Microstory 102: Jaklyn Simonds

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Jaklyn Simonds was born into a fairly uninteresting family. The most exciting thing her parents did was spell their daughter’s name oddly. They went to work for their five hours everyday, they provided her with food and shelter, and they let her go to the movies. Nothing was expected of her, and they were never disappointed in her. The thing that Jaklyn wanted most was to be able to see far away lands. Her parents never outright told her that she couldn’t, but they never took her on vacation, and it didn’t really occur to her that she could ask them about it. One day, when she was even more bored than usual, she was looking at pictures of beaches. Suddenly, she was overcome with a bright blue light. She found herself, not only on a beach, but the beach from the last picture she was on. No one was able to see her, and she had a hard time interacting with objects there. There was some kind of protective force field around her that made it feel like she was trying to pick things up with oversized gloves. After some practice, and a little help from a new friend, she learned how to control her ability better. She could go wherever she wanted, whether she had seen it in a photo or not. She discovered that she could allow people to see her, if she so chose, but she was not able to remove objects from a location and take them back to her origin. And if she wanted to go somewhere else, she would always first have to return to her origin. She immediately enrolled in geography classes in college so that she could understand how to navigate. One time, she accidentally ended up on the moon, and was grateful for the force field. Having failed to even make an attempt to study anything but geography and a bit of astronomy, she ended up not attaining her degree. Her parents didn’t care, so she left home and spent the majority of her time exploring; stealing food from her origin as needed. It wasn’t until later that her abilities were enhanced so that they were less like projection, and more like teleportation. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only thing that changed about her. She grew—not evil—but hateful and envious. And she became dangerous.

Microstory 101: Bellevue Profiles

Click here for the list of every Bellevue Profile.

A very long time ago, a group of scientists were living in a dystopia. Because of this, the regulations on scientific endeavors were all but nonexistent. They broke nearly every law of ethics and began to perform genetic manipulation experiments on human subjects. Their results were inconclusive at best, and extremely volatile at worst. Many of their guinea pigs died, but a few of them survived and propagated the species. Their bloodlines showed little to no signs of being different than regular universal humans. Eventually, their history was forgotten as lore. Thousands of years later, however, upon the birth of The Keystone, these anomalies were awakened. During evolution’s final push back towards the mean, a certain number of people began to exhibit extraordinary abilities. Each of these had their own particular set of skills, and Generation Twos were notably rare. The Keystone gathered them to an abandoned hotel in the middle of nowhere. There they taught each other further skills, and argued over what their purpose in the world may be. But very few of their origin stories took place in Bellevue.

For the next one hundred microstories, I will be giving you a short introduction to each one of these anomalies, along with a few members that had no abilities at all, but still contributed immensely to history. I’ve actually already begun. Due to extenuating circumstances, Starla’s story requires a full weekly series. I have 21 Saturdays total to do something with, and we’ll cross the next bridge once we’re over this one (why did they build consecutive bridges?). I will also be profiling a number of antagonists who acted against Bellevue, but you won’t know who they are from only this. If you want more details, keep reading my stories. I need a following if I’m going to be able to produce more. Please note that these profiles are subject to change according to later decisions and collaborative developments. I still think you’ll find them interesting, but I would consider these early introductions as subcanon; that is, mostly canonical.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 7, 2031

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Aura (formerly known as Lauren) Gardner dove across the car and tackled her son. “Matty!”

He hugged her tightly back.

“I’m so sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t want to leave you. I didn’t have a choice. They took me. They took me away from  you, and I’ve been trying to get back ever since. I never thought I would, but I guess they’re done with me. I’m here. You’re here. Everything is going to be fine.” She backed up a bit. “Let me get a look at you. My, it’s been, what? Fifteen years, maybe twenty? Oh, you have so much to tell me, I’m sure. But first, I need to explain where I’ve been.”

“I know where you’ve been,” Mateo admitted.

“How would you know that? Did you find Edward’s records?”

“Better,” Theo jumped in. “He found Edward. I go by Theo now.”

Aura stared at Theo like he was a ghost and fell back to her seat.

“You were reincarnated too?” the other man asked.

“Indeed...what name has been chosen for you this time?”

“Samsonite,” the man said. “Aura and I felt our new assignments before we left. That’s how we knew that we were jumping soon. But we figured we would land in the eleventh century. What year is this?”

They exchanged as much information as possible, but there wasn’t nearly enough time. Mateo thought that all five of them would be sent to the future, based on what Danica had said about them being a whole party.

Unfortunately, Mateo was wrong. Midnight came and sent both Mateo and Leona to April 7, 2031. They were alone in the clearing. They waited for signs of life but nothing came. They remained there alone for a half hour, hoping to see Leona’s brother, Mateo’s mother, and her significant other. “Leona. We should call them. Danica gave us those phones, remember?”

“I have the phones,” Leona replied in a huff. “I have all of the phones. I forgot to pass them out.”

“Okay,” Mateo said gently. “That’s okay. We’ll find them.”

“Where?” Leona asked angrily. “We’re in the middle of nowhere Canada! Your mother was only familiar with this area back in God-knows-when. Other than that, we have no connection to this town. We don’t know anyone, and we don’t have money! It’s pretty cold here for April, so that’s not great! Our only chance is to get back to Kansas, wishin’ and hopin’ that your family thinks to check there every year, just in case, but that’s practically impossible!”

“Give me one of the phones.”

“I told you. I have all of them. There’s no one to call!”

“Would you just trust me?” She was not happy, but handed one of the phones over anyway. While she walked away to kick the dirt around, Mateo discovered that they had access to the present-day internet. It was a little tough to navigate. Not only was the phone probably from deep in the future, but the internet had changed in the last 17 years. “I found it. Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“There’s a hotel not twenty minutes from here by foot.”

“Do you remember me telling you the part about not having any money?”

“At the very least, we can get out of the cold. Hopefully we can work something out. If not, we’ll figure something else out.”

“Great plan, Mateo.”

“If we don’t try something, we’re going to die out here.”

The moonlight was hardly enough to see her face, but she was very obviously fuming. “Good point.” She began to walk away. “What are you waiting for?”

“It’s this way,” Mateo told her.

“Well why didn’t you say that?”

They walked out of the field, along some kind of body of water, past the high school, and through town. They ran a little bit of the way, not only to warm up, but because they were in a hurry to find a way out of their predicament. As soon as they walked into the inn, the man at the counter greeted them. “Welcome to Canada. Here is your itinerary.”

“Pardon?” Mateo asked, slightly out of breath.

“The jet leaves in one hour. A car is being brought around to automatically drive you to the base. From there, a state of the art aircraft will take you all the way to your final destination in San Diego. Shouldn’t take more than two hours.”

Leona took the itinerary. “What’s in San Diego?”

“I’m afraid I don’t have that information. But Mr. Reaver personally came out to ensure that you were taken care of. He said that you would be able to find the rest of your party there.”

Mateo looked up from the packet. “Our family must be down there. But why?”

“Let’s go outside,” Leona suggested.

“Wait, I have a few more questions.”

“Mateo. Outside. Now,” she insisted. She turned to the innkeeper. “Thank you very much, sir. Mr. Reaver will be very pleased with your service.” The innkeeper smiled as they walked out. Once they were out of earshot, Leona pulled him to the side. “We cannot get on that jet.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You don’t find this a little weird?”

“Nothing in my life has been normal for the last couple of weeks...decades.”

“Do you recognize the name Reaver?”

“I’ve heard it before. I can’t place it. We know him?”

“His company is the one who bought up the warehouse district where we had our surgeries. He’s been under a lot of suspicion. The authorities haven’t been able to find any evidence, but his business practices are shady at best. He’s responsible for a lot of unemployment, gentrification, and even a standard increase in the business day. He’s basically the anti-Google, and he’s just as powerful, if not more.”

“Why the hell would a guy like that have anything to do with us?” He started to look up Reaver Enterprises on his phone. “Theo is a pretty interesting kid, but I have a hard time believing he’s already networked this much. He’s not yet a teen—oh my God,” he interrupted himself

“What is it?”

He was looking at a picture of Horace Reaver. “This is him. This is the guy who tried to kill me when I jumped to the future.”

“He’s a salmon. That actually makes sense. It explains how he’s advanced technology so much.”

“What are we going to do? He probably has our family. We have to get them back, but you’re right, we cannot get on that jet.”

“This packet has the address of where we’re supposed to go once in San Diego. We have to find a way to get there on our own.” A car pulled up in front of them. The door opened, revealing the inside to be empty. “Run,” Leona ordered.

As they ran away from the inn, Leona looked through her phone for the nearest airport. The directions said that it was going to take almost an hour to walk to Lake Vernon, but they were able to wade through a stream and cross a highway to cut that down. They were exhausted when they arrived. Just as they were deciding whether they should try and figure out how to steal a plane, a woman approached them on the dock. “Can I help you?”

They froze, unsure of what they should say. They had already established that they had no money, but they also had no other form of compensation. They didn’t have a fancy watch to sell, or any special skills to trade. No one in their right mind would help two freaky people looking for a trip to San Diego at two in the morning. They say that honesty is the best policy, but Mateo decided to fudge the truth a little. “An evil business magnate kidnapped our family and is holding them hostage in San Diego. He says only he can get us there in time before he kills them at midnight since he stole our passports. We were going to steal your plane, because we’re desperate.”

“Are you talking about Horace Reaver?”

“We are,” Leona answered.

“Get in,” the woman said. “My brother died of cancer after working for Evil Enterprises.”

They got lucky. True to her word the woman, who refused to exchange names, flew them all the way to California. They were there many hours later than Reaver would have expected them, which could either be very good because he would have no idea where they were, or very bad because he may have decided to kill their family. The woman couldn’t be any more involved than she already was, so she immediately started getting ready to leave after dropping them off on Lower Otay Lake, having not filed a flight plan. The last thing she did was give Leona a few hundred dollars and a gun, saying that they might need it. Leona later said that it seemed very un-Canadian of her.

Mateo and Leona made their way towards the address written at the end of the packet, hoping that it wasn’t a diversion. It took quite a long time to get across town, especially since they were not quite in San Diego from the start. They had to find a cab that was not only driven by a human, but who would also accept Canadian bills. He appeared to be sympathetic to their troubles after they mentioned Reaver again. It would appear that everyone hated him, but no one was capable of defeating him. Mateo couldn’t help but feel like doing just that was exactly the reason he was turned into a time traveler, despite the Delegator’s claim that he had no official job.

They found Aura, Samsonite, and little Theo chained up in the middle of an abandoned warehouse, drained of energy and literally starving. They weren’t even under guard. After getting some food and freshening up, they posited that Reaver was only ever interested in killing Mateo and Leona, and that the jet was engineered to blow up or crash. The only reason he was keeping the other three hostage was so that they wouldn’t be able to make contact. Why he bothered giving them the address was the only thing that truly could not be explained.

Mateo wanted to finally catch up with his long-lost mother, but he fell asleep while they were talking. By the time he woke up next to Leona in the motel bed, it was noon of the following year.

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Crossed Off: Locked In (Part I)

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Very few people were aware of Starla Wakefield’s ability to possess the bodies of other people. She first discovered her gift at a very early age, but instinctively knew that she had to keep quiet about it. The first person to find out about it was her best friend, Alec who was also the first person with whom she switched bodies. He was a couple years older, and was always there to help her with homework and bullies. While she was freaking out about being in the body of another person, he seemed pretty happy about it. He liked to watch movies about superheroes, and saw this as a chance to live one out in real life. He insisted that she would one day grow up and become a superhero herself, and that he would be her sidekick.
Together, they learned how to use her skills both accurately and responsibly. They discovered that she was capable of switching places with anyone in the entire world. She could also possess them without allowing them access to her body; she could see through their eyes while they remained in control, so that they were completely unaware that anything was different; and she could share a body with the owner. After some research in the library, Alec decided to nickname her Avatar, based on the idea that she could cross over from her place to another. Over the years, she collected seven other confidants from around the world, mostly accidentally while testing her limits. She spent her time learning about other cultures, and going on instant vacations. Her favorite switch, however, was in the body of a retired conservationist who spent his days interacting with the feral horses of Cumberland Island, which was only a few miles away.

Soon after Alec headed off for college, Starla began to show unusual symptoms that were almost certainly the result of her ability. She started losing control of her own motor functions. At first, her limbs slouched for minutes at a time, but she was eventually able to regain control. But things were getting worse. The doctors had no clue what was happening with her. After all, how could they? They tested for a stroke, multiple sclerosis, and ALS, among a few other things. Despite showing a number of common symptoms, the neurological degeneration simply was not there. Her brain was sending signals throughout her body, but they were somehow blank messages. There was some kind of loss in translation during transit that current medical technology could not explain.

After several months, Starla found herself forced to remain in a wheelchair. For the most part, she had retained control of her upper body, but her legs didn’t move at all. Every second she was left alone she took the opportunity to take over the body of someone somewhere else who happened to be asleep at the time. That was the only time she had when she could move around freely. She felt bad that these people would wake up the next morning feeling fully unrested, but she had given in to the dark side of her personality. Her worldwide confidants offered to give her temporary control of their bodies, but she felt even worse about that since she knew them.

Starla couldn’t move all of her body but, unlike a paraplegic, she could still feel everything. Sitting in the chair all day was extremely uncomfortable. One day, when she was visiting Alec in his dorm room, his lovely roommate, Kathleen let herself be late for class so that she could lift Starla into the bed. Once she left, they were able to talk freely. “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” he asked.

“I’m going to die.”

“Don’t say that. This doesn’t have to end like that, or even be permanent. But you have to stop what you’re doing. I have a theory that the body cannot exist too long without the mind. Switching consciousnesses is probably okay, but if you leave the brain without any purpose, then I imagine it starts to decay.”

“I don’t mean that this is going to kill me. That’s the problem. It’s probably not. I’m going to be stuck like this forever, and my only chance would be to possess some poor schmuck permanently. I know myself, Alec. Without you, I would have abused this in so many ways.”

“I do not agree.”

“Well, you would be wrong. You said it yourself, I need to stop taking over sleeping people’s bodies. I can’t help myself. It’s far too tempting. The only way out of this is to take myself out of the equation.”

“And how exactly would you do that,” Alec asked. “Sorry to be blunt, but you can barely lift a toothpick. How would you lift a gun, or a knife, or even a bottle of pills?”

Fortunately, Starla could still shrug, so she shrugged. “I could make someone else do it for me, literally.”

He nodded, pretending to see her point. “And what if you die while still in this person’s body? Hmm? What if you get stuck there? What if the only reason you can switch bodies is because this body is still a valid origin? Maybe you wouldn’t be taking yourself out of the equation; you would just be killing the one thing that keeps you in control of your ability. Without it, you could doom that person to spend the rest of their life unable to actually live it.”

“I’ll have him stab or shoot me in the chest. That will give me plenty of time to jump back before getting stranded.”

“Okay, but then you’ve just made that person a murderer. There he is, standing over the body of a young handicapped girl. Amnesia doesn’t hold up well in court. They would be put on trial. If they’re bad, they’ll probably do something stupid and get caught. If they’re good, they’ll turn themselves in because they’ll assume they were the culprit, just like everybody else will.”

“You said something about pills?”

“I said something hoping that you would give up this quest based on logic. I see now that that tactic is not going to work on you. So let’s switch to your heart, which is hopefully not as damaged as your crazy nutso cuckoo brain. What about me? I love you, and you’re just going to leave me?”

“I don’t see any other choice.”

“I just gave you a choice. Stay put,” Alec suggested. “Don’t use it at all. It might mean years, or it may only take a few weeks, but your condition may go away. You don’t have a disease. There’s nothing wrong with your tissue. There’s no reason this isn’t reversible. Perhaps you haven’t gotten better because you haven’t given yourself the chance.”

“I’m sick of arguing about this.”

“So am I.”

“Let’s talk about something light. Your new roommate seems nice.”

“Kathleen is great, yeah.”

They sat in awkward silence before Starla slumped over. Alec lifted her eyelids and checked for the signs of body switching, but found her pupils to be normal. She had just fallen asleep, so he took the opportunity to go down the hall to access the payphone. “Hello, Tristan,” he said into the mouthpiece. “No, Kathleen’s fine. Thanks for putting us together. I don’t think I could have handled another semester with the horrible guy the school paired me with.—No, I’m calling because Starla is having bad thoughts. I have a break coming up, and I was hoping to come up to Kansas City to meet you. I think seeing one of her confidants in person will be good for her, and you’re obviously the closest one.—Yes.—Yeah, that would be the plan.—Okay, I’ll figure out how I can convince her. Thanks, bye.”

Little did Alec know that Starla often accidentally slipped into his mind when she fell asleep. She had heard every word.

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Microstory 100: Lifespan Tattoo

Ethan woke up with a slight itch on his arm. He lifted his sleeve and discovered a tattoo that he had no recollection of getting. He had only put his head down for twenty minutes for a nap, and he didn’t drink. There was no way he could get a fully healed tattoo and not remember it. It read Ethan Daniels 2002 - 2044, which was incredibly ominous. He rode his bike to various tattoo parlors in town but they all assured him that they would never ink a 13 year-old without his parents’ permission. He knew his parents would never agree to such a thing either, even if he asked. Eventually, he gave up on finding a logical reason for it, and instead focused on the warning. It was clear that someone was trying to tell him that he was going to die in 29 years. As he continued trying to go about his normal life, the message ate away at him. He took classes and did research online about precognition, ghosts, time travel, and anything else so much as mildly relevant to his situation. He found himself obsessed with the possibility of immortality. He ended up studying longevity in college and began a company of his own that put vast amounts of resources into solving death by attacking the problem from multiple angles. His death loomed, and he was running out of time. The tattoo didn’t show a date, so he had always assumed that it would happen on his birthday, July 10. On that day, despite objections from his team, he subverted safety protocols and uploaded his consciousness to an android body. It worked. The artificial neural network soaked up his brain patterns like a sponge. It was only then that he realized the truth. The tattoo was never predicting the year of his death; it was predicting the year of his birth.

Microstory 99: Problems (in no particular order)

People who refuse to work but expect money from their parents; That my dog is dead; Paper; Ignorance; Machismo; Customer service; Running; Microsoft; Trash; Religions holding back progress; Hypocrisy; Gender roles; Lack of (sex) education; Cheapness of fast food and expense of healthy food; Hunger; People who pronounce en route more like “in route” (that’s not right, it’s French); People eating babies; Yemen; Emojis in place of words; Texting and driving; Sweat shops; Libertarianism; Sports; Animal abuse; PETA; Treating teenagers like their thoughts and issues are trivial; Oil dependence; Neo-nazis; Betrayal; Global warming; Global warming deniers; Facebook; Rapists being considered part of a “culture”; Speed limits; Victim blaming; Slut-shaming; Entitlement; Show cancellations; Expensive healthcare; The sixth extinction; Smart but mean people; People who are above owning a television; Police brutality; People who try to correct my grammar even though I’m the one with the linguistics degree (e.g. claiming it’s wrong to end a sentence in a preposition); Infant mortality; Cold weather; Homelessness; People who are grossed out by the human body; Awkward situations; Claiming that all poor people choose to be poor; Facial and body hair; Shaving; Donald Trump; Utah in general; Nerd/Geek superiority complexes; People who don’t shower before bed (ya’ll got dirty beds); (Young Earth) Creationism; Illiteracy; Inequality; Pollution; Bad drivers (and the excuses for them); Parties of all kinds; Insurance (I pay monthly so that when something happens, I’ve already paid for it. If you raise my rates then you are charging me twice!); Homophobia; Spiders; Apple (the company); Terrorism; States rights; Glamorization of poor role models; People who spell it as theater; Tobacco, alcohol, and other recreational drugs; Apathy; Amazon (the company); Hunting for sport; People caring about a politician’s personal sex life; Car racing; Mormon encouragement of child rape; Colony Collapse Disorder; Freak accidents; Freeganism; Tax loopholes; Depression; Public bathroom doors that open inward; Side effects; Drought; Death; Piercings and tattoos (a.k.a. bad skin); Overpopulation; Guilt trips; Poverty; Disease; Onions; The U.S. Constitution (it’s outdated); Nuclear research for weapons rather than energy; The Lumineers; Scientology; War; The Bible; Idiocracy (the concept)

Microstory 98: The Typist

Diego Villa was considered to be one of the most prolific writers in history. He basically did nothing with his time but write; starting out using a typewriter, and moving on to computers as they became available. For the last couple of years, the physical act of typing had become more difficult. A few months ago, he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis which made his carpal tunnel syndrome practically permanent. It was heartbreaking for him to learn that he could no longer continue with the one constant in his life. He had plenty of money, so he didn’t need to work, but he felt useless throughout the day. His computer remained off most of the time, and he would spend hours trying to sleep off the depression. One day, he woke up from naptime with an amazing idea, and for a few seconds, he completely forgot his obstacle. But it quickly returned to his memory. The story would forever be stuck in his brain. Still, Diego couldn’t help but try.

He switched his machine on and just stared at the screen, with nothing better to do. After several minutes of this, a single letter appeared on the screen. What? He kept concentrating, and more letters followed. The more he tried, the faster the words appeared. The keyboard wasn’t moving, so he hadn’t somehow spontaneously developed telekinesis. No, this was all in his head. His brain had figured out how to trick his eyes into seeing something that wasn’t even there. Despite being certain that none of this was real, he sat there for hours, the sentences and a paragraphs streaming out at the speed of thought. Eventually, he stopped thinking of the individual words, and simply came up with the general plot developments. Entire pages blinked into existence instantly. His nose began to bleed and his head burned with pain, but he ignored it. He had to keep pretending. His final push. It was near midnight when he reached the final words of the greatest story he had ever told. Just before the last period could appear on screen, Diego fell over and died. His caretaker arrived the next day and discovered his body. She contacted the family, and within months, they had published Diego Villa’s final novel. It sold more copies than his other books combined.

Microstory 97: Homeless Tenant

Everyday around 8:30, I look in the windows and make sure that no one was in the house that I didn’t know about. Sometimes the homeowner doesn’t leave at all, and I’m stuck outside; but if she does leave, she always returns at exactly 6:30 in the evening. The first time I discovered this house, she had accidentally left it unlocked, but then I found a spare key in her desk. I had an extra one made and have been using it every day since. I don’t ever steal anything valuable. The first thing I do is take a nice warm shower. That way, the water heater has time to compensate by the time she gets back home. She keeps a lot of fruit in her kitchen, so I pick and choose what won’t be noticed. I also like to have a piece of toast, careful to clean up the crumbs. Since she doesn’t own a television, I spend the rest of the day reading the books she has in her library. After a couple years of this, I had all of the narrative fiction read; some of them twice. I moved on to the more technical material that would have been far beyond me before. She was apparently some kind of astrophysicist. I was this close to finishing high school, but I’ve learned more in the last few years of reading on my own than I ever did as a kid. I found her educational literature to be fascinating, and wished that I had had an opportunity to go to college. After exhausting her resources, I started to check books out of the public library, but I would always read them in her house. It felt more like home to me, even though I could never sleep there. One day, I was in the middle of a book about exoplanets, when the door opened. The homeowner walked in and dropped a stack of papers on the coffee table. I’m stunned. “Applications for your GED, college admittance, and financial aid,” she said. “I think it’s time we move you on to a formal education.” How long has she known?