Microstory 601: Belief of the Atheist

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In the beginning, our Father created heaven, hell, and life. And with life came the 121 Taikon. Father said that a great change would arise once all taikon had been experienced in the proper order. Many have speculated as to what this change entails. Some believe it to be the end, others a new beginning. Some think they will be ushered into heaven, while still more think that God himself will come down to the mortal world and spread peace across the land. Certain people believe that this will be instead a sign of another figure beginning his rule over mankind; one that is evil and twisted. Whatever the truth, there are those attempting to hasten it along, while their opposition pushes back against them. They believe that Affirmation Day is coming, but do not feel like there is any reason to instigate the inevitable taikon. In fact, it is possible that the only true path towards the end is one of nature. Any attempt to artificially create this path will ultimately lead to failure. Of course, there are those who do not believe in the taikon at all, and do not care what believers do, as long as it does not interfere with their lives. Whatever truth you believe, the 121 Taikon are real, and so is the impending Affirmation Day. Not only that, but the first taikon has recently been witnessed. A staunch atheist—one who was particularly boisterous in his blasphemy—has suddenly, and without provocation, started to believe in the Father Creator. While yesterday he was nothing but a man, he is now our creator’s absolutely most devout follower. He is now sharing the light of salvation with all of his peers, and many of them have admitted the truth alongside him. Watch and be prepared…as the next 120 taikon arrive.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 15, 2130 (continued)

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“Who were those two?” Mateo asked Arcadia.

“Kayetan’s friends. Or rather they were once friends.”

“Will he help us?”

“Not likely.”

“So you’re saying maybe.”

“Leaning towards the no side,” Arcadia said, “but I know someone who might.”

“Okay, how do we find them?” Horace asked impatiently.

“She’ll find you,” Arcadia assured them. “But now I must go.”

“Wait!” Mateo tried to stop her, but it was pointless. Fortunately, before too long, they heard a rustling in the bushes. Then a young woman struggled to pull away from them and approach the group, muttering frustrations about being in the wild.

“Of course it’s you,” Horace said once she was close enough for him to see her face. “Alexina McGregor. Tracker extraordinaire.”

“Hey, Ace. I’ve got a proposition for you.”

The two of them stood before each other in that way where everyone else around them couldn’t be sure whether either was happy to see the other, or angry. Then, after a few moments that were probably only awkward for the onlookers, Horace and this Alexina hugged each other like old friends, which was what they probably were.

“It’s been forever. You look so much younger. What the hell are you doin’ in 2130?” Horace was surprised and delighted.

“Lookin’ for you, of course!” she answered. “So we can look for Paige together.”

“Can you do it?” he asked.

She took a deep breath and shook her head. “Man, it’ll be tough. Those guys know all my tricks, and of course, Tauno can hide his scent from me. Well, I guess both of them can.”

Mateo wanted to ask them about their past and relationship, but didn’t want to interrupt. It would seem as if there was all this history between him and his family, and all these people he hadn’t heard of. There was still so much he didn’t know, and so much he was missing out on.

“Will you be okay going after them?”

“I owe them nothing.”

Horace nodded, expressing a tiny bit of hope that they might actually pull this off. They then looked at the crowd, who were each waiting as patiently as Mateo. “So...this Alexina. She’s clairvoyant, which means she’ll be able to find Paige for me. Basically, she’s The Navigator without the compass. She can just do it on her own. Thank you all for your support, especially you, Mateo. We’re gonna go now.”

“Hold up,” Mario said. “You think we’re staying here? We don’t support you just by smiling and waving you off. We support you by actually helping.”

Ace shook his head. “I can’t ask you to do that. Really, these guys are dangerous. And Alex, do you know if any of the others are involved?”

“I don’t,” she claimed.

“See, they may have someone on their side who can rewrite reality. I have to do this on my own.”

“That’s not happening,” Aura argued. “I’ve grown close to Paige. I’m not letting those men keep her.”

Horace realized that he wasn’t going to be able to talk them out of it. And Mateo knew he wouldn’t have to say a word. It was obvious he would be going too. “Someone needs to stay here in case they circle back ‘round, though,” Alexina noted.

“I can do that,” Lincoln agreed.

“No one should be alone.”

“I’ll stay with him,” Darko said. “I wouldn’t do much good out there anyway.”

Alexina inspected the three who were going with them: Mateo, Mario, and Aura. “Very well. You should know, though, that it might take hours, or it might take days. Like I said, these guys are hard to track.”

“I can’t do days,” Mateo said.

“What?” She didn’t understand the problem. Horace leaned over and started whispering in her ear, but she didn’t feel the need to be as quiet. “Really?—Why doesn’t he just go to Durus?—Well, has anyone tried to tell him?—I survived. We all did.” She sighed. “Okay, but do we even need him?—Who?—Okay, I get that.—Who?—Fine.” She separated herself from Horace, and faced Mateo. “Way I hear it, you’re salmon.”

“They are too.”

“Yes, but his pattern has been put on hold, and hers doesn’t interfere with the work. I can’t do anything about your situation because Horace doesn’t want you trying to sever your ties with the powers that be.”

“Don’t tell him that,” Horace complained.

She went on, ignoring him. “Any man who falls behind...is left behind.”

“I get it. I need to help, though. I’m responsible for these people. This is my planet.”

This took her by surprise. She looked back to Horace, whose facial expression confirmed his own confusion over the matter. “My, my, aren’t we the peculiarity?”

She stepped back to address the group. “Be packed and ready to leave in five minutes.”

Mateo was ready to go, so he followed Horace to his bag so he could speak with him. “What’s this about a place called Durus? What were you two talking about?”

“Durus is the one place that lies beyond the purview of the powers that be, and we don’t know why. It can possibly break your connection to them. Permanently. Possibly.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it earlier? Why doesn’t everybody know about it? We could all go there. My father, my mother...”

“It’s a dangerous place, Mateo. And it’s unpredictable. This one here? He pointed towards Alexina. “Only she was born with powers. The rest of her friends were just human, and received their powers when they went there. But it came at great cost, and it doesn’t work like that with everybody. It could kill you, or it could alter your pattern so that you and Leona never see each other again. Any number of things could happen there, I can’t recommend it.”

“That wasn’t your decision to make.”

“I made it anyway. There’s tons I haven’t told you. Help me get my daughter back, and I promise to find a way to get you there.”

Mateo took Horace’s wrist so he couldn’t add anything more to his bag for a second. “That you would think I would only help you for something in return shows how little you know me.”

“You’re from an alternate reality,” Horace said. “I remember that timeline, but that’s all you have to go on. “We’re not friends, and I’ve done things in this reality I’m not proud of. This isn’t the first time Paige’s life has been threatened. Hell, it’s not even the first time Keanu was the perpetrator. Things get bad when she’s in trouble. I always go back to how I was; and this was before I had any memories of my other self.” He finished packing with a bottle of water, and stuck his face in Mateo’s. “You shouldn’t trust me. People who trust me get hurt.”

Mateo raised his voice as Horace was trying to walk away. “I killed Serkan.”

He stopped short, but didn’t turn around. “I’ve never blamed you for that. Not even once. I haven’t even hinted that I held you responsible for his sacrifice.”

“I haven’t either,” Mateo said back. “And I should have. I created The Cleaner. I put your husband in that situation.”

He turned and let out a breathy laugh. “Lots of people had a hand in that, Mateo. Not everything is about you.”

“That battle on top of Uluru was about me.”

He smiled. “No. Choosers get bored, even with endless wonder. They play those games every once in awhile. You were simply the latest victim of that pettiness.”

“We have to go!” Alexina yelled to them from up the beach. “First 48 hours!”

A brief temporal rift opened up in the jungle a few miles away from camp. They barely made it through in time before it closed on them. They jumped a few times through time and space before making their way to what Alexina claimed to be Kansas City in present-day. They were just in a forest. “This is where we begin,” she said. “I haven’t picked up their trail at all, but I figured we start in some familiar places.”

“Which way is the city?”

“Backwards in time,” she explained. “People don’t really do cities anymore. This, where we’re standing, is where Paige and her fathers once lived.”

Horace looked around, trying to find something he recognized, but there were only trees. “It’s more beautiful than it was back then.”

“Yes.”

“But it is severely lacking in Paiges.”

“I know,” Alexina said solemnly. “This was a longshot.”

“We can’t give up,” Horace said. “Look around for clues. Speak up if you find anything out of place.”

“You mean like this?” Mario was holding up a yellow plastic egg.

Horace smiled at the egg. “Paige loved Easter. It was the one time of year when her birth parents pretended to be normal, and nonabusive.”

“Christianity is dying,” Mario pointed out. “And it doesn’t look like anyone lives here. This is definitely out of place.” He squeezed the two halves of the egg and split it open. Beams of light shot out from the opening and overcame them.

When the light receded, they found themselves in a cave.

“What the hell happened?” Horace asked.

“We teleported, but where is this?” Even Alexina didn’t know.

“It’s Easter Island,” Mateo said.

“Oh, that makes sense,” Mario said. “The egg was a riddle.”

“Wait, where’s my mo—I mean, Aura?”

“She was looking for clues in the trees,” Mario remembered. “She must have been just outside of the blast radius.”

“They wanted us here,” Horace realized. “This wasn’t just a clue, it’s a path. Which way should we go?”

“I don’t know,” Alexina said honestly. “Temporal energy is emanating from the walls. I can’t sense anything specific.”

“Mateo, you’ve been here. Which way?”

“Horace, if they want you here, then maybe we should think about—”

“Are you here to help, or not?” he yelled.

Mateo sighed, and knew that he had to do what he promised. “That way.”

Horace just started running.

“Horace, stop!”

“Ace!” Alexina called up to him as well.

They all started chasing after him.

Once Horace reached the end of the tunnel, he was stunned. Mateo and Leona had told him what the giant amphitheatre had looked like, but it wasn’t really something you could understand without seeing it yourself. He took a beat to admire its beauty, which provided an opening for someone he failed to notice waiting to knock him out with the butt of a gun.

When Mateo arrived, he tried to look for the assailant, but didn’t see anyone. He knelt down to make sure Horace was still alive, but before he could be certain, the lights went out.

He woke up already massaging his temple from having been knocked out himself. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

“Welcome back,” Mario said. “It’s been awhile.”

Mateo gathered his composure and looked around. They were in a part of the cavern system he hadn’t seen before, and also locked in iron cages. “How long is awhile?”

“Long enough for you to jump to 2131.”

“You’ve been locked up here for a year?” Mateo asked.

“No,” Horace said. “We jumped with you.”

Oh, that’s right. That’s what Easter Island does. The question now was what had happened to Paige in all this time? And where was their ally, Alexina? They spent the rest of the day there with no answers. They didn’t even see any of the captors in that time. Perhaps Keanu and Tauno were trying to starve them to death.

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Flurry: Timeline (Part IX)

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This was a side to Horace Reaver that Serkan had never seen, and hoped he never would. From what little Lincoln said on the matter, Ace was not a great person in some alternate timeline. Exactly how the timeline they lived in was created was not something they knew, but they had decided to leave it alone. Trying to learn more about this other version of Ace could do them absolutely no good. Their best bet was always to distance themselves from it as much as possible, and continue on with their lives as if they had never heard anything about it. Unfortunately, it was starting to look like that wasn’t going to be possible. Upon contacting some other friend, Keanu disappeared, leaving Serkan, Ace, and their new friend, Daria literally out in the cold. So the three of them went into the house to figure things out. For now, Daria was waiting in the other room so the two of them could discuss some personal issues.

“She’s our daughter,” Ace said in his own defense before Serkan had had a chance to say anything.

“I know that.”

Ace was still operating in fight or flight mode, with enough adrenaline pumping through his body to power a city. He paced back and forth, which Serkan wanted to stop, but it was actually probably gradually dissipating his frustration. “I’m not going to let that man hurt her. Whatever she does in the future, she’s just a little kid right now. I have to protect her.”

“I’m not saying we don’t, but you have to remember that we’re dealing with people who can manipulate the spacetime continuum. Keanu even said that he knows someone who can enter other dimensions, which is where Paige is right now.”

“Exactly! So I couldn’t just let it go.”

“Beating him into the snow wasn’t going to help anybody. We have no idea what kind of power these people have. Petty human tactics don’t work anymore. We have to be smart.”

“Oh yeah, and how do you suppose we defeat them? You say they have powers, right? Well, if that’s true, and we can’t even begin to comprehend, then I guess all we have in our arsenal are our bare hands. Savages fighting a nuclear bomb with rocks and sticks might sound foolish, but they can’t disarm it with their rocket scientists, because they don’t have any! I have fists, I don’t have powers, so that was my only choice.”

“Words are a choice.”

“Words mean nothing. People talk all the time, nothing gets done. All change has been executed with action. Sometimes that action is violence.”

“I’m not going to believe that,” Serkan said.

Ace had calmed down somewhat, or maybe he was just crashing. “Well, that’s where you and I differ.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Ace said after gathering his thoughts. “But maybe it’s best it happens now, rather than later. That’s always been in me. When Rutherford said I did bad things in the other timeline, I wasn’t surprised. And I was glad when The Delegator sent Ulinthra to wherever he did, because I could see in her eyes that she’s even more dangerous...because she doesn’t have you.”

“Then use me,” Serkan pleaded. “Whatever it is that I provide for you that stops you from becoming whatever it is you think you are, hold onto it. Whenever the anger starts building inside, picture me. Give my avatar that anger...and I’ll take care of it.”

He took a deep breath. “I could try that. We still need to do something about Paige. She isn’t safe here. This much is true”

Serkan nodded, because he certainly agreed with it. It Keanu really could get into Bran’s secret dimension—and all evidence pointed to this being the ase—then she would probably be in even more danger than if she were just with them in the real world.

“Give her to me.” Daria had come into the room, as if she had been listening to them the entire time.

“What do you mean?”

“This mission has taken too long,” she told them. “Most last minutes...seconds even. I get in, save a life, and get out. I don’t stick around. When the powers that be leave me in one place for an extended period of it, it’s usually because there’s some kind of perpetual threat that can’t be fixed with just one quick jump.”

“Where can you take her?”

“I can’t go anywhere off Earth, but I can run. And I can hide. The powers won’t let this chooser group catch us. I’m sure of it. Bring her back from wherever she is, and I’ll take her away from this.”

Ace and Serkan looked to each other to see if either of them had any objections, but they didn’t. Maybe it was the wrong choice, but they were already trusting Kallias Bran with her, who they barely knew. That didn’t mean they could just pass her out to anyone they came across, but they had to believe that there were genuinely good people out there. Keanu and his friends could be playing the long con by sending Daria with lies, but that wasn’t any more or less plausible than someone who could open dimensional portals.

“Okay,” Ace said.

As Ace ushered Daria to stand around the corner, Serkan took out the Escher Card and hovered it over the wall where they had first used the original Escher Knob. This was as good a time as any to test this new time object, and it proved functional. The portal opened, revealing Paige and Kallias sitting on the couch, watching cartoons.

“Is it over?” Bran asked.

“Can I come back home?” Paige asked.

Serkan just shook his head. “It’s just no longer safe here.”

Bran stood up. “Where can she go?”

Now Ace shook his head. “You can’t know that.”

Bran completely understood. “Okay.”

Paige gave her babysitter a hug, grabbed her backpack, and headed for the portal. “Remember. You owe me that camera.”

“I’ll find one,” Bran told her with a kind smile. “Somewhere. Some time.”

Once Serkan closed the portal, it was safe to let Daria come back around. They needed to keep Bran from seeing her to compartmentalize the plan. The less he knew, the better. Daria knelt down to Paige’s level and reached out her hand in greeting. “Hi, my name is—” But before she could finish her sentence, they both disappeared. As soon as her fingers touched Paige’s, they were connected.

By then, Ace had calmed down so much that this seemed completely normal. “I sure hope we’re right about her.”

“We know Paige grows up to be—what was she, twentysomething? Maybe thirties?”

“Yes,” Ace agreed in monotone, “but we do not know what happens to her along the way. Obviously she makes enemies on her own.”

“Let’s hope for the best, and plan for the worst,” Serkan mused. “What we need to do right now is figure out how we’re gonna deal with our Keanu problem. Clearly he never needed his company to alter the weather. And now we see how serious he is about keeping to whatever his grand plan will turn out to be.”

“We need...an edge,” Ace continued the conversation. “An advantage. We need to find some way to surprise him. Even if he’s powerful enough to handle it, maybe it’ll be enough to stop him just because he doesn’t see it coming.”

“You mean something other than the Escher Card?”

A young man they had never seen before came up from the stairs, looking like a house-sitting nephew of a work friend who didn’t realize they had already returned from vacation. “Maybe it’s not something you need, but someone.” Were people just gonna waltz into their lives as if scripted? Maybe their lives really were being controlled by these powers that be people were always going on about.

Ace put himself into fighting stance, ready to get that adrenaline flowing again. Serkan did the same. “Who are you, and how did you get in here?”

“Whoa,” the teenager said, “it’s cool. We’re cool. I got the key you taped to the underside of your neighbor’s doghouse. Very clever of you; keeping it close enough to walk to, but far enough that random intruders wouldn’t be likely to find it, but also secure in a spot that doesn’t generally move.”

“You can’t be all three impressed, smart enough to have found it, and confident enough to have used it,” Serkan pointed out.

“Fair assessment. She told me where it was.” He just nodded to the wall, as if someone were standing next to him. “I know you can’t see her, but she’s there.”

Serkan actually believed it. A ghost certainly wouldn’t be the craziest thing he had encountered over the last year. Still, he had some snark to spill. “And are the voices telling you to hurt people, or yourself?”

“It’s nothing like that. We help people. I’m from the future,” he claimed. Further than you are. And I’ve come back to bootstrap my life.”

“You what?” Ace probably didn’t believe him at all.

“The time we’re in right now is a temporal crossroads. From here, many possible timeline branches can form. I’m here to make sure that the branch I come from is the one that’s ultimately chosen. If I don’t...” he nodded to the wall again, “...she’s never born, and my life never has purpose.”

“What in the world are you talking about?” Ace asked impatiently

“I travel backwards in time, changing history for the better. It’s what I do. It’s my...gift. But I wasn’t the first. If you don’t act...if I can’t get you to help us, my predecessor will die before she has a chance to start her own mission.”

“You change history for the better?” Ace asked.

“Yes.”

“You could even say that you...put right what once went wrong?”

“See, that’s funny,” the stranger said. “My predecessor loves movies and TV. She would appreciate that reference so hard.”

“What exactly are you expecting us to do?” Serkan asked of him.

“You have to save her life.”

“Whose life?”

“Quivira. Quivira Boyce. Also known as The Renegade.”

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Microstory 600: The Oncoming Taikon (Introduction)

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This series needs no introduction. Just kidding, I know you have no idea what to expect from something like this. You’re thinking, taikon? What the hell is that? I started working on this part of my canon several years ago, so give me a second to consult my trusty online etymology dictionary. No, it’s not on there? Well, obviously it derives from the word icon but I’m not sure exactly how that fits in. It’ll make sense later, and if not, we’ll fix it in post. If you read my last series in its entirety, then you might have started to notice that a few of these fictional “news” stories occasionally referenced each other. Sometimes these references were so small that you couldn’t possibly notice unless you studied it like a crazy person. I can explain why it was like that, and why I couldn’t just flat out point to each connection. The concept in that series was that I didn’t actually write them, but simply copied and pasted them from other stories. Real journalists, across time and space, supposedly wrote them instead, and I’m just releasing them to the world you and I live in. So when one writer vaguely references something spoken of in greater detail in another story, it’s because that writer’s target audience actually already knows this stuff, so rehashing those details each time wouldn’t make sense. I would like to let you know that I took a semester of journalism my freshman year of high school, and did not realize until beginning this new project that that was not enough to know how to write news articles. I did the best I could, but they don’t read like something you would find on a news page, because that’s a completely different medium that I don’t personally believes translates well to this format. Of course, this next series is going to be different, but it does take place in the same franchise. I bring up Headlines because I sometimes referenced events that will turn out to be adjacent to the following ones. A group of people—who felt disillusioned with the state of affairs—broke away from their originating society, and formed their own in another galaxy. But before they found this galaxy, they sort of had to hang out on Earth, hiding themselves from the primitive humans living there at the time. While on our planet, they got their hands on a few copies of that bible thing you people are always going on about. Instead of adopting your faith, though, they corrupted and reworked the story to better fit their preexisting political beliefs. Over time, this corruption became so comfortable that this part of their history was effectively erased, leading most modern believers with the impression that their religion formed organically. The following relates a prophecy that operates as their version of the Book of Revelation. The Oncoming Taikon, in 121 parts.

Belief of the Atheist