Microstory 2483: Campodome

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Camping has never gone out of style, but it’s had its ups and downs. Once our ancestors invented computers, they realized how disruptive it was to be away from their devices. People in the 19th century were basically, like, “camping is just living without being in a building, and peeing in the woods”. Over time, the gap between regular urban living and camping in a tent widened. Then we started developing better portable energy storage, and more prolific satellite connectivity, and it started going back the other way in many respects. You could go out to the middle of the woods, and enjoy nature, while still maintaining a connection to the outside world, to just about whatever degree you wanted. There were snobs, of course, who said that you really shouldn’t have anything, and to a certain extent, I agree. Glamping is what they called it when you basically lived in a tiny home with no sacrifice of amenities. Really, what’s the point? The leaders on Castlebourne couldn’t answer that either, so it doesn’t exist here. There are all kinds of other camping formats, though. Forest, prairie, desert, even wetlands, and snow camping. What people don’t realize is that each dome is large enough to be fully capable of supporting a diverse multi-biome ecology. You just have to tailor the terrain to fit what you need, and maybe add a bit of scientific intervention. Colder regions are near the top of a mountain range, as you might expect it on Earth. It doesn’t have seasons, since the kind of engineering that would require is just a little beyond what’s practical. It’s not impossible, but it’s more logical to divide climates up by areas. You choose where you wanna camp, and how you wanna do it. Some people go out there and totally rough it. They have no supplies, no food, maybe not even clothes. There’s a subculture of people who go out there totally naked and alone, and survive on their skills.

As I said, there are no seasons, though these survivalists can replicate them by moving to different spots. I will say that that’s not quite right, because if you really wanted to start your journey in Spring, and see how you fared when the weather changed, you would build your shelter as well as you possibly can, and wait for it to become necessary. That’s not a feasible option when your campsite has to shift in order to account for that journey. So maybe they can improve upon that. I know it’s not easy, and maybe they shouldn’t try. After all, that’s why the flying spaghetti monster made Earth, because it already has everything you need, and the cycles kind of take care of themselves. I’ve not mentioned it yet, but there are hiking and backpacking routes, if you like to stay on the move. Some of them are pretty long, but nothing that compares to the grueling trek of the Pacific Crest or Appalachian Trails. There’s just not enough space. There might be a dome out there that winds you around enough times to cover that distance, but it’s not here. This is mostly about the camping and again, some things probably should be left to the homeworld. We didn’t spend decades rewilding the surface exclusively to leave it to nature. We still allow ourselves access to that nature, and are encouraged to camp when we feel like it. So, is this place better at what it does? No, I shouldn’t think so. You’re still in a snowglobe. You will always know it’s artificial. And it’s nothing we don’t have elsewhere, unlike say, the waterpark in Flumendome, or the realm in Mythodome, but it’s still pretty nice. I certainly wouldn’t cast your consciousness here with the express intention of coming to this dome, but it’s a great option if you’re already here, and need to take a break from civilization.

Microstory 1403: Two Against the World

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When Escher Bradley first arrived on Durus, he met a few people. They were all time travelers, though, so they didn’t stick around for long. After his first harrowing adventure, his rival went away for a little while, and seemingly left him alone. His battle with that alien enemy resulted in him now possessing an exorbitant amount of temporal energy. He would come to discover that he did not exactly possess any time powers of his own. He could absorb energy that others expelled, and then relocate it somewhere else, but he generally couldn’t control it. If he held it in too long, it could start deteriorating his mind and body, though, so he would always have to get rid of it. In the beginning, the energy itself sustained him, though. He didn’t need to eat or sleep for the next several days. Not knowing how long this would last, he knew he had to find a source of water. He wandered the planet for about a week before he finally found a small pond. He knew the right thing to do would be to boil the water to make it drinkable, but he didn’t have the proper resources, so he just drank it up, and hoped for the best. It was hard to explain, but as he drank, the water seemed to be communicating with the temporal energy. No, they weren’t communicating. They were harmonizing with each other. His body and the pond vibrated in sync, and he could just feel that they were now being drawn towards each other. To see what would happen, he released a small fraction of the power. It suddenly started raining for a few seconds. He released some more, and it rained some more. If this was the only source of water—and there was no way back to Earth—then expanding the source was the best use of his power. He released the rest all at once, and started a downpour...which never stopped. He had just created what the Durune would come to know as Watershed. It would be the only place to get water for the next two hundred plus years. The rain was heavy enough to alert the planet’s only other permanent inhabitant, Savitri. She raced over there as fast as she could, and found Escher walking out of the rain boundary. They were both shocked to see each other, but then Escher’s surprise wore off when he assumed it was merely his enemy, Effigy, who was known to alter her appearance to deceive people. It took Savitri at least two years of proving herself before he seemed satisfied that her presence was not a trick. Nonetheless, all the while, Escher was teaching Savitri everything he knew about everything. He taught her how to speak, and then by drawing in the dirt, how to read and write. He recalled the few lessons he received in elementary school, though most of it wasn’t all that useful here. She taught him survival skills, but he was able to bolster them from his more traditional education. They had about nine years before Effigy showed back up and started giving them trouble.

Microstory 1401: Premature Fledging

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In 1980, there lived a little girl in Springfield, Kansas named Savitri. She was only three years old at the time, and just barely starting to become aware of herself as an independent being, who was capable of observing and making judgments about her surroundings, and of maintaining memories of the past. She recognized her family, though she was later unable to recall how many siblings she had, but she was pretty sure the number was higher than zero. She couldn’t remember anyone’s names, or her own surname, for that matter. She was playing in the backyard one day when a random tear in the spacetime continuum swallowed her up, and dropped her onto another world. These sorts of temporal anomalies happen all the time, and all over the place, but rarely are they large and stable enough to allow an object to pass through; let alone an entire person. She would come to discover that she was born with a time power, and actually belonged to a special class within the choosing one subspecies called metachoosers. She could boost the power of anyone else with powers, which some have suggested was what caused the rift in her backyard to be so much more accessible than most. When she first arrived on the dark and lifeless rogue planet of Durus, she brought with her a little bit of breathable air, but this did not last long. Once it was depleted, she spent about thirty seconds unable to breathe until the atmosphere kicked in. She didn’t know where it came from, because she was too young to understand how planets had atmospheres anyway, or what they were made of, but she could finally survive, at least for the moment. In the beginning, she was starving. Never before had she been required to prepare her own food, let alone forage for it in the wilderness of an empty planet. Her instincts sent her underground, where she found moss that experts would later figure survived the void of interstellar space through some kind of natural electrolysis process. Of course, she didn’t know any of that. She just hoped the moss was edible. It was. She spent ten years alone on this world, eventually growing old enough to go out and explore more of the planet. She never really could be sure that she wasn’t simply still on Earth, but in some remote pocket of it. Again, she was too young to understand any of this. She lost most of her language, and had to relearn it when the next unsuspecting child finally showed up in 1990. He was four years younger than her, so while he possessed more social experience, he wasn’t that much more capable of survival. He had it easier, though, because throughout the years before his arrival, the planet became host to more and more life. The atmosphere that spread over the surface brought with it seeds that grew into a thicket. No one would have ever called it lush, but it was alive, and it did help Savitri stay alive along with it. This was only the beginning of her story, though.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, April 1, 2025

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Declan was going to be vital to their survival in a world with no people, and therefore no civilization. None of the others knew how to build a shelter, or even start a fire without any tools. Darko Matic was evidently Declan’s trainer for years, and while their primary focus was the martial arts, they also developed a well-rounded education, including survival skills. He struck a fire with wood and rocks, no problem, and instructed them how to build sufficient single-person shelters for themselves. Still, once camp was complete, there was no competition when it came to whose shelter was superior. Being told how to do it ad hoc, and having the experience to build it right, were two different things. They were good enough to keep the elements out, however, and they all reportedly slept pretty well that night. It was April 1, 2025 when they woke up, according to the Cassidy cuffs.

“Anybody else have a countdown,” Mateo asked as he was watching his screen, “as well as what I can only guess to be a tracking beacon?”

“Yeah,” Leona said. “Jupiter said we would have us complete tasks for him, rescuing people from this reality. The beacon must be leading us to our first challenge.”

Ramses stretched, and rubbed his eyes like a cliché. “I would say getting through yesterday was the first challenge.”

“He didn’t want this world to be as it is,” Declan reminded him. “He wants people to rule over, and I don’t think he has it here.”

“If he wants to rule,” Mateo began to reason, “and he has the ability to travel between each reality at will, why wouldn’t he just take a bunch of people, instead of one or two at a time, which I presume is how the challenges are going to work?”

“His abilities are surely limited,” Leona presumed. “He’s probably traveling through time, looking for a workaround.”

“Don’t give him any ideas anyway,” J.B. warned.

Leona was working on her cuff screen. “Okay, so without satellites, it’s hard to tell how long it’s going to take us to get to our challenge, but based on the countdown, and the distance, I imagine we have about an hour and a half to eat before we have to head out.”

“Eat what?” Ramses questioned.

Declan lifted his teleporter cuff. “You leave that to me.”

He returned twenty minutes later with a shirt full of fruits and roots, plus a dead rabbit over his shoulder. Predicting this would be the result of his efforts, Leona had built a spit over the fire. An hour later, with full bellies, they started walking towards the beacon. There were a lot of obstacles in the way, namely trees, but there was also a deep ravine they had to walk around. Being the man they were learning he was, Declan estimated that they walked a little under five kilometers to their destination. When they arrived, eleven minutes were left on the countdown, so they sat down for a rest.

Before the timer reached zero, things around them started to change. Streets and buildings flickered in and out around them. Leona recognized it after a few times. “This is Country Club Plaza.”

“That checks out,” Declan confirmed. “It’s about as far from Mission Hills as it should be, in the direction it should be, based on our walk.”

“Guys,” Ramses said, holding his arm up like he was trying to block the sunlight. “These devices are AR. There’s someone up there, right under the beacon marker.”

The rest of them lifted their arms to see what he was. Sometimes a building would appear in a flicker, blocking their view, and sometimes just the person standing on top of it was visible.

“She’s gonna fall!” J.B. cried.

“I can get her,” Declan said, fingers hoving over his teleporter cuff.

“What are you waiting for?” Mateo asked desperately.

“She’s not really here yet,” Declan replied. “I have to time it just right. Count me down, Lee.”

Leona waited a moment before beginning. “Six, five, four, three, two, one!”

Declan pressed the button. The flickering stopped, and the figure standing in the middle of the air began to fall downwards. He caught her before she got too far, and they both started to fall together. Before they hit the ground, they disappeared again, and reappeared a few meters away, but upside down, so momentum was propelling them upwards. Once they were at equilibrium, Declan teleported them once more, safely to the ground.

The woman turned around to get her bearings, and catch her breath. Both Mateo and Leona recognized her immediately, of course, and simultaneously said, “mom?” It was Carol Gelen, and this was the day she was fated to start her ten day walk towards death.

“Leona!” Carol said inquisitively, but not as if it had been long since they had seen each other. “Where are we?”

Leona waited to respond. It was a little too late—and there was no reasonable way—to cover this up. She just didn’t know exactly what to say at first. “Mom. I’m a time traveler, and we’re standing in an alternate reality. We’re not sure what changed, or when it changed, but there don’t seem to be other people here.”

Carol studied her daughter’s face for a moment and a half. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Leona questioned. “That’s it?”

“I trust you, Leona. If you say this is another world, then okay.”

“Aren’t you worried?”

“You seem to know what you’re doing. You look a little older; maybe a few years? I assume you’ve been doing this for awhile.”

Leona looked over to her husband, who was Carol’s son in yet another timeline. “You could say that.”

Carol smirked. “And who is this?”

“This is my husband, Mateo Matic.”

Carol lifted her hand, and shook that of her once-son’s. “It’s nice to meet you. I guess it really has been awhile.”

“Guys?” Ramses was looking at his Cassidy cuff again. “There’s another countdown. It says the window’s closing.”

“We have forty-two minutes to get her back to her own reality, before she’s stuck here,” Leona posited.

“How do we get her back?” J.B. asked. “Do the cuffs explain? I’m not super experienced with technology.”

“Yes,” Ramses confirmed. “I can see the steps we need to take to send her home. Just tap the right arrow.”

“Now, hold on,” Mateo said. “Who said we’re sending her back? Jupiter said we have a choice.”

“She can’t stay here,” J.B. argued lightly, looking around at the wilderness.

“She can’t go back either!” Leona fought back.

“Leona,” Carol scolded. “Relax.”

“You don’t understand, mom. It’s dangerous.”

“That’s no reason to forget your manners.”

Mateo looked at his once-mother sadly. She had no idea who he really was. Their situation was like something out of a comic book TV show. It was even worse than when he ran into them at the Pentagon in 2005, because now he was married to what the multiverse could theoretically consider to be his own adoptive sister. Time demanded that Carol Gelen be on that plaza rooftop in forty minutes, so that Paige Turner could unwillingly return from the future with a pathogen that will apparently only be deadly to the second individual infected by it. Mateo didn’t want that to happen, obviously, and neither did Leona. They didn’t even really have reason to believe Jupiter himself had any interest in her dying. Perhaps that was why he extracted her from the main timeline in the first place. They just need to figure out what to do about it. There was no question that they needed to save her life, but this world wasn’t much safer. She wouldn’t survive here alone. There had to be some kind of loophole. There had to be a way to get her back home without also sending her to an inevitable death.

“Do we wanna talk about this over here?” Ramses asked.

“No,” Carol disagreed. “Unless telling me about my future is going to destroy the universe, I wanna hear whatever it is you’re discussing.”

Leona looked at her sadly as well. She had no right to keep the truth from her, and she knew her mother well enough to know that when she said she wanted to understand, she meant it. “Have you met a young woman named Paige Turner?” she asked.

“No.”

“You didn’t see anyone in the parking lot up there?”

“I saw a few people,” Carol answered, “but I didn’t meet anybody.”

Leona consulted the countdown. “In less than an hour, time itself is expecting you to be back on that rooftop, presumably after you pick up your lunch from your favorite restaurant in this part of town?”

Carol checked her own watch. “That sounds about right. I’m a little early. I thought I would enjoy the day before pick-up.”

“Destiny says that a friend of ours is going to appear on that rooftop. She’ll be carrying with her a disease that a frenemy of ours forced her to bring back to this time period. The idea is to infect everyone now, so that when the disease shows up later, the population is already immune to it.”

“Okay, I guess I get that,” Carol said, “but how many people will have to die from it before herd immunity takes care of it?”

“Just one,” Leona replied, tearing up.

Carol lifted her head, absorbing the information that wasn’t being said. “Oh. But this will ultimately save lives?”

“Not really.” Leona fought back full tears. “It sterilizes people in the future, but they’re immortal by then anyway, so our species doesn’t actually die out; they just stop having biological children.”

“But if I don’t go back, the...immunity process doesn’t happen.”

“No, it still does,” Mateo jumped in. “Paige doesn’t have to infect you at all. You die, because you’re too close to her when she shows up. It’ll still spread on its own, and there will be zero deaths from it.”

“So, this Jupiter guy rescued me?” Carol guessed.

Everyone looked amongst each other. “We don’t really know,” Ramses chose to answer. “He brought you here, but his motivations aren’t a hundred percent clear. It could be a Sophie’s choice type of thing. We either choose to leave you alone in this world, which isn’t exactly full of supermarkets and houses, or send you back.”

“She doesn’t have to be alone.” Holly Blue was walking up to them. “My son and I will protect her.” As she drew nearer, she presented a device in her hand that kind of looked like an electric shaver, but instead of a regular blade on the top, it resembled the one specifically designed to cut nose hairs. She placed the tip against one of Declan’s Cassidy cuffs, and began to hack into it. “When the next window opens three years from now, we’ll slip back with whoever it is Jupiter brings in. All she needs to do is hop over her death moment.”

“Why don’t we save everybody?” Declan asked his mother.

“At least two people have to continue the pattern, so they can save everyone else,” Holly Blue explained. “J.B. has to be one of those people, and a Matic has to be another.” She continued working her hacking device. “There.” She pulled the trigger, which served to release both Declan’s cuffs at the same time. Unfortunately, there appeared to be some kind of failsafe. The cuffs fell from his wrist simultaneously, but before they hit the ground, they flew back up through the air, and secured themselves around Holly Blue’s wrists instead. “Also, there’s that.”

“Did you, or did you not, know that was going to happen?” Ramses asked. He took the hacking device from her, so he could examine it himself.

“I was worried he had programmed a contingency. Jupiter was a little not quite upset enough with me when he learned I was planning to rescue Declan. I should have known it was too easy.”

“Okay,” Declan said, “give it to me. I’ll put them back on myself, so you can be free.”

“No,” Holly Blue argued with her son. “I’m not letting you go back to this. You have too much potential to be wasting your time on this mission. No offense,” she said to everyone else.

None taken, really.

Declan looked sadly at his own mother, who could all but read his mind. She smiled back. “Someone has to protect Carol, and I wasn’t able to bring a lot of resources with me, so you’re far more equipped to handle that. It’s just three years, then you can both go back to the main timeline, and you can finally do what you’ve been wanting to all along.”

“Darko never said I was ready.”

“There’s no way he would say you’re not ready once this is all over,” Holly Blue assured him. “Let’s consider this your final lesson.”

Declan didn’t want to trap his mother on the Bearimy-Matic pattern, but this was the best of all terrible outcomes. Carol really did need someone to stay with her for the next three years, and he was the best for the job—not just out of everyone who happened to be here—but the best overall. The time window closed a half hour later, leaving everyone with no choice but to stay in their current predicaments. At the end of the day, Mateo, Leona, Ramses, J.B., and now Holly Blue jumped forward in time, leaving Declan and Carol to fend for themselves. They returned to a shelter complex impressive enough to drive Robinson Crusoe to tears. There was a third person with them who had been there for about a year, whose name was, for whatever reason, Hello Doctor.

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Microstory 876: Deer to My Heart

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When the first of the monsters started cropping up in the public, a lot of people thought they knew what they were dealing with. They had pale skin, sharp fangs, and drank human blood, presumably to survive. They only came out at night, and they seemed to be multiplying. People reported that their loved ones, who were once perfectly normal, suddenly acted different, and went after them like all the other attackers. Vampires. That was the word people were using to classify these new beings, because that was the one that made the most sense. Naturally, we assumed we understood what that meant, and how to fight them off. We were so wrong. What we discovered the hard way was that they would not be killed by the sun, or by ultraviolet light. They came out at night because their bodies preferred cooler weather, but that didn’t mean heat was deadly to them. They could be killed with fire, or decapitation, but that goes for just about any living creature on the planet. We also thought a vampire could be killed with a wooden stake to the heart, but a great many humans were either killed, or turned, failing to make that work. Though not impossible to kill, vampires were tough, and strong. It took more military prowess than the average civilian could demonstrate, unlike in the movies, where average joes band together, and save the day. It was I who discovered their unusual weakness, and I did it accidentally. Like any good doomsday prepper, I had a plan to escape the city, and just wait this out somewhere remote. Like a good doomsday prepper with no money, my plan was limited to a few ready-to-eat meals saved up, and some camping gear. I couldn’t afford a bunker, or a road tank, so my best bet was to just hope to find some small sliver of land away from the struggle.

I made my way out of town when the first legitimate reports came in, and monitored the situation via crank radio. I drove up to the nearest significant wooded area, which was Aldenroda National Park. Then I just started living off the land, finding food using the knowledge I gained from video tutorials online before this all happened, and supplementing what I never learned with instinct and improvisation. After a couple of weeks, things were getting worse in civilization, but I had still not encountered a single vampire myself. By then, anyone still around knew that wooden stakes and daylight wouldn’t help them, including me. I felt fairly safe where I was, but winter was literally coming, and I would die from good ol’ fashioned hypothermia if I didn’t travel south, or find some better shelter. Fortunately, I happened upon an abandoned cabin that was perfect. It was pretty well insulated, had a nice fireplace, and a good bed. I was doing even better than before when a vampire showed up out of nowhere, looking for some dinner. There weren’t any samurai swords around, and I didn’t think I was clever enough to set the guy on fire, so my options were death, or switching sides. Desperate for door number three, I grabbed the nearest weapon I could find, which was a set of deer antlers the cabin’s real owner evidently never got around to hanging up. They had just left them on the floor, and so had I. The vampire thought he had me cornered, but I got lucky when he accidentally fell onto the antlers, and straight up died. I was shocked and relieved. I had stumbled upon perhaps the easiest way to kill these things, and no one else knew about it. I now had a new pair of choices; continue to use this revelation to my advantage, or go back to the outside world, and spread the word. The choice was obvious. The world had never done anything for me, so screw ‘em. They can all die, for all I care. I’m the only person who matters now, I thought. Yet fifty years later, I’ll be dying soon anyway, and humanity is still here. I impart the secret of the antlers to you, stranger. Use it wisel—what are you doing with that machete?

Microstory 305: Food for Survival

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Potable Water

There’s a huge movement in this country for the implementation of healthier eating. That’s a great thing, and I applaud anyone for making improvements in their dietary habits, but I want to make sure it doesn’t take away from another global issue: hunger. There are people in this world who are not able to find food in the first place. You probably, at one point, said that you were starving, but you probably don’t understand the full extent of what that means. That’s okay; I’m not the semantics police, and I’m not here to tell you that your so-called “first world problems” will never be relevant until massive world problems are solved. Just always be aware of what’s going on in the world around you, and don’t take your life or your resources for granted. For some people, it doesn’t matter what they eat. They don’t care about carbohydrates, or sugars. They’re not counting points or buying organic. They’re just eating what they can. Like water, food is a vital component of survival. Food gives us the nutrition we need to maintain homeostasis, generate energy, and perpetuate organ function. But there is something to the act of eating itself that keeps us going. And I don’t mean psychologically. As you eat, your stomach stretches out, and tells your brain that that’s enough. This is why we can’t so easily pack all our daily requirements into oral supplements or intravenous solutions. If you ever find yourself lost in the wilderness, with no food, you might have to find some. Do research now on how to conduct an edibility test, so that you never know what it’s like to experience true hunger. It takes awhile, but you can never be too careful. If you don't have time for an edibility test, you don't have time to live.

Clothing for Protection

Microstory 145: Laurence Cardinal

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Strange things began to happen around Laurence Cardinal when he was only a toddler. He was far too young to have any chance of understanding what was happening to him, or that these things had anything to do with him at all. Metallic objects, specifically those with enough magnetism, would either be drawn to him or thrown from him. His parents were frightened and confused, but they had faith in their son, and predicted that he would one day learn to control his clearly amazing gift. Unfortunately, they were wrong. Despite being a seemingly regular anomaly, and despite having been activated by the Keystone, Laurence’s abilities were somehow unfinished. He exercised little to no control over the magnetism, no matter how hard he tried, or how much he practiced. Life in the city got so bad when he was a teenager that he was forced to move to a part of the Seychelles jungle that was completely uninhabited by humans, and more importantly, free from their metal. He continued on as a hermit, like Jayson Casy. He ate out of plastic, and remained removed from society in his little wood shelter. His family visited him as they could, but his parents had six other children to take care of, and there was only so much that they could do. He had to live too far away for frequent visits to be logistically reasonable. One of his little sisters wasn’t even old enough to remember him by the time she needed braces on her teeth. Until she was allowed to have them removed, it was too risky to have her anywhere near Laurence. And so he kept to himself, hunting with rocks and spears when game was near, but surviving mostly on roots and berries. Sometime after being discovered, Bellevue reluctantly agreed to force him into a type of coma, for his ability only ever went fully dormant when he was asleep. The alternative treatment was even more dangerous. With no other choice, and no way to protect him from danger, or from hurting others, they found a way to remove his abilities. Upon success, he was able to start a real life, and ended up in the education department, teaching others useful survival skills.

Microstory 76: Night Training

As soon as I go to sleep...

...I wake up. I immediately inject myself with a serum that keeps me from needing sleep. I go over to the corner of my room and open the secret passageway that leads me to a second basement, inside of which is a teleporter. It only goes to one other place, and I’ve never been told exactly where that is. My trainer is always there waiting for me. I’ve been developing my skills in hand-to-hand combat, weaponry, explosives, and wilderness survival. If I need to wake up in the middle of the night, it means that I will have to go back through the teleporter and temporarily slip back into bed. I receive multiple injuries throughout the training sessions; cuts, bruises, and even broken bones. One time, I was sent into the field before I was ready, and was shot in the chest. I had to undergo surgery for a heart transplant, which is why I “slept” 15 hours that night, and missed class. On a normal night, once the session is over, and it’s time for me to wake up for good, I receive medical treatment that heals me almost completely. I go back to my house and inject myself with a serum that suppresses my memories of that night. As soon as I go to sleep...

...I wake up. Throughout the day, I notice a few subtle hints of injuries. Bruises that I don’t remember getting in the first place are nearly gone. I find small cuts and scratches all over my body. My arms and legs are inexplicably sore. One time, I discovered what looks like a scar on my chest, just under my heart. And I was exhausted for no reason for weeks afterwards. It was only then that I started getting suspicious about myself. I can’t prove it, but I’m pretty sure that someone has been erasing my memories. I must find out who. And I must find out why.

I think my lower self is getting too close to finding out what’s going on.