Microstory 623: Ascension of the Humble

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Though our galaxy is not run by a central government, there are a powerful few who make decisions for a significant percentage of the population. These leaders made their way to the top by working hard, and being able to provide something for the economy that others couldn’t, or at least not as well. Some of these are Lightseers, while some are not. In any case, they tend to be egotistical and self-righteous, and true Lightseers are better than that. We rise above. On the planet of Yrosfulh, there was a relatively isolated nation called Grelvo. It was run by a dictator who had risen to power some twenty years ago. He practiced a form of rule involving keeping his citizens poor, and on the brink of starvation, so that they would not have the energy to rise up against him. Some even lived in literal ruins. Still, the majority of them held onto their faith, and have the potential to be great Lightseers. He actually fed his Arkeizen thralls better than his human subjects, knowing that Arkeizens are not intelligent, or organized, enough to endanger any established system. These Arkeizens he kept as a sort of strange military contingency, should anyone attempt to conquer them. The country is of little value to anyone else in the galaxy, so this has never happened, and it’s doubtful Arkeizens could ever do much good on the battlegrounds. They certainly were not effective here. As much of a right as Supreme Leader Grelvo had to treat his subjects however he pleased, he was clearly a poor leader, and it would seem that these subjects believed this as well. They started rearranging their rations so that the youngest and strongest in their villages were able to eat the most. Some of the elderly even let themselves starve to death just so that the able-bodied warriors could gather their strength, and formulate their plans. After about a year of this, they executed their dictator, killing every single thrall in the country in order to reach that point, including the ones that surrendered. It was such a minor story in terms of galactic news that it was nearly missed, but a loyal Lightseer discovered this current event, and reported it to the Highlightseers. It has now been determined that this development qualifies for the twenty-third taikon. The humble have ascended, and one has proven himself to be more qualified than all of them put together.

Appointment of the Loctener

Microstory 622: Feast of Zest

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As you’ve heard, in relation to the warbad parasites, there are some things in this galaxy that do not meet our people’s standards. In the old worlds, all recreational drugs were illegal. Alcohol, amphetamines, depressants; if they didn’t treat a medical condition, they were not to be consumed. Though we’ve tried to leave behind the old ways, there are a few practices we’ve held onto. One of these involves drug use. Now, there are some drugs in Fostea that are acceptable in moderation, though they are regulated by a special law enforcement body. This is one of only a handful of regulatory agencies, because of course, we in Fostea believe in a free market. For the most part, people in our galaxy, just as in any other, don’t have much interest in partaking of drugs anyway, so it’s generally not a problem. There is only one drug originating from the galaxy that has been deemed completely illegal. They’re called simply verbeans. These black and yellow fruits make you so energetic and enthusiastic, that you party and dance until you die. Literally. Once you’ve eat enough verbeans, you’ll feel like you won’t ever have to sleep again, and then you won’t. It starts out heavy, with an unending desire to loosen up and dance around. Then they’ll keep you awake for days, sometimes weeks, which could be long enough to suffer from exhaustion. They’re not addictive, but also have negligible effects in small doses, so the only time a user experiences any change in feelings or behavior, it’s probably too late. It’s nearly impossible to cure, with only one attempt out of hundreds of cases being successful. It would seem, however, that the taikon passages in the Book of Light command they be taken. Many have tried, but have found no other logical interpretation to the prophecy about a feast of zest. And so, a group of insignificant Fosteans were placed on a random moon, force fed verbeans, and left alone. It is the only taikon that has been arbitrarily carried out, but this was at the request of Eido Ivanka herself, so it had to be done.

Microstory 621: Parasitic Infestation

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Not everything in this galaxy is perfect. To be sure, there is no galaxy out there with absolutely zero problems. In order to achieve such a thing, you would have to build one yourself, like they do in the ancient broadcast series Starscapers. Wise and capable Sotiren Zahir knew this going into his mission of finding a new galaxy to call home, and this was the best of a multitude of options. One particularly nasty problem with Fostea, however, has to do with a single planet. Before we even arrived, Sacred Savior Zahir ordered all Fosteans to stay away from the Warbad system, in order to protect everyone, for it houses the most dangerous parasite ever encountered by man. Scientists have concluded that warbads are probably only parasites when there is a species worth taking as hosts. While in a period of what science has called peace time, they live just as any other creature, eating what bacteria they find naturally in their environment. It is only when they encounter a suitable species that they enter their war time, which is where it gets its name. There are five kinds of warbads; the king, the queen, the purgers, the proliferators, and the civilians. They all look like tight strips of dark hair. There is only one king and queen in any given warbad platoon. They mate with each other up to nine times a day. Afterwards, the king will birth a troop of purgers, while the queen births the proliferators. These proliferators then go on to propagate their species with civilians. Another organism’s body is often the best place to lay a new city of civilians, but it is not technically necessary. Once a suitable species is identified, the king and his purgers will get to work with their own purpose, which is to weed out hostile conditions.

You see, though host organisms make for great brood environments, they can also provide inhospitable environments, depending on the individual. Instead of merely ignoring these unsuitable hosts, the purgers are responsible for destroying them, so that only the desirable hosts remain. They do this by infecting a mediocre host’s brain, ultimately directing it to kill its own kind in an endless quest for blood. Purger-infected hosts go on killing sprees, cleansing the battlegrounds of any host that might limit the warbad platoon’s ability to survive, and protecting the hosts that might be used by the proliferators. Health professionals and other researchers have been unable to identify the parameters of what the warbad considers a good host, versus a bad host, but it has recently been turned into our advantage. A new platoon has somehow managed to escape their home planet, and begun infecting the galaxy. But they are not going after just anyone. They’re only killing and infecting nonbelievers. Somehow, they know who has the light, and who does not. Atheists are being used as proliferator hosts so that the warbad civilians can multiply, while members of rival religions are being turned into purge vectors, and gone about killing each other. They began their crusade with the silenced blasphemers. By the end of the taikon, the only ones remaining should be Lightseers. Blessèd be The Light, and all its seeds, and only its seeds. Our day of illumination is upon us.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: July 20, 2135

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Sometime in the interim year, Darko and Marcy had grown closer, and formed a solid romantic relationship. To everyone else, this seemed perfectly normal, and though Mateo and Leona knew they had been gone for that year, it still seemed far too fast for them. These crazy kids needed to slow down, or burn out. But no, this was totally acceptable, wonderful even. Back in the old days, when Mateo was just starting out, missing important life milestones was one of the first problems that arose. Since then, following the advent of immortality, this became less of a problem. People developed and changed more slowly these days. A several month journey from Earth to a moon of Saturn no longer ended with dying on that moon. It was very easy to go there, spend a lifetime worth of years there, and come back to do something else, or go somewhere new. Soon, people will be going to planets outside the solar system. It will take the first ships decades to get to even the nearest star, but it will be worth it, because that’s nothing compared to the amount of time they have ahead of them. Even after reaching the fastest speeds known to be possible, these trips will take years, but that won’t be a big deal. One day, it won’t be unheard of to take a fifty-year vacation. This is all coming from Leona’s lessons.

As was tradition, the remaining members of their island group were having breakfast together. “Did you know that Arcadia would be moving you here when you first came?” Leona asked of Marcy.

Darko didn’t look pleased. Marcy was content. “I was hoping I would be able to stay,” she answered.

“Why is that?” Mateo asked.

“Last year,” Marcy began, “you carried out the art expiation so that one of Aldona’s family could eventually come back from nonexistence.”

“Right.”

“You didn’t ask what that person’s name was.”

“It was you?”

“Yes,” Marcy replied. “I am Aldona and Gino’s daughter.” She paused to comfort Darko, who was conflicted by the whole thing. Likely grateful for her presence now, but bothered by what Arcadia had done to her. “I was returned early as a gift in good faith. Now you know that it can be done, and that she is not a monster.”

“She is,” Darko argued.

“Honey,” Marcy said to him. “Maybe you should meditate?”

“Yep.” He stood up and walked straight into the jungle. He was changing a lot.

Marcy continued, “I am here to stay until you complete your expiations, but I do not come without conditions. One, Arcadia reserves the right to remove me from time, or simply the island, at any moment. Two, I am not allowed to help with these expiations. Three, if you fail in any one of my family’s expiations, I will be immediately taken out of time again; this time for good.”

“We won’t fail you,” Mateo said. “We will complete these expiations. All of them.”

She smiled. “I appreciate that.”

“Do you know what we will be doing today?” Leona asked.

“You’ll more than likely be working to save my brother, Loris.”

“What was he like?” Mateo asked. He then corrected himself, “is like?”

“A chef!” she said excitedly. “He can cook anything, and it’s always the best thing you’ve ever had.”

Mateo looked down at his food, then to Leona’s, and then just up into space. “I think I know what the expiation is gonna be.”

In the blink of an eye, the scenery completely transformed. They were still on Tribulation Island, at about the same part of the beach as before, but everything else was different. The stage consisted of four tables, three of which were facing the fourth, which was more off to the side. Aura and Lincoln were standing at one of the chef’s tables, Mario and Leona were at another, and Horace and Darko were at the third. Mateo and Marcy were sitting at a smaller table, along with—with...is that? It couldn’t be.

Arcadia was wearing a flamboyant dress, standing between the chef’s tables, and the audience, which were seated on a platform of floating bleachers in the water. Mateo wasn’t sure who these people were, or what they thought they were doing there. She was also addressing a series of stacked cardboard boxes that roughly approximated the shape of a video camera, which was being ‘operated’ by Paige. “Ladies and germs, welcome to the first daily Tribulation Tryouts! As always, I am your host, Arcadia ‘Sweet Stinger’ Preston. It’ll catch on...” She kept holding the microphone, but pretended to be telling a secret by holding her hand to one side of her mouth, “I hope.”

The audience broke out in laughter according to their reaction cues.

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“Please give a round of applause to each of our judges. Ever angry, ever absent, Mateo Matiiiiic! Starving artist, Marcy Calligaris! And our celebrity guest judge...Jaaaaaaames Van Der Beeeeeeek!”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” James-frickin-Van Der Beek said, smiling with his eyes closed. “It’s an honor to be here, really. Humbled, so humbled. Just don’t make it too spicy, I can’t handle that.”

The audience laughed.

“Seriously,” James Van Der Beek urged, still sporting a smile. “It does not sit well with me.”

The audience laughed even harder.

Now James Van Der Beek stopped smiling. “No, really.”

“Oooookay,” Arcadia went on with her spiel. “Introducing our contestants! She’s a once-mother with a dark past who can’t even remember her own son from an alternate reality; he’s an uptight lawyer who remembers everything, from every reality! It’s Aura and Lincoln! At our second table, we have a father who also can’t remember two of his children, and is so uninvolved with his other son that it’s easy to forget they’re even related; and a little girl who once somehow gave herself kidney disease so that she could trick her unrequited love interest into making her a time traveler! It’s...Mario and Leona! And finally, we have some villain named Horace, and also a time traveler who happens to be named Darko! How original, hashtag-amirite?”

“You are right!” the audience recited back from the teleprompters.

James Van Der Beek put his hand over his mic and whispered to the other two judges. “I don’t understand what’s happening. Where am I again?”

“The future.”

“Right. I’m getting paid, though, right?”

“I don’t know,” Mateo answered honestly.

“Whatever. Better than a Dawson’s Creek reunion.”

“All right, contestants, now for the secret ingredient.” She waited to create a false sense of anticipation, which the audience was pretending to experience. “The secret ingredient is...” They were literally on the edge of their seats, for no logical reason. “...nothing. We don’t do that on this show. Now, as you all don’t know, the premise of this competition is to make something halfway edible using ingredients found naturally on the island. Then the judges have to eat and keep down everything. Yes, that’s right, not only is it a cooking challenge, but also an eating challenge.” She looked over to the judges. “I don’t love your chances.”

The audience sparingly let out a few awkwards laughs. The reaction cues must not have been telling them to do anything.

“Okay, kids,” she instructed the contestants. “Go!” As they ran off to look for the staples of this island, she stopped them, “wait! Bugs.”

“What?” Aura asked.

“I changed my mind. There is a secret ingredient. It’s bugs. You have to include bugs, and it has to be obvious that there’s bugs, and you have to be able to taste bugs.”

The contestants just froze in place.

“Well, go on, go! Find bugs!”

Mateo was unable to help Leona...or anyone, for that matter. All he could do was sit there and play to the audience per Arcadia’s goading. He tried to crack a few jokes, as did Marcy, but they could only do so much. Fortunately, James Van Der Beek was good at stealing the show, and getting everybody to watch him. He eventually got out of his seat and started an impromptu stand-up comedy set, which...could do with a little more work. Meanwhile, his family and friends were rushing around the island, looking for anything people could eat, disappearing and reappearing between the trees. Boar, bananas, fish, berries, these leaves they discovered could be made into an energy tea. They also looked for bugs. In the dirt, and in the sand. They were hard to catch, and ultimately even harder to clean.

At the end of James Van Der Beek’s set, Arcadia thanked him for his service, and spoke to the fake camera, “we’ll come back...after the break.” And then she just stood there, frozen. She literally didn’t move a muscle, likely having trapped herself in a time bubble, just for the effect.

James Van Der Beek narrowed his eyes and stared at her. “How is she doing that?”

“Time travel is a thing,” Mateo said.

“What year is it?”

“2135. Listen, James Van Der Beek—can I call you James Van Der Beek?—James Van Der Beek, are you gonna be able to do the bug thing? This is kind of a life or death situation.”

“Oh yeah, sure, no problem. I’ve been through worse. On the set of Don't Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23, craft services didn’t even always have croutons for their salads.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m kidding. I get that this is important. I can stomach it, so to speak.”

“Thank you.”

There’s that nightclub air horn that sounds three times in rapid succession. People often mimic it with their own voices when they think they’re DJs. One of those goes off, signalling to the contestants that it’s time to return and actually begin cooking. They all rush in, holding their baskets of ‘food’ and doing their best to wrangle their bugs. They carry them over to their chef’s tables and begin preparations. As they’re working, Arcadia walks around, commenting on the minutiae of what they’re doing, and asking them stupid questions. She also goes over the judges’ table and asks for their opinion. Rather, she asks two of them, because Marcy’s literally not allowed to speak. She was apparently just placed there to round out the number. Mateo and James Van Der Beek have to explain the process the contestants are going for, and what they might be after with their decisions. Neither one of them is an educated or experienced cook to the calibre of someone who would call themselves a chef, so they have to BS their way through it, which Arcadia has no problem with.

Then came the hard part.

The food was worse than they thought it would be. Sure, these were all things they ate on the regular on the island, but they also had other things, like eggs and fresh Earthan vegetables. Mateo wasn’t sure exactly where it came from, other than a magical pantry down the beach that kept refilling itself every day. The fact is that they never ate a meal with only the island food, and this low level of flavoring made everything seem so bland. The bugs were the worst part, of course, but Mateo was doing okay. He knew the danger in not meeting Arcadia’s expectations. Marcy acted like she ate bugs all the time. James Van Der Beek was a trooper too. Even though he didn’t quite understand who these people were, or what the hell was going on, he forced the food down his throat, and came out the other side a better man than Mateo ever knew. They had to continue making remarks about the food, coming up with meaningless ways the contestants could have done better.

With the wave of her hand, Arcadia apported the audience, the fake equipment, and the furniture away. Now they were all just standing on the beach together. James Van Der Beek was still there. “Okay, the fun’s worn off,” Arcadia told them. “It looks like you’ve passed this expiation. Congratulations.” She looked to James Van Der Beek. “I suppose you want your money.”

“Just take me home,” James Van Der Beek insisted. “That’s all I need.”

“Very well.” She waved her hand and apported him away too.

“Goodbye, Arcadia,” Mateo said, unprompted.

“Have a pleasant evening.” Then she nodded to Marcy. “Marcy. Remember your options.” Then she teleported out of there.

“What did she mean by options?” Mateo asked.

“Don’t worry about it.”

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Flurry: The Jacket (Part XIII)

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“Do we need both jackets?” Serkan asked after catching up to Jupiter. He was used to walking slowly to accommodate normal people, so it was a nice literal change of pace to be around someone just as fast.

“We do. The jackets need time to recharge, which we’ll only be able to do in the real world. They can take no more than two passengers at once, so without the copy, the other two in our group would have to stay behind.”

“The other two? There are three of us.” Ace noted. “Who’s the fourth?”

“I came here to rescue you, yes,” Jupiter began, “but only as a favor. My true mission is to retrieve someone important to me personally. I promised to protect him, always. I can’t break that promise.”

“If he’s here, then he was copied, right?” Serkan asked.

This made Jupiter stopped dead in his tracks. “Does that mean he doesn’t matter; that I shouldn’t save him?”

He misunderstood. “No, I was just wondering about what happens when you take him back. Will he live with his duplicate, start a new life somewhere else, or what?”

Jupiter turned back around and pushed the door to the stairwell, ready to begin the long journey back down. “I’ll raise them both.”

If at all possible, the weather outside was even worse than when they sought shelter in the skyscraper. Serkan and Ace had stolen a few extra layers of clothing that had been left lying around the cafeteria, and still felt like they were about to turn into icicles. Jupiter seemed perfectly fine...warm even. When asked about it, he said, “oh this jacket runs real hot. It’s not really meant to be worn while you’re not using it. The Weaver built it to be stylish, but she never did figure out the overheating problem.”

“Do you know where the copy of it is?” Serkan asked as he was restarting the bus with the Escher Card.

“I know where it should be. Whether it was stolen in the meantime, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t believe my old friends know about it, but I can’t be sure. They’re tricksy hobbitses.”

Serkan handed Jupiter the Escher Card so he could input in the coordinates. “Tell me about this group of friends of yours. Did you have a falling out?”

Jupiter shook his head in disappointment. “Technically yes, technically no. Jupiter Rosa is still very much friends with all them, and works with them happily.”

“I thought you said that you were Jupiter Rosa.”

“That’s the technically part.”

“You’re a copy,” Ace realized.

“I am. The first. Since then, the quote-unquote real one has figured out how to assimilate and destroy his copies as needed, but he could never bring himself to destroy me. That’s our sentimental side, I guess. Still, we avoid each other; stay out of each other’s way. But now he threatens someone I love, and that I cannot abide.”

“Is it your son?” Serkan asked. “You said you would raise them both; him and his copy.”

“He’s not mine, no. But I suppose...he is.”

This reminded both Serkan and Ace of Paige. “We’ll get him back,” Ace said, trying to comfort him. “We can relate to raising someone else’s child.”

“We also have experience with multiple versions of that child,” Serkan added.

Jupiter cracked a smile and nodded. “Oh yeah, that’s right.”

“What happened to the birth parents?”

“The closest the mother could find a decent job was in Ottawa, so she drives down there and back every day. She happened to be there when the metro was duplicated, which means there’s only one of her. She’s presently looking after that reality’s version of her son. Meanwhile, this world’s copy is with daycare.”

“Do you know where he is now, I mean, since the city was evacuated?

“Olathe’s weather is okay right now. They should still be there, waiting for the last of the parents to return. It’s possible that they’ve gone somewhere else, but with no communications, I can’t be certain unless I check there, and the apartment.”

Ace was looking out the window, and up. The weather was less tumultuous the farther from the center they drove, but it still wasn’t great here on the edge of the county. The bus was slowing down. “Why are we stopping here, then?”

“I know this place,” Serkan said. It was the tagger homebase, located at the confluence of the three of the five central metro counties. This was where he sought sanctuary with the taggers, and learned more about Crispin, the rabbit dog. “In the future.”

“The other jacket is here,” Jupiter explained. “This won’t be tagger territory until next year.”

They got out of the car and entered the building. Jupiter led them up the stairs, down the hall, and up to one of the units. When he noticed the door ajar, he reached to his hip...exhaling in frustration upon realizing he didn’t have a gun. It looked like instinct to reach for his sidearm, though, so maybe he had law enforcement experience, or military. Armed or not, he could come in handy whenever they ran into Keanu again. Which was happening right now.

Keanu ‘Ōpūnui was standing on the other side of the foyer, holding a baby with two arms. “Yes, do everyone please come in. But not any further than that. You’ll track slush on the floor.”

Jupiter tried approaching him anyway.

“Uh-uh-uh.”

“You wouldn’t hurt a child,” Jupiter hoped. “An infant.”

Keanu shrugged. “It’s a fake baby. Like the one from that Bradley Cooper movie. See, I could just toss it...” he lifted it up in the air, as if he were about to throw it across the room, but didn’t. The baby started crying.

“Jesus..Christ, man! What the hell happened to you!”

“I had everything,” Keanu began to explain. “Then you people show up and screw me over.”

“Looks like you got your arm back,” Ace pointed out.

Keanu held up what was once a missing arm. “This..is a shitty prosthetic.” It looked just as real as any other.

Jupiter’s anger was rising from his feet to his face. He was breathing heavily, and on the verge of doing something he was going to regret.

“That’s right, Jupi. Let it all out. Come back to us. None of this pansy hippy BS. You are a gunrunner. Act like one!”

The baby cried louder as Jupiter yelled louder. “You wanna see my gunrunning side again! You wanna see my rage!”

“Yes! Yes!”

Jupiter let out a battle cry and punched the wall, which delighted Keanu to no end. This turned out to have been a ruse, though. After he quickly pulled his arm back out from the drywall, they could all see that he was now holding a gun. His rage was completely gone, and was probably never really there in the first place. He calmly said to Keanu, “give Luken to me, and you will be spared.”

“You think you’ve won? You still did what I wanted. You’ll have to go back to your office and reset that sign of yours. How many days has it been since you held a weapon in your hand?” He chucked. “Well...zero, I guess. It feels good, doesn’t it? Like a jolt of electricity to your balls.”

“Have you ever noticed that you never stop talking, but you also never say anything?” Jupiter asserted.

“You can’t shoot me. I’m holding Mendoza’s son. You shoot, I drop him.”

“If I shoot you in the head,” Jupiter replied, “your body will seize up. You’ll fall straight to your back. Luken will go down with you, but your body will break his fall, with your arm cushioning his head and neck.”

“That sounds like it might not work, dude.”

“It’s like you said. He’s just a copy anyway. I can always go back to the one in the other world.”

“That world may be different than you last left it. And you’ll need two jackets, won’t you?” He bared all of his teeth in this creepy clown grin.

“What did you do?”

Still grinning uncomfortably, Keanu lifted his phone. “The wonderful internet of things. Ya know, you can connect anything these days, even if it makes no practical sense.” He pushed a button, set Luken down, and ran through a portal behind him.

The microwave in the kitchen started sparking. “Run!” Jupiter screamed before dashing over to shield the baby.

Serkan tried to protect Ace, but it was too late. The microwave exploded.

Slowly, Serkan started working on opening his eyes. At first, they were sealed shut, but then he got them to flutter. Eventually, with enough practice, he was able to open them all the way, and keep them open. Before him was a wall with tiny little holes in them. No, that wasn’t a wall, but a ceiling. He was on his back. His whole body ached, and he couldn’t move. He struggled to look to his sides, and was able to see just enough to know that he was in a hospital room. A television attached the wall was barely hanging onto its brace. The walls were dirty and oily, and the lights were barely on. So, not a very good hospital.

A silver fox walked into the room wearing scrubs. “Mister Demir, do you know where you are?”

“A hospital, I don’t know which one.”

“You were in an explosion. You’re at the Kansas University Medical Center.”

“How long has it been?”

“Mister Demir, you have to understand that you suffered terrible injuries from the explosion. It caused irreparable damage to your body.”

He stopped the nurse from continuing his speech, “I need to know the time first.”

“It’s been nineteen days.” He looked at his watch. “Almost exactly since they found you. You were placed in a medically induced coma so that your brain could recover, as best as possible.”

“As best as possible,” Serkan repeated. “So not really.”

“The doctors did all they could,” he answered. “But we’re in a new world, and resources are scarce.”

“What’s wrong with me? Be honest. I couldn’t care less about bedside manner. I need to know what I can do next.”

“You were paralyzed from the waist down. You will not likely ever walk again.”

His brain injuries must have been extensive, because he was having trouble with rational and logical thought. There were pressing questions. “I was with people. My friends. One was a baby.”

“We only found you. I’m sorry. There was no evidence anyone else was in the apartment.”

“Am I still in the other Kansas City?”

“The other Kansas City?” the nurse questioned. “We found out about that while you were asleep. How do you know about it?”

Serkan shifted his body as much as he could to get comfortable, but of course, his legs were stuck. He winced in pain. “I’m friends with a scientist,” he explained, referring to Duke Andrews, sort of. “He figured it out sooner than anyone else.” Obviously telling this guy he was a time traveler could put his life in danger. If people were trying to figure out how to escape this dimension, Serkan could be of use to them.

“Does he know how we can get back to Earth?” See?

“He told me not long before the explosion. I know nothing. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do now.”

“There are a few options. I don’t know if we’ll be able to accomplish them here, though. We’re completely cut off from the world, living in a bottle. There’s only so much we can do to help.”

“I have no money.”

He laughed, but it wasn’t funny-haha, more like funny-oh God. “Your money is literally no good here. There is no use for it. We’re gonna have to figure something else out, but for now, all available resources will be allocated to anyone who needs it. The leaders of this hospital have decided that, and the tracer gang has been called in to provided added security.” He paused to pull up a chair. “We have access to a phenomenal new procedure that could make your legs good as new. You have to know that it does not come without sacrifice, is not—strictly speaking—legal, and is still extremely experimental.”

“What would it entail?”

“Amputating your legs and giving you new ones. We probably wouldn’t even suggest it if we weren’t now in another dimension.”

It had been tough to wake up, and to think clearly, but things were really coming into focus. He was a runner, and needed his legs. They were the most important part of him besides his soul. He had to do everything he could to get better, even if it was dangerous. “Do it.”

They performed the procedure that night, apparently having already been in the process of 3D printing his new legs. A couple days into his second wave of recovery, Ace walked into the room, wearing the special leather jacket. Not bothering to say anything other than “finally,” he scooped Serkan up in his arms, and transported him to a different version of the same room. It was much cleaner and nicer, as if someone had actually had time to maintain it. The sun was shining. It was April of 2025.

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