Microstory 2424: Aquilonian Deep

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Why do they call it that? I don’t care. It’s an ocean. You ever see an ocean before? It’s just like that. I mean, the way my buddy hyped this up, I expected to find giant sea creatures lurking the dark waters, like a krakken, or what’s that thing from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? I never read it, I just heard about it. But mermaids. And sirens! You could do so much with this, but it’s pretty much just a giant-ass ocean. I could get that on Earth. It’s got islands too. Are you incentivized yet? No, because again, it’s just an ocean under an invisible dome? At least Polar Tropica has sun and sexy ladies in bikinis. That’s all I got to say about this. It was a nice idea, but they totally botched the execution. They told me that I would never be bored on this planet, but I was bored. I just sat in the boat, and the waves were crashing, and it wasn’t a fun experience. No one else around me seemed to be enjoying it. Sure, they were smiling and laughing, but I know what they were really thinking. Get yourself some monsters to escape from, and we’ll talk. Until then, I’m going back to one of the Lovecraftian domes. They got what I need.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 9, 2461

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Ramses had it figured out. Through a lot of experimentation and trial and error, he was able to come up with a device that measured an individual’s cosmic frequency. This was all taking place on the quantum level. Normal samples, like blood, did not give him any useful information about them in this regard. They needed an EEG. He theorized that every brane in the bulk vibrated at a unique frequency of its constituent particles and waves. Each one had some form of the cosmic microwave background radiation left over from its inception event, and the collection of subatomic particles that made up any individual or object from that universe harmonized with that radiation. When something was removed from its universe, and placed in another, it exhibited a disharmony with its environment. By sampling the brainwaves of thousands of people in Stoutverse, Ramses had been able to come up with a baseline, and then write an algorithm which compared that baseline to visitors, such as himself and Olimpia.

The three men who came through the Westfall doors each disharmonized with the environment in a different way, as did their current group of Ochivari prisoners of war. By comparing the three men’s cosmic frequencies to the Ochivari, Ramses was able to determine that they were not from the same universe. Unfortunately, that wasn’t inherently good enough as the human allies were suspected of originating from somewhere other than the Ochivari homeworld anyway. He needed more data, and more time, to dig deeper into the subatomic properties. He now believed that he could also determine whether an individual had ever been to another universe, even if they had only stayed there for a few minutes. Each brane evidently left its signature upon their quantum consciousness. A cosmic imprint, he called it. It didn’t seem to work with inanimate objects, but he was able to detect a number of these imprints on himself and Olimpia, as well as the Ochivari. They were not present in the other three visitors, nor the natives of this universe. They were probably not spies, or they likely would have traveled to other universes before.

It was now required for all residents of this version of Earth to submit to a cosmic frequency test to make sure that they were all from this brane, and had spent their entire lives here. That was beyond Ramses’ control. He invented the machine, and the local researchers had reverse-engineered it while he was out of the timestream. Primus Mihajlović probably would have told them if they had discovered any spies using the new test, but his mind was preoccupied with something else. After using other interrogation and investigative techniques to decide whether the three Westfallers had good intentions or bad, an attempt was made to assimilate them into society somehow. It did not last very long. Last year, Dutch Haines—the gardener who was rather apathetic about all this—was bored enough to ask to meet one of the Ochivar in person. Naraschone granted this opportunity. If he turned out to indeed be an evil spy, seeing how he interacted with the POW would only give them more information.

Shortly after Dutch left the prison, the Ochivar fell ill, and ultimately succumbed to a mysterious disease that doctors could not explain. It was apparently airborne, so the rest of the prisoners contracted it too. The first one to get sick was the closest to Patient Zero, and the last one was the farthest, but they all suffered from it, and they all died. Dutch was carrying some kind of pathogen, even though he wasn’t exhibiting any signs or symptoms himself. Other humans appeared to be just fine too, for he had been free to move about the world before they placed him back in quarantine. Several months ago, another Ochivar came through a portal to complete his nefarious tasks. They sicked Dutch on him, and he too died. They had all but proved the viability of a new weapon against this multiversal threat. A biological weapon. They began to research it.

“We could wipe them all out,” Elder suggested.

“You can do what?” Ramses had heard him, but he couldn’t believe it.

“All we have to do is infect one Ochivar, and then let them try to go home. The pandemic will spread from there.”

Olimpia shook her head. “You can’t do that.”

“Oh, but we can.” Elder was apparently the biggest proponent of this project, believing that it would save human lives, and render the Transit Army obsolete. His reasoning was not without its merits. The Ochivari operated by intruding on other people’s universes, making judgments on their lifestyles and cultures, and deploying their own virus, which sterilized the entire population. Fighting fire with fire was how he justified this plan.

“Did Primus Mihajlović agree to this?” Ramses questioned.

“This is a military operation,” Elder explained. “It would not be completely out of her hands, but the Generals can override her decision in such matters, especially since it’s not taking place on her world.”

“The hell it’s not,” Olimpia argued.

“The initial infection is, but the latter deaths will happen on the Ochivari homeworld,” Elder explained. “It’s foolproof. Humans are totally unaffected.”

“You don’t know that,” Ramses contended. “Pathogens mutate. If you were to dispatch this to the major Ochivari population, it could change and evolve, and eventually maybe become a threat to humanity.” This was wrong; probably a war crime. They had to do everything in their power to stop it, which was easier said than done. They were powerful, yeah, but they still didn’t exist most of the year. That gave this new program a lot of freedom to continue. If Naraschone didn’t know about it, then it was his responsibility to tell her while he still had the chance.

This actually seemed to resonate with Elder a bit. “Well, we can’t stop it now.”

“Yes, you can. Don’t let Dutch infect anyone else. It’s immoral,” Olimpia began. “There is a reason that biological weapons were declared illegal worldwide where we come from. Besides the logistical issues with targeting and containment, they are a profound human rights violation.” She dismissed Elder’s argument with a waggle of her finger. “It doesn’t matter that the Ochivari are not humans. We are. Humanity is not about how you’re treated, but how you treat others. This. Is. Wrong.”

“You don’t understand. Dutch has already infected two more Ochivari, and they’re about to leave. I wanted you to watch.” He pressed a button underneath the window, which raised the curtain. Two clearly weak Ochivari were heading towards each other, coughing and heaving. Each one was being escorted by a human in a hazmat suit, forcing them to keep walking using cattle prods. “We asked Carlin to just send them back for us, but he refused. He said that you would not condone it,” Elder explained. “He appears to have been right about that.”

“The torture devices alone are immoral,” Olimpia pointed out.

Ramses lurched, but Elder took him by the wrist. “If you’re really worried about the disease mutating, then I wouldn’t teleport in there if I were you. That’s why they’re wearing suits. We’re careful.”

Ramses was still angry, but he recognized how powerless he was here. It didn’t look like it was going to work this time, but these people were going to try again, and they just had to wait a day. Someone had to be here to talk them out of it. The Primus was their best option for that. He did teleport away, but not to stop the Ochivari from trying to return to their home universe. He instead retrieved Naraschone from her meeting in one of the South American bunkers, and brought her to the observation room.

She looked at everyone present. “You told me you would wait until I could be here,” she said to Elder.

“It was too important to wait a year,” he replied. “I wanted these two to see it too.”

“I thought she didn’t know,” Olimpia complained.

Elder shook his head. “I never said that.”

“Madam Primus, you cannot let this go on,” Olimpia begged her. “Put a stop to this. Please.”

“Pia. Trust me, it’s fine,” Ramses said calmly.

Naraschone narrowed her eyes on him. “What do you have planned?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I don’t have to do anything. This isn’t going to work.”

“Why not?”

“Just look.”

They watched as the two Ochivari drew nearer to each other. The hazmat prison guards grabbed them by the shoulders, and turned them around, slamming their backs against each other until they were locked up. At first, they seemed to be refusing to open their portal, but the cattle prods came out again. So they relented. Their skin rippled, and glowed with a slight increase in temperature. Their wings stiffened up, and they began to struggle against each other in a battle of wills and biology on a level that the humans could neither see nor truly fathom. After a few minutes of this, they both disassembled, with their body parts falling to the ground. According to the research, when a group of Ochivari wanted to create a brane-hopping portal, they would perform this back wrestling ritual, and it would end with one of them exploding into a million pieces while the other was pulled into the resulting portal. This time, no portal formed, and they only exploded into maybe a couple dozen pieces. Ramses was right to believe that it wouldn’t work. The infection was just too much for them.

“What happened?” Naraschone demanded to know.

“They’re too sick,” Ramses figured. “You need strength to form a portal, whether you’re an Ochivari, or a human choosing one. Neither of them had it. You and Dutch made sure of that.”

A few hours later, they tried the experiment again, but instead of waiting for the subjects to exhibit symptoms, they made them do their wing fighting right away, and just hoped that they did end up getting sick, and eventually began to spread the disease. But it didn’t work either. They were too sick and weak immediately upon infection. The fifth subject died in this universe, same as all the others. Ramses and Olimpia were pleased, but they should not have been, because Elder and Naraschone came up with a new plan. Instead of infecting an Ochivar here, and then sending them home, they would just send Dutch there. That came with its own questions on morality, so Ramses had to stop it this time. He teleported Dutch away, and hid him somewhere on this planet where hopefully no one would find him.

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 1, 2390

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There is no stealth in space. If you’re generating power, then you’re generating heat. There is nowhere to dump all that heat, except to radiate it away, which others can detect. According to Ramses’ research, some ships in this reality can shunt it to another dimension, but on its own, this takes a lot of energy, and can still be detected in other ways, so it’s not really that useful. Pilot Fish protocol was not about making themselves completely invisible, but hiding themselves in the chaos of a larger vessel; a very large vessel. The WTD was enormous, and radiated a ton of waste heat. It also had lots of other little ships flying around, executing repairs, and whatnot. It was rather easy for a tiny lifeboat such as the AOC to attach itself to a remote part of the hull, and sit there quietly. No one and nothing knew that they were there, which was good, but it was the easy part. Presumably, the Warmaker Training Detachment was presently in the middle of the beginning of a new war. While it was out here, there was no telling where the rest of the detachments were, or whether they would ever be rendezvousing with each other anytime soon. Fortunately, they only needed to cross paths with the SWD once. The team’s AI knew what to do when that happened. It would detach itself from the first ship, and attach itself to the next. They didn’t know if it would happen within the next year, but they figured it would occur at some point in the next few days from their perspective. It turned out to be one day realtime.

When the team returned to the timestream, they learned that the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had been pilot fishing the Security Watchhouse Detachment for almost the entire year. This was perfect, because it was even more massive than the WTD, so their chances of being caught eventually had actually gone down. Everything was going according to plan. They were going to make their way to Dilara Cassano’s office, reveal to her that she had a special time power, and a destiny in another reality, then all go home together.

“Wait, who are you again?” Dilara asked. She was sitting in the same place they had always seen her, in the breakroom area.

“Mateo. This is Leona, Ramses, Olimpia, Angela, and Marie.”

“Angela and Marie are twins?”

“Alternate selves,” Angela clarified.

Dilara yawned. “I remember you people looking older.”

“Eh. Time, right?” Ramses noted

“Right,” Dilara sort of agreed. “Did you need some...antiquated technology, or sanctuary...?”

“We want your help getting home,” Mateo requested.

“There’s nothing left for us here,” Leona added. “The main sequence is where you belong anyway.”

“How do you figure?” Dilara questioned.

“We’ve seen you there,” Leona claimed. “You have the ability to cross back into old timelines, which means you necessarily also have the ability to travel to parallel timelines.”

Dilara stared at her, and then looked one by one at the rest of the team, like she was waiting for someone to give away that this was some kind of prank. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We know,” Mateo said. “It happened in our past, but in your future.”

“Do I go on adventures in this future?” Dilara pressed. “Do I exert a lot of effort?”

Mateo leaned his head back in confusion. “I mean, I think so...”

“And I’m walking?”

“What?”

“This person who you think is me, does she walk?” Dilara continued.

“Yeah, she walks,” Leona confirmed.

Dilara opened a panel on her armrest, and pushed a few buttons. The chair gently flew out from under the table, and began to hover before them. “I can’t walk.”

“You what?”

“I have literally never walked,” she said, though it must have been a lie. “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not your girl. I don’t have any powers, and I’m not going to be going on any adventures.”

“They can’t cure whatever’s stopping you from walking?” Angela suggested.

“Mother says no. They tried when I was younger.”

“Can we speak to her?”

“She’s dead.”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Ramses said. “At the very least, you can strap an exoskeleton on her, and have her simulate walking. There is no way a reality this advanced can’t find a way to fix her.”

“I don’t need to be fixed,” Dilara contended. “I’m fine sitting down, thank you.”

“I’m sorry,” Ramses said sincerely.

“There’s also the matter of this.” Dilara reached up to her necklace, and pushed another button. A hologram flickered off, leaving a much older and wrinkled face behind. “I know what it’s like to change your age of appearance.”

They all stared at her, unsure what to say. Mateo looked to the floor behind them. “The football. You say you can’t find a record of it being a sport that ever existed before, yet you know what it is.”

“That’s right,” Dilara agreed.

“Mateo...” Leona began without finishing.

“You are our Dilara Cassano,” he realized. “You’ve just lost your memories. I don’t know how, or whether it was done on purpose, but that’s why you’re older than we knew you, and it probably partially explains why your mother claimed you couldn’t ever walk again. I don’t have all the answers, but the main sequence is not part of your future. It’s in your past, just like it is for the six of us.”

“Except it should also be in your future,” Dilara reasoned. “Because you want to get back there, whereas I don’t think I care to get those memories back, if they even exist.”

“They exist,” Mateo assured her, “and no one’s going back now. You were our last hope. If anyone else had the ability to cross realities, we probably would have heard of them by now. I mean, maybe if we were able to find Jupiter, or Jupiter, or one of the other Jupiters...”

“There may be another way,” Olimpia said, nervous about bringing up whatever it was she was thinking.

“What would that be?” Leona asked.

“I don’t wanna say anything without any more information.” Olimpia answered. “I was just hoping you could...point me towards that library database that you used a few days ago, Mateo?”

Mateo wanted to respect her wishes, even though he also wanted her to just say it. “Yeah, I’ll take you.” He offered her his hand. When Olimpia took it, he turned his head back to Dilara, who was resituating herself under the table. “Thank you for everything. I apologize for the confusion.”

“It’s quite all right.” Dilara reinitialized her youngification hologram.

Mateo escorted Olimpia to the library. Nothing had changed since last time. It was still completely empty. He tried to look over her shoulder as she began her search for whatever she was searching for, but she looked right back with a look. All he caught were the words mysterious war before he agreed to literally back off, and walk the perimeter. It wasn’t long before he started to get a feeling. It didn’t hurt, but he knew it wasn’t great either. It felt like waves of energy pulsating on the side of his forehead. When he turned his head, the waves stayed in place, so now they were on the other side of his forehead. He did a one-eighty, and now they were hitting the back of his head. Something external was out there, doing this to him. Again, it wasn’t painful, but he instinctually prepared himself for an attack of some kind.

The attack came in the form of a bullet, right in his shoulder joint. At least that was what he assumed it to be. He heard a loud explosive sound, and felt a sharp pain in his chest. It didn’t last very long. The pain went away to be replaced with another wave of information, reminding him that there was a bullet wound there. It happened several more times after that. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Somebody wanted him dead, but Mateo was getting the feeling now that that wasn’t going to happen. Ramses’ upgrades were just too good. He didn’t know if he could heal as fast as superheroes did in movies, but he was still standing even after all this, and the pain was gone.

A figure rounded the corner. “You think I wouldn’t recognize you, didn’t you?” It was the security guard from years ago. He was still patrolling the same area. He walked forward, and placed his gun against Mateo’s head. “You can hologram your face in whatever form you please, but I can still tell. You have a certain smell.”

“Hey, that rhymed.”

“Shut up!”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

Mateo shrugged. “People changed their minds. It’s been six years.”

“No, it’s been one year.” He reached into his bag, and pulled out the mangled remains of the Cassidy cuff that Mateo forced upon him to make sure he didn’t leave him trapped in a time bubble.

“It took you that long to figure out how to get it off?”

“I don’t have any friends!”

“Sorry, dude.”

“It doesn’t matter, it’s just time. I told you that you shouldn’t ever come back, and now you’re gonna face the consequences.”

“Look at me,” Mateo said. “You’ve already shot me several times. Why do you think it hasn’t killed me yet?”

The man tugged at Mateo’s shirt. “Body armor.”

“No. Armored body,” he corrected.

He frowned, and loosened his grip on his weapon while he looked away. “This isn’t a hologram, is it?”

“No.”

“You people have technologies that we have never seen before.”

“Which is weird,” Mateo said. “I mean, consciousness transference? That’s not easy, but it didn’t take us as long as faster-than-light travel. It’s like you just skipped over a bunch of developments that would have been really helpful to your lives.”

“Or they were deliberately withheld from us.”

“That would sure make sense. I personally know the people who invented FTL where I come from. It’s taken them until recently to even begin thinking about sharing that with everyone else.”

“You’re trying to get back there, aren’t you?”

“We weren’t before, but we are now. Unfortunately, the tech we used to come in the first place has been lost to us. We’re working on it.”

Now the security officer lowered his arm completely. “Take me with you.”

“What?”

“It sounds like you have purpose. I want that too.”

Mateo sighed. “You wouldn’t be the first stray we took in.”

“Please.”

“Mateo!” Olimpia came up from behind him. “I found him.”

“Found who?”

“The guy who’s gonna get us back home,” she said cryptically.

“How’s he gonna do that?”

She presented her tablet. “Medavorken Alon.”

“Is that a band, errr...?”

“He was a famous Comradiant in the People’s Army of the Independent Triangulites For The Independence of Triangulum.”

Mateo couldn’t help but laugh, “wwwwhat?”

“The Triangulites?” the security guy questioned. “They were wiped out centuries ago.”

“Who are you again?” Olimpia questioned in return.

“Go on,” Mateo prompted.

“He went missing...before all that happened. They say he went into a deserted building alone, they heard a loud horn, and then it blew up.”

“So he’s not missing, he died,” the security—

“What is your name?” Mateo asked.

“Summit Ebora.”

“Well, Summit, we know he disappeared because of the horn. It’s The Transit. That’s your idea?” Mateo asked her. “You wanna hitch a ride?”

“They’re the only people who can do it,” Olimpia said. “And we know exactly where they’re gonna be, when they’re gonna be there.”

“The problem is that we don’t have a time machine,” Leona said, having teleported to their location. The rest of the team was there too.

“A time machine? I can get you to a time machine,” Summit claimed.

“Now, is it an actual time machine, or just an amusement park ride in the bulk store?” Angela joked.

“I don’t know what that is,” Summit said. “It’s an actual time machine, which can get you back to the 21st century.”

“Great!” Mateo said enthusiastically. “Leona, that’s your birthday present. I didn’t get you anything else.”

“Kind of an irresponsible gift to give to a thirteen-year-old,” Angela joked more.

Leona shook her head and half-scoffed, half-laughed. “I’m gonna get you back for that.”

“Thirteen-year-old or not,” Marie began, not joking, “you’re the captain.”

They waited patiently for her decision.

Leona waited to respond, considering the dangers and ramifications. “Very well. We’re going back to the past.”

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Microstory 1625: Fort Underhill

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I think it’s a pretty fitting time for me to discuss this next brane. As you’ve probably noticed, if a universe manages to distinguish itself from others enough to earn a name, it always ends in verse. Flipverse, Hypnopediaverse, and Salmonverse are good examples that I’ve already mentioned. Most of them form one word titles, but there are exceptions, like the Composite Universe, Universe Prime, and Area Doubleuniverse, which is quite obviously a pun. Still, they’re all verses. This one is the one exception to the rule. It’s an artificial brane, though its no less an independent brane than any other one. It’s twinned to Salmonverse, which protects it from external threats, and there’s only one entrance that I know of. The membrane surrounding it is 50,000 times thicker than most, done completely on purpose, which is why it’s impossible to cross into, except in the one special place. Its creator is a very powerful woman named Hogarth Pudeyonavic. She has her own story to tell, but it all came to a momentous transition when she discovered that she had a connection to the energy that pervades the bulkverse. No, I’m not talking about bulk energy, per se. This is more like the data delivery aspect of it; the waves that carry information in all directions. They call it the Aitchai, and Hogarth was chosen to wield it pretty much as she wished. It allows her to transmit matter from any location in the bulk, to anywhere else, at the subatomic level, if need be. She used this power to create mechacelestial objects, like the matrioshka body, and Big Papa, but once those were complete, she set her sights on something larger...more glorious. She wanted to build an entire universe, according to her specifications. These specifications are her creation’s proper physics, which refers to the physical laws specific to a given brane, as opposed to the ones that are true of all branes. What she didn’t have after completing her creation was a population. No one lived there, and if it remained as such, there would be no point to it. That is where another powerful woman named Ellie Underhill comes into the story. It was her own abilities that transferred tens of billions of people, allowing them to start new lives, and thrive in them. I’m afraid I can’t tell you much more about it than that. I witnessed its beginnings, but cannot see things that are happening inside the universe itself, because that’s the whole point. The thickness of the membrane doesn’t just keep invaders out physically, but also psychically, and spiritually. I can tell you that it works, and that it becomes a key sanctuary and strategic position in the Darning Wars.