kind of looks like a tiny microphone, but Tinaya recognizes it to be a portable radiometer, probably full-spectrum, in this case. The familiar crackling sound that a radiometer makes when it’s picking up radiation begins to overwhelm the soft buzzing sound that’s been coming from somewhere inside.

“Well,” Tinaya says. “I don’t know what I’m looking at. I don’t know why I thought coming here would be helpful.”

“I can take a look at it.” Valencia turns out to have been behind them. “I’ll make sure it works, and if it doesn’t, make it so it does, or maybe just improve upon it.”

“It’s certainly big enough,” Vaska acknowledges. “I would love to streamline it. What if Mister Al-Amin could wear it on his wrist at all times?” She proposes.

“Does he need that?” Tinaya wonders. “I thought the only issue is when he’s coming from Verdemus. If he’s anything like his father, he’ll be doing a lot of traveling.”

“He is standing right here,” Aristotle states the obvious. “And he considers this to be his home, so he’ll probably frequently return.”

“You’ll need this at any rate,” Vaska explains. “As you said, it’s your home. The temporal radiation that our respective bodies have been exposed to would eventually dissipate given enough time away. But you’re both a choosing one, and you were born here. “It’s a part of you, and it always has been. You probably can’t survive without it. I imagine you’ll have to return here whether you want to or not, or grow the timogramen elsewhere. I hesitate to suggest the latter.”

“Why is that?” Valencia questions.

Vaska is reluctant. “It’s not harmful. It’s time. Temporal energy and radiation are properties of time, and time isn’t harmful. Except that it is. Time leads to entropy. It’s what kills us, and destroys what’s not alive. The timogramen is dangerous. It could be weaponized, and abused...misused. It would probably serve as an invasive species if allowed to spread to other worlds.”

“How did it evolve in the first place?” Valencia presses. “Is it just a coincidence that it grows here?”

“That I don’t know yet, but I’m pretty sure that you did this. You may have created it when you came here. All the teleportation, and the parallel dimensions...Tinaya’s glass skin thing. Plus, the way I understand it, this planet was annihilated years ago, and then someone went back in time to prevent it. That may have had unforeseen consequences, I really don’t know. Fittingly, I need more time for my research. One thing I know for sure is that it’s not perfectly natural, but there has to be something here, or we would already find the stuff on Earth, and anywhere else that time travelers have visited.”

“This is all fascinating,” Aristotle interjects, “but what does it have to do with me, and the job that I need to get done? I have to travel to Extremus, and get that Nexus working, so we can reconnect. Does this do that; that’s all I need to know.”

“That’s not all that I need to know,” Valencia contends. “You will be taking me back, and I need to feel comfortable and safe with that. The questions that I’m asking now are directly related to me reaching that level of trust in your abilities.”

“Fair enough,” Aristotle relents.

“Can that thing make him more precise and reliable?” Valencia goes on, pointing to the contraption.

“On a planetary level, yes,” Vaska answers. “What happened to him before, when he went back in time, and landed way off course, that shouldn’t happen again.”

What does that mean, on a planetary level?”

Vaska clears her throat, and starts touching things on the compensator, and moving some things around as she’s explaining. “The spyglass is a modified form of the Jayde Spyglass, which is why it has any hope of seeing thousands of light years away. But relative to other stars, planets don’t really move. Of course they do—everything moves—but compared to the reframe speeds of the Extremus? It’s nothing. These tubes here feed clarified timogramen juice into the contaminant filter to capture and counteract the temporal radiation that’s bombarding the compensator while it’s in this environment. There’s a limit to that, which is dependent upon its size. The pure timogramen juice can’t absorb enough background radiation to protect the other instruments for the precise targeting that you’re looking for. Therefore, we can shoot for a planet, but not a ship.”

“What if you built a bigger one?” Tinaya decides to suggest. “You could be more precise then, couldn’t you?”

Vaska winces. “With the bigger one, you can specify a more precise target on the planet, but still not a ship traveling at reframe speeds away from us. At a certain point, size doesn’t matter. A larger surface area means more radiation, which means more clarified timogramen juice is necessary, and you end up with diminishing returns.”

“You didn’t say a bigger one,” Aristotle points out. “You said the bigger one. Did you already build it?”

“That’s what I built first,” Vaska answers. “This one is the prototype portable model. I didn’t think that you would want to use the other one, because it’s a power hog, and for my part, I don’t know why it would be necessary.”

“It still needs his temporal ability, right?” Valencia poses. “It just helps people do what they already do?”

Vaska shakes her head. “No, this one only works with him. The bigger model too. It would be useless for anyone else’s power. But yeah, he still gotta do what he does.”

Valencia nods. “We need the precision. Aristotle has to aim for a mining site in one of the star systems where the Extremus deploys a fleet of resource automators. We’ve been getting a lot of data from Project Topdown, so I know where those are going to be.” She consults her watch. “But if we’re gonna intercept them, we have to leave today. The next proverbial gas station isn’t for another proverbial hundred miles.”

“It’s ready when you are,” Vaska promises. “It’s in my garage, and it’s on wheels.”

“Do you wanna say goodbye to your husband first?” Tinaya asks Valencia.

Valencia taps on her neck. “Omega?” She waits for a few seconds. “Bye.”

Vaska leads them into the garage. Aristotle uses his manly strength to pretend to pull the giant temporal radiation compensator out, and onto the sidewalk while the electric motor does the actual heavy lifting. The pallet jack drops the machine onto the grass. A few of Omega’s clones approach out of curiosity. Vaska and Valencia hook it up to the grid, run through a diagnostic, and a form of a preflight check. She and Aristotle agree to take the risk, knowing that it could kill them, and then they unceremoniously turn on the machine, gather the necessary data, and have Aristotle interface with it. Once it’s at full power, he receives the literal green light, and they both disappear.

“I hope it worked.”

“Let’s go find out.” She takes Vaska by the hand, and teleports up to the moon base. They walk into the Nexus lab to find Valencia and Aristotle waiting for them.

“Welp,” Valencia begins. “It technically worked, but we were off schedule by about four hundred years, and needed to build a couple stasis pods.”

Vaska frowns. “I must have missed something. I’m sorry.”

“It’s quite all right, right?” Lataran says as she’s coming out of the control room, eying Valencia. “Now. I’ve been cooped up on that ship forever, and I haven’t been here in a long time. Who here is gonna give me a tour?”

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Microstory 2179: Moving in the Right Direction

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I’ve received word from human resources that my job descriptions have been approved for posting. I believe that most of them will go out to the job boards starting on Monday. There’s stuff that they have to do, with pasting my verbiage, and adding their own, like the company’s mission, hiring policies, and the location details. I don’t have to worry about any of that stuff myself, but if you’ve ever applied to a job online, you now what I’m talking about. If you’re looking for a chance, or you’re in between jobs right now, I encourage you to apply. We will be seeking an expert for each of the following positions: Behavioral Psychologist, Jail Counselor, Addiction Counselor, Conflict Resolution Specialist, Job Counselor, Logistician, Data Analyst, Computer Expert, Criminal Lawyer, Immigration Lawyer, Social Worker, Cultural Sensitivity Expert, and Community Volunteer. If you think you would be a good fit for these roles, please be on the lookout for the postings next week. We expect high interest. A few jobs are missing from that list, which will be filled in other ways, such as internal recruitment or direct offers. Note that some team members will be working for my employer as contractors to the jail, while others will be working for the county. We will all be on the same team, though, so for the most part, we won’t even notice. It will only affect the backend situation, like payroll, disciplinary action, and time off requests. I’ve mentioned the concept of co-employment before, and it’s a real danger, which is why I won’t technically be the boss of everyone on the team, only the ones who work for my company. For our county staff members, we will collaborate fully with them on a day-to-day basis, however, they will report to the warden instead. I believe that they are currently looking into creating yet another position to oversee those members, so I could end up with a partner of sorts, or maybe a liaison who doesn’t spend much time in the meetings. It’s unclear at this point, but we’re on track to reaching our target start date of August 1. On that day, we want all positions filled, all equipment and supplies in stock, and to be starting to do the actual work that we’ve been hired to do. So again, if you think you belong on the team, apply sooner rather than later, so we can keep things moving in the right direction. Speaking of keeping things moving, I have to get back to work. I’m predicting ten hour work days for the foreseeable future. That’s the thing about a salary job. I don’t ever clock out, and I always take my work home with me. I’m not complaining, though. I once had a job that only gave me a few hours a day. I could do whatever I wanted with the rest of the day, but I couldn’t afford rent.

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.