Microstory 1630: Virtual Exclusion

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Here is another story about a world that avoided a run-in with the Ochivari and the Darning Wars. It’s also not about a version of Earth. Here, humans evolved on a planet called Olankaran. It was tidally locked with its host star, meaning one side of it was stuck in perpetual brightness, and the other, perpetually nighttime. They could only survive in the terminator zone, which was a thin strip of temperate vegetation that went all around the circumference. Despite this wildly different solar dynamic, they developed about as any other civilization does. They fought with each other, and formed bonds, and progressed science, and were held back by religion. It took them about as long to figure out that some habitable worlds weren’t tidal-locked as it will take a non-tidally-locked planet to hypothesize about them. One thing they had on their side was a deeper appreciation for how precious life was. So much of their planet could not support complex life, so they understood how important it was to protect what little managed to come into existence. They didn’t ever burn fossil fuels, instead moving directly to renewables. It might have taken them longer to start harnessing electricity, but whatever, who cares? Solar was, of course, their number one form of power generation, as there were places where they could install panels that worked throughout the entire day. It was very windy on the nightside, though, so that was useful to them as well. They flourished on this world, and why they were just as curious about outer space as anyone, the majority of them chose to stay right where they were. And that was because they knew, from there, they could go anywhere.

They developed virtually reality constructs, which was a completely normal and natural progression for any civilization. These people took it to an extreme. Once they were ready, just about everyone chose to upload their consciousnesses to the virtual worlds, and live there permanently. To keep them cool, their processors were placed on the far side of the planet, and kept them running using highly advanced solar power on the day side. Robots maintained them from the outside. The temperate zones where their physical bodies once took up excessive space were returned to nature. Within a century, it was nearly impossible to tell that people had ever lived there before. Anyone still using a body was exploring interstellar space. The uploaded people were exploring space too, they just weren’t doing it with their own bodies. They dispatched probes to map the galaxy, and one day reach out to other galaxies. As more data came in from these unmanned exploratory missions, the virtual equivalent world was updated to reflect the new information. They just thought it was a lot safer, because it was impossible to die in the construct unless the servers were damaged, and of course, they came up with safeguards to prevent that from happening. The people here were so good at hiding that the Ochivari weren’t even aware that they existed. When they came to this universe to find out whether any sufficiently evolved life was here in need of being destroyed, they didn’t detect anything, and marked it down as empty. They lived happily ever after. Literally. Because when the universe finally came to a close on its own, they simply transferred all of their servers to a younger one, and just kept going on forever.

Microstory 1629: Legend Has It

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Let’s get away from the depressing Darning War stories, and talk about something unrelated. I don’t want to say that this universe has nothing to do with the war—because sooner or later, the Ochivari find everyone—but the story itself will be about something else. This version of Earth only encountered one instance of time travel. One day, an underemployed twentysomething man living in his recently deceased grandmother’s house heard an explosion downstairs. His name was Legend, but he was anything but. He didn’t have any passions, or goals. He just went to work every day, and came home to his cat in the evening. It was his once grandmother’s cat, and it came with the house as a packaged deal. He was convinced it would outlive them all. When Legend went down to investigate the ruckus, the cat was just sitting in a chair on the back deck, having barely acknowledged the explosion in the kitchen. He didn’t expect her to run to his rescue, but it should have freaked her out. That thing could not be flapped. He crept around the corner, and looked in to find a naked woman about his age, brushing the dust off her skin. “Axel Quincy?” she presumed.

“Is that your name, errr...?”

“I thought you were Axel Quincy,” she said.

“Nope. Sorry. Wrong house. Never heard of him.” As it turned out, the woman was from the future, and desperately needed to find an engineering prodigy whose designs were this close to saving the world decades from now. He was destined to die sometime within the next two weeks, and only he could prevent disaster. He was unable to finish the plans for many of his inventions, and while the time traveler’s people were able to reverse engineer what they needed once the initial plans were discovered, they weren’t able to do so in time. They could have really benefited from having them already exist by the time any of them were even born. She had to find him, and save his life, so he could complete his work on his own, and be prepared to defend the planet against a terrible future. After a little sleuthing, they realized that the time machine had accidentally sent her to the wrong place. It wasn’t even the right country. She didn’t have any money, or a present-day identity, and she didn’t know how to drive, and she wasn’t familiar with the national borders, which were erased from the map when catastrophe struck the first time. Legend was her only hope now, even though he was nobody, and didn’t know anything about how to find some Canadian stranger who wasn’t going to be famously important until after his death. Still, he agreed to help, because it was the right thing to do. So the two of them set off on an adventure, along with the cat, and hijinks ensued. She tried to drive once, because he was too slow, so they had to wait for it to be repaired. Getting across the border was tough, because neither of them had a passport. The people they met along the way either tried to help and failed, or actively tried to stop them. They were running from the law, and a CEO who thought Legend was someone else; evidently someone who was a far greater threat to his freedom and wealth. They bickered and struggled, and of course became friends, and I won’t tell you how it ends. You’ll just have to see it for yourself, if you get a chance.

Microstory 1628: Scared Substrate

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Like Lochanverse, this next universe was sterilized completely by the Ochivari, in an attempt to prevent them from being able to destroy their world completely. Unfortunately for the Ochivari, their plan failed, because it had a weakness. Organic life isn’t the only thing capable of destroying. The truth is that it doesn’t matter what body you’re in, if you don’t care about the environment, you’re not going to go out of your way to save it. It doesn’t matter as much as people think if you could live long enough to see the consequences of your actions. You’re not going to suddenly start recycling, and turning off your lights, and driving electric cars, and donating money to wildlife preserves. You’re going to keep doing whatever it is that makes you happy in whatever way is the most convenient, whether that means polluting, or wasting resources. This is what happened here. Most of the time, the Ochivari don’t reveal themselves to the populations that they sterilize. They do it quietly, and just let the humans figure out what happened to them on their own. Obviously, they always will realize it, but the hope is that it will be too late by that time. The Ochivari don’t just want to make sure no one stops them, because once they release the virus, that’s pretty much impossible anyway. The sooner the humans figure it out, the longer they have to come up with some solution. Now, most of the time, that’s not relevant. The humans spend all their resources trying to cure the virus that they don’t have the time or resources to try anything else. The discovery that no more children are going to be born leads to mayhem and civil breakdown. The mistake that the Ochivari made in this case was to reveal themselves to their victims, and they did it out of anger.

The one requirement they have when choosing a target is the people have to be doomed to destroy their world unless someone intervenes. Generally, this means that they’re greedy, lazy, or just inept. This world, however, was willfully destructive. They reveled in the damage they were doing to their environment, seeing every bad outcome as proof that they were gods of their own planet, and were entitled to do whatever the hell they wanted with it. They were conquerors, and takers. They didn’t want to save their planet, because they were confident the best of them would one day leave, and maintain their lifestyles elsewhere. They weren’t wrong. The Ochivari made a mistake when they chose to lecture them about why they had to sterilize them. Armed with this knowledge, the humans came up with a workaround. They didn’t even bother to cure the virus. They simply uploaded their consciousnesses to new bodies. They were working on this technology already, so it wasn’t all that hard. The technology was made free—which didn’t sound like something they would do, but presumably, they wanted to rob the aliens of the satisfaction of watching even one organic human die. It was an unexpected response. It showed how flawed the Ochivari's ideals were, even within the parameters of their sick and irrational view of the multiverse. Unfortunately, this development did nothing to dissuade them from their crusade. They just needed to devise contingencies. Organic lifeforms were susceptible to organic viruses, which computers were immune to, but computers have their own viruses to contend with. All the Ochivari had to do was program one of these viruses to be as nasty and all-inclusive as their normal pathogen. The people died out anyway, and nothing got better. It was a lose-lose situation.

Microstory 1627: For a Favor

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Most worlds progress in about the same way. Sure, there are plenty of notable differences, but they generally have a lot of things in common, and there are some things that just won’t happen, because they do not support that species’ survival, whether speaking evolutionarily, or socially. A species that can’t, or won’t, protect itself, won’t last very long, because nobody else is going to do it for them...most of the time. Guardian races do exist, and I’ll get to one or two of those in the future. The universe I’m talking about today didn’t have guardians, but the humans of one planet still managed to remain quite peaceful throughout their pre-singularity struggling period. That’s  probably not what you would notice if you went there during that time, though. You would probably first realize that the people of Whrweh never had any standard form of currency. They maintained a barter economy until they no longer needed to exchange goods and services with each other, when automation took over. They managed this by sticking to isolated pockets of civilization. They lived underground, and figured out how to build tallish structures pretty early on, which allowed them to remain confined in a smaller area, and leave more space between each region. They didn’t need to spread out too much, and they didn’t want to. They had recycling, and minimalistic principles, and they did not like waste. Surprisingly, this form of isolationism never led to war. In fact, though they did experience some violence, it was nowhere near what most civilizations had. They had no use for it, because everyone always had their own resources, and left others alone. Each pocket was pretty self-sufficient, and with little occasion to reach out to other pockets for help, there was also less of a chance of encountering conflict.

One thing they did to keep the peace was to have a sort of unwritten policy of sharing knowledge with each other. When a pocket made a breakthrough in science or technology, they wouldn’t be obligated to actually give the results to other pockets, but they would give them the tools they needed to develop it on their own. When someone invented the plow, they told everyone else about it, and pretty soon, everyone had a plow. Then, when someone else realized they could hook a plow up to a work animal, they told everyone about that too, and now they all had better plows, including the person who invented the first version. This had the added benefit of lessening their negative impact on their environment. By giving all new information to everyone, they were assured that someone would quickly discover downsides, and deeper solutions. They skipped right over using fossil fuels to power their vehicles, and other machines, because they soon learned that electricity was cleaner, and more efficient. This all just kept going until the whole planet was so advanced, there was no longer any need to stay separate. Technically, they were living in independent regions, but they were already one peoples, so coming together officially was a no-brainer. Once robots and artificial intelligence were created, everything fell into place. They shed their surface and underground dwellings, and flew off into the sky, to live in something called an orbital ring. It’s exactly what it sounds like, a giant ring that goes all around their planet, like you might find around Saturn or Neptune. Except this is artificial, solid and continuous, and capable of housing their entire population many times over. They did away with the bartering system for the most part, though elements of it are still there. You are allowed to have anything you want, as long as you contribute in your own way. Your peers are responsible for determining whether you contribute enough to be worthy of any given amenity, and for the most part, this works out with no terrible disputes. A second type of bartering was created in order to handle external interactions. Some humans left their home world, and went off to live elsewhere. Humanoid aliens also developed on their own worlds, and formed their own systems of government. When dealing with these people, the Whrwehs always ask for a favor, in exchange for whatever it is they’re asking for. This favor is never something they actually need, but they believe it’s only fair that the other side make some kind of effort, or even a sacrifice, in order to receive something in return. This was all great, and it protected them from Ochivari invasion, but it would not last. While time travel was not possible within the bounds of this universe, that rule does not extend to external forces, and one little mission changed everything about everything.

Microstory 1626: Sterile Conditions

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Perhaps I should have brought this up earlier, but when an Ochivari invasion force arrives in a new universe, they don’t just fire up their weapons, and start killing people. First of all, that would be counterproductive to their goals. They believe that they’re saving the planet, and its innocent animal and plant life, from the evolved species who are doing damage to it. They believe they’re ultimately preserving life, and ridding the bulkverse of the harmful life. They see humans as much of a virus as humans see actual viruses. They do recognize our intelligence, and in fact, hold that against us. If we’re so smart, we should be able to figure out how to live in harmony with our ecosystem. Some planets do figure that out, in various ways, usually by a combination of asteroid mining, and space migration. If they do, and they do it quickly enough for their homeworld to recover, the Ochivari leave them alone. If they don’t—if they can’t break out of their own cycle of destruction—the Ochivari will step in, and take care of the problem. They’ll do this in one specific way, by delivering their own virus, which has been programmed to render every member of a given species sterile. It doesn’t kill them, or hurt them in any way, as long as it goes right. Like I’ve been saying, they are antinatalists, not efilists, and not murderers. An all out war would cause more harm to the planet they’re trying to rescue, and would unnecessarily drain them of resources. That’s not to say that violence never occurs. Sometimes, the world they attack is advanced enough to fight back, and the Ochivari have to do everything they can to pull the battles away from the new sanctuary, or the whole endeavor would be pointless. They could go back in time instead, and end it before that civilization can advance, but there’s always a crossroads, and it leads to a self-imposed rule of theirs. It’s a point of no return, that after passing it, that civilization can no longer undo or repair what they’ve done. Then—and only then—are the Ochivari allowed to intervene. If they were to go back and attack the humans at their most vulnerable, they would consider themselves to be hypocrites, and unworthy of the responsibility.

Lochanverse is so named because of its one survivor. Lochan Madigan found himself immune to the sterility virus when no one else was. What they didn’t know at the time was that he was the only known survivor in the entire bulkverse. His virility was unmatched by any other; off the charts, you could say. When they discovered him, scientists of that world were hopeful. Maybe there was a way out of this. By studying him, maybe they could figure out how to combat the virus. If that had been true, it would have changed everything. It would have helped a lot more people than they knew. Of course, they couldn’t figure it out. He wasn’t completely immune. It was more like the virus wasn’t strong enough to prevent him from potentially having children. Of course, this superpower was useless if he was the only one. Had they found a woman with her own resistance to the virus, they could have had children, and those children might have been the key to solving their problems, but that woman did not exist. I saw him in his universe, and could sense his loneliness. Other people were still around, as the species wasn’t going to die out for another several decades, but he was still unique, and from where he sat, not in a good way. People were envious of him, because even though he too would die one day, he was well-protected, and lived a life of luxury. As you can imagine, the whole world becoming sterile was not without its consequences. Society fell into chaos, and continued to cause harm to their planet. This is the folly of the Ochivari. No matter what they do, they’re killing life, and going against their own ideals. They believe they are doing the bulkverse a great service, but they’re really just making things worse. I rescued Lochan from this world, and took him to one that was pretty much off limits to the Ochivari, regardless of how they advanced. Here he began an immortal happy life, with his new family.

The Advancement of Serif: Tuesday, September 23, 2200

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Lochan Madigan was a refugee from another universe. His world was attacked by an alien force bent on destroying all sufficiently evolved life. Instead of literally starting a war, though, they decided to simply sterilize the entire population. It had a near hundred percent success rate, but Lochan managed to slip past those odds. Scientists and medical professionals tried to figure out what made him different, but never came to any conclusion. His ability to resist the pathogen was completely irreproducible, despite everyone’s best efforts. The theory was that they could find success if they discovered a woman with her own resistance, but they never did. He was seemingly one in a trillion. And so he was rescued from his world, and transported through the bulkverse in an attempt to find him a new home. They couldn’t save anyone from that universe, but they could save him, and that would have to be good enough. Thack and her bulk traveler were on their way to drop him off when they received that call about Adamina and Esen, and decided to make a pit stop. When he was stranded here due to Tamerlane Pryce’s intervention, he asked to just stay in The Parallel. “This is as good a brane as any,” he said. “I just don’t want to watch everyone I love struggle, knowing that their legacy ends with them. If I can find someone to love here, then they all live on, in a way.”

Serif and the crew got him set up with a new life on Earth, and then jumped to the future. When they returned, they found him immensely happy. He did meet someone to fall in love with, and pretty quickly sired a son. The boy, Amulet was fourteen years old now, and eager for his own life. Lochan told him the truth about where he was from, and how he came to be here. He grew up fascinated by the whole idea of having adventure. There were billions of worlds in this reality. He traveled to a few of them, but they weren’t exciting enough. They didn’t have death or danger, and Amulet didn’t think that was living. He begged his parents to one day let him join the crew of the AOC.

They were all standing around the central table of their ship, the crew, and the Madigan family. Here was his problem. He was too young now, but if he didn’t put on a Cassidy cuff today, he would have to wait nineteen years. “I’m old enough,” he argued. “There is no standard definition for an adult in this reality.”

“That’s only because people regularly travel to different planets, with different solar cycles,” his mother, Ilaria reasoned. “According to Earth, you’re only fourteen. And a fourteen-year-old can’t go off on his own on a spaceship.”

“Since when?” Amulet argued. “That happens all the time. It’s not about the number of minutes I’ve been alive. It’s about how mature I am, and I think we can all agree that I’m well-prepared, and well-suited to do this.”

“We don’t even know if Serif would want you to be on this ship at all,” Lochan said.

They all looked to Serif now. “This isn’t, uhh...this isn’t a fishing boat. Our job is unfathomably dangerous, and none of us volunteered. We were all recruited, and while we’re comfortable doing it now, I don’t know that I’m allowed to bring in someone else. I’m in charge of the choices the crew makes, and how we handle our missions, but I’m not in charge of the roster, or what missions we take.”

“Well, who is?” Amulet asked.

“Her name is Nerakali Preston.” Serif lifted her cuff, and spoke into the microphone. “Do you hear me? Care to weigh in on this?”

A message popped up on the screen, reading, No.

“No, he can’t join, or no, you don’t want to weigh in?”

Another message appeared, He can’t join. Kill him, before he kills you.

“Ha-ha-ha. What?”

Nerakali’s coordinates then appeared, prompting Serif to tap on it. “I’ll be back soon, I think. But hear me, Amulet. You cannot join us if your parents do not approve. It doesn’t matter what I say without that, so you’ll have to convince them first.” Serif tapped the link, and jumped to Nerakali’s location on the edge of a foggy mountain.

“What the hell are you goin’ on about?”

“It’s like I said, you have to kill him,” Nerakali ordered. “That’s the mission today.”

“He’s just a boy.”

“That boy,” Nerakali began, “is the destroyer of worlds. He is the sickness that pervades. He is the end of all life.”

“Stop speaking in riddles. Tell me what the problem is, so we can come up with a solution together. Is he supposed to be the next Elon Musk, or something?”

Nerakali sighed quite heavily. “The timeline is confusing, and I don’t have all the information, because our memories have been messed with, but I’ll try to explain. There’s a pathogen in 3117. It renders every biological entity sterile. Sound familiar?”

“Yeah, that’s what happened to Lochan’s world. But he’s immune.”

Nerakali breathed slowly now, trying to figure out the words. “He’s not immune. He’s just very, very virile. It’s more like a game of chance. I can’t tell you how the pathogen works, but it doesn’t stop him, because he’s just powerful enough to overcome it. He’s still a carrier. Fortunately for us, he didn’t start infecting everyone he came into contact with since he left his universe, but he did pass it on to his son, and if that son is allowed to reach sexual maturity, he will start spreading it, and you can’t stop it then.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. You said the pathogen shows up in 3117. This doesn’t line up with him being here today.”

“It does if you give him that Cassidy cuff. He’ll be in 3117 in no time.”

“Okay, so my options are as follows. I can give him the cuff, and by the time we reach 3117, he will have matured enough to spread the pathogen. If I don’t give him the cuff, he’ll mature in a matter of years, and the pathogen will show up a millennium early. Or I kill him now, and stop the pathogen completely.”

“Yes,” Nerakali confirmed. “In some realities, the pathogen appears around this time period. In others, it’s in the future. You have to create a timeline where it never existed at all. You can end this now.”

Serif started to think over her options. Obviously, killing him was totally off the table. She wasn’t going to do that. Having him join the crew was probably never something she was going to agree to either. Why did Nerakali think that happened? In what reality did Serif make that choice? Perhaps people in the Parallel were different, but where she was from, fourteen was too young to do something this insane. Then she remembered what Thack told her just before she left. Let him enter the cave. “Wait, how do you know how the pathogen gets to 3117? How do you know it’s because he wears the cuff?”

“It’s how the math works out. I don’t actually know it, but it makes sense.”

Serif shook her head. “It doesn’t make that much sense. And I don’t think it’s true.” She kept digging into her memory archive, and trying to solve the riddle. “The time cave on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. It goes nine hundred and nine years in the future.”

“No, it goes nine hundred and nine years in the past.”

“Unless you enter the cave on Earth.”

Nerakali frowned, and looked away, now also solving the riddle. “Why would he go through the time cave?”

“Maybe he doesn’t know it’ll take him to the future. Maybe he’ll just try to get there before we go there for our transition missions.”

“That’s absurd.” Nerakali shook the thought out of her hair. “It doesn’t matter, though. You still have to kill him. He’s dangerous no matter what time period he’s in.”

Serif placed her fingers on either side of her nose, and cupped her mouth. There had to be a way to get through this without anyone getting hurt. “I’m a healer.”

“You’re a nanite healer,” Nerakali contended. “You think the people who have been trying to stop this haven’t already thought of nanites? You don’t have a power so much as you’re a walking nanobot manufacturer with a small-scale delivery system.”

“Maybe I can’t cure an entire population of this,” Serif said, “but maybe I can heal this one person before it takes full hold of his system.”

“If you try that, and it backfires, it could kill you.”

“I thought it didn’t kill people, it just sterilized them.”

“It’s killed before, if it’s too concentrated. It killed Leona’s mother.”

“I have to try,” Serif maintained. “It’s who I am. I was created...for...”

“That’s something you’ve forgotten. Why were you created?”

“Maybe for this. Maybe this has been my purpose all along.”

“In no reality has this happened,” Nerakali claimed. “In every reality, the pathogen takes hold somewhere, somewhen. If this were going to work, I would have heard about it already.”

“Maybe. Or maybe there are some things that even you don’t know.”

“Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. There’s too much at stake here for you to do anything if you’re armed only with a bunch of maybes.”

“Are you ordering me to stand down, Nerakali, or are you warning me that you’re gonna try to stop me? Because I can ignore the first of those, and I can fight against the second. Either way, this is happening. So all you need to do is decide if you’re gonna hold me back, or back me up.”

Nerakali was still reluctant. She didn’t want to kill a fourteen-year-old boy, but she didn’t want to let the whole species go extinct when she had the power to stop it. But that was true either way, wasn’t it? She had the power to stop it no matter what.

“If it doesn’t work, you can always go back in time, and change things. But if you do, then just take him to an unpopulated universe. Don’t kill him.”

This seemed to satisfy her. “Very well. Go make your attempt.”

Serif returned to the ship. Surprisingly, Amulet’s parents finally agreed to let him join the crew in a limited capacity. He would not go on any missions that were too dangerous, and— “It doesn’t matter. Stop talking about this.” She turned towards the boy. “You’re sick. You have the same disease your father’s people had. I might be able to cure you, but if it doesn’t work, you could be responsible for the end of the human race in this universe. If you think you’re old enough to join the crew, then you’re old enough to hear the truth.”

Amulet was frightened, but desperately didn’t want to show it. “Do it.”

Serif stepped forward, and inhaled to prepare to breathe on him, so her nanites could enter his system, and cleanse him of the lingering and dormant sterility pathogen. As she was trying to exhale, a pair of hands appeared between their faces, blocking the air from reaching him. The hands gently pushed Serif away, and she could see who it was. It was an alternate version of herself.

“Whew!” the other Serif said. “That was a close one. You have no idea what I just saved you from.” She started walking around the room, shaking everyone’s hand. “Hi, it’s nice to see you again. I’m Future!Serif.”

“What did you save me from?” Present!Serif demanded to know.

“Not you. Like, us, I guess. All of us, as a species. Your nanites are a key ingredient. Not only do they not cure him, but they exacerbate the problem. The pathogen makes the victim’s body turn on itself, like a cancer. They would attack your nanites, take them over, and use them to spread. You’re immune. Uh, I am immune. And that’s only because I’m...well, at the time, I was—”

“Pregnant,” Present!Serif interrupted. “I’m pregnant.”

“That’s right.”

“And the baby is Mateo Matic’s.”

“Right again,” Future!Serif said.

“Yeah, I’m starting to remember him. It’s all coming back to me.”

“Yes,” Future!Serif noted, “very..interesting. The point is that you’re not a cure. Your baby is the cure. We don’t need your breath, we need your amniotic fluid.”

“And then I’ll be cured?” Amulet hoped. “And then I can join the crew?”

Future!Serif laughed. “Ha! No, that would be stupid. Roster’s full now. You’ll find your place. You’re a second generation spirit, after all.”

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Big Papa: White Hole Radical (Part XII)

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I keep watching after we think it’s all over. Pryce has finally been neutralized, and it looks like everything’s gonna be okay. But of course there’s still one loose end. With everyone still distracted for a moment, staring at the spot where Tamerlane Pryce once was, Pinocchio takes his shot. He pulls out his own zero blade, and pierces Genifer right in the heart. “I want that button.”

Lowell lunges forward to help, but Genifer holds out her staff, and stops him. “No.” She smiles at Pinocchio, confusing him. Then she turns her staff, and pounds it on the floor three times, very deliberately. The paint melts off of it like ice on a summer snowman. It’s turned white.

Pinocchio looks over at it, unimpressed. “The White Staff can’t save you now. It’s too late.”

“It’s too late for you too, whoever you are,” Genifer replies as the blackness quickly overwhelms her clothes. She lifts the staff, and gently—almost affectionately—taps him on the nose with it. “Boop!”

They both disappear at the same time, him in a flash of white, her in a puff of smoke. Behind me in the real world, a floor model gasps, and begins to breathe heavily. Pinocchio rolls out of the pod, and squirms on the floor. He’s never been alive before, so he’s quite harmless for the time being. Back in the simulation, the white staff has remained standing, even though its bearer is now dead and gone. As if finally remembering simulated gravity, it begins to tip over, but Dalton catches it gracefully.

“We need to figure out what to do with that,” Gilbert notes. “It’s up to Ellie to decide who gets resurrected, and when.”

“Yeah,” Dalton says, nodding his head. But he doesn’t hand the staff over, and there’s something weird about his answer. He’s just looking at it like there’s writing on it, and he’s in the middle of a good story. Then he bolts. He runs as fast as he can, down the hallways, and back up the steps. Lowell and Gilbert aren’t sure whether they should chase after him, or what. As far as leveling weapons go, it’s dangerous to be in the wrong hands, but at least no one will get hurt by it. I understand why someone would want to maintain control over it, and though I don’t know why Dalton is one of these people, it’s not the worst of our problems. As he’s climbing out of the fountain entrance, still moving as fast as he can, I can see another version of Pryce gliding down in the opposite direction. It’s probably Avatar!Pryce, having recovered from his indentured servitude. The zeroblade should destroy any copies of the same code, unless the copy is sufficiently divergent.

“Is that the guy who took over my body at the wedding?” Lowell wonders out loud.

I point at the resurrected Pinocchio, but before I say anything, I realize my mistake. He’s not been resurrected at all, but this is his first day as a real boy. It’s more like he was just born, and I guess in this case, there is such a thing as original sin. “Call security, and have him taken to MedHock,” I order the lab tech. “But first, put me back in. Same coordinates as Lowell.”

“You should know,” the tech says, “Madam Preston was keeping Mr. Benton apprised of her situation with the Glisnian authority. She has not been doing well. She fears a complete shutdown.”

“If she calls again...” I say, “tell her to stall.” One crisis at a time, please.

I return to the simulation just as Avatar!Pryce is arriving. He approaches cautiously, and with no sense of aggression. “I felt her death. I felt the loss.”

“Is there any way back?” I ask. “Is the zeroblade a lie? Are they just dormant, and recoverable?”

“It’s not a lie,” Pryce answers, possibly truthfully. “Her death is final. The blade destroys the code, like overwriting a file.”

“I’m not gonna let you push the button,” I warn him.

“I do not aim to,” he claims. “You’ll push it, though, I guarantee it.”

“Why would I do that?” I question.

Pryce looks at his wristwatch. “It’s 2400. This year marks beginning, and ending. It’s a transitional period. The patrioshka body will return to its place in the stellar neighborhood, the truth about temporal manipulation will come out to the public, and the simulation...will shut down.”

“Not if I can help it,” I maintain. “I won’t let these people die.”

Pryce chuckles with his lips sealed. “Of course you won’t. Why do you think I stepped down? It has to be you. You’re the only one capable.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” He’s not making any sense to me.

“When you took over for me, did you happen to notice our official position? What was my title, and what’s yours, now that you wear the rainbow clothes?”

“Yeah, it said Kernel. I thought it was a misspelling of Colonel. I don’t use it, because it’s stupid. I’m just Ellie.”

“No, my dear,” Pryce begins, “it’s not stupid. It’s everything. You are Kernel Underhill, and you deserve it. Now go in that room, and push the button...so we can all get out of here. Time’s running out, I’m sure.” Without another word, he turns confidently, and tries to walk away.

“No,” I say with my own confidence. “You want me to push the button, you’re gonna go in there with me, and explain in excruciating detail, exactly what it does.”

“As you wish.”

“Lowell, keep that ice pick at the ready. If he tries anything...”

“Got it, boss,” Lowell agrees.

I place my hand against the stone door, just to try to figure out where the handle is, or how it works. It gives to my pressure immediately, swiveling on an axis in the center, and allowing us to pass through. Up until this point, the stone walls and ceilings were smooth and even. Pryce designed this chamber to look more like it existed naturally, and everything else was built around it. We’re inside of a mountain cave, with jagged edges, and random stalagmites. A highly detailed pavilion is in the center, and in the center of that is a well-carved stone structure. Sitting on it is a wok, filled with fire pit marbles. Water bubbles from underneath, and spills out on all sides. The fire burns high, partially obscuring a small obelisk that does not rise high enough to be touched without feeling the flames. A button rests on top, ready to be pressed.

“For the very last time...what. Does. It. Do?” I demand to know.

“You are the kernel, and it is a syscall. Part of your code will be copied a hundred and twenty-billion times, and placed inside the IDCodes of everyone inside the simulation, including the Level Ones. Yes, it can put everyone on ice, but only if the one who pushes it has just been downgraded to that level themselves. As long as you stand within the borders of that pavilion, you can decide what level you are, and what code will be copied. That is, as long as you don’t choose a level beyond your own real one. Mr. Hawk, for instance, was only a Limited, so if he pushed the button, that would be as far as he could take it. For you, it’s different. Once that code is disseminated, you and everyone else will change into whatever it is the code you’ve allocated does. You could put them all in Hock, or make them all Elites; whatever you wish. But be careful, because you will suffer the same fate.”

“Why are you asking me to do it?” I question. “Why have you not done it yourself?”

“I do not have an IDCode,” Pryce admits. “My other self does not either. Neither of us ever died, and came here. He was always a visitor, and I...I’m just an NPC. You have been resurrected, so you can resurrect them all.”

“So can Lowell,” I point out. “So can Leona, and Mateo, and a couple dozen others in Hogarth’s new universe.”

“Yes, but Mateo and Leona aren’t here, Lowell has always been bad code, and Hogarth’s World-Builders are ambitious, entitled, narcissists who believe they have become the gods they always thought they were.” He’s one to talk.

“Aldona does not fit that description,” I counter.

“True. Like Harry and Neville, I suppose there is indeed one other option. But you’re the only one who’s truly earned it. You’re the one who demanded control over the simulation, and you are the one standing here today.” Pryce has a response to everything. “We could call Madam Calligaris, if you want, but she may not arrive in time, seeing as that the Glisnians are this close to shutting the whole simulation down with all of us still inside.”

“Wait, Gilbert’s here too.” I just resurrected him recently.

“Oh, no,” Gilbert protests. “Don’t nominate me for this role. If anyone’s bad code, it’s me. You know the things I did while I was alive?”

“Ellie,” Lowell says. “Stop coming up with alternatives. It’s all you.”

“Where, do you reckon’ you want I should put all these people?” Now I’m sure I have them stumped. “There are some floor models waiting for hosts up there, sure, but not a hundred and twenty billion, I’ll tell ya that much right now.

“I had that problem solved a long time ago,” Pryce claims. “There are about ten million up there, and it takes about an hour to replace them, as long as the protein goop keeps coming. There’s also enough temporary storage to keep them dormant while they wait their turn. It’ll be done in two years. I own those servers, the Glisnians wouldn’t be able to shut them down without sparking a war.”

“Which they would win,” Lowell argues.

I’m shaking my head. It’s a trick. There is no altruistic or benevolent version of Pryce. There are only some that aren’t as bad as others. I don’t know why he wants me to be the one to do this instead of him, but I can’t let him play any part in it. Something he said reminded me of something else. He used the term protein goop. The cloning machines aren’t only limited by the amount of time it takes to create a new floor model body. They need the raw materials to actually make the damn thing. Star Trek replicators aren’t a real thing, and they never will be. Well, unless you use time powers. Fortunately, I know someone who might be able to help, and now I’m starting to think that she saw this coming; that she knew what was going to happen all along. I can transfer the minds, but I need her to build the bodies. Can I contact her from here? Can I access a separate brane? I take some time to try, and find that I can. The conversation isn’t long. She agrees to help.

“What are you thinking?” Pryce asks, noticing that I’ve been silent and stuck in my own head for quite awhile now.

“That you are unworthy...and unnecessary.” I step right over to him, and place my hands on his head. He’s too confused to struggle. In a matter of seconds, the avatar has been de-rezed. I’m not sure where he went, or if I just murdered him, but there’s always a backup somewhere, so I’m not too butthurt about my choice.

“What are you doing?” Gilbert asks, purely out of curiosity, and not at all bothered by my actions.

“We don’t need him anymore. I’m ending this, once and for all. I can’t promise things will be good once we’re on the other side, but I don’t think we have much time. I asked Nerakali to stall—”

“Oh, thank God,” Nerakali’s voice comes into my ear. I’m starting to realize that people can contact me across distance as long as I’m thinking about them at the same time. “You have ten minutes. The Glisnians work fast, and they’re done with this whole thing. They think Pryce has become too big of a nuisance.”

“Thanks for the update,” I reply to her. “I don’t think I’ll need that long.”

“What are you doing?” she asks, unknowingly echoing Gilbert.

“Now I am become life, the sower of men.” I step up onto the pavilion, and approach the pedestal. I don’t want to give these people any snippet of my core code. I don’t want them to be able to spy on each other through time, or spontaneously and nonconsenually transfer each other’s minds to other substrates. I don’t need a button to resurrect any of them. I just need access to all of them. This thing grants me that power, but I already have the power to save them. Almost angrily, I swing back, and swipe the wok off of the platform. I’m left with a fountain, bubbling up from the ground, connected to every consciousness inside the simulation. Hogarth is ready on her end, so I reach into the fountain water. It’s freezing cold, but still somehow pleasant and life-affirming.

I can feel them immediately. I can feel their hopes and their pain. I see images of what they’re doing right now, all combined to form a mosaic of the entirety of the afterlife simulation multiworlds. I know what they’re thinking, and what they’ve done, and what they’ve seen. I know who they are, and who they want to be. “Hear me now, people of the afterlife,” I say to them all. “The experiment is over, and it is time to see The Beyond. It is time to live once more.” They’re all here because they crave life, experience, triumph, risk. The few who wanted to die and find a true afterlife—if such a thing exists—have moved on by now. Everyone wants to be alive, and I can give them that. It won’t be through floor model substrates, though. They won’t wake up in a cold clone pod with straight edges, and a tube coming out of their navel. The first thing they see won’t be the harsh lighting on a white ceiling. The first thing they see will be a beautiful and relaxing violet sky. I’m sending them to Violkomin, where a protein-infused lake of primordial soup will construct new bodies for them in accelerated time. Here they will float, until they are ready to walk the lands, and begin a new journey. They will breathe again. They will live again. And they will do it in a new universe.

< > Entire Story

Microstory 1625: Fort Underhill

< > Table of Contents

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.