Microstory 2226: Not Giving Up on Him

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If you’ve been following Nick’s social media posts over the weekend, you’ll know that his health fell into a steep decline. He was still alive, and still aware of me in the room, but he couldn’t keep his eyes open for more than a few seconds, and he had a hell of a time speaking. His tremors went away, though. He was very still. I made the decision to keep him comfortable, and let him have the weekend. I was going to monitor him closely, and check him into the hospital if he did not get better in the next two days. Well, he somehow did get better. He was awake and alert this morning, and able to form full sentences. Sadly, his tremors came back too. It’s like his body shut down to take a break, and now it’s back to how it was last week. So he’s not cured, or anything, but I see it as a promising development. The doctors aren’t so optimistic. This is an unusual symptom for the type of prion that he has, but it’s not unheard of. He’ll go through dips, and come out of them as if he’s gotten better, but then he’ll go right back down. They want to keep him overnight to get a better read on the pattern that he’s on right now, but the dips don’t necessarily warrant a permanent stay, which is good. They expect him to recover from each dip. Now, if he starts having trouble breathing, that’s when things have gotten too bad for me to be able to care for him alone. But until that happens, the medical staff are willing to accept his wishes to remain in a more comfortable and familiar environment. He’s with PT in the hallway right now, trying to keep his brain and body active. The best way to fight the misfolded proteins is to exercise the good proteins. The disease is slowly taking over, so he has to be as much himself as possible. I’ll encourage to keep trying to formulate his own words for these posts to stave off the inevitable for as long as possible. He agrees that this is a good idea. And who knows, he may find himself regaining the ability to type it all out himself. I’m not giving up on him just yet.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 12, 2433

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Leona peered at the viewscreen. “A shipyard, you say?”

“A shipyard, and a ship graveyard. A sizable portion of the surface is riddled with old ships, new ships,” Ramses explained. He looked more excited than a child on Christmas day. “All shapes and sizes.”

“You wanna take one?” she asked.

“Noooo,” he insisted. “I mean, if the shoe fits, I guess... But it has everything we need to build our own. The place looks abandoned.”

“You don’t have a life signs detector, though, so you don’t know that. All we can do is search for radio waves.”

“Yeah, but look at it down there, there’s no activity.”

“They could be lying in wait,” Mateo suggested. “This feels like a trap. We’re going in a straight line. They’ll always know where we’ll end up next.”

“They couldn’t have set all this up in just a few years,” Ramses contended. “Trust me, it’s fine. But...”

“But what?” Leona questioned.

“But we’ll need to land this little vessel down there to get to them. We can’t teleport to the surface without it.”

Leona was suspicious now. “Why not?”

Ramses breathed out through his nose, worried about how he’ll be received. “Okay, you know how most ships in our little underworld of time travelers have a teleportation field, right? Instead of just letting micrometeoroids hit the hull, we teleport the objects away as they pass through the field.”

“Right...” Leona encouraged.

“Well, the Exins apparently use that technology too, and...all of those ships down there are...passively active.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” She shook her head, getting kind of annoyed with him. “Passively active?”

“The fields are in standby mode. They’re not constantly using power, but if you try to make a jump anywhere down there, sufficiently close to the materials I need to build us a real ship, the generators will react, just as they would to any other celestial object. They’ll activate briefly, and then close back up again.”

“How do you know this?” Leona asked incredulously. “Have you seen this phenomenon before, a giant collection of ships with teleportation field generators?”

“No,” Ramses assured her, “I tested it with a probe.”

“What probe? We never talked about any probes.”

Ramses acted almost offended. “I built a probe. I thought it made sense to start using them to scout ahead. It’s designed to search for Vitalie too, so no one will ever need to go on that mission again. At least, not at first. As soon as it finds the pod, someone can jump there to wake her up, and greet her. And that will continue to work, just not here.”

Leona sighed. “Ramses, what happened to the probe? Was it sent back like a slingshot?”

He seemed afraid to answer, but he did. “There’s a game that you people used to play in the before-fore times? There’s a metal ball, and you hit it with these little things, and it bounces around...”

“Pinball,” Mateo realized.

“Yeah, it was like that.” Ramses nodded. He started pointing at the screen. “The probe was here, and then here, and then here, and then somewhere over there, and then I lost contact, because I think it was ripped apart by the tidal forces of overlapping teleportation fields.”

“Sounds like a wild ride,” Leona said sarcastically. “We could sell tickets.”

“Well, that’s why I want to land the ship, so that doesn’t happen!” Ramses argued.

Leona’s eyes widened in frustration. “The field isn’t teleporting teleporting objects, Ramses. It’s teleporting anything that falls into the field. Why would our ship survive that where the probe didn’t?”

Now he smiled. “Because our ship also has a teleportation field, which we can use to counteract the effects. We can force them to cancel each other out, and make it all the way through. I’m sure of it.”

“I assume we don’t have these fields ourselves?” Olimpia asked.

“No,” Ramses answered. “That’s not a bad idea—we would basically be bulletproof and punch-proof—but no.”

“I say we leave,” Leona voted. “It looks great down there. A real smorgasbord of amazing technology that we could salvage, but it’s not worth risking being ripped apart inside the Roche limit of two conflicting teleportation fields.”

“It’s usually more than two,” Ramses corrected.

“Oh, well, in that case...”

“Leona, I can do this. I’ve done the math already.”

“When did you do the math? We just freakin’ got here.”

Ramses put on a pompous face. “I’m fast, because I’m just that smart.” He reverted back to normal. “You can check it yourself, if you want. We have a little time, but I do want to get started. I’m sick of these cramped quarters. Pocket dimensions just don’t feel real to me. The AOC was designed to get you and your friends to the next planet over. It was never meant to house a full crew for the long-term. We made-do, but technology has progressed since then, and I want to create something better now. This world gives me that chance, and I don’t want to pass it up. We’ll survive, because we always do. That’s our job.”

Leona sighed again, but more patiently this time. “Okay, I’ll trust you, and won’t check the math. But I’m not making the decision for everyone. We vote, and it has to be unanimous.” She looked over at the rest of the team. “You all understand what’s at stake here if we do this?”

Everyone nodded, including the dummies, Mateo and Olimpia, because they were indeed able to follow the conversation. When Captain Matic called for an official vote, they all raised their hands, except for Vitalie, who seemed distracted by her thoughts.

“What is it?” Ramses asked.

“If she’s voting no, I won’t let you bully her,” Leona argued.

“You didn’t ask for nays yet,” Ramses reasoned. She’s not voted at all. She could be abstaining.”

“I’m not—” Vitalie was stammering. “It has nothing to with—” She huffed, and raised her hand. “Never mind, let’s go. I vote yea, or aye, or whatever.”

“Vitalie, you’re a part of us now,” Leona told her. “You have every right to express your opinion. We should have made this a blind vote,” she added when Vitalie didn’t respond.

“No, it’s not that,” Vitalie continued to stammer. “I agree, we should risk it. It’s just that I’ve realized that there is no hope for us finding Vitalie!741 down there. The only way we’ve ever done it is by triangulating it with your makeshift stasis pod communicator. If we can’t even teleport.”

“It’s not impossible,” Ramses began to explain to her. It would just take longer. When you get close enough to the pod with the locator, it will detect that there’s a pod somewhere nearby. When you jump again, if you get another ping, that tells you that you’re going in the right direction, or at least that you’re not farther from it. With enough jumps, you can eventually determine its position. But you don’t have to jump. You could take a car. You could even walk.”

“Then I’ll do that,” Vitalie decided. “I’ll walk.”

Ramses chuckled, a bit rudely. “I meant that you could technically, possibly do it. But not in practical terms. You could potentially have to walk across the entire surface. We can’t stay here that long.”

“You don’t have to stay here,” Vitalie said. “Just leave me with a locator, and I’ll work on it as long as it takes. Just promise me you’ll build another locator, and keep using it on the other planets, assuming this teleportation field mess doesn’t continue.”

“I already have multiple locators. That’s not the problem.”

“The problem is we can’t leave you here alone,” Leona said to her.

“And also that you still can’t be expected to walk the entire surface,” Marie added.

“Well, I could build her a car,” Ramses declared. “Hell, I’m sure one of those ships down there works well enough.”

“We’re not leaving her alone!” Leona insisted.

“It’s my choice,” Vitalie fought. “We voted on going down to the surface. But all of the sudden, you want to make an executive decision?”

“We could vote,” Leona began, “but it’s never gonna be unanimous, because I’ll always be a nay.”

Mateo placed a hand on her arm. “Lee-Lee. You’re the Captain; not the King.”

“Well, she—”

Mateo stopped her from continuing to argue with a simple jerk of his head. “Captain,” he whispered.

Leona looked back over at Vitalie with puppy dog eyes, hoping that she would change her mind, or maybe just show some sign of reluctance, but Vitalie was steadfast. Leona hung her head. “Okay. But we’re staying here for two days at least. Right, Ramses? You need that long to build something good?”

“It’s true,” Ramses confirmed. “I didn’t mention that before, but the construction will last beyond today. Vitalie, you’ll probably want to go into stasis, since we won’t be traveling at maximum fractional speeds. You don’t have to be awake for the locator to start trying to triangulate Vitalie!741’s pod. I can program it to wake you up if it finds her during that time. If it does, you’ll both be able to leave with us, no problem.”

They discussed the details a little more, and then made the jump. Instead of leaving their ship in orbit like they usually would, the whole thing dropped down. It was impossible for Ramses to predict what would happen with certainty, but they did survive the ordeal. They were sent teleporting all over the place before they found and island of stability, but once they did, everything was fine, and they were all in one piece, which was what they were really worried about. Their own teleportation field protected them without issue, or excessive power drain. They climbed out of their little ship manually one at a time, which made them feel like animals, but it worked. The industrial atmosphere wasn’t pleasant, but it was breathable. Vitalie wore a filter mask for added safety, but the rest of their substrates handled the task on their own. 

“All right,” Leona said, “get what you need. We’ll help with whatever, I guess.”

Ramses pulled out his tablet. “I have a list.”

“Do you guys hear that?” Angela asked. Their hearing was heightened, but they couldn’t hear everything on the entire planet, so they all tilted their respective heads to get a better angle on the soundwaves. Something was definitely sounding off in the distance, and it seemed to be getting closer. It was a sort of screaming noise. Angela took a couple steps forward. “What is that?”

Leona reached into her bag, and pulled out a pair of digital binoculars. She started to scan the sky. “Run.” She dropped her arms down, but kept looking in that direction. “Run!” she cried louder. She took off, and so did everyone else.

“Remember, you can’t teleport!” Ramses reminded them. “The field generators actually do react to each other! That’s why they’re kind of evenly spaced!”

They ran as fast as they could, the ones in front looking over their shoulders to make sure the ones in back were still coming. They could move pretty fast, but they were still within range of the blast when the missile crashed down, and exploded on impact. Mateo could see a piece of shrapnel flying towards him, but didn’t know what to do. Before he could try to escape, someone’s arms were wrapping themselves around his body. They teleported away, but they didn’t just make one jump. The teleportation field generators all around them started pinballing them every which way several times, until one of them managed to throw them clear of any other vessel. They fell from several meters up, and crashed onto the ground, just like the missile, but with no explosion.

Only then did Mateo see that it was Vitalie who had rescued him. “I’m sorry. I know we weren’t supposed to do that.”

“No, no, no, thank you. Leona, can you hear me?” Mateo half-expected the trauma to have fried his communicator, but it was still working.

“Yeah,” she replied. “We’re all fine. You and Vita?”

“We’re okay. I don’t know how far away we are.”

“We have locators, remember? You’re only a few kilometers away. You see that giant blue crane?”

“Yes.”

“Jog towards that. We’ll meet in the middle.”

“The ship? Our ship, that is?”

“Gone. You were right. It was a trap.”

Just as they were starting to run towards each other, the ground began to shake. It shook, and it shook, and it didn’t stop shaking. Gargantuan explosions began to rage in the distance. The blue crane that Mateo and Vitalie were using as a reference point suddenly sank below the horizon. Cracks were forming in the ground.

“A really good trap!” Marie shouted into the comms.

“Leona, everyone, jump.”

“We can’t!” Ramses complained.

“You can! Just come to our location. There’s a reason we finally stopped moving in this spot. This spot is safe!”

The group appeared in scattered formation around them. Mateo and Leona hugged and kissed each other. They all began to huddle together instinctively as the tremors and explosions intensified. “If there’s any antimatter in those ships, it will be devastating. Ramses, do you remember where the biggest open area was?”

“That might not be good enough either.” Ramses slipped Angela’s bag off of her shoulders. “Thanks for carrying this for me.” He reached in, and pulled out a dimensional generator, but it wasn’t the same one they used in the ship. That one would still have been in there when the missile struck. That one was destroyed. “This one is smaller, barely enough room to walk past each other, but it’s stocked with supplies, and it’s all we got.”

“Then what?” Marie asked.

“Once all of you are inside, I’ll jump into space, and join you,” Ramses explained.

“I’m the Captain, I’ll do it,” Leona volunteered.

“That’s why you shouldn’t.” Mateo stole the generator for himself. He pointed it at Vitalie first, because she was the only one not equipped to survive in space, so she absolutely had to be inside. Then he started to shoot everyone else as well. 

No one argued, except for the last one, Leona. “Stop!” She breathed deeply, and looked around at the planet as it was being ripped apart. She laid hands on the generator. “We’ll go together.”

“Were I you.”

“Were I you.”

They jumped.

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Microstory 1729: Crater

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I have not been able to get very much sleep for the last few weeks. Really, when I think about it, it’s been a lifelong problem. I have too much stress. At first it was because of my parents’ hostile divorce, then my schoolwork was too hard, then I was trying to get into a good college, then I was looking for a job, then I had to deal with a terrible job. It just never ends with me. I keep thinking that things will get better if I can just solve this one major problem. Then I do, and I find that the grass actually isn’t greener on the other side. It’s mostly more dirt and I have to cross yet another void to get to something better. My therapist says that things actually have gotten better, and that just because some people at my high school reunion are CEOs and city council members, doesn’t mean I’m a failure. She suggests I stay positive. But I was born optimism-blind, and I don’t think there’s a cure. I finally get to sleep when the ground shakes, and the loudest sound that has ever pounded on my eardrums attacks me from all sides. It’s a crash, but there’s also this sizzling electrical sound. I order my smartspeaker to turn on my lights, and watch as my glass figurine collection threatens to topple over, but never does. I swear to God, some of them actually do tip before straightening back up, like some kind of ghost is there to protect them for me. The ground continues to tremble, and a deeper darkness overwhelms my windows. I switch the lights back off as I get out of bed, and move over to look outside. All I see is the black. I stand there for hours, watching it ever so slowly dissipate. It’s dust and debris, and it takes a long time to settle. No one answers the phone, not even the police. The sun comes out, and I can see a crater.

I check every window in my little house. The crater wraps all around me. It doesn’t look like a bunch of different craters, but a single one, of which I rest in the middle. A massive doughnut must have fallen from the sky, and left me unscathed. If there really was a big space doughnut, though, it still shouldn’t have spared me. I mean, the tremors alone should have sent me to hell with everyone else in my neighborhood. The hole is so large than I can’t even make out the houses that weren’t crushed by it. I see the edge in the distance, but everything left above is too far away to discern. I cautiously step outside, and crawl to the edge of my little protected patch of land. I realize, though, that if I were capable of dying, it probably would have happened already. The thing that protected my figures wasn’t likely a ghost, but a guardian angel. I don’t think I have to be careful anymore. I peek over the edge of my patch, and look for the bottom of the crater, but I can’t tell if I see it, for the light does not reach as far down. I check the GPS on my phone. No, I’m not in La Brea, so I doubt there’s a portal below me that will send me to prehistoric times where CGI monsters still roam the lands. I check all around my—I don’t know whether to call this a butte, or a mesa, or a plateau, because it’s as tall as all hell, but narrower than my now-dead neighbor’s political beliefs—patch. I see nothing that would explain what saved me, or whether the theoretical angel is still here. Just then, two helicopters fly over from different directions. One appears to be military, and the other from a news station. As they’re inspecting me, trying to figure out what the hell is going on, their rotors just stop, and they fall out of the sky, into the crater. Others come, hoping to understand, including an AirEvac, but they all suffer the same fate. I was wrong. An angel has not saved me. A demon has doomed me.

Void: Falling Skies (Part II)

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Saga and Camden lived together for years, starting in 2157. They both continued to try their powers to return to 2102 every once in awhile, but it never worked. Camden could only ever jump forward to 2257, or back to 2057. Saga couldn’t use her powers at all, though. She kept arbitrarily opening doors, picturing her destination in her head, but never succeeding. It was always just a door. Several months into this, a much older Xearea showed up during one of her floating holidays. Unlike most previous Saviors, she wasn’t expected to be on the clock 24/7. Life wasn’t as dangerous or difficult as it once was. There just weren’t as many accidents to save people from. Even when people were hurt, medical science had progressed enough to treat them successfully for pretty much anything. There just wasn’t much need for the position anymore, and since the powers that be could see the future, they always knew this was coming, and had come up with an endgame. Come Xearea’s death, they would choose one last Savior to serve Earth, and then completely shutter the program. At that point, if someone’s life was in danger, they would have to call upon the Kingmaker, the Runners, or some other traveler.

Xearea assured Camden that there was nothing he could do to get back home. She had already experienced 2102, and 2103, and so on. He never went back home, nor did she. At best, he could have had a few days with her before she had to go off on her own job, and they could enjoy those days together now instead. Sure, it wasn’t the same, and it certainly wasn’t fair, but it was also hopeless. All this had already happened, and going back in time would alter history too much, according to her. She was perfectly happy with how her life had turned out, and counter herself lucky to be seeing him now. As the Centurion, working primarily in the 20th century, Camden was never allowed to undergo longevity treatments in his original present, so he would have likely died by this point in history. What happened, happened, and could not have happened any other way, for they were all still alive. At least now he had broken his connection to the powers that be.

Over the years, there was a hint that there could be something romantic between Saga and Camden, but nothing came of it. Though she could never be as close to anyone as she had been to her one and only true partner, Vearden, Saga saw Camden as her new partner. They got to know each other well enough to develop a shorthand, and an unbreakable friendship. Today was May 18, 2161. They were walking back from the natural human grocery store when a van pulled up next to them, and matched their speed. The sliding door opened up, and a girl called out, “your ride’s here!”

Saga tensed up. “What?”

“Saga! It’s me!”

Saga got a better look, not having recognized the voice at first. “Paige? Paige Turner, is that you?”

“It is,” Paige replied. “Get in.”

“Where are we going?”

“The future. Tomorrow’s a bad day for salmon and choosers. Everybody needs to skip it.”

“What’s so bad about it?” Camden asked.

“We weren’t told that,” Paige answered.

“We think it has to do with syzygy,” a voice from inside the van said.

“We don’t all think that,” Paige argued.

“What’s Ssssssiiiiii—” began to ask, not even sure how to pronounce what the other one had said.

Another girl peeked her head out the door. “Syzygy. It’s when celestial bodies line up. Tomorrow’s Syzygy is important, though. All eight planets are going to line up, on the same side of the sun.” She stuck her arm out. “Hi, I’m Dar’cy.”

“Nice to meet you, Darcy,” Saga said, shaking her hand.

“No, it’s Dar’cy. My mother, Marcy is weird. I was named after her and my father, Darko Matic.”

“You’re Darko’s kid?” Saga asked.

“Yes. I was born on Tribulation Island...after you were torn out of time.”

“Oh,” Saga said quietly. Years ago, she was kidnapped by a very powerful choosing one, and forced to live on an island on another planet, along with all her friends. It was meant as a punishment for Leona Matic, who she held responsible for two of her siblings’ deaths. Every few years, she would remove one of Leona’s loved ones from the timeline, only keeping Leona’s memory of them intact. She would have to complete challenges to get them back, calling upon the aid of everyone who was still left, even though they literally didn’t know who they were fighting for. Once they were all finally returned to the timeline, very few people had any memory of the ordeal. To the ones without it, they believed they had lived on the island almost completely carefree the entire time. Saga had been removed from the timeline once before, though, which she assumed was why she knew the whole truth about that corrupted timeline. She came back to find Vearden had died while she was gone, so she immediately opened a portal to 1947 Bangladesh, and dedicated her life to helping people. This was why she had never had the pleasure of meeting this Dar’cy.

“What do you keep going on about?” Paige asked as one of the lucky ones, who couldn’t remember anything about the corrupted timeline.

A third girl showed her face. “And my name is Missy Atterberry. I don’t have anything to add to the conversation otherwise.”

“I’m Camden Voss,” he chimed in.

Missy nodded her head. “Xearea’s infamous brother. She didn’t tell us how hot you were.”

“Same for you,” he said, like he had known Missy’s inappropriate remark was coming.

Paige smiled. “You’re not on the list, but you’re salmon, so someone was likely scheduled to pick you up too, but you should get in, just in case you were missed.”

“I likely was. Missed, that is. I don’t know that I’m salmon anymore. I fell off my pattern.”

“Believe me,” Paige began, “they will find a way to get you back on it. Leona has fallen off hers many, many times.”

“Yeah, and we need to get going,” Dar’cy said. “We’ve yet to pick up Ulinthra.”

“Where have I heard that name before?” Saga wondered. “I associate it with...Harrison. Harrison the android, yes. He was on Tribulation Island long before any of us, I believe.”

Awkward silence since there was no reason to reply to that.

“Well, we should go,” Missy said.

Saga and Camden gave each other one look. “No, thanks,” she said politely.

“What?”

“We won’t be joining you. Safe travels.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Paige said. “You’re in danger here. It’s only for one day, though. You’ll blink, and it’ll be May 20th. Maybe the 21st.”

“That’s okay,” Camden said. “We’re fine here.”

“But you don’t know what’s gonna happen.”

“Ya know, people who can’t see the future do that all the time,” Camden told them. “That’s just...life, for them.”

“You’re not one of them,” Dar’cy pointed out. “Is it a pride thing? No one’s going to think less of you for avoiding something dangerous.”

“No,” Saga said, “we just don’t find it necessary.”

“Saga, it would be like me telling you there’s a cliff ahead, and you just continuing to walk towards it anyway. That’s not rational.”

Saga shrugged.

“Well, we’re not in charge of you, but we strongly urge you to get the eff out.”

“We appreciate the concern,” Camden said. “If something bad is coming, we’re gonna wanna be here. My sister certainly is.”

Another silence, but this time not so awkward, just reverent.

Paige frowned.

Dar’cy didn’t seem to care one way, or the other.

“Kay, byeeeeeee,” Missy said.

They left Saga and Camden to continue their errands.

The next day, they started feeling a strong vibration all over their house. It intensified, gradually becoming a full-on earthquake. This was it. This was what their friends had been talking about. Why would they need to skip over the day, though? Earthquakes don’t happen all over the planet at the same time. They really just needed to travel somewhere else, if even that. This wasn’t so bad. They had the impulse to go outside and look around, though. As soon as they stepped out, they could feel a warmth bearing down on them from the sky. They looked up.

“Do you see that?” Camden asked.

“What is that?” The sky was rolling like waves, floating from one direction, to the other. No, it wasn’t waves, nor was it the sky itself. It was just the shape of an object, coming towards them. An invisible object. An invisible, massive object.

“Is that, like, the fraking moon, or something?” he asked in shock.

“I have no frelling idea,” she responded. “It’s almost like the sky is falling.”

“What’s happening to you?” he now asked of her.

“What?” She looked down at him. His body was rolling and waving also, like an invisible force was warping all around him. She looked down at her own body, which was doing the exact same thing.

“I think this is what the ladies were talking about,” he guessed.

Pretty soon, they could feel themselves being pulled from the ground. The object in the sky was luring them to it, like a magnet. They flew through the air, completely helpless to it, and moving faster with each passing second.

In moments, they were standing safely on the surface of a different planet, watching the Earth fly past them now. This wasn’t the first time Saga had traveled to another world, so there was no need to panic. But somebody needed to tell Camden that, because he was currently freaking the freak out, having never experienced anything like this in his life. He was looking around like a paranoid chicken in a slaughterhouse.

“Calm down,” she tried to tell him.

“What is this? Where are we?”

“Somewhere new.”

“You’ve never been here before?”

She took a deep breath. “No, I don’t think so, but it’ll be okay. Feel that? That’s air. We can breathe, check. Vegetation, check. We’ll have something to eat. Water? There’s vegetation, so probably. Probably somewhere.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s safe! We have no idea what’s going on, or what’s going to happen!” he cried. “And where’s Xearea? Did she come here too? Is she back on Earth? What if a bridge fell on top of her?”

She took him by his trembling upper arms. “Camden. You were a secret agent...in a secret agency...protecting humans...who didn’t know you existed. You can handle this.” She started the patterned breathing techniques she had taught oh so many mothers in labor when she was a time traveling nurse.

He mirrored her breathing. “All right. You’re right. This is nothing.” They could hear footsteps approach them from the side, moving quickly. Camden tensed up again, and sent his body into the fight stress response. “Why didn’t I bring my weapon?”

“Because you didn’t know you were coming here,” Saga reminded him, knowing it wasn’t a real question. She prepared for a fight as well.

A man stopped a few meters in front of them. “Did you see something fall?” He started searching the ground. “I was on my way to Watershed when I swear I saw a bright twinkling object, coming straight from Earth. I must have horribly misjudged where it landed.”

“Uhh...no, I believe that was us,” Saga said tentatively.

“You’re from Earth?” he asked them.

“Yeah, you’ve heard of it.”

“Of course. From the histories. What are your names?”

“Saga Einarsson. Camden Voss.”

He shook their hands. “Ludvig. Now that we apparently didn’t crash into Earth, I believe I can take you to your friend.”

“Our friend?”

“Yeah. Hokusai Gimura. You don’t know her?”

No.

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Microstory 698: Quantum Darkness Declines

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We’ve been fighting a war on two primary fronts, and have been doing this for years. Some battles are fought against people; with weaponry, blood, and loss. Others are fought against the quantum darkness, which has proven itself to be stronger than we previously believed. Every star in every galaxy in the cluster has been shrouded from sight, destroying most life. Entire planets in Fostea, for instance, have been abandoned, for they are no longer capable of sustaining life in any meaningful way. There’s a reason why humans don’t live permanently in the blackness of interstellar space. Well now, all star systems basically exist under these same conditions. The only thing characteristic they retain from before is their orbits, for the stars are still there, just covered. Those living in places with fewer resources were relocated to the central worlds, and other, more wealthy, civilizations. This process was supported by the Ring of Migration, a powerful tool wielded by new eido, Agantai Bauriter. The economy has suffered immensely from this, especially since a great deal of our collective resources have been redirected to the traditional war battles. It has forced us to adapt our ways to something more restrictive, and less free. Though we still adhere to capitalism, we have developed regulations that to make sure our resources are allocated to the appropriate places. No longer can we survive with anyone accumulating whatever they work hard enough for. Though we are nowhere near the level of mainstream parity of the dirty communists, we now live more like Earthans. Nations on Earth are primarily labor-based, with strong emphasis on the correlation between hard work and fortune. There are programs, however, that provide for people who are less capable, so that the market remains somewhat stable. We’ve learned a lot from the Earthans these last few years that has saved us from complete annihilation. The most faithful of us still believe we will return to a culture of freedom, but for now, the Earthan method will have to do. We have studied the problem of the quantum darkness, with experts sharing knowledge at an unprecedented level. Together, they have figured out how to begin defeating this evil. As a gift to Earth, and out of obligation, we have used this new information to begin turning the lights back on, to be metaphorical. We’ve started with the ones closest to Earth so they won’t notice that anything was ever wrong.

Microstory 697: The Great Earthquake

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Despite making no mention of the Thuriamen, or the fact that the twisted Amadesis faith might have survived in any form, Sacred Savior Sotiren Zahir predicted a great earthquake. For those of you who can’t discern this from the language, an earthquake is a seismic event exclusive to the planet Earth. Though the Earthans are fully aware that tremors can occur on other orbitals, they have a long history of geocentrism, making it difficult for them to truly fathom how things happen outside their sheltered bubble. Rather, they have difficulty relating to things that are too far away to have any observed effect on them. Earthquakes occur all the time. In fact, it’s considered to be a natural phenomenon, with the world’s humans nearly totally helpless to predict one, let alone reduce its damage. This would not be just any tremor, however, in that it was foretold to happen soon after the declaration of the new war, and would somehow be caused by it. For the last several centuries, as we were waiting for the taikon to come to pass, academics couldn’t understand how this would be possible. Quantum Entanglement is one thing, but we know of no region of Fostea that has any connection to Earth, nor do we know of such a region anywhere else in the universe, for that matter. It does have a connection to one at least one other planet, but that’s located in the other universe, and we never thought we would ever have to return there save for our secret trips using the bar catel. Now, with the sudden discovery or our new enemies in the Thuriamen, we have a reason to engage in battle near Earth. We made every attempt to limit this first battle to the Thuriamen dimensions, but were forced to employ the aid of some unlikely allies who used their capabilities to keep the Earthan humans veiled. During the lead up to the Battle Between Two Earths, scholars postulated that the Great Earthquake wasn’t literal. While kept secret from the Earthan natives, it could still be one of the most profound events in Earthan history, having a lasting general effect on their future. They were wrong about this, and really, we were just lying to ourselves about this. The battle itself was so powerful that it ended up creating one of the most devastating earthquakes in recorded history, especially as followed by a series of deadly tsunamis. This catastrophe opened the eyes of our military leaders, and even also those of our new enemies, who were never before worried about illegally deveiling the Earthans. Later battles in the Light Wars would be fought elsewhere in an attempt to prevent something like this from ever happening again.

Microstory 563: The Quake That Never Was

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Two weeks ago, a minor seismic tremor shook the Usonian west coast. No big deal, we deal with them every time. No one was hurt, and we suffered very little damage. But something was different about it. This tremor wasn’t supposed to be minor at all...it was actually shaping up to be the largest in recorded history. Science, for now, has given us no way to significantly predict major seismic activity before it begins, but the same does not go for predicting an active tremor’s growth. By measuring the increase in intensity over even a short period of time, seismologists have learned to determine just how big the quake will ultimately be. This on its own serves little practical purpose, for getting the word out to the public how bad it’s going to get once it gets worse than it already is can’t ever really help. However, this research is a necessary step to predicting quakes with enough time to warn people of its danger, and even possibly halting a quake’s progress. This may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but it’s technically already happened before. With this one. Several separate teams of seismologists were in decent enough locations to measure the seismic activity for this particular tremor. By combining their data, they discovered that it was simply not as large as it should have been. Its ultimate effects should have been devastating for anyone close to its epicenter. So why was it so minor? Well, technically it wasn’t, because what actually happened was that it simply stopped. After but a few moments of a steady increase in intensity, it suddenly began to dissipate at an even faster rate; faster than could be considered physically probable. Plenty of scientists in the field are studying the possibility of halting quakes, but as far as the industry as a whole knows, no one has been successful. It’s possible that this research is being done in secret, yet no team has come forward with their findings. They are either keeping it under wraps even still, or something else is going on. Already, certain religious groups are using this as an opportunity to promote their faith, claiming some divine intervention. We may never know what truly happened with this tremor, but I think most of us hopes that it happens again.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: 2121 – 2123

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Just before hitting the water in 2121, the scene changed, and Mateo Matic found himself in the middle of a city. He was just standing there on the sidewalk, as if he had been there for the last few minutes. After a second, though, he realized that he wasn’t in a city as he remembered them. Before him stood a gargantuan structure, larger than anything he had ever seen in his life. It looked like something out of a science fiction movie, which made sense considering that this was the early 22nd century. While he was trying to admire the beauty in the architecture, he heard a faint scream. High up above, someone was falling towards their death, like Mateo had many times before. He watched along with the crowd, but then started to feel dry mouth. Suddenly, he was no longer on the ground, but in the air with the falling man. He instinctively took the man in an embrace and teleported back to safety on the ground. They were now standing a few kilometers away from the massive structure, in the middle of the woods. Only then could he see the structure’s true glory.

“How did you do that?” the man asked.

“I don’t know, I just work here.”

A dark-skinned woman teleported herself in, and immediately started clapping. “And a great job you did.” She directed her attention towards the man. “You may go now.” She waved her hand and apported him away.

Mateo outstretched his hand, but assumed this woman would already know who he was. “Hi, I’m Mateo Matic.”

“Nice to meet you, Mateo. My name is Sabra. Are you the newest Savior?”

“Oh. Um...I guess I am,” he answered.

“Great, well, you can call me by my name, but I also go by Memphis.”

“Are you from Tennessee?”

She laughed. “No. The other Memphis. I’m very old. In fact, I’m one of the first.” She seemed a little perturbed when Mateo didn’t ask for details. She was probably used to people asking just how old she really was.

Mateo was already over it.

She awkwardly moved on. “Okay. Do you understand what’s being asked of you? Do you know what a Savior does?”

“Not specifically, but as I understand it, we teleport around saving people’s lives.”

“Yes, but you are no superhero. You won’t be hanging around to flirt with the pretty girl, or tell everyone that it’s—” and she threw up airquotes for this— “all in a day’s work. Literally as soon as everyone is safe, you’ll move on to the next assignment. It will probably last a few seconds, and then you’ll move on to the next. And then the next. And so on and so on. Now, Saviors normally get breaks, but I’m afraid that you don’t have that luxury. We have to squeeze an entire year into the span of twenty-four hours.” She looked at her bare wrist. “We’ve already lost several minutes just talking about it.” She handed him something that kind of looked like a gun, but clearly wasn’t. “Inject yourself with these whenever you start feeling tired. The doses will keep you going for three days straight. You’ll crash and feel like shit afterwards, but apparently you chose this?”

“Well...” Mateo had bargained with Arcadia when the true Savior, Xearea was mortally wounded. He asked Arcadia to tear her out of time, which was the only way to save her life. A consequence of this was that others would have to take her place during those missing years. “I didn’t really have much of a choice.”

“It’s all a matter of perspective. We just need you to help get us through the Xearea years before The Last Savior is called upon.”

“Whoa, wait. The Last Savior? There’s an endgame to this?”

“Well, not really,” Memphis replied. “It’s just that a Savior won’t be necessary past the 22nd century. At that point, humans tend to be able to take care of themselves well enough.”

“I didn’t know that. I guess I thought you would always have one Savior at all times.”

“That doesn’t account for the interim periods between a Savior’s retirement, or death, and the activation of their successor. Nor has there always been only one at a time. You’ve just only been around when we started our little Buffy sequence.”

“Buffy sequence.”

“Ya know...’cause there can be only one? Never mind. You don’t really need to know the history. What I can tell you is that teleporting Saviors used to come in packs, because life used to be more dangerous. Each time someone comes up with something like antiseptics, seatbelts, or cellphones, we lose a little bit more of our relevance, and our numbers are decrease. The Last Savior will mark the end of that era.”

“I see. And who handles these interim periods?”

“Before, we would stagger their activations, but since we ended up with only one at a time, time travelers like your father are called to fill in those gaps.”

“Oh. The pieces are all coming together now.”

“I should hope so. Now that you have some perspective, you really must be going. Like I said, you’ll have to work through an entire year in only a day. You’ll be given an average of three minutes per day.” She eyed her wrist again, still intent on pretending there was a watch attached to it. “Starting...now.”

Before that last word left Memphis’ lips, Mateo teleported to a new location. He apported a nice couple lost on a nature hike back to safety. He rescued a child who had fallen in the ocean from her floating city. He pulled someone out of the street where someone else was recklessly driving one of those manual vehicles from the olden days that probably should have been outlawed by now, if they weren’t already. These were the easy jobs, likely just to get him familiar with the process. There was even a possibility that they were staged by Memphis, or maybe Arcadia, so that the dumb trainee wouldn’t screw something up for real. He ended up moving on to developing countries where technology was far more advanced than anything he saw in his original time period, but still more primitive than what could be found elsewhere. Things were more dangerous in these parts, but still not generally as bad as the early 21st century. There were a few really terrible things, though. A test of an earthquake management system resulted in a massive backfire. Hundreds of workers and bystanders were suddenly put in immense danger. Mateo was forced to teleport next to maybe two or three people at a time, huddle them together, and teleport them far enough away to keep them safe. Then he would have to go back and grab some more. Fortunately, even with the time constraints, he was successful in his mission, and no one was seriously injured.

There were still other human-driven complications that Mateo had to deal with. Weapons still existed, and they still often ended up being pointed in the direction of innocent people. Two countries that shall not be named even fired missiles towards each other, forcing Mateo to teleport onto each of them, and spirit them away to the middle of outerspace. How people who knew nothing of teleportation and time travel were explaining any of these things was neither something Mateo had time to worry about, nor the resources to answer.

He did all this over the course of three days. Eventually, the passage of time barely registered with him. He just kept going, really only stopping to inject himself with the fancy futuristic stamina drug. It was likely developed as part of a supersoldier program, but was deemed unsafe because of its awful side effect. A couple hours before midnight central, Memphis dropped by quite briefly to let him know that his, uhh...nine-tuple shift was over, and that he was free to rest. He really needed it too, because by the time he woke up back on the island, it was 2125, and he still felt like crap.

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Microstory 105: Blake Williams

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There were a handful of anomalies who had some form of telekinesis; the ability to move objects from a distance. They each had their own niche, and none of them possessed a more generic variety like that which one might find in the witches or prosper humans. Blake Williams was no different, though his was probably the most frustrating and, at first, the least useful. He could create small seismic events, which was perfect for all those times he desperately needed to knock over a table or shatter a few glasses. For the first few times that it happened, his mothers assumed that they were just experiencing minor tremors. However, they grew suspicious when the quakes began to follow them around, and were always so very localized. Having known no other way, Blake never thought to explain to them that he felt a surge of energy in his chest every time it happened, and that he was always rather moody at the moment. Since he was so young, he just assumed that that’s what people felt when quakes were happening. Once they realized that he was the source of the disturbances, they immediately got to work. They enrolled him in Eastern spiritual disciplines so that he could learn ways to remain calm and centered. They spent their very last dime purchasing a nearby botanical garden so that Blake could always find tranquility. They encouraged him to become a hair stylist because it was considered to be one of the least stressful careers. He was happy, and the only time he ever generated quakes was when he chose to (i.e. never). After years of a sheltered but contented existence, he decided to take a trip to the coast. While he was there, the area began experiencing what was shaping up to be one of the largest and most devastating seismic events in history. Except that it didn’t. As it started, and Blake was sure that it wasn’t originating from him, he instinctively planted himself on the ground and lowered his center of gravity. He quickly discovered the shaking from the ground being drawn into his body and dissipating. He was settling the quake, rather than creating it. There was no telling how many lives Blake Williams saved that day, but it gave him a pretty good rush. He quit his job and revealed his secret to a team of scientists who were working on predicting seismic activity so that he could travel the world and prevent them on the regular.