Microstory 489: Supervisor

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Right from the start, the founder of the renegade group could see that the one eventually known as Supervisor could be a great leader in her own right. Early on in the ordeal, she would submit to others, but she ultimately had little choice in whether people looked up to her or not. She ends up sort of falling into being responsible for managing the details of the day-to-day operations, while the other appointed leaders plan the overall goals of the group. Her focus is mainly on the short-term, and she finds herself drawn to directing the people themselves, rather than policy or outreach. Her honesty and high standards have gotten her into trouble in the past, but everyone now seems to find it refreshing, necessary, and a vital force for good. Unlike nearly everyone else, by the time military service came on her radar, she had only earned a technical certification in team management. As young and inexperienced, however, as she appeared to be, she is actually quite knowledgeable. She has already been through more than most people do in centuries. Her only true confidant is her partner, whose connection and relationship with her remained a secret for quite a long time. They did not join the military for the usual reasons, and it is these secrets that give her an advantage over their enemies. The Supervisor is the most dedicated and loyal member of the cause. When others begin to doubt their resolve, she interferes and reminds them what they’re fighting for. She believes in rules, but more so in people, and trusts them to either follow procedure accordingly, or come up with better ideas. It’s true that she likes to push her agenda, but that agenda always aligns with the greater good, and so she doesn’t limit herself to her own perspective. She might be the greatest unsung hero in the history of the universe.

Microstory 488: Inventor

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Like I said with the last one, some of these titles will be more literal. The Inventor is one of these. If ever something needs to be repaired, or built on the fly, she is your girl. She seems to know more about what’s going on than she lets on, frequently dropping hints as if under the assumption that people already know what she knows. She needs others to ground her so that she does not abandon a project in excitement for another one. Because of this, her workspace includes a number of half-done inventions that she finally finishes and uses later, but only when and if the need arises. She tends to reject traditionalism, preferring instead to look for new, improved, and especially interesting, ways of getting things done. She has a goal towards universal efficiency. Even if she doesn’t actually operate like this herself—often jumping into new projects without any sort of planning stage—her creations are designed to ultimately increase the end user’s speed and accuracy. Others like her for her ability to both be social while recognizing that not everyone is like her, but also know her to be absent-minded. The longer her friends know her, the more they accept her quirks, and the more they love her for them. She has magnus degrees in astrophysics, quantum dynamics, plex mechanics, radionics, and engineering, as well as a sub-magnus degree in matterology. She has studied a plethora of other subjects on her own time too without ever bothering to earn formal recognition for them.

Microstory 487: Healer

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All right, so I’m still not sure how I’m going to handle all of these personalities, but for now, this is what’s up. I’m going to talk to you about a character I’ve created who’s known the Healer.  A few years ago, I started writing a story set in another galaxy a very long time ago. No, really, it’s longer than you think—and I’m certain it’s much longer, and much farther, than that the events in that other galaxy you’re thinking of. Why’s they humans? Unlike that other franchise, I can explain...just not yet. Please note that these personality titles are based off a particular psychologist’s model. That doesn’t mean that the character who holds a given personality actually carries the most obvious job associated with it. That being said, the healer of this story actually is a healer. Just to add some level of mystery to this whole thing, though, I won’t name names. His life path was chosen for him at a young age. In fact, he was born on a planet that prides itself in contribution determination. Through genetic analysis, and early development testing, scientists have decided that they know what kind of person someone is going to grow up to be. And so they’re raised with that assumption in mind, and this pigeonholing is rarely challenged. For them, it seems to work, for no one more than for the man in question today. He is naive and excitable but was given little time for social interaction as a child. He can be a bit bipolar, switching from bubbly to down right mean, unable to tell the difference between lightheartedness and rudeness. Strangers will find him vulgar while his friends generally give him the benefit of the doubt. He has magnus degrees in neurobiology, physiology, cytogenetics, and diagnostics. He has a sub-magnus degree in robotic surgery. Magnus degrees are the equivalent to doctorates in this galaxy. They use separate terms to avoid ambiguity. They use separate terms in order to avoid ambiguity. This is something our planet ought to consider, in my opinion. Understand also, however, that people in this galaxy live much longer than we do, so the fact that he holds four magnus degrees isn’t as impressive as it may sound. It’s quite low for his age. That’s not to say that he isn’t intelligent, just that he ultimately dedicated himself to military service, which limited his educational pursuits.

Microstory 486: Composer

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I’ve spoken before on the fact that I ended up deciding that I wanted to do more series, and fewer standalone stories on this site. In reality, I don’t think I’ll really ever go back to the way it was in the beginning. Sure, the Dreams series will include a hundred different dreams, but they’ll still all be dreams. The problem with this plan is that the solar calendar doesn’t really make this easy. I end up with dangling remainders on both ends of the calendar year. This could be solved if we used a calendar that had 28 days in each of 13 months, but you people are too bloody superstitious. Anyway, these danglers are fine, because I end up coming up with something based on however many installment slots happen to be left over. And how many do we have this time? Well...14. I didn’t have any ideas broken up into 14 sections, but what I did have was a set of 16. This turned out to be perfect, because I could set aside two Saturdays to complete it, which helped with the mezzofiction math. Unfortunately, however, this meant I didn’t have room for an introduction, which I’ve discovered to be narratively important. If I don’t explain what’s going to happen ahead of time, I feel awkward, because I’ve just jumped into this weird new thing, and it never had a real beginning. So that’s what I’m doing here, instead of talking about Composers. Why would I talk about composers, you ask? Why because it’s a type of personality. Composers are observant artisan entertainers. They are creators, artists, inspirers. But they are also methodical, deliberate, and stable. They’re considered to be ever-present, choosing not to focus too much on the future, or dwell on the past. It is for this reason that, although I’ve discussed the future of this project, I cannot tell you what the other installments are going to be like. That’s mostly because I don’t know. But that’s okay, I’m not worried about it. Let’s just be here. Now.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: June 23, 2108

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The first thing that Mateo’s once-mother, Aura Gardner wanted to do was start planning the wedding. She barely let Leona and Mateo tell her the good news before her mind started racing with the color scheme and guest list. All Mateo could think of was how ridiculous that list would be. Leona, however, truest voice of reason, pointed out that it was no time to start preparations. “The average duration of an engagement,” she said in her teacher tone, “was about fourteen-point-five months when we first left our time period. I believe it has gone down since then, but still, that’s several centuries away from now for us.”

“You’re not seriously going to wait hundreds of years to tie the knot, are you?” Aura asked, horrified.

“Of course not,” Mateo said, realizing how normal it was for someone to be playing referee between their parent, and their love interest.

Leona put her foot down. “I’m not going to get married tomorrow just because that’s a whole year for everyone else.”

“No one is saying that either, honey.”

“We’ve never called each other honey. Don’t start now just because of the engagement. Marriage is a logical step, not a transformation of the relationship.”

“She’s right,” Aura agreed. “I mean about the wedding date. Not about her thoughts on relationship dynamics. I don’t know anything about that. I just got overexcited. I get overexcited. You need to take all the time that you need to take. We all understand.”

Leona took a deep breath and composed herself. “It won’t be in four hundred years, though, I promise you that. I just need time. It doesn’t just take months to do the actual planning. A lot of emotional exercises need to be completed.”

“We understand,” Mateo said, and in order to lighten the mood, he added, “honey.”

“Congratulations,” Horace Reaver said to them.

“Yeah, what he said,” Gilbert Boyce added playfully.

The four of them were the strangest group of people fate had ever brought together. Horace and Leona were married to each other in an alternate reality. Then he went back in time, unwittingly entering a reality where she fell in love with Mateo instead. Due to his anger, he tormented and chased after them, creating a tumultuous relationship with Gilbert along the way, and ultimately murdering him. Then Gilbert came back to life as an extremely powerful temporal manipulator, and began to torment Mateo as well, but for different reasons, while under the influence of another person’s soul, and at the behest of an even more evil person.

Gilbert later assisted Mateo in going back in time and killing Adolf Hitler earlier than he was supposed to die, which created a third reality where Mateo was never born, Leona was raised by the couple who were previously Mateo’s adoptive parents—which prevented her from having the chance to meet either Mateo or Horace—and Horace had no memory of their time against each other either. He grew up to become a better person, eventually falling in love with a man named Serkan Demir, who recently sacrificed himself to save pretty much the entire universe. And now they were all friends, their respective memories intact, and presumably all water under the bridge. Congratulations, was not a word he would have expected to hear from either one of these two outside of sarcastic sentiment. But here they were, happy for their loved ones' new lives, even amongst all this death and destruction.

Mateo thought about how, if they were able to learn to love each other, then maybe anything was possible. Maybe everything was going to be all right after all. “How are you holding up?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” Horace said truthfully. “Ask me again in three months, and he will have been gone longer than it was that I even knew him.”

“I don’t like missing your grieving process.” Leona placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, which he pressed against with his cheek. “I wanna be there for you.”

“We both do,” Mateo emphasized.

“It would be worse in reverse,” Horace commented. “Imagine a loved one’s loved one dying, but only seeing the survivor once a year while you move on faster.”

“I remember that,” Leona said, referring to the period of time shortly after Mateo’s parents’ deaths. It was years for her, but only days for him.

Horace slapped his hands together. “Let’s stop rehashing the past. It’s a new day; a new year! We should be celebrating. You two are finally freaking getting married!”

“Hear hear!” Gilbert cried, holding up an imaginary champagne flute.

Shortly after Horace and Serkan met, they encountered a young girl named Paige Turner. She accidentally accompanied them through a time portal, and ended up stranded in the 21st century. With no way of returning home—and no desire to—she remained in their care, as a surrogate daughter. That was decades ago, and though she looked younger than Mateo and Leona, she was practically an old woman. At the moment, she was walking up the beach with a girl who appeared to be anywhere between fifteen and twenty-eight, but she could have been older than all of them combined for all he knew.

“What are we celebrating?” Paige asked, noticing that they had all raised imaginary flutes.

“Hello, my dear,” Horace said. “These two are engaged to be married.”

“How lovely,” Paige said. “However, this is Kivi.”

The girl, who was apparently named Kivi, did an actual real-life curtsy, completely unironically.

“What do you mean, however?” Gilbert asked.

“I can’t speak for you, Leona,” Paige said, “but I would take a beat to consider marrying someone if I found out he had a kid.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Mateo Matic, meet your daughter, Kivi Bristol.”

“That’s insane, I don’t have a daugh—” Oh, no. Time travel. Time travel made everything weird and confusing. It was entirely possible that he had a child. She could be from the future, or the other reality, or by some other weird temporal power that he wasn’t even aware of. He was just about to accept her, knowing that understanding her was not a prerequisite to loving her, when he remembered something. “Bristol. I knew a Bristol.” He reached far into his memory banks. Way back when he was just a young one, Mateo spent a little time as a restaurant delivery boy. It wasn’t a biker bar, or anything, but their schtick was delivery via motorcycle, and so that’s what he did. He met a lot of interesting characters during that time, just as he had in other driving jobs, but one of them stood out. She was a very tall redhead with only her left ear pierced. She carried two cell phones with her, but he eventually learned that only one of them worked. The other was to make people think she was a federal agent, or something fascinating like that. She was always messing with people’s heads.

She was the personal assistant to this fellow who patented a singular and relatively small technological advancement that most calculators were using at the time. This allowed him to be filthy rich, and not have any responsibilities. He had always wanted someone to follow him around and do whatever he said, so that was her job. He also had this thing where he ate the same thing, from the same restaurant, every other day. It was always to be delivered at exactly 2:16 in the afternoon. She even stopped having to call it in, because Mateo just wrote it up on the staffing shift schedule whiteboard. It was on these runs, which occurred during the slowest time of the restaurant, where he got to know her. He told her about his dreams of becoming a hollywood stunt driver, and she talked about her dreams of being the first lawyer on Mars. No, she had no real interest in practicing law, nor any plans to apply to law school. And she knew that Mars colonization was a long ways off. But she hated attainable dreams. If you could actually do something, she would say, then why the hell wouldn’t you just do it?

Several months into the routine, her boss died from a heart attack, she moved away in order to live close to a summit named Bitch Mountain, New York—for what she referred to as “obvious reasons”—and Mateo grew tired enough of his job to just quit. And in all that time, after all those romcom movie moments, there was one very specific thing that didn’t happen. Not once did the two of them have sex. He would have remembered that. “Eseosie is your mother?”

“She was, yes,” Kivi answered.

“Eseosie Bristol,” Mateo confirmed.

“Literally the one and only.”

“Shock Bristol was your mother?” Mateo asked, using a nickname of hers he had never quite figured out.

“That’s right.”

“I can’t be your father then. Not that I’ve met any other Bristol anyway, but it simply can’t be me. She and I...”

“Were never intimate?” Kivi finished, clearly not afraid to discuss sex with a man she believed to be her father.

“We weren’t...no.”

“I know. She’s told me the names of every single person she’s ever been with. Yes, I am aware of how strange my childhood was. But believe me when I tell you that I know for a fact you didn’t make the list. I don’t understand either, but that doctor guy told us that he ran a DNA test.”

“Doctor Sarka?” Leona asked.

“Yeah, that was it,” Kivi replied.

“Gilbert,” Leona began, “do you have any way of contacting him?”

“I have a pager,” Horace piped up instead. “I’ll go look for it.” He started running off, but then stopped. He either realized that the moment did not require urgency...or running reminded him of his late husband, Serkan.

“Thanks,” Leona called out to him.

Mateo looked at her with his sad puppy dog eyes.

She looked back. “Stop freaking out. We’re still getting married. What kind of person do you think I am?”

A few hours later, salmon doctor, Baxter Sarka teleported to them and confirmed that Kivi Bristol was indeed Mateo’s daughter. It was just that no one knew how. If she had been conceived in an alternate reality, how would she be here now? Mateo wasn’t even ever born in this timeline. There were other forces at play, and Mateo couldn’t be sure whether that was good, or bad. The debate was not able to last past the day, though. When Mateo woke up the next day in 2109, he was in an incredibly rustic cabin, complete with no running water, heat, or power. He stepped out of this sort of door thing and looked around. The beach and treeline looked familiar, this was definitely Tribulation Island, but everything else was gone. None of the buildings that The Constructor, Baudin had built for them were anywhere to be found. He started asking people what was going on, but no one knew what the hell he was talking about. They had no memory of anyone named Baudin, nor of these supposed buildings. Something was wrong.

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Swept Under the Rogue

Click here for Clean Sweep.
Click here for Rogue Possession.

“Ummm...hi.”

“Yeah, hi.”

“My name is Gilbert Boyce.”

“Zeferino Preston. But they call me The Cleanser.”

“They either call me The Apprentice, or Oh My God, Get Away From Me.”

“Stirring fear in others seems to be something that we have in common.”

“The difference is that I do not enjoy it.”

“Maybe you don’t, but that body you’re in sure does.”

“I’m working on that.”

“I have a few ideas.”

“I’m not sure I can trust you. I mean, we’re standing on a frozen lake, for God’s sake.”

“First of all, never rhyme around me. Secondly, frozen lakes are exciting. And C, can anyone trust anyone?”

“I trust...”

“Who? Mateo Matic? Leona Delaney?”

“You stay away from them.”

“Why, ‘cause they’re your friends? You’ve still not learned. How many years are behind you in your personal timeline? You should know by now that guys like us don’t have friends.” Zeferino drew near and spoke softly. “Those two don’t care about you. I saw what happened on that prison tower. You were a patsy. They only let you come along on the jailbreak because they felt bad about it afterwards. Aren’t you angry with him for what he did to you in the Shimmer?”

“I can get over it.” Gilbert drew even nearer, and spoke even more menacingly. “That’s why they’re my friends, and why you have none. They done me wrong, but I can learn to love them again. They felt bad about the prison thing, and had we seen each other again, I’m confident that he would express regret for what he did to me on Worlon. Have you even once felt bad about something you did?”

“Once,” Zeferino answered honestly. “When I killed Horace Reaver, a few spawn ended up as collateral damage.”

“A few what?”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s just that they were innocent, and not a threat to me. I’ve not killed anyone since who didn’t deserve.”

“According to whose calculations?”

“To mine. I have been granted the latitude to make these decisions. I’ve even been asked to do it. You see, we have these contracts...”

“Are you trying to tell me that you have a license to kill?”

“You could put it like that, but I understand that I’m not James Bond in this movie.”

“You’re the villain, yes, I would agree with that assessment.”

“Not sure how interesting a character he would be if he didn’t have any opposition.”

“Are you saying you’re only bad because you believe in some sort of Lucasian cosmic battle between good and evil that can’t end or they wouldn’t be able to keep making movies?”

“It can’t end because that would cause either a boring utopia, or endless, actionless nothingness.”

“I would love to get inside that head of yours to understand how your ego got so goddamn big. You are not the epitome of evil. You’re just part of it.”

“By that logic, Mateo wouldn’t be wholly good.”

“Why are we talking about him? This is a fight between you and me, which is why it has nothing to do with good or evil.”

“We’re talking about him because he’s a tweener.”

“A what?”

“He is supposed to be a salmon, but he’s more influential to our world than any chooser I’ve ever known, or will know. We’re talking about him because he’s a project of mine. If I’m going to do what I need to do, I need him either on my side, or warming the bench.”

“Please, no sports metaphors.”

“Don’t change the subject. This is important. I’m trying to accomplish something here. I’m trying to fix the world.”

“Well, that’s funny...because that’s kinda what I’m trying to do.”

“Riiiight? So you get it?”

“No, I don’t get why you have to kill Mateo.”

Zeferino shook his head. “I don’t have to kill him. In fact, I’m contractually obligated to keep him alive. He’ll cause problems for my work, though. Man, when he gets to the late 23rd century? After he takes on the...it’s epic. People start really paying attention after he does all that. I can’t have that. Or at least I need to be in control of it.”

“How are you gonna do that? Torture him? Now that he’s still a young salmon, you think he’ll be more malleable.”

“Nothing so distasteful, I assure you. But yes, he needs to be conditioned. I was under the impression that you would know how to do that.”

“Why would I know anything about brainwashing people?”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it brainwashing, but I don’t think I have to remind you of the time you were the leader of the free world.”

“I spent four years losing everybody’s trust. The real Donald Trump is the one who got all those votes.”

“Still, I think you would have value to me.”

“Well, I have my own agenda, and it doesn’t include you at all. It’s slower, more painful, but it’s also thoughtful and intricate.”

“You want to start at the beginning, yeah I get it.”

“I’m not sure you do. That’s a simplistic perspective of it.” Gilbert thought for a second. “Did you ever get the chance to see Maxxing Out, or its first sequel?”

“I did. How is that relevant?”

“He was trying to create the perfect reality. But he couldn’t do it with all these people getting in the way.”

“So he tried to kill them, yeah. Real noble of you.”

“Don’t focus on the fact that everyone else in the galaxy would die. Remember that he protected all the children.”

“So that he could be a creepy father figure. Gross.”

“Well, I’m not gonna do exactly what he did...but there are a lot of people who just gotta go.”

“You sound like Hitler.”

“I knew you were gonna bring him up. What I wouldn’t give to shoot that man in the head.”

“What would you give?”

“Don’t change the subject,” Gilbert echoed. “What do you want from me? What’s supposed to happen here? I met this weird apparent human in the early 21st century who told me you were there at the same time, but that we weren’t going to meet until later.”

“Oh you were there at Analion’s fall too? Me, you, Kallias Bran. What a weird convergence.”

“Do you know why we’re here together...now, or not?”

“I assumed you were here to help me,” Zeferino said plainly.

“I thought you were gonna help me.”

“Maybe we could help each other.”

“In what capacity?”

“Let’s sign a contract. You help me manipulate Mateo, while I promise not to hurt him, or anyone he cares about.”

“What do I get out of it? I don’t want you to manipulate him.”

“I’ll let you do the one thing you’ve always wanted to do, but never got your chance.”

“What’s that?” Gilbert asked, unconvinced that Zeferino had any clue what he was talking about.

“I’ll give you the opportunity to kill Horace Reaver.”

“He’s already dead.”

“I know, I killed him.”

“And I’m a time traveler, I could always just go back and kill him before you did.”

You could, but then you would lose your power.”

“How do you figure?”

“Horace Reaver is the reason you can do what you do. If you destroy him, it will destroy you. It might even kill you too.”

“Like a vampire?”

“No, not like a vampire. Christ, are movies the only thing you think about? It’s just this weird thing, I can’t quite explain it. But I promise that, if you kill him, you’ll only be killing yourself. He doesn’t have to be alive for you to be what you are, but you cannot be the one who takes him out of the equation.”

“If that’s true—and I’m not saying that I believe you—then how could you help me with that?”

“I have an extraction mirror. It can take people out of the timestream at the moment of their death. That’s your loophole. If you don’t kill him in the timestream itself, then you’re free from the consequences.”

“That sounds made up.”

“I can show you the mirror. I’m not lying.”

“You could be lying about the loophole, or the idea that I would need one in the first place.”

“I could.” Zeferino paused for effect. “But do you really wanna risk that?”

Gilbert thought over it, and even though he knew the Cleanser was a gifted manipulator, he really couldn’t risk the whole thing being true. “An extraction mirror, huh? You mean like—?”

“So help me God, if you say a word about Doctor Who, I’ll just kill you right now. Like, I don’t even care.”

“Fine.”

“So you’ll help me?”

“I will help.”

Zeferino smiled.

“But I will do it in my own way. I need full creative control. You have to trust the process, are we clear?”

“As mud,” Zeferino said.

“I will also need some protection. If you go back on your word, if you break our contract, then you will have to lose something.”

Zeferino laughed. “What could you possibly take from me?”

“One of your sisters.”

Zeferino stiffened up, but knew that he had to remain calm if he was going to get what he wanted. “You couldn’t. I would protect them from you.”

“That may be, but it needs to be in the contract just the same, along with a clause that says you can’t employ help from your family while I’m working for you either. They would make things unfair.”

“Very well. I accept your terms. We shall work out the details, but now, let us drink. I believe this to be your poison of choice?” He apported a bottle of bourbon, as well as two glasses, into his hands.

“If we’re gonna do this,” Gilbert said, “then let’s do it right. I hear the best place to drink is on Luna about 14,000 years from now when Durus collides with Earth.”

“Gilbert, Gilbert, Gilbert. You’re a weird one, aren’t ya? All right, fine by me.”

And so The Cleanser and the soon-to-be-named Rogue, traveled to the future and watched the planet be destroyed by a different kind of rogue. Later, they reluctantly began executing their truly insane plan. Their relationship was never bound to work out, though. Things went horribly wrong seemingly ever other week, and once around Christmas. In the end, Gilbert won out. Even after working against him so long, he managed to get himself back in the good graces of Mateo Matic. Zeferino was no match for the two of them working together. They gathered several other allies along the way, and ultimately bested him in a fight to the death. True to his word, for an earlier breach of contract, Gilbert acted on his promise to kill one of Zeferino’s sisters. He asked for help from a man named The Warrior so that no one would know of his involvement. Unfortunately, she was not the one they should have been worried about. Former Conservator—and current Extractor—Arcadia Preston, would go on to cause for them a great deal more problems. And the only one who could put an end to it was the Cleanser himself. They would need the extraction mirror.