Microstory 2401: The Terminal

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google VideoFX text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 2

You know what? This place is big. They call it the Terminal because everyone who quantum casts their consciousness to this planet runs through here. It’s mind-boggling how large it is. I think I heard someone say that every cast-capable individual could upload their mind to a new substrate here at pretty much the same time, and there would be enough room for everyone. I don’t know about that, but I saw this thing from the outside, and I think I believe it. But in the end, the principle remains the same. You get in an egress pod wherever you’re coming from, hook yourself up to the machine, and zip across the interstellar void. You wake up about an hour later, and start moving around in your new body. You’re a little shaky at first, because I admit, it was a new experience. The technology they use to transfer your consciousness is a little different. They have to worry more about things like interference and signal degradation. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t afraid, and I don’t regret it. I just mean, the end result may be a bit different than what you’re used to. It’s just a little harder to acclimate, even if you’re a seasoned caster. Fortunately, they were prepared. They have nearby acclimation rooms that are designed to help you figure things out. They have bars to hold onto and treadmills; basically everything you would find in a physical therapy gym. I was told that they do offer mech subs, if you want that instead of an organic. I’ve never personally used one of those kinds of bodies, so I can’t speak to that experience, but if you choose that route, you may be able to move around just fine right away. Anyway, I didn’t need to use any of the equipment. It was helpful just to have a place to sit and relax. They also had an orientation theatre. Some of it was in person, surely from an android of some kind, while other parts were on the holo-screen. There are way too many domes for them to go through them all, but they do teach you how to search through the catalog, so you can find the exact experience that you’re looking for. But I won’t get into specifics here. I’m sure once I start going to the domes, I’ll review those too. This is just about The Terminal. You should know, they do have medical facilities here, and hygiene stations. I didn’t use any of those, but they’re there if you need them, and they looked nice. I set my trip up ahead of time, so I pretty much received my orientation packet, and bounced. It looked like some people were hanging out there for a little while, though there are plenty of domes that offer relaxation options.

Microstory 2271: It Won’t Be Long Now

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 3

It’s so much worse than we had imagined. After everything Nick has been through; traveling through time, bouncing around the multiverse, being trapped away from his friends, getting sick over, and over, and over again. At worst, we thought that he would be dead. That would have been horrible, but at least he would no longer be suffering. There were consequences to this blog that none of us foresaw. Learning that Nick’s organs fetched such a heavy price from a reputable and trustworthy businessman, an as-of-yet still at large basket of deplorables abducted my friend, and took him to a makeshift surgical theatre. You heard that right. There was clearly an audience to this thing. It was put together quickly, but it was made with great purpose. A surgeon tore into his body, removing both of his kidneys, his liver, his spleen, and even his gallbladder. I don’t know how much they intend to make for these stolen organs on the black market, but there’s no way these assholes aren’t going to be found. The authorities don’t have to sift through dozens of other dark web postings for organs. They only have to find the one that’s advertising miracle organs for an insanely huge amount of money. They’re going to get nothing, and then they’re going to jail. Meanwhile, my poor Nick will be dead. He’s not immortal anymore, and no one can survive losing that much of their key organs. The doctors have placed him on life support, but there is only so much they can do. These five organs are literally vital to the proper functioning of a human being. It’s true, you can donate half a liver, or one whole kidney, and be fine. Yes, you can be suffering from kidney failure, and be kept alive through regular dialysis. With the proper lifelong treatment, you can even live without your spleen or gallbladder. But you can’t survive if all of these things are ripped out of you all at once. He’s going to die if another miracle doesn’t happen, but I really don’t see that happening. Dutch is running around in a panic, opening every single door that he can find. He has even demanded keys from hospital staff for locked doors. He’s trying to make another connection to the bulk to restore the magic of Nick’s immortality for but a few minutes, just like he did when he came back here from another world. Needless to say, it isn’t working. What happened that day was a fluke. If an angel is looking out for Nick, I can’t imagine they have the inclination to do it a second time. Even so, I’m letting Dutch try, because it’s not hurting anything. Well, it is, he’s causing a disruption, but everyone here has been pretty cool. They know why he’s doing it. Me, I’m sitting at Nick’s bedside, holding his hand, and hoping that he can hear me. It’s really sad to say, but...it won’t be long now.

Microstory 2100: All Over the City

< > Table of Contents

Generated by Google Gemini Advanced text-to-image AI software, powered by Imagen 2

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...

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 12,398

« < » > Table of Contents

One second. That’s how long Mateo spends in the stasis pod that Danica forced him into. As soon as that door closes, he teleports out, and lands on the other side of it. To his left is Past!Mateo’s pod. This is the version of him that first came back here after falling down the main elevator shaft. He’s destined to remain here for the next few billion years until his team rescues him with a sledgehammer. For now, though, this room has not yet been sealed up with concrete and wood. He could walk right out that door, assuming it’s unlocked, but that may not be the best way to handle this. She obviously doesn’t want him wandering around The Constant unsupervised. He might learn a secret that she doesn’t want getting out. He has to be smart about this. He tries the door anyway, and finds that it is indeed locked from the outside, so that’s a no-go.

Mateo jumps around to loosen up his joints. He’s assuming that each section of the Constant has its own set of alarms. If he can teleport to each one of them in succession, he’ll be able to choose one at random, and hide out there while Danica is scrambling, searching through the rest. It’s not the most brilliant of plans, but that was never his strong suit. He doesn’t usually do well on his own, but he’s all he’s got right now, so there’s no point in dwelling on that. He starts going over the sections in his head one by one, formulating a route, when the handle turns, and the door opens. He peeks his head out, and looks around to the other side of it. There was someone there, but he doesn’t get the chance to see who. He catches a glimpse of a silhouette before it disappears, either teleporting or time traveling away. They’re either trying to help him or hurt him, but either way, they have more information than he does, so worrying about it isn’t going to do him any good. All he can do now is try to gain some kind of advantage that will prevent Danica from being able to just throw him away like garbage.

First off, he wants to find out where she is, and where there might be others lurking about this facility. Though, if there is anyone else here, they’re probably fully invited, and he’s the only lurker. He steps out of the stasis room, and immediately regrets it. His shoes are too loud. What are they designed for, tap dancing? After he closes the door behind him, he takes them off, and starts walking with them in his hand, but he doesn’t get far before changing his mind. He feels like a heroine in an action movie who had to go undercover at a fancy party where the villain is entertaining a bunch of freeloaders to hide the fact that he’s really there to host a black market auction in the wine cellar, and now it’s time for her to run and fight. He decides to tuck them away underneath the couch, and move on.

He slinks down the hallways, hugging the walls, and trying to avoid the cameras, but he didn’t exactly memorize their locations, and there probably aren’t any blindspots anyway. He just keeps going, and hopes that his presence doesn’t trigger the artificial intelligence to sound that alarm after all. He could probably breathe easy, because the person who let him out of the stasis room surely knows whether they would be a real issue or not. No one is in the kitchen, no one’s in Danica’s office. No one’s in the security room, or the small film screening room. There’s no one in this library-looking place that is apparently called the master sitting room. “Wow, look at all this seating!” he exclaims to himself. The gym looks empty, but it has lots of spots to hide, so he gets himself a better look to be sure. No, it’s clear. Man, this is a big place for only a few visitors at a time. Only one person is meant to work here, except for Danica’s current posse, which Mateo assumes consists of Bhulan, Aquila, and maybe Tamerlane Pryce and Dalton Hawke?

“Tryna get swole?” a voice asks from behind him.

Mateo turns around to find a man who he doesn’t recognize. “I’m just trying to get answers,” Mateo admits.

“Aren’t we all?”

Mateo sizes him up a little. “Report.”

The man smiles. “Asier Mendoza, father of The Concierge. Some people call me Corporal Mercy.”

“Never heard of ya. Danica never mentioned her father, and Daria never mentioned her baby daddy.”

Asier nods. “You were probably talking to the wrong version of Danica.”

“I thought there was only one.”

“It’s complicated when you’re the way that she is.”

“Is that why we’ve never met before?”

“I guess.”

That’s not surprising, when Mateo thinks about it more. This is not the Danica he knows and loves, and that’s the point. Nerakali was always trying to explain that alternate selves are not identical. The fact that everyone is unique isn't just something to teach your kids; she called it a metaphysical maxim. “What are you going to do to me?”

“Do to you? What do you think we are, monsters?”

“Honestly, I don’t know anymore. Danica can’t take five minutes to have a conversation with me before she either erases my memory, or throws me into stasis.”

“If your memory was erased, how do you know how long the conversation was?”

“Does it really matter if my memory is gone? It’s like it never happened anyway.”

“Good point,” Asier muses.

“Interpret my question however you please, I would still like an answer. What is going to happen, and how can I prevent you from putting me back into that stasis pod?”

“Stasis is a gift, Mateo. For you and me, it’s a way for us to skip time, and reach the future. For the others, it’s a way to avoid the boredom of the aeons.”

“I understand its value, but why did she force me into it without saying a word? She took my friend, Alyssa away, claiming that she was going to send her back to the future, but I don’t know if that’s the case. Why is she being so cagey?”

Asier considers his approach to this. He’s obviously not allowed to answer all of Mateo’s questions. “This version of my daughter has caught glimpses of the parallel realities, which most versions never see. Each one is only meant to be responsible for one reality, and are meant to fend for themselves. The insight she gained from this information has changed her. She’s decided to make this reality different. She’s decided to protect it in a way that all other Concierges were never asked to do. It was a hard decision to make, and she’s incredibly stressed out about it. I would kindly ask you to be patient with her while she figures out how to proceed. Can you do that for me?”

Mateo considers what’s been asked of him. “If I’m going to support her, then I’m going to need to speak with her personally. Can you promise me that?”

“She’s not scheduled to come back out of stasis for another ten thousand years.”

“Then I’ll be back in ten thousand years,” Mateo responds.

“Okay, then. I’ll escort you back to your pod.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Boltzmann Brane

« < » > Table of Contents

The men continued to struggle against each other. Mateo and the team’s visions started coming back to them until it was clear enough for them to see that most of them didn’t recognize the fighters. Mateo did. One was part of Lucius’ group in the universe where he got his soul back. The other only looked familiar, but he couldn’t place him. He did get the feeling that he wasn’t a good guy, though.

“Listen, I know we don’t know each other yet,” Lucius said, sort of contradicting himself, “but could you help us get this guy out the airlock?”

“It’s not an airlock,” his friend said. Man, what was his name?

“Whatever.”

“Uhhhhh...okay,” Mateo said. He looked like a fifteen-year-old, but Ramses built his body to be stronger than the average person, so he didn’t find it too difficult to help.

“Are you freakin’ serious?” the bad man cried. “Stop, you son of a bitch! Get me—no! Argh!” The other dude was right. It wasn’t an airlock. They didn’t place him in another room, and then close the doors between them before opening a set of outer doors. They just threw him directly into the void. He was caught in some kind of current, and pulled away before he could grasp onto anything.

Lucius’ friend shut the door again. “Thanks, Mateo.”

“How do I know him?”

The friend sighed, and thought about it for a moment. “Oh, you were there. Yeah, when Cain and I were sent off on our respective missions, you were in the room.”

Mateo tilted his lizard brain.

“On Gatewood,” he continued. “When you were trying to get the Ansutahan humans safely across the threshold?”

“Oh, yeah!” Mateo said, remembering. “Oh...yeah.”

“Don’t worry,” Lucius comforted, “this one is good now...we think.”

“It’s complicated,” the other guy—Abel; his name was Abel—said.

“What also must be complicated,” Lucius began, “is how you remember any of this when you’re barely out of diapers. This all happened when you were adults.”

“We are adults,” Leona explained. “We just had to move into younger bodies.”

Lucius nodded. “I see. Well, you wanna come back to the other room, and meet with the rest of us, or...?”

“I’m afraid he doesn’t have time for that,” came a voice from behind the team. It was someone they hadn’t seen in a very long time, and never knew all that well. Back when Arcadia Preston was forcing Mateo and Leona to plan their wedding before they were ready, many of their guests arrived via The Crossover. It was a special machine that could travel between universes, and it was larger than anyone knew. It even included a hotel, which this man here was apparently responsible for. They just called him Bell.

“Bell,” Leona said.

“Yes, that’s me. Have we met?”

“Maybe not yet for you.”

“Okay,” Bell said. “Well, like I was saying—”

“Before you explain,” Mateo began, “could you tell us your real name? I feel weird not knowing it.”

“It’s Apothem Sarkisyan,” he answered.

“Sarkisyan. Are you related to a Dodeka?” Leona asked.

“She’s my sister.”

“Running hotels must run in the family.”

“It really doesn’t,” Apothem said bluntly. “Anyway, Lucius..Abel, thank you. You can go now.”

“What do you want with them?” Lucius asked, worried about his friends.

“I assure you that I will take great care of them. They are all on the guestlist.”

“The guestlist for what?” Lucius pressed.

“Come on,” Abel urges, taking Lucius by the upper arm. “It’s fine. It’s not nefarious. It is a great honor. I still don’t know if I’m on the list.”

“Don’t tell anyone else we’re here,” Apothem warned.

“Of course not,” Abel replied as they were stepping away.

“The guestlist for what?” Angela echoed.

“You have been selected to witness the birth of a Boltzmann Brane.”

“Are you serious?” Ramses questioned with great interest. “They’re real?”

“This one is,” Apothem confirmed.

“Wait, where’s Medavorken?” Olimpia asked.

“He’s on his own path,” Apothem claimed. “Follow me.” He led them down the corridors, into what Mateo recognized as a black box theatre. Except instead of a stage, the couple hundred or so seats were angled towards a large window to the equilibrium space outside. “Welcome...to The Stage,” he said proudly.

“So this is a show?” Olimpia asked.

“The greatest show this side of the bulkverse,” Apothem said.

“Did you bring us here?” Leona asked.

“No, but I knew you were coming, because like I said, you’re on the list. And as our first guests, you shall have the privilege of the first row.”

“When does it begin?” Marie asked.

Apothem stood up straighter, and looked at her. Then he looked over at Angela. “Which one of you is Angela Walton?”

Mateo interrupted before Marie could point to her alternate self. “They both are.”

Apothem pulled at an embellishment on his uniform sleeve, which revealed a scroll of e-paper. He studied it for a moment. “One name, one person...” He looked up to the group, and added, “one ticket.”

“One of them can have mine,” Mateo volunteered.

“You don’t have to do that,” Marie said with unwarranted shame. “I’m the temporal intruder. I’ll recuse myself.”

“No,” Mateo insisted. “I don’t know what this is we’re supposed to see, but I’m sure I’ll get little out of it.”

“It’s the spontaneous emergence of an ordered intelligence in the vastness of infinite spacetime due to random fluctuations in a balanced thermodynamic state,” Ramses explained poorly.

“Huh?”

“It’s a person who just suddenly exists due to the crazy amounts of time that have passed, rather than as the result of some logical series of causal events,” Leona translated, though even that was a little much. “But he doesn’t mean a Botlzmann brain as in B-R-A-I-N, do you? You mean B-R-A-N-E, which isn’t a person, but a universe?”

“It’s both,” Apothem disclosed.

“Hot damn,” Ramses said, which didn’t sound like him at all.

“The tickets are transferable,” Apothem went on, “but there are no plus ones, no extra seats, no double bookings, no waitlist. We invited a certain number of people, and since time doesn’t matter here, we don’t worry about whether everyone can make it. Every one of the two hundred and sixteen guests will make it, and they’ll arrive sometime in the next hour, from our perspective. The six of you will have to work it out amongst yourselves, but there is no loophole.”

“They can have my seat.” It was Gavix Henderson, an immortal from another universe who was present, not only at Mateo and Leona’s wedding, but also their engagement party a year prior.

“Sir, you don’t have to do that,” Apothem said.

“You and I both know that this event is not a rarity,” Gavix said to him. “It’s just easier for the humanoid mind to comprehend this particular instance in three dimensions. I’ve seen it before, and I’m sure I’ll see it again.”

“Very well,” Apothem acquiesces. “You may exit.”

“Thank you for this,” Mateo calls up to Gavix, embarrassed for having let him get so far before he remembered.

“Yes, thank you,” Marie echoed, since it was she who would be taking the seat.

“Just invite me to that fancy weddin’ o’ yours,” he returned, not turning around.

“We saw you there,” Leona said.

“Nah, not that one.” He rounded the corner without another word.

It was hard to describe what it was Marie would have missed. No, literally, it was hard to describe. It wasn’t exactly an explosion, which was how scientists back home had always described the big bang. But was this even the same thing, or entirely different? Mateo was at one end of their group, sitting right next to a clearly intelligent and knowledgeable individual, who explained a little more about what they were witnessing. Like stars and planets coming together particle by particle, chunk by chunk, and collapsing into their gravitational forces, something called bulk energy was becoming so hot and dense that it was transforming itself into solid matter. So it was less of an explosion, and more an implosion, though he said that this made perfect sense, because the explosion would be seen as such from inside the universe in question. But from out here, all that energy and matter had to come from what we would consider a low entropy state. This was evidently the greatest mystery in his field of brane cosmology. In a given universe, entropy increases, so why does it happen in the reverse in the outer bulkverse? Why does it operate so differently from the metacelestial objects that it creates? And why, from their puny human eyes, does each one look like a knife?

Well, Mateo had trouble following the man’s lecture, but it was still fun, and made a lot of sense while he was saying it. The team was grateful for having been around to witness such a thing. Apparently, like Gavix said, branes form like this all the time. His own did at some point, as did everyone else’s, but dimensionally speaking, they were all like partial eclipses, while this was a full eclipse, as seen from their position in the greater cosmos. After it was sufficiently over, the crowd began to stand, and move over towards the refreshments, where they could get to know one another.

There didn’t seem to be anything they all had in common. Some were scientists too, but others were just regular people. Some of them already knew about these other branes before today, but some hadn’t heard of any of it. Why and how they were chosen was another mystery their new friend couldn’t explain. The team itself was pretty special, but only within the context of their own pocket of that bulkverse. Out here, they were small fish in an infinite ocean.

“I don’t know of anyone in my universe who could help ya with that,” said an older gentleman by the desserts. He had a thick southern accent, and didn’t look anyone in the eye. This wasn’t out of a superiority complex, but more like his eyes would wander around, and he would forget where exactly he was meant to be directing his words. “I tell you, maybe that genie over there could help ya. Her special thing is she refused to grant anybody any wishes on her world, which is why the rest of the genie council, or whatever, sort of exiled her.”

“Why would she help us if her defining characteristic is that she doesn’t help people?” Leona reasoned.

The old man chuckled with delight. “Yeah, I guess yer right ‘bout that.” He took another swig from his flask. “I’m such a dumbass sometimes. By the way, drinkin’s legal on my planet. I feel I hafta say that, cuz some people think it’s weird.”

“It’s legal in ours,” Mateo said.

“Oh.” He widened his eyes, and presented the flask.

“No, thank you.”

“Aright.” He shrugged his cheeks as if to say your loss.

“Well, it was nice meeting you,” Angela said to him, gracefully stepping away. The others followed like magnets. “Seemed too eager to give children alcohol,” she said once they were out of earshot.

“We told him we weren’t as young as we look,” Olimpia reminded her.

“I know, but a normal person would still hesitate to believe it, let alone act on it.”

“What is normal?” asked a woman they hadn’t noticed before. It was Thack Natalie Collins of voldisilaverse.

“Miss Collins,” Mateo said. “It’s nice to meet you in person.”

“Likewise.” She shook everyone’s hands.

“Wait, you put us on the list, didn’t you?” Mateo guessed.

Thack sighed. “It was either this, or have you join the Newtonian Expats on their adventures. I wanted to give you a break. I know you reconnect with them in the future.”

“If you know all you know,” Leona began, “then you must know both of someone who can get us back home, and provert us to more appropriate ages.”

“Yes to the second one, but no to the first. We all came here through Westfall.”

“What’s that?” Olimpia asked her.

“Basically...we don’t know how we got here,” Thack said cryptically. “It’s a special feature of the Crossover. It just happens. You walk through a door, and you’re in a different universe, and most of the time, you don’t even realize it. You just end up going back home, and living under the belief that everyone you met on the otherwise simply lives on the same world as you. Of course we only went halfway, and made a stop here.”

“Sounds trippy,” Marie decided.

“The point is it’s not. You don’t notice unless you knew enough about brane cosmology before. Anyway, this is my friend.” She reached over without looking, and ushered a young woman into the huddle. “She’s not technically a proverter, but she can accomplish the same thing in her own way. Just tell her how old you wanna be.”

“Hi, I’m Xolta McCord.”

Leona frowned at her with rage. “We’ve met.”

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 1285: The Boy and the Chocolates

< > Table of Contents

A class of young school children was on a field trip to the mall in the center of town. There were many fascinating specialty stores there that were able to keep the children busy for hours. One sold all sorts of art supplies, while another was dedicated to music. There were restaurants of all kinds, and even a small theatre where the students sat to watch a local production of a popular play. There was also a candy story, which the students were specifically warned not to enter. A half hour before they were set to leave the mall, however, the teacher revealed that they would indeed be going into the candy store, but that they would be going in together, and in an orderly fashion. The kids were all so very excited. The owners of the candy shop were a friendly couple who liked to bring joy to children’s lives. So they agreed to a deal where each student would be allowed to take on fistful of candy from one of the dozen or so jars that they had laid out on the table for the occasion. The children were very good. Each one stood patiently in line, and waited their turn. One boy amongst them was a little different than the others. Due to a condition he had had since birth, he was rather large for his age, and he always felt a little out of place. His classmates weren’t too terribly mean to him about it, but he did experience a few jokes here and there. One thing he loved was chocolate; probably more than anyone else here. He could live off the stuff for the rest of his life. Unfortunately, when it came to be his turn, he found that he could barely fit his hand inside the jar, let alone grab a fistful of sweets, and pull them out safely. It was a rule that each child would only be able to take as much as they could in one go, but it was looking like he wasn’t going to get very many. He reached as far as he could, but the best he could do was grasp one piece between his index and middle finger; one lousy piece, and it wasn’t even his favorite kind. “Surely we can bend the rules this one time,” one of the shop owners said. “We shall pour some into his hand.”

“Only if that’s okay with the rest of the students,” the teacher said.

The boy was saddened, for he did not think his classmates would let him do things differently. But he was wrong. They gladly gave him permission, with no hesitation. After all, they had already received their own candies, and weren’t going to get any more, whether he got his own fill, or not.

This story was inspired by, and revised from, an Aesop Fable called The Boy and the Filberts.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: Bladapod

« < » > Table of Contents

Weeks later, the group was coming out of the Prototype, less one Hogarth Pudeyonavic. Missy promised to stay on the lookout for her, and find a way to get her home. Apparently Universe Prime was the safest place for her to get lost as there would be ways of accessing her homeverse from there, unlike any other random universe. Leona had selfish reasons for wanting Hogarth’s return, as she still had the Rothko Torch on her person. Out of all the objects, it was the only one that could theoretically be replaced, but it be difficult.

Things were eerie on the streets of the town they were now in. The people walking around looked normal, and the buildings looked normal, but there was something different about the air around them that none of them could explain. Khuweka followed through this time on staying invisible, and Leona tried to keep her tattoo protected. With no evident guide in the form of an old friend, the compass was still directing them to their next ingredient, which was the LIR Map. The deeper they moved toward the center of town, the more unusual things became. It started out with just little things. An out of place swing on a corner was swinging back and forth by itself, with no apparent wind moving it. A couple was on a jog, completely naked. A car drove by that looked less like it was rolling on wheels, and more like the tires were bouncing up and down one at a time, like stout legs. The driver was passed out asleep behind the wheel. A puddle of water nearly ran into them as it was trying to cross the street. It shifted directions in a way that normal water never could.

“What is up with this place?” Vitalie asked, but only loud enough for Leona to hear.

“This is Kansas City!” a bloke on a nearby roof screamed down to her. “Please try to talk quiterly! My boyfriend is trying to sleep up here!”

What the hell?

As they continued down the block, a small group of people convened between two pillars holding up a skyscraper. One of them mimed pressing a button in the air, and they started floating up in unison, like they were in an invisible elevator.

A toddler walked right up to them as they were watching the elevator riders. “You looked confused. Are you from Iceland?” He nodded to young Dubra. “Wassup, hun?”

“Why would you think we’re from Iceland?” Vito asked. “Are Icelanders easily confused?”

“Iceland is the only place outside the bladapodosphere,” the toddler answered. He acted as mature as an adult. Perhaps he was.

“What is the bladapodosphere?”

He laughed. “Even Icelanders have heard of it, they just don’t experience base modifications. Are you aliens?”

Kivi was about to answer yes to that question, but Vitalie stopped her.

“Hey, I don’t judge,” the toddler said. “I’ll just assume you’re not aliens, but are instead idiots who didn’t pay attention to the signs stopping you from falling into a memory pit. If this is the case, you can go to the movie theatre on seventh, and ask for a showing of World Introduction.”

Just then, a young woman came right up to them, and looked up at the sky. “What happened to you?” she asked, but they didn’t know who she was talking to.

Vito shut his eyes, and when he opened them, they were glazed over. “She’s looking right at Khuweka.”

“You can see me?” the voice of an unseen Khuweka asked her.

“I can,” the woman said. “Never hide who you are. We are all beautiful.” She hopped into the air, and kissed the tall white monster, presumably on her cheek, then  she glided back to the ground, as if in lower gravity.

Khuweka took the woman’s advice, and turned visible.

“Whoa, sweetheart,” the toddler said, backing up a bit. “Spent a little too much time in the milk mines, did we? I’m out.” he ran away on his tiny little adorable legs.

The woman took Khuweka’s hand in her own, and started pulling her away. “Come. I’ll take you to the theatre. It’s on my way to work.”

They were the only ones in the theatre. On stage was a man holding a glowing water bottle, who couldn’t help but overact. “I am a traveler from faaaaaaaar away.” He placed one hand over his brow, and scanned the auditorium. “I come with this canister of lights. Oh, oh no!” He dropped the bottle, and it started rolling away, so he scrambled to pick it up again. Then he struggled to twist the cap off. “I said, oh no!” He dropped it again, but this time, the water spilled out. Two spotlights flickered above the bottle. The man threw some confetti and glitter. “What have I done?” he asked, and then he ran off.

A man and woman wearing black walked on stage from the other direction, and set two crabs down on stage. Knives were haphazardly tied to their legs. Hopefully they were fake. A group of people walked on in lab coats. “We are scientists, and we have found this new species,” they said in fractured unison. One of them picked up one of the crabs. “Shit!” he whispered. “You weren’t supposed to use real knives. Goddamn.” He set the creature back down, but held his hands up in front of him, pretending it was still there. “I shall call you the bladapods, for your legs are made of blades.”

“How weird?” another scientist remarked, causing the others to laugh, but were distracted by trying to remember what they were to do next. The audience was probably meant to laugh as well. The actors grabbed crates from upstage, and placed them on either side of the crabs, who couldn’t care less what was happening.

“Oh no!” one of them shouted.

“Wait,” they could hear someone order her offstage. A stagehand ran on, and handed one of the the other actors a bag. The actor clambered to get the bag open, then started pulling plush crabs out. Others came over, and did the same, throwing each one onto the floor, next to the real crabs. Once the bag was empty, he nodded at the one who had spoken her line too soon before.

“Oh no!” she repeated, on the right cue this time. “We have placed our new subjects in captivity, and they have bred out of control. Let us distribute them all over the world, and hopefully things will go back to normal.”

“Yaaaay!” the other scientists agreed as they started changing the scenery.

“What are we watching?” Kivi pondered.

“I don’t know,” Vito said to her, “but I can’t get enough.”

“Shh,” Khuweka scolded them.

The show continued. The two stagehands came back and carefully removed the real crabs. The scientists started haphazardly throwing the other crabs around to spread them out. A man in a suit walked on, and stepped to the edge. “For legal reasons, we are no longer allowed to use a fog machine in this building. We ask that you use your imagination.” He bowed graciously.

“Oh no!” the main scientist cried. “The bladapods have released gasses into the atmosphere.”

They pretended to be shielding their faces from the imaginary fog.

“What do the gasses do?” another asked.

The first one turned to the audience, and said overdramatically, “anything.”

And then music played, and everybody picked up one of the bladapod dolls to dance around with. After a few minutes, they started to bow to the audience, smiling widely. “Thank you! Thank you so much!” the apparent lead actress said to the audience, who couldn’t move, let alone clap along. Well, Kivi was clapping, because everything was wondrous to her. The man who played the traveler returned with the most fanfare, but again, only from the rest of the cast members, and Kivi.

The man in the suit came back. “Thank you for coming. Please wait in the alleyway to greet the cast and crew in a half hour.” Then they spent the next few minutes bowing again.

“Wow, that is a lot to unpack,” Vitalie commented.

“Have you heard of this universe?” Leona asked Khuweka.

“I’ve not, though I wish we had known about this forever.”

“How do the gasses work?” Vitalie asked.

“They seem to rewrite reality, in various and unpredictable ways,” Leona supposed. “It would explain the kinds of things we saw the street.”

“You call that an explanation?” Vito asked. “It rewrites reality, just like that?” He snapped his fingers.

“It’s more like they rewrite the rules for reality,” came a voice from a seat behind them.

Leona jumped forward, and looked back, heart racing. A man was sitting there, legs propped up on nothing.

“Avidan?” Vitalie asked. “Big boy Avidan.”

“In the flesh.” Avidan leaned forward and shook everyone’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you all. I’m not sure about you, though.”

“I’ve always been an ally,” Khuweka informed him.

“That doesn’t make you good.”

Khuweka didn’t want to argue with him about this. “Those lights that they described in the play. They sound like—”

“They were,” Avidan interrupted. “I was in the lab when the Crossover exploded. They came with me, and ultimately created the bladapods. The play took some liberties, and it was certainly the most wretched performance you’ll ever see, but it was pretty accurate. I’m glad you chose to come here. I wouldn’t have known you were in this universe if you hadn’t bought tickets. No one’s come here in years. Those actors are the understudies to the understudies, and budgetary constraints has severely limited production. They should just let it go. No one doesn’t know what the bladapods are, except for you guys, of course.”

“So these changes the gasses make are completely unpredictable?” Leona asked him.

“I wouldn’t use the word completely. There are a few common changes. You often meet children who’ve matured too quickly, or adults who regressed. Water is always dangerous. Do not drink the water if you don’t know what kind it is. Irony water, saliva water, oh, and twinkle water. It’s just best you stay away from all food and drink while you’re here.”

“We keep offering this to friends, and they never take us up on it, but you’re more than welcome to come back with us,” Vitalie told him.

“That’s kind, but this world is my responsibility. I did this to them, and I have to help in any way I can. It’s not all bad, though. I see your frowns. Dancing cats, mealpeas, and trains that run on watch batteries have been great additions to the world. Astronomy gets a little complicated since each star has a companion near it that’s just an illusion, but the night sky is more beautiful than ever. Plus, the bladapodosphere negated all the planet’s air pollution literally overnight. I should be offering to let you stay with me.”

“We’re just here for the LIR Map,” Leona said, still with a frown.

“I’ll stay,” Khuweka said, and immediately almost wanted to put the words back in her mouth.

“Is that a good idea?” Kivi asked her.

“What better universe for me to live?” Khuweka posed. “I can’t go back to Ansutah. Salmonverse hasn’t yet encountered aliens, and may never. I feel comfortable here. Accepted.”

“People would assume the gasses mutated you,” Avidan warned her. “You wouldn’t be able to tell them the truth.”

“I’ve spent millennia secretly hating my own people,” Khuweka said. “I know how to lie.”

“I have more conditions,” Avidan added.

“I agree to everything outright,” Khuweka claimed. “As long as they get what they came for.”

He sat there for a minute, considering her offer. Then he reached into his bag, and retrieved a reusable water bottle. He twisted off the bottom to reveal a secret compartment full of sand. “You have no idea what we had to go through to get this away from Arcadia.” He poured the sand onto the floor, and sent an energy beam towards it. The granules rose up in the air, and coalesced into a solid form, ultimately in the shape of a flat sheet of paper. “She only left because she didn’t know Lucius’ time power could reverse entropy.” Avidan lifted the sheet and handed it to Dubravka, which inspired Khuweka to hand Vito the Jayde Spyglass. Upon all this happening, Leona’s tattoo began to warm. She pulled her sleeve back to find fish jumping out of the center of the compass, and fading away in midair. They were finally going back home.

« < » > Table of Contents

Microstory 984: Live Theatre

< > Table of Contents

I grew up in the same world that you did, even though I make a lot of jokes about being born on a Keserint space station orbiting Pluto hundreds of thousands of years ago, or in the future. One of my biggest regrets is allowing myself to be influenced by so many bad sources of information. As a man, I’ve had it extremely easy, never feeling like I had to transform myself into the perfect people in magazines, or like I wasn’t allowed to wear pants. I did, however, contribute to the negativity this world has offered, almost always without even realizing it. My parents were always very loving, and believed in diversity, but there were so many other things vying for my attention, that not even their good teachings could insulate me from everything. I once had a teacher in middle school who got off on a tangent about some associate of hers who underwent gender reassignment surgery. She talked about how gross that was, and charged us to never do anything like that. She wasn’t an absolutely terrible person, but she was a clueless jackass who didn’t know what she was talking about, and that sort of behavior would never be tolerated today; not even in Kansas. I didn’t feel as sick about the idea as she did, but I didn’t question her position either. I spent years being indifferent to transgender people; time I could have spent being a vocal ally. That teacher fucking blocked something good in me with ignorant darkness, and I will never get that time back. People have died because children are highly impressionable, and are being taught to agree with just about everything a role model says. I’m optimistic about that teacher, and have enough faith in her that she’s changed her beliefs, possibly without even remembering—and thusly not feeling guilty about—the damage she inflicted on young minds. I recall her being fairly open-minded and liberal otherwise. She was just as much a victim of society’s rules as I was; more so, because she was older. The reason I’m saying all this is because, especially when I was younger, I’ve been conditioned to be resistant of certain things that I later realize I like. I had to overcome society’s expectations that I not like live theatre, because I am not a girl. I was expected to like sports and boobs, and nobody outside of my family even thought to let me question these assumptions. I like RENT, and I like listening to show tunes, I miss Smash, and I very much wanted to win the lottery for Hamilton tickets when my family took a trip to New York City in 2016. I even determined the physiological characteristics of a species in my stories based on the possibility that I may be able to help write a musical about them decades from now. They have two sets of vocal cords, so they can sing notes humans can’t, and singing is vital to the conception, and early development, of their offspring. The point is that gender roles are a social construct, rather than a biological one. You would probably agree if you saw Book of Mormon.

Microstory 936: Douglas Adams

< > Table of Contents

My sister gave me the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for my eighteenth birthday, just in time to see the film adaptation in theatres before it disappeared. For some strange reason, I liked science, and I liked fiction, but I didn’t seem to seek out a lot of science fiction. At the time, I didn’t watch Star Trek, Stargate, or similar franchises. I had heard of Douglas Adams books, but didn’t think I would enjoy them. They have since become my favorite books. The summer after graduating from high school, I went off to volunteer at a farm in Ceres, California. One of the first questions the fellow volunteer who drove me there from the airport asked me was whether I liked to read. I said that I didn’t, because it was true. But I still had four more Hitchhiker’s books to read, so I wasn’t going to let a little thing like my own personality stop me. We were given a break sometime later, and decided to take a weekend trip to San Francisco, which was where I bought the rest of the series. I was so fascinated by the brilliant writing that I couldn’t put them down but to work, eat, and sleep. I was even that weird guy at the party who went there with a book, which confused everyone who had learned that I was not much of a reader. This was the same party, by the way, that inspired some of the details of the story in my Dreams series called Man Planes, God Laughs. As I’ve worked tirelessly on my craft, and my canon, I’ve drawn inspiration from a number of sources, mostly television, but Douglas Adams books are part of that too. I love his wit, and I try to emulate it whenever I’m writing something humorous, or even just a little lighter. There’s that hypothetical question about which historical figure from all of time you would most like to meet, and Douglas Adams is my answer. Rest in peace, Mr. Adams. You were taken from us too soon.

Microstory 929: Netflix

< > Table of Contents

It was the year 2010. Some dumb team I don’t care about had recently won the superbowl. A good man was still president. And I had just graduated from college. My sister gave me three months of Netflix as a gift. I hadn’t thought much about trying the service before then. I had seen my evil roommate’s DVDs strewn about the apartment, but didn’t think I would get much out of it, especially since I did not yet have a job. I went to the movie theatre a lot during college, usually by riding my bike two and a half miles down the hill. My record was five movies in one day, which was pretty much the maximum with their hours. What I didn’t realize was that I was on the cusp of a better Netflix, and because of that, I ended up never cancelling the service, and still have it today. The library was already huge at that point, but was really picking up speed. It had existed for over ten years by then, but was only starting to become ubiquitous. Of course there are still plenty of people in the developed world who don’t have a Netflix account, but those people are becoming harder to find. The greatest part about the service is that it’s generally pretty reliable. It can be accessed on myriad devices, with varying levels of internet speeds, and they even let you download titles to your phone, to be watched offline. I still encounter errors, as one does when using a computer, but most can be solved fairly painlessly. Netflix has tons of their own original programming, and they keep them up there all the time. My OnDemand services usually only keep five episodes of a series at a time, and sometimes it’s not even the last five, but some inappropriately random order. Netflix does occasionally only offer certain seasons of certain shows, but I’m certain the fault lies with the studio from which they bought the rights for the content. I can say nothing more about it, except that they should renew Lost in Space for a third season now, instead of waiting until season two comes out. And they should do the same with season four of Travelers. Also, please Netflix, don’t change your intro sound effect. You’re going to try to “update” it in a few years, as some belated response to the Kevin Spacey scandal, and it’s going to upset me, because I find this one quite comforting. Oh, I do have one more thing to say. The phrase “Netflix and chill” never had to be sexual in nature. It could very well have described a pleasant evening sitting innocuously in front of a screen, but noooo, you people can’t help but ruin everything. So thanks for that.

Microstory 857: Drive Out

< > Table of Contents

My best friend and roommate, Deena Norup comes up with the craziest of theories, and as absurd as they sound when you first hear them, they start making a bit of sense the more she explains her reasoning. And she has been right every single time. She thought that our neighbors to the North were cheating on each other with our neighbors to the South. She insisted that the North house husband was sleeping with the South house wife, and vice versa. I didn’t believe until the truth finally came out a week later, and we watched the four of them get in a huge screaming match on our lawn. Deena also predicted that the mayor of our town was actually featured in a number of scifi B-movies in the early 90s, but always while wearing some alien or monster costume. This turned out to be one hundred percent true, and I still don’t know how she discovered it. He only ever did it to help his second cousin, who was a filmmaker, and he was never credited for his parts. She just sees connections that other people don’t. So when I tell you she believed the paralegal at the law firm where she works as a receptionist was secretly an inventor with hundreds of patents, you know I was on board with proving it. The paralegal dressed in modest inexpensive clothing, treated everyone as if they were his boss, and didn’t seem to have a personal life. No one but Deena would expect this guy to be a multimillionaire who carved out an extensive underground lair under his one house, but it turned out to be there, just as she said. We put on our comfortable black clothes, broke into his house, and snuck downstairs, where we found a massive garage full of rare classic cars. We went another level down to find a laboratory with tons of equipment and machines that neither of us could name. The third level was finished, but almost completely empty, like it was waiting to be designated for some interesting purpose. The only thing in it was another car, but it was of no model we recognized, by no apparent make. He must have built it himself from scratch.

The car gave Deena a bad feeling that only increased the nearer she got to it. She begged for us to leave, but we were this close, so how could I not at least check it out? I opened the door and crawled inside. Right away, I could see that this car must have come from the future. The windows turned opaque, and displayed full 4K screens. There was a coffee maker, and a stove; both of which were built into the interior. The passenger seat lifted up to reveal a toilet, and the back seat turned into a tub. Once my foot was clear, the front door closed on its own and locked itself. I couldn’t open it from the inside, and Deena couldn’t let me out either. The screens indicated that the vehicle was in vacuum mode, which freaked me out, but I could steal breathe, so maybe I was misinterpreting what that meant. Still, I needed to get out somehow. By now, alarms were going off in what must have been the whole lair, but Deena was just standing there, as calm as ever. “Drive,” she said simply. What the hell did that mean? I continued looking for an exit, but there was nothing. The only way I was going to solve this problem was with help somewhere else, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to trust what Deena says. I turned the engine, and started driving forward, hoping to find an exit somewhere. The wall in front of me opened on its own, and let out to the yard above. There waiting for me was a horde of angry men and women with guns. They were all wearing suits, so I assumed them to be federal agents. The paralegal was there too. He spoke to me through his wrist watch, “Miss Norup should not have shown you that. It is not for you.” I was desperate to get out of there, any way possible, and it was like the car read my mind. It started hovering over the ground, then rose higher and higher. Through cameras on the side of the car, I could see that the wheels had turned into rocket engines, and were flying me away. It just kept going and going, high above the atmosphere, and I finally realized what vacuum mode was. I looked at the back camera feed, and could see the agents had followed me with their own flying cars. This must be part of some secret government program. A friendly voice spoke to alert me that the drive-in theatre was now populated, and that the end had come. The screen showed me footage of a parking lot filled with a bunch of vans. Then the Earth disappeared...literally. All that survived were that parking lot, and these spacecars.