Microstory 2042: New York

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As I said before, the state of New Jersey worked really hard to find out if my parents were still alive in Ethiopia. They were unable to find them, or any other family that I might have there, which is why my fathers were allowed to adopt me. When I was 7 years old, though, that changed. A special charity organization flew to Ethiopia, and started offering free DNA testing. Anyone in our country can send in a sample so a computer can study their DNA, but it’s not that easy in other parts of the world. An aunt of mine participated in this special program, and when they uploaded the information to the big worldwide database, they found that I was a match. My fathers did it for me early on after I first met them, because they wanted to know whether there were any medical issues that they should be worried about. When they found out that I did have some family in Africa, they decided that we would all three fly out there to meet them. As it turns out, my birth parents were dead, but my aunt had a husband, and they had a bunch of kids, who were my brand new cousins. They were happy that my papa and dad were now my parents, so they didn’t want to take me away, but they did want to have relationships with me. So my fathers worked really hard to help them get to the United States. It has taken years since 2019, but they are finally living here, and on their way to becoming U.S. citizens. I wish my papa was alive to see it. Oh, and we had a really long layover in New York while we were waiting to fly to Africa, so my papa was able to see it.

Microstory 2041: New Jersey

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My dad and teacher didn’t want me to put this information on the slide, and I bet she’s upset with me right now as I’m presenting it, but the way I see it, it’s my story, and I should be able to tell it. I was born in a country in Africa called Ethiopia. When I was still a baby, some men came into my village, and took me away. They were trying to sell me to some really bad people. We think that I would have grown up to be a slave for them. That’s right, slavery still happens. I was rescued, but not everyone is, and it’s going on all over the world. They found me and a bunch of other children on a big ship, and took me to New Jersey where I would be safe. But I still didn’t have a home. A group of women who worked for the state took care of us in an orphanage. Reporters talked about what happened to us on the news, so actually a lot of people wanted to adopt us, but they first had to see if they could send us back to our birth parents. It was really complicated. It usually took a really long time to find out where we belonged, because we didn’t all know our names, or who our parents were. I was there for three years before my papa and dad came in to take me to my forever home. I will always be grateful to them for that, because I love them, and I would never want to live anywhere else.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Year 121 RSS

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Leona turned out to have packed a lot more in her emergency bag than a teleporter gun. It’s all tricked out with a vacuum tent, an oxygen tank, a carbon scrubber, food, hydroponic tubes, basic survival supplies, and even a miniature meat bioreactor, along with a fusion reactor to power everything. She designed it to promote the survival of one to three people in an environment with no atmosphere, and no organic resources. It can recycle water for a time, but this is not a permanent solution. For that, she wants to include starter nanites, as well as a few other amenities, but the tools that she had at her disposal in the Third Rail were limited. It’s impressive what she came up with already, and it’s more than they need in this place. All combined, it’s far lighter than it sounds, and could be carried by an average-sized adult with little issue.

When the team first landed in the Third Rail, their bags of holding stopped working, leaving only a few random items available to them, possibly forever. They do not have the Compass of Disturbance, or the HG Goggles, but Leona had built something pretty similar. It was mostly designed to test for the temporal origin of a given object or individual, but she thinks she can rework it to find out how long the lost objects in this forest have been sitting there. Erlendr was already trying to do that himself, but he could only estimate it, and he was way off on a lot of things, because it’s not like he has any experience dating aged and weathered objects.

Mateo didn’t help with the mapping project that Leona performed to find the location of the next roving bulk portal. It was his sole job to keep an eye on Erlendr, and since he would be an incredible annoyance on the road, the two of them just stayed at camp. Leona taught Alyssa how to work her gizmo, while she kept a lookout for threats. There are other people on this planet. They can hear them in the distance, in their little village by the river. They never come this deep into the woods, though.

The planet is not naturally habitable in salmonverse, so calling it a duplicate of Proxima Doma isn’t really all that fair. Leona’s current hypothesis is that this universe developed about the same way as it did for their brane, but experienced an impact—or series of impacts—which resulted in this huge mountain range in the Terminator Zone. This region receives warmth from the host star, Proxima Centauri, while being protected from its wrathful magnetic flare-ups. It probably gets warmer at those times, but not detrimentally so. Free from these solar storms, which would otherwise blow the atmosphere away, a pocket of civilization has been able to develop here without artificial superstructures. They couldn’t have evolved here, though. They came from Earth. They’re human.

“I believe we have enough data,” Alyssa declares, having just finished analyzing a heavily bedraggled forest couch.

Leona thinks she heard something, so she scans the trees a little more while Alyssa is waiting. Once she feels comfortable, she takes the tablet, and looks at the readings. “It probably is, but I think I saw some right angles between those trees. If there’s one more lost object deposit, then I would like to check it, and then we’ll see if our map does us any good.”

“Is there a chance that there is no pattern at all?”

“There’s more than a chance. If this phenomenon has anything to do with the flares from Proxima Centauri, it may be hopeless. We may be stuck here forever.”

Alyssa frowns.

“Trina is safe,” Leona goes on. “So are Carlin and Moray. I know what it’s like to leave people behind, unsure of their fate. All you can do is be strong, and keep trying.”

“Okay.” Alyssa sets her anxiety aside for now. “Let’s go investigate these right angles.”

Whatever Leona saw, it must have been an optical illusion. This area seems to be beyond the range of the portal. Or maybe it sometimes shows up, but doesn’t deposit anything. It may go all over the planet, and this only looks like a place of higher concentration. They have caught glimpses of the village, which doesn’t look technologically advanced at all. Whether that was originally done on purpose or not, it suggests that the people have yet to discover the lost objects. There are a lot of cell phones here, like a shocking number of them. One might think that they would eventually reverse-engineer them, or at least become inspired to aspire to it. Who knows? They don’t even know if the bulk portal is two-way. This could all be a massive waste of time. “Okay, I guess that’s it. Let me see if the map has good news.”

They turn to head back for camp when they see a young boy staring at them a few meters away. He looks scared. “Well, hello there,” Alyssa says to him kindly.

“Are you a wraith?”

“A what?” Alyssa asks.

The boy looks down at Leona’s device when it beeps to indicate that the map is finished rendering. “Forbidden. Forbidden object!” He runs back towards his village screaming, “forest wraiths! Forest wraiths! Alert the king!”

“We should go,” Alyssa decides.

“Yeah,” Leona agrees. She starts heading towards camp, but stops when her tablet beeps again.

“What is it?”

“It’s already detected a pattern.” Leona’s eyes widen.

“What is it?” Alyssa repeats.

“We need to run.”

They bolt, and make it back to camp out of breath.

“What is it?” Mateo asks. “Is everything okay?” He looks at Erlendr, in case he had something to do with this.

“Se...” Leona continues to try to breathe. “Seven.”

“Seven what?” Mateo urges.

“Seven years.” Another breath. “Eighty-three days.”

“Seven years, and eighty-three days. That’s how long we’ll have to wait?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“It’s okay, be patient with yourself.”

“I can’t. Erlendr was right, but he didn’t have the whole story. This planet makes one orbit every eleven days, and Proxima Centauri rotates on its own axis on an eighty-three day cycle. That means that the portal opens up every eleven days, but it only does it seven times before the poles reverse.”

“The poles?”

“The poles,” Leona confirms. “The AI from The Constant, it detected a pattern. Every seven Earthan years, the sun’s magnetic poles reverse, and begin dumping random objects from the bulk roughly every eleven days for eighty-three days.”

“How many times has it done it during this cycle?” Erlendr asks. “At least three.”

“There’s no way to know. If we miss the next one, we may only have to wait for eleven more days, or seven more years. My system detected some objects that were recent, some that were seven years old, others that were fourteen years old, and so on. Nothing shows up during the interim periods. That’s how I realized that they matched this solar system’s behavior.”

“So where’s the next portal going to open up?” Alyssa asks.

Leona frowns, and delays her response. “There is no pattern to that, at least not one that the AI can detect. I know that it’s going to happen today, but I don’t know where. It may have popped up already. That’s why I ran. That’s why I’m so earnest. Mateo, are you...sensing anything?”

Confused, Mateo switches his gaze among everyone, as if he’s not the only one who could answer that question. “No, not really. Little hungry.”

“Are your hands, uhh...being blocked right now?”

He pulls at his shirt, which would have disappeared if he wasn’t letting the layer of telekinesis magic protect it from the timonite layer on his skin. “Yes, you want me to unblock them?”

“You could try,” Leona suggests. Just try not to touch anything.”

Mateo clears his throat, and turns around. They see him start to undo his pants as he heads for the trees alone. He doesn’t go very far, so they can hear what he’s doing, as if they needed any more proof. “Okay,” he says once he returns. He takes his shirt off completely. He’s not had anything else to wear for eleven days, so it’s pretty dirty and uncomfortable—they couldn’t bathe or wash in the river without being seen—and he doesn’t want to waste the timonite on needless banishments. It may be a finite resource.

“Do you feel anything now?” Erlendr asks him.

“Shut up,” Leona orders.

Mateo holds his arms out, not only hoping to catch a scent of some kind, but also to keep from touching anything he doesn’t want to get rid of. He starts to wander around the area. Meanwhile, Alyssa and Leona begin to break camp, and Erlendr stews. His hands are still cuffed, though now in front of his body. He’s getting off easy. “I feel something!” Mateo announces.

“Where?” Leona lets go of the vacuum tent, which expands automatically from the outside of the bag, and has to be collapsed back in manually. Alyssa takes the job over, since it still has to be done.

“It’s close. It’s very close. I think it already dumped something, and it’s just hanging around. I think we could have gone back in where we came last year, had we been able to see it.”

“Can you see it now?” Leona presses.

“No, but I can tell where it is. Come on.” While Alyssa throws the pack over her shoulders, Leona and Erlendr begin to follow Mateo through the trees. He’s moving slow enough, so she’s able to catch up. “It’s here,” he finally says. “Are we ready?”

“How do we get through?” Alyssa asks.

“Everyone take a hand,” Mateo figures. Once they do, technicolor bulk energy begins to cover their bodies. They slip through the portal, and land on some rocks by the river. They’re not alone. “Medavorken?”

“Mateo?” Medavorken asks right back.

“Hi, I’m Cricket!” a young woman says excitedly.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: August 23, 2398

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Neither Winona nor Tarboda have any clue what the United Kingdom is, or the North Atlantic Isles, or anything else that it might be called. If they ever called it something else, they don’t know that either, because it doesn’t even seem familiar when he tries to talk about a big land mass above France on the map. To them, there’s pretty much only ocean there. That’s when Mateo remembers that at least one little bit of England remained where it was meant to be, as its own tiny island. “Follow me.”

“Follow you where?” Tarboda questions, but he and Winona follow anyway.

“We’re gonna see if Bristol is here, or not. We’ll need to find some wheels, though, if they’re even a thing here.” They’re on a path, and that looks like a road in the middle distance, so vehicles existed here at some point. “We have yet to see a soul.”

“What are we expecting?” Winona asks.

“We’re expecting it to be missing,” Mateo answers. “We’re expecting nothing but water. That’s assuming I’m taking us in the right direction.”

They start walking northwest, which is about as accurate as Mateo can get with the orientation. They see the occasional farm building, and more roads, but no other signs of life. If the isles were sucked into a portal, the process may have been detrimental to complex life. If it happened a long enough time ago, maybe the plantlife came back on its own, Mateo doesn’t know how it works. Or maybe they’re just in a rural area, and nobody happens to be around. Finally, after a solid five-k, they find a small town, just waking up for the day.

“Morning!” a local calls out to them from across the street. He jogs over to them. “Are you nomads? I’ve already eaten, but my nanny will be making breakfast for my children soon. You’re welcome to join, and then stay with us for a night.”

“We’re not nomads,” Winona explains. “We’re just travelers. We’re looking for a town called Bristol.”

The stranger frowns, but not in a sad way. “Hmm. Never heard of it.” That’s a good sign. “The county cartographer would be able to help you. She’s heard of every street, every building, in the whole world.”

“Oh, wow. Tell me,” Mateo says, “how big is the world?”

He smiles. “Why, I’m not sure. She would know that too. If you’re asking how much land there is, though, I think it’s about 150 leagues wide, and 200 leagues long.”

“And there’s nothing beyond it?” Tarboda asks him.

“Beyond the ocean?” He laughs. “Not that I know of. Explorers used to search, but I think they gave up on it.” He narrows his eyes at them playfully. “Wait a second, you wouldn’t happen to be from beyond the ocean, would you?”

“What would happen to us if we were?” Winona asks.

“Well, we would celebrate, of course! New friends? We only ever get new friends when babies are born! They’re great, but they don’t say too much, and they’re always complaining.” He’s either talking in the more general sense of an isolated population, or there aren’t millions of people here, like there ought to be. “Anyway, I must get to work in Winterbourne Stoke in about an hour. The cartographer lives over there! Good luck!” He just heads down the street, not getting into a car, which suggests that he’s going to walk, and if he has to be there in an hour, it’s probably pretty far away. Hopefully they do have cars here somewhere. They would ask, but he’s busy, and he’s been so nice.

The cartographer’s house is across the street from a park, so that’s where they sit until a more appropriate hour. By the time they feel like it’s late enough, guessing by the sun, a fairly old woman comes out of the house. They approach her cautiously, but when she sees them, she smiles as joyfully as the man did. People are real friendly ‘round these here parts. She speaks before they can even explain why they’re there. “Nomads, no doubt! Please, accompany me to work. I would love to hear stories of your travels.”

Mateo decides to take a risk. “We’re from the world beyond the ocean.”

She frowns in a disbelieving way, and looks around for eavesdroppers. “Tell me where, and if you try to lie, I’ll know. I’m aware of all the islands.”

“We’re not from an island, we’re from Kansas City,” Mateo says.

She perks up. “Funny you don’t consider it an island. We’ve always suspected that the residents could not see outside the bubble. Tell me, how did you escape?”

“The bubble?” Mateo asks. While she’s not responding, he looks away to think. “You’ve seen this bubble? From the outside?”

“Not personally. I’ve seen video footage, taken from the scouting plane. How did you escape?” she repeats.

Mateo keeps thinking. “What other places have you seen? Easter Island, maybe?”

“Yes. That, plus Kure, Muskoka District, El-Sheikh Zayed, Panama, and Machu Picchu.”

“Have you heard of those places?” Mateo asks Winona.

“I’ve heard of Panama and Machu Picchu, of course, but that’s it,” she answers.

“Kure is in Japan,” Tarboda adds. “I flew missions there during World War VI.”

“And I’ve heard of Muskoka,” Mateo says. “It’s in Canada. Have you ever heard of Canada?” he asks the cartographer.

“Nope, are people nice there?” she asks.

“Very,” he replies. “Are all the others in bubbles?”

“None of the others is,” she says. “Only Kansas City, and we only called it that because we saw signs for Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri. We figured Kansas and Missouri were the subdivisions, and their conventions reverse the order.”

Mateo gets back into his own head. He had always wondered why they called The Fourth Quadrant its own reality when it just seemed to be a pocket dimension. Based on his interactions with the people living there, they believe that their universe is as small as the metropolitan area. He wonders how they explained the sun, because it’s only now that he knows that the sun he’s looking up at right now is the same one. There’s a whole world out there, and the key to reaching the farthest corners of it lies in that circle of stones to the southeast. He’s sure of it. “We have to go back.”

“We have to go back where?” Winona questions.

“Stonehenge. Those stone archways aren’t just well-placed rocks. They’re doorways. They’re portals.”

“I don’t understand,” the cartographer admits.

“That’s okay,” Mateo says. “I don’t understand it either. We just have to go back where we came from. I really appreciate the information, and thank you to your people for being so pleasant and accommodating.”

“Wait,” she says. “Information should go both ways.”

“I’ll do you one better,” Mateo begins. “If I’m right, there’s a way back to your world of origin, so you’re about to meet billions of new friends.”

Microstory 1861: The Tarmides of Tasmania

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In the late sixteenth century, a certain famous playwright wrote what would become perhaps his most obscure works. He was two years from death, and didn’t even get to see his final piece performed on stage. Once Tarmides of Egypt finally did make it to the theatre, opening night was riddled with such bad luck that it ruined the show’s future indefinitely. The lead forgot many of his lines, his co-star had to give birth halfway through, forcing them to switch to an understudy. The man who played the grandfather died of a heart attack near the end, and another was impaled when the stage collapsed due to all the weight of the people who ran up to tend to the old man. The injury resulted in death a day later. It was for these reasons that all further showings were cancelled. Years later, a different troupe tried to put on another production, but it went badly too. No one else died on the night, but set pieces fell apart, multiple actors flubbed their lines, and historians believe this to be the probable ground zero for what came to be known as the relatively shortlived Lurch Plague. The play was cursed, according to the superstitious majority of the time, and no one else so much as attempted to produce it again for at least a century. Since then, rumors of further unfortunate events have spread about more recent attempts, but most of these claims remain unsubstantiated. The fact of the matter is that the play has almost certainly been produced dozens of times without any issue, but that’s not a very good story, so most students are taught the melodramatically stretched truth that the curse always takes them in the end. The mystique of this whole thing is only fueled by the subject matter of the play itself.

Tarmides was born in Greece, but the narrative is about him immigrating to Egypt to escape his past, only to find himself at the center of one disaster after another. The playwright was probably trying to demonstrate the futility of life, having become more nihilistic in his latter years, but this depressing lesson is lost to the more sensational idea that he was a prophet, who wrote it in order to prompt destruction in the real world. When I was a young man, a tyrant rose to power, and waged a war against the rural parts of my country. Villages were demolished under the weight of his superior technology. I probably wasn’t truly the only survivor, but again, that’s not sensational enough, so the media billed it that way. I became famous, and an international effort formed in order to relocate me to a safer region of the world. Most of the time, developed world nations fight over who has to take in refugees, but in my case, they fought for the honor. Tasmania won, so that’s where I moved. Shortly thereafter, an undersea earthquake in the Southern Ocean sent a tidal wave to the island, killing thousands of people, and destroying a great deal of the infrastructure. Once again, in order to sell papers, journalists began drawing connections between my arrival, and the completely unrelated and unpredictable natural disaster. Like most regular people, I hadn’t even heard of the play myself at the time, but I soon came to be known as The Tarmides of Tasmania. This nickname followed me for the rest of my life. Whenever an item fell off of the shelf at the grocery store, or I was around when it began to rain, I was blamed for it. There was always someone around who enjoyed pointing it out, especially if something even moderately inconvenient happened to someone else. I lived the rest of my life with this mark, and as much as I don’t want to die, I won’t miss it.

Microstory 1845: Home

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When I was a young lady, a group of mostly white people came to my village to tell us about their religion. We did not understand why they felt the need to do this, and we did not understand their words, but we listened to them patiently, and then went back to our business. A boy around my age caught my eye, and seemingly I his. He was quiet, and did not speak, and he was not white, but he was from the West. It appeared that he did not want to be there, doing this. Now, I’m not saying that these missionaries were bad, but they were not wanted, and we were happy when they moved on to the next village. The following night, the boy snuck out, and crossed the bridge to see me again. It was hard for us to communicate, but we figured it out. I was able to piece together that he was from Africa. I could not tell back then which country, but I know now that it was Gambia. The missionaries had once come to his home too, speaking their words. While they were there, a warlord came through, and tried to recruit all of the young boys to fight in a war that they did not believe in. His parents did not want him to fight, so they asked the missionaries to take him away. That sacrifice possibly saved his life, but he never found out what happened to his family. Back then, you could not simply look someone up on the internet. He always assumed the fighters found out what they did, and killed them for it. Two of the white missionaries raised them from then on, and he had felt indebted to them ever since. But he did not believe in their religion, and he did want to try to convince others to either. He could see that there was a difference between his group and the warlord, but he could not help but also see the parallels. They weren’t being violent, but they were being intrusive, and he did not want to do it anymore.

He was about to turn eighteen years of age, and in their culture, that meant he was a man. Together, we came up with a plan. It was clear that my village and our neighbors were not going to have anything to do with the white man’s God. The missionaries were respectful of this, but they did not like to give up if they did not have to. They had intentions to travel on, and continue spreading their words, but the boy told them that he wanted to stay. He thought my people only needed more time to learn the language, and see the light. This was his special way of getting out of his responsibilities without letting the group know the truth. It took him some time to persuade them, but they eventually saw it as a sort of rite of passage. He was ready to go off on his own, and this was the perfect opportunity for him. When they left, the boy was glad for a moment, but then he realized he had nowhere to go. He was in the middle of a strange country, and he did not know anyone but me. He wanted to go back to Usonia, to start his new life, free from the burden of proselytization, but he had no means of accomplishing this. He had no money, and no connections. I was able to explain to him that it was perfectly fine if he stayed with us. He could work in the fields, and build his own dwelling. One day, he might be able to return to North America, or anywhere else he wanted to go. He never did end up doing that, but not because he was unable to. We eventually fell in love, and after he finished constructing that dwelling, we lived in it together. We had three beautiful children, and seven grandchildren so far. He died a few years ago, and I have missed him dearly. I do not know what happens after death, if anything. Were his adoptive parents right, or are we? I do not care, as long as he is there waiting for me.

Microstory 1744: Indus

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I’ve lived next to the border my whole life, and I’ve always questioned why it’s there. I once asked my parents what was on the other side, but they always started to shiver, and couldn’t answer me. I continued to press as I grew older, never asking the same person twice, and they all gave me the same non-response. They were afraid of going over there, but could apparently not vocalize why. I once wrote a letter to a friend, asking them to pick a random time in the future, and ask me what I thought was on the other side. Perhaps being the answerer felt different than being the asker. Two years passed before I gave up. I’m sure she got the letter, and I’m sure my words were enough to scare her into forgetting she had ever read it. I feel fine. It looks so normal over there. We have trees, they have trees. Animals make their noises over here, as they do over there. How could it possibly be so special that we’re not even allowed to so much as talk about it? I fish on the bank all the time, but even when I’m alone, someone will run out and scream at me if I wade in the water too far. It’s like nearing the center sounds some kind of alarm that everyone can hear but me. I saved up all my money for years until I could buy a spyglass to get a better look, but all I can see through it are trees. The forest is too dense, no matter if I go up or down the river. I have become an adult today, and I’ve resolved to finally do something to satisfy my curiosity. I’m sure someone will try to stop me from going, as they always do, but now I have a little more agency. Now I can choose to ignore them. I pack some provisions, and head out in the middle of the night.

I’ve never liked following rules, or limiting myself to where people think I should be. I know that the other side of the river is safe. If I can just get over there, and come back, that will prove it to everyone else. I just have to figure out how. The farthest I’ve gone is about a quarter of the way there, and the floor had already started to drop. It’s possible—likely, even—that I will not be able to reach the bottom. I can’t swim, of course. The nearest lake is in the next village over, so no one thought to teach me. I think I can float, so maybe what I’ll do is just move my arms a bunch until I get close enough to stand again. I imagine it doesn’t matter exactly where on the other side I walk out. It’s all forbidden, according to the others. I step into the water, and freeze for a moment, afraid that someone will run out and scream again. They don’t usually do it this soon, but I’m still worried. It shouldn’t matter. I’m doing this, whether they like it or not, so I better just get on with it. I’m more than a quarter way there, and standing on my tippy-toes. Instinct kicks in, and I think I kind of am swimming. I wouldn’t win any races like I hear about them doing on the big lake that’s a two-day journey from here, but I’m surviving. I’m halfway there now, and so proud of myself. Suddenly, my arm runs into something. It’s smooth and hard, and it’s not just in the water. It feels like a wall, except I can’t see anything. I just see the river, and the forest behind it. I tap on it first, but then I start to pound. Harder and harder until it changes. The forest and the sky flicker, almost like torchlight, giving me glimpses of this invisible barrier. I keep striking it, eventually realizing that it’s not invisible at all. The wall is what’s here. It’s everything else that’s an illusion. There is no other side of the river. We’ve been trapped in some kind of giant prison this entire time. Now there’s only one thing left for me to do. I continue to float down the river, hoping to find an opening through the border.