Microstory 1280: The Bat and the Boar

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A bat was flying overhead, looking for some food to eat, when she noticed a boar scratching his tusks against a tree. Curious, she flew down and asked him what he was doing. “Are you trying to cut that tree down? I do not believe that you will be able to.”

“No,” the boar replied. “I’m sharpening my tusks.”

This frightened the bat, for she had just flown above, but did not see any threat. “Are you in the midst of war?” she asked. “I did not see an enemy when I was in the sky.”

The ignorance annoyed the boar. “I need to sharpen my weapons now, so that when the fighting does come—as it inevitably will—I’ll be ready,” he tried to explain. “You know what they say, if you want peace, prepare for war.” He went back to sharpening.

“That may be what they say, but that does not mean it is true,” the bat argued. “War is war, and peace is peace. I say that if you want peace, be peaceful.”

And so it was that the animals in the forest were so afraid of the boar that they attacked him together. His prediction was a self-fulling prophecy. The bat, meanwhile, was left alone, for she did not purposefully make herself appear as a threat.

This story was inspired by, and revised from, an Aesop Fable called The Wild Boar and the Fox.

Microstory 1279: The Ladybug and the Ants

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One summer, a ladybug was merrily flying about, enjoying the day, chewing on some aphids, and hiding from birds under leaves. As she was finishing her meal, seemingly an entire army of ants came marching towards her. They were carrying large bits of food to their colony on the other side of the hill. The ladybug stopped one of the ants and asked what they were doing. “We’re taking food to our colony, so that we can have it over the winter.”

“Why do you need to do that?” the ladybug asked. “The food is already here. Why, you should just eat it now. That’s what I do with these tasty aphids. Why, there are plenty here for all of us, as long as you stay out of my way, we’ll have no problem!”

“There will be no food in the winter,” the ant replied. “We must store it up every year.”

The ladybug scoffed, and moved on. She was too young to know the cold. Weeks later, winter came indeed, leaving the ladybug with no food to eat. All the aphids were overwintering as eggs. She flew over to the ant colony, and begged them to let her in. “Please, I did not understand. Do you have room for a humble lady bug? I am so hungry, but I promise not to eat too much!”

“Of course you can come in,” the ant said to her, “but just this year. Next year, you must learn to fend for yourself.”

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

Microstory 1278: The Dolphin and the Ape

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As sad as it was, a ship called The Delfis once wrecked on the rocks near a small island in the middle of the ocean. Fortuitously, however, a pod of dolphins happened to be swimming nearby when it happened. They were so touched by seeing a ship that was presumably named after them that they felt they needed to help. Humans were always friendly to the dolphins, and these ones would likely be even kinder! They began to rescue the humans one by one, and carrying them to the shore on their backs, starting with those who were struggling the most. One of the first to be picked up was not a man, but an ape who had been aboard as a pet. Dolphins are known for their excellent eyesight, even out of the water, but it was dark and stormy, so the rescuer could not tell that she was not helping a human. “I like the name of your ship,” the dolphin said.

“Thank you,” the ape replied.

“What possessed you to name it that?” the dolphin asked.

Well, the ape—being not a man—did not know human language very well, and she certainly could not read. She had only heard the humans mention it a couple of times, but since it wasn’t important to her, she hadn’t really paid attention. She did not want to let on that she was so ignorant, however, because all the humans on board probably knew the answer to this question. So she lied and said that she and the rest of the crew were big fans of Elvis.

The dolphin laughed, and looked up to her back, to finally realize that she was carrying an ape, instead of a human. She was a good dolphin, though, so she still swam her to safety. Then she went back to the site of the wreck, rescuing all lifeforms she could find, human and animals alike.

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

Microstory 1277: The Hikers and the Wallet

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Two hikers were walking along the mountain path when one of them spotted something underneath his feet. It looked like a dark leaf, but when he decided to dig it up, he discovered that it was a wallet. It was wet and muddy on the inside, which suggested that it had fallen from its owner’s person sometime yesterday, for it had rained last night, but was perfectly clear today. When he opened it up, he found a punch card for a restaurant two states away, an insurance card that was turned totally illegible by the rain, and a couple hundred dollars. “Look what we’ve found,” said the one hiker. “I’ll split the money with you.”

“No,” the other replied. “We should find a way to return it to its owner.”

“That should be impossible,” the first hiker said. “There is no identification of any kind here.” He looked down the mountain. “The rain must have washed it away.”

“Either way, I’m not sure we should keep it. We’ll find the nearest ranger’s station, and see if anyone’s reported it missing.”

Just then, they saw a group of hikers climbing down the mountain towards them. A forest ranger was accompanying them. “I remember you from the campsite the other day. Did you steal my wallet?” asked one of the strangers.

“I did not,” the first hiker said.

“Why, I see it right in your hand!” the wallet’s owner cried.

“We found it here in the mud,” the second hiker explained. He took it from his friend, and handed it back to its rightful owner. “How fortunate that you returned here. Your ID must have fallen out, so we would never have known where to return it.”

“Yeah, okay,” said the wallet owner. He was a bit reluctant, but appeared to believe them. Their explanation was only logical, for if they had stolen it on purpose, they would have surely kept it hidden so as not to be caught.

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

Microstory 1276: The Dingo and the Crane

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Years ago, a dingo and a crane were drinking from the same watering hole, and got to talking. As different as they were as animals, and as unrelatable as their lifestyles should have been to each other, it turned out they had a lot in common. The dingo even agreed to limit her meals to rodents and lizards, which didn’t bother the crane at all. Birds were out of bounds, though, and the dingo was fine with this. One thing they did both enjoy, however, was a tasty fish stew. For one evening, the dingo decided to play a prank on the crane. She invited him over for dinner, like she had so many times, but the crane soon realized that he would not be able to eat the stew. She had placed it on an only moderately deep platter. The dingo was perfectly capable of lapping up the stew herself, but the crane couldn’t manage to get any into his beak. The dingo apologized for this, claiming that none of her other dishes was clean at the moment. A couple of days later, the crane invited the dingo over, so that he could host his own meal. They would have fish stew again, because it was easy, and agreeable for both. The dingo knew that the crane was planning on getting her back, likely by giving her a long jar in the same way that she had given him a platter. But she was wrong. The crane recognized that what the dingo had done was nothing more than a joke. He was able to find some fish on his way home the other day, and since he was not the vengeful type, he didn’t need to get her back. They remained friends, and one day laughed together about the silly platter prank.

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

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 28, 2266

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Mateo still needed some time to recover from whatever it was that brought him back here. The jump to the future didn’t help things. Leona was frustrated, because he didn’t appear to have any serious injuries, and there really wasn’t anything she could do. She offered him some pain medication, but he refused, because he knew he would get over it on his own, and he didn’t like putting anything in his body that he didn’t have to.

Finally, Leona stepped out of nurse mode, and stepped into protective wife mode. “How did he get here? Why is he in pain?”

“I couldn’t tell ya,” Nerakali claimed.

“No, you said something about a time travel gun,” Leona argued.

“It’s fine, Leelee, I’m fine,” Mateo tried to comfort her.

“No, she’s gonna answer me.”

Nerakali sighed. “No, I’m not.”

Leona got all up in her grill. “And why exactly is that?”

“Rule number twelve,” she answered simply.

Don't learn too much about your future. It was kind of an amendment to Leona’s ninth rule of time travel, which was to gather as much information on the future, and your future, as possible. Well, maybe more like a clarification; a reiteration of the possible part.

“Look,” Nerakali said, “you’re gonna have to trust me on this. I cannot say anything more.”

“Let it go, Lee,” Mateo said.

“You don’t call me that,” Leona spat. “Stop acting like you call me that.”

He stood up and gave her a hug. “Okay, Del.”

“Ugh,” she growled, like someone whose dollar the vending machine keeps rejecting. She did let it go, though, and turned back to Nerakali. “Why are we here? What are we doing? You wanted us to find your mother, but I don’t see anyone else.”

“Her whonow?” Mateo asked, confused.

“We came to this place to get your husband,” Nerakali explained. “That’s as relevant to the mission as it is, and as relevant as it ever needed to be.”

“Well, then, where are we gonna start?”

“We start,” Mateo said coolly, like he had any clue what was going on, “by catching me up to what the bloody ‘ell is happening, and why she’s involved.”

Nerakali flipped a lid off the top of her ring, and revealed a holographic image of a woman Mateo thought he recognized.

“It’s Arcadia.”

“Everyone thinks that,” Nerakali said, shaking her head. “It’s actually our mother, Savannah. She’s the one what killed you.”

Mateo squinted, and looked again. “Okay, so she does look a lot like Arcadia, though I can spot some differences when I know to look for them. Still, she doesn’t look anything like Briar.”

“Briar was just the weapon,” she said, closing the hologram, and shrugging her shoulders.

“Evidently, she gave him the hundemarke so your death couldn’t be undone with time travel,” Leona added. She also gave it to Newt’s killers, and also Jabez Carpenter back in 2019.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Just one of many people my mother manipulated.”

“So she’s been doing this all over time and space?” Mateo asked.

“Yes. We are here to stop her.”

“Well,” Mateo began, “I’m happy to do anything I can to help, but this might be out of our wheelhouse. I’ve jumped back in time before—why, I was just in, like, a million years ago—but those are always flukes. I doubt the powers that be would let us keep doing that, so unless she stays in this time period, and during our days in the timestream, I’m afraid there’s little we can do.”

“Aren’t we just waiting for a moment when she shows up?” Leona assumed.

“Sort of,” Nerakali replied. She pulled up her ring hologram again, but swiped to a different image. It was a document of some kind; probably a spreadsheet, but holograms weren’t the best form factor for what was meant to be legible data. She seemed to just be showing them for illustrative purposes. “I know when the hundemarke was used. I have a list of every fixed moment in time that was made to be that way with the hundemarke. Most of them are deaths, but a few are presumably just moments that particular people don’t want to be altered. Not all of them have anything to do with Savannah. She seems to be deeply committed to wiping certain people from the timestream permanently, but other people have used it for their own ends.

“I believe I’ve narrowed the list down to just the ones she was involved with.” She swiped again to reveal another document. “But these just tell me the moments the hundemarke was used. What some people might not realize is that, just because you’re wearing it, doesn’t mean it’s going to be doing its thing. In fact, you don’t technically need to be wearing it all, but people usually do, because there’s a psycho-emotional connection. Still, some of the people she manipulated had no idea what they were wearing, yet they still activated its power. Why? Well, most of the time, it’s because even if they don’t know what they have, they are committed to the moment they’re in. Whatever it is, they want it to happen to a much higher degree than for other things they do. They may be wearing it when they go get their car washed, but since the wash isn’t particularly important to them, the hundemarke remains nothing more than an indestructible antique piece of jewelry.”

“We understand,” Mateo said. “It doesn’t work unless you really want it to, even if you don’t realize it has magical powers.”

“Right, but not all the time,” Nerakali said. “I mean, Jabez certainly had no intention of killing...” She trailed off, like she had been personally traumatized by whatever event she was referring to. “The point is that Savannah has seemingly exercised a level of remote control over the damn thing. She can activate it even when she’s not the one wearing it, and may not even be within its blast radius at the time. I don’t know how she does that, but what it means is that she’s even more powerful than we realized. If she can do that, we can’t just go to these fixed moments, and pick her out of the crowd. We have to trace the hundemarke’s path back from that moment, to the moment they received it from her. That’s the only way we’ll find her.”

“Why are you doing this?” Leona asked. “If she’s your mother, then...”

My siblings and my relationship with her has always been a complicated one. I don’t want to blame everything on her, because that’s not taking responsibility for my own actions, but she’s not totally blameless for how we turned out either. Zeferino inherited her obsession with becoming a master of reality. Arcadia inherited her desire for fairness, justice, and balance (read: punishment).”

“What about you? Or are you more like your father?”

“I am, actually. He taught me loyalty, honesty, and sticking to your word. I would be a really great person if not for Savannah, because I inherited her sadism. I like to hurt people. I like to hear their screams when I blend their brains, and I like that they have to live with the guilt from remembering doing things that they never actually did. Then I met you two.”

“Us?” Leona asked. “What about us?”

“You are good people. You’re a good couple, and even though I do know what happened to your kids here, I also happen to know how great of parents you were in another timeline. I admire you, and I’m jealous of you, and I wish that you had been my parents instead. You helped me remember why I was put on that plane of existence. I was created to help the world, by allowing people to let go of past traumas as if they had never happened, because to them, they hadn’t. I have a plan to find Savannah, and I don’t technically need you for it. It’s not even the most efficient plan, because like you said, you’re not generally allowed to jump back and forth through time. I’ve asked you to help, because I know you’ll make good choices. I need to make sure this happens, and I need you to be here, because you’re the reason I want to make sure it happens. The old me would have let it go. She was a bad mother, and I don’t ever want to see her again. But she’s doing bad things, and you’ve turned me into the kind of person who wants to stop her.”

Neither of them knew how to respond to what Nerakali said. It was a pretty moving speech, and it seemed pretty sincere.

“Obviously, you can back out. I’m not gonna force you, or hold something over you. This isn’t going to be safe. Mateo, you and I are kinda in the same boat now, except it’s worse for you. Every time I’m put in a life or death situation, I revert back to my actual moment of death, and take one more step towards it. I don’t think you have any steps, though. I think you probably have one chance, and then you’ll just die. It won’t be any safer for you either, Leona. I don’t have a comprehensive list of every single time the hundemarke was used, so for all we know, you could secretly be destined to become one of its victims.”

Leona smiled sadly, and wrapped her arms around Nerakali. “Of course we’ll help you. I regret everything that’s happened between us. Well, the bad things that happened. It hasn’t all been bad. You blended my brain without my permission, because of that whole sticking to your word thing. That wasn’t right, but I can’t argue with the results. I’m glad I remember Mateo, and I’m glad that you existed to give me that.” They ended the hug, and enjoyed a moment of silence together.

“I would hug you too,” Mateo said, “but that feels inappropriate.”

“Come here,” Nerakali said to him. So they hugged as well, and it wasn’t inappropriate, or awkward, or uncomfortable.

“So,” Leona said, after the moment was over. “What’s the plan? How are we going to find your mother, and how are we going to stop her?”

“Honest hour?” Nerakali asked rhetorically. “I thought it might take a couple years-slash-days to convince you. The mission doesn’t start today. It doesn’t even start next year. Our first clue can be found on November 30, 2268.”

“Okay,” Mateo said, “we’ll wait.”

“Until then!” Nerakali spun around until she lost her balance, and then just turned so she was facing the direction she wanted. She lifted a blue fob and pointed it towards the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She held down the button, and waved it towards the ship, which caused it to disappear, line by line. The more she waved, the more the ship was erased.

The other two watched her do this, confident that she wasn’t somehow destroying their ship. It didn’t look like it was being torn apart, but that Nerakali was using photo editing software to make it look like it wasn’t there. After she was done, the ship was gone, leaving only an empty corner of the underground hangar.

“I don’t think you want Savannah Preston to have the ability to travel over seven hundred light years in a year. It’s best we keep it secret. Besides, we need to jump all over the globe, but not beyond its atmosphere, and the AOC isn’t designed for that.”

“What is?” Leona asked, excited to see another vehicle of some kind.

“Are you ready?” Nerakali sported an evil smile, but, like, in a good way.

“Yes,” Leona said, happy that they were friends now.

“Here we go!” Nerakali teased. She reached behind her back, and quickly returned with futuristic handcuffs, but with the two halves separated from each other. Before they could stop her, she had them installed around their wrists. She then reached behind her back again, and retrieved a third cuff, which she placed on her own wrist.

Leona tried to get hers off. “What is this?”

“They’re Cassidy Cuffs. They bind our powers together,” Nerakali said. “Well, my powers, and your pattern. Whenever you jump forward in time, I jump with you. Whenever I teleport, you teleport with me. You could also blend someone’s brain, if it strikes your fancy.”

“Why did you do this?”

“I don’t want to get separated. You don’t want to separate from each other either, right? That’s rule number thirteen. This protects you from that.”

“We did not consent to this,” Leona complained.

Nerakali took out two slips of paper from her pocket, and handed one to each of them. “These are your respective cuff codes. You are free to leave at will. Please don’t. You’re not prisoners any more than I am, but while I think this is for the best, it’s up to you.” She started tapping on the console on her own cuff. “I’m putting a thirty second delay on this, and teleporting myself to what’s left of Machu Picchu. Either you unlock your cuffs in that time, and walk away, or you leave them on, and follow me through. You choose.”

She disappeared. Thirty seconds later, so did they.

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Dardius: Newt Clemens (Part II)

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In a universe called Ansutah, a young woman and a young man met each other, and fell in love. Their names were Savitri and Avidan, and before too long, they conceived a child. Avidan had the ability to diagnose people’s general health through fairly simple examination, so it was he who actually alerted her to her pregnant status. He said she was pregnewt, however, and this way of saying it stuck around so long that they ended up using it for their child’s name. Sadly, Newt Clemens came into the world stillborn. His first, final, and only act was to remove the time powers for every single person on the whole planet. This was only in one reality, however. There was another timeline, where Newt was born perfectly healthy. His life would not continue to be so perfect, however. The primary species in this universe were the Maramon; white monsters who had complicated feelings about the humans. Many Maramon felt extremely threatened by Newt’s existence, and were always worried he would strip them of their immortality. So he had to escape.

He found himself on a vessel called The Transit. It was larger than The Prototype, and smaller than The Crossover, but was equally capable of traveling to other universes. He, a man named Nereus, and dozens of other humans fled Ansutah, and ended up in back in their own universe. The others were now fine, but Newt was not out of the woods yet. His ability was as dangerous as it was powerful, and there were people in this world who were just like the white monsters, and did not like that he could take away their abilities. His only hope was to be rescued by Dardius, where he could live in Sanctuary forever; safe and content—still separated from his family—but at least alive, and that was all his parents wanted. But even living here, things couldn’t be so easy for him.

While Dardius was a great place to live, and people were generally happy here, it was certainly no paradise, and Newt remained in danger. He was afforded protection by the world government, and the majority of the population had no ill intentions towards him, but as a public figure, there were those who wanted him for their respective agendas. A war broke out when the Dardieti attempted to rescue a ship full of capitalists from destruction. They were not happy with being forced to move from one non-capitalistic society to another. They wanted to stop being moved around, and they wanted control of their own world. After years of fighting and stalemates, a peace was finally reached, but that didn’t mean each individual was happy with the outcome. A faction of terrorists rose up and attempted to kill Newt because of how important he was to the leader of Dardius, Patronus Matic. They failed in this endeavor, and their operation was significantly diminished, but they weren’t destroyed. They returned, angrier now, and more determined than ever to complete their mission. They found Newt, fitted him with a suicide vest, and sent him off to kill the Patronus. The Patronus survived, along with most of his friends, but Newt was not so lucky.

Just as the bomb vest was about to explode, everything around Newt froze in place. He could see his friends being spirited away by a teleportation machine. “Hello?” he called to the void, but there was no answer. He cautiously stepped out from his own body, but did not turn around to look back at it. He knew exactly what was happening. This was the work of an extraction mirror. It was capable of accessing any time and place in the past, but there were many other ways to travel through time anyway, so its most common use was to slow time to a snail’s pace, and retrieve someone from the brink of death. The catch was that if you needed to slow time to accomplish this, it probably meant that whatever had caused this person’s death could not be undone. He looked down at his own neck. His new and temporary body was free from the suicide vest, but there was one thing on it that remained. It was called the hundemarke, and it prevented temporal alterations within the vicinity. His death was unavoidable. He was now free to move about time and space at will, but in the end, he would have to return to this moment, and finally let himself die.

Newt didn’t have an infinite amount of time, though. He quickly found the entrance to the extraction mirror, and stepped through the threshold. The barrier between now and then closed back up. He was standing in an unfamiliar place; a darkened hallway. It was clean, but stoney, like a billionaire’s secret mountainside winter getaway. A blinking arrow appeared on the floor beneath his feet, pointing down the hall. When he stepped forward, the arrow flipped off, only to be replaced with another arrow a meter away. This continued as he walked on, letting them direct him to whatever his destination was going to be. “Hello?” he repeated every once in awhile. The arrows led him to a room. It was just as stoney as it was everywhere else. Nothing was inside of it except for a chamber of some kind, and a note hanging from a string in front of it.

“This will take you home,” Newt read the note aloud. He looked up to the aether around him. “What exactly does that mean?” He waited for a response. It was possible no one else was here anymore, or that they had been watching him this whole time. “They say that home is where the heart is,” he went on, “but maybe that’s not what you mean. Maybe this returns me to Earth, where my mother was born. Or maybe it goes to Durus where my mother was trapped, and where my father was born. Or does it go to Ansutah, where the two of them conceived me? Will it take me to 2226, which is where I was before I died? Tribulation Island? Sutvindr?”

He heard a click, and a sigh. “Just step into the time chamber, please.”

“No,” Newt argued.

“Why not?” she asked.

“I don’t know who you are, or what you want with me,” he tried to explain.

“You think I’m trying to hurt you?”

“Maybe.”

“If I thought you wouldn’t get inside of this thing unless I forced you, I would have just forced you. If I were going to kill you, I would have just left you in your death moment. There is no reason to extract you unless I want you to live.”

“You may just want to exploit my powers.”

The voice didn’t respond for a moment. “Okay, well, I can’t argue with that logic. That’s not what I’m doing, though.”

“Prove it.”

Another sigh.

A hidden door cracked open on the right side of the room. A woman came through it, and walked forward. “My name is Ellie Underhill. Perhaps you’ve heard of me.”

He shook his head. “Are you in a band, or something?”

“I don’t mean I’m famous, though...I kind of am. I’m a choosing one, so it was possible you’ve heard my name before.”

“Wait.” Newt thought about it a moment. “Are you DJ Mount Alias?”

“The very one.”

“My father loved your show.”

Ellie pointed towards the way he had come. “I have other people to extract, and they all need to use this time chamber. Well, except for one, but the next one definitely does.” She looked at her watch. “He’s going to be coming through in two minutes. He’s very badly hurt, and Doctor Sarka is going to need this time chamber to get here to treat him, since the powers that be won’t be dispatching him themselves. I kind of need you to get the hell out of here.”

He jerked his head at the note. “It says home. Explain what that means.”

“It’s what you said,” Ellie explained. “It’ll take you to where your heart is.”

“My heart is with Étude and Cassidy.”

She sported a wide-eyed knowing look, but didn’t say anything.

“Am I going to see Étude and Cassidy?”

“I know of one good way to find out.”

“Thank you.” Newt nodded. “As long as you’re telling the truth about trying to help me, thank you.”

She nodded back, but then stopped short. “Wait, is that the hundemarke?”

Newt looked down, even though he obviously already knew the answer to that. “I don’t know how those capitalist terrorists got their hands on it, but that’s how they killed me.”

“No, I know that. I just...I didn’t think it would come with you. Like, I thought it would stay with your real body.”

Newt shrugged.

She eyed it.

“Do you want it?”

“No, but I know someone who needs it. We’ve been looking for it. Except...” She trailed off as she got lost in her own thoughts. “Why have we been looking for it if it’s already been found?”

He watched her, and waited for her to either answer her own question, or remember that he was still standing in front of her.

“No, I can’t take it. You have to.” She looked down at the floor as she spoke. “You have to give it to Horace, so he can get it to Bhulan.”

“What are you talking about? Who is Bhulan? Which version of Horace am I meant to meet?”

“This solves everything.” Now Ellie was getting excited. “You keep it, but give it to Horace Reaver, who you’ll see after you step into that time chamber. If all goes according to plan, this entire future will be erased.”

“If it’s erased, then you won’t extract me before my death, but if you don’t extract me before my death, then I can’t go back in time, and give Horace the hundemarke.”

She searched for answers on the ground again. “It’s a loophole. We can’t extract you permanently, because of the hundemarke, but we can extract the hundemarke itself, because it couldn’t have been destroyed in the explosion anyway.” She looked back up at him. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to you when you do this, so I guess it’s your choice. Can you make that sacrifice? Because I can’t make it for you.” And with that, she walked back through her secret door, and sealed it up behind her.

He let out a sigh of his own, and gazed at the time chamber. The hundemarke was one of the most powerful objects in histories. It could undo time travel complete. It could make a permanent world, with one timeline, and no second chances, or it could save humanity. But it was only ever used to kill, And it was for that reason that it needed to be destroyed. Newt knew a lot about Horace Reaver. He lived a lot of completely different lives, and he wasn’t always a good person, but he was one of the best in this reality. If he needed the hundemarke, it was surely to destroy it. That could only be good for the love of his life, and his daughter.

Newt Clemens, stepped into the time chamber, let it activate on its own, and disappeared through it. He appeared in the main restaurant of the original Dardius Sanctuary. Everyone he loved was there, including his wife, and his little girl; all grown up now. He hadn’t seen her since she was a baby, but he knew this was her, because it had to be. Mateo and Leona were there as well, along with Saga Einarsson, Vearden Haywood, Vitalie Crawville, Ramses Abdulrashid, Amanda Moss, and a few people he didn’t recognize. Horace Reaver was there too.

“Newt?” Étude asked, shocked and glad

“Dad?” Cassidy asked.

“I love you,” Newt said with a smile. “A lot of people say they would die for their children, but I get to prove it.” He began to remove the hundemarke from his neck. “This is a fixed moment in time...so I will always have been here.” He reached out towards Horace. “But I cannot stay.”

“Oh my God,” Horace said, staring at the dog tag.

“Take it,” Newt insisted.

“What is this?” Cassidy asked. “Dad? What are you doing? What do you mean, you can’t stay?”

“I love you,” he said again, because it was all that truly mattered.

Horace reached for the hundemarke and pulled it from Newt’s hand. And then Newt disappeared, like he was never really there.

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Microstory 1275: The Camel and the Party

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And so the animals gathered for a lively party in the valley. The hummingbirds and the elk sang the music, while the elephant handled trumpets, and the woodpecker kept the beat. The lynx was there, and so was the antelope. The sea otter family swam up while the flamingo flew down. The chimpanzee swung in to much fanfare, and the camel walked up slowly. The lion showed up late, thinking he was cool, but the others just thought it was rude. Still, he was the most ferocious of them all, and though he and the animals had called a temporary truce, no one wanted to set him off. It wasn’t worth the risk. One by one, the animals came before him and showed them their dances. The otters shook their shoulders, and rolled their stomachs. The lion was impressed, for he could not do that himself. The antelope hopped gracefully back and forth, and though the lion could hop as well, it was almost as if the antelope’s hooves never touched the ground, so the lion was also impressed with her. The lynx spun around, and performed flips, which the lion was too large to do himself. The flamingo soared through the air, which of course, was impossible for the lion. The chimpanzee was the most impressive, however. He could shimmy like the otters, and leap like the antelope, and flip like the lynx, and when he swung on the trees, it was almost like he was flying like the flamingo. Then it came time for the camel. He was slow and bulky, and quite frankly, graceless. He tried each of the others’ moves, but always failed, and tried to cover it up by switching to something else. By all accounts, the camel was a terrible dancer, but he was having fun. The lion scoffed and mocked him, and the other animals followed suit, for they still did not want to anger the lion. But the camel never stopped. He kept trying, and he kept having fun, and eventually the animals began to dance again, but this time together. Even the lion tapped his foot and bobbed his head. The party was a hit.

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