Microstory 764: Hockey Stick

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Few people could be considered as fierce an athletic competitor as Veraise Akima. Though born in Captain Mason, Usonia, her family decided to take up a nomadic lifestyle, and start moving all over the world. They never spent more than six months in any one place, and often did not even bother renting a permanent house. They wanted to experience everything that the universe had to offer, so trotting the globe was as close as they were going to get. As a result of moving around so much, Akima found herself in a number of completely different environments, but her one constant was hockey. From the street to the field, ice rink to roller rink, and even underwater, Akima did it all. Seeing her love of the sport, her parents moved to a small island in the Japanese archipelago where it was rumored an old woman was experimenting with graphene tools. She agreed to design a custom stick for Veraise that would be the strongest of its kind in the whole world. Once she had it, she never used anything else. No matter which type she was playing, or where she was playing it, she used the same stick, swapping out only the blades, when necessary. Even after growing old enough to move out on her own, Veraise stuck by her family, having long fallen in love with the idea of not being tied down to any one place for too long. In her mid-twenties, they found themselves living in inland Somalia. There they discovered the Great Salt Flats of Somalia, which she eventually decided was her favorite place ever, especially since it gave her an idea that would change the course of history. She founded a new type of hockey, one that could be played on salt flats. But not all salt flats are created equal. Some are completely dry, and playing on those would prove to be but marginally different than playing in a semi-arid desert. No. Though similar flats existed, no flat was quite like the Great Flats of Somalia. It lies just on top of brine water, which seeps to the surface, resulting in a thin layer of water. It is highly reflective, giving distant observers the impression that they are watching someone walk on water. It was on the edge of the flats that Akima tried out her new sport, gathering her neighbors to play with her, and work out some of the nuances. For the most part, it’s played like other versions of hockey, but requires special equipment to allow for speed in the shallow water. From this day on, Veraise Akima never played any other type of hockey, nor any other sport, for that matter, nor did she live anywhere outside of Somalia. She gathered crowds of spectators from all over the world, which snowballed its popularity, and encouraged the creation of a league. She served as its first commissioner, establishing most of the organization’s rules that remain today. She was buried somewhere in secret somewhere under the Somalian flats with her stick, while her various blades can be viewed by the public in the International Salt Hockey Association museum.

Microstory 763: Time Travel

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People often come with me with questions about how time travel works. They watch a movie about it, and are confused on the timeline. Sometimes I can help them, because I’m fairly well-versed in the subject of time travel in fiction, but sometimes it’s done so horribly, or confusingly, that even I can’t follow it. A lot of writers seem to keep making the same mistakes, and I would like to clear some of them up. First, you can’t have an event in one moment of time have some effect on an event in another moment without impacting the time in between. If today you went back to when you were in first grade, and stopped yourself from cheating on a test, you would not suddenly feel the effects of that once you returned to you own time. A whole bunch of other things happened in between. While we’re on this subject, you can’t return to your own time anyway, or rather if you did, you would find yourself in an alternate timeline. You would have to deal with the version of yourself who is living there. A single timeline simply does not explain the point of divergence, for if you succeed in stopping yourself from cheating, Future!You would have no reason to go back and change it, which would leave it unchanged, which would give you a reason to go back and change it, and so on, ad infinitum. Alternate timelines are the only logical consequence of any time traveling event. Writers also try to bring in bogus tropes that make no sense. They have timewaves, which somehow affect the timeline at a different rate than the flow of time itself. This allows people to see the changes that are being made all around them, and maintain their memory of how things were before. But this is impossible. Like I’ve said about the alternate timeline, as soon as you go back to first grade, everything changes, from that moment of egress, onwards. One may be able to jump from one moment in time to another, but that does not stop time from moving forward at a constant. Now, this constant gets a little more complicated when you factor in relativity, but it is still always moving forwards. Time doesn’t change, only an observer’s perspective of it. I could go on about the issues I see, but no one has time for that. There’s a lot we don’t know about how time works, but by as much as I write about it, and the manipulation of it, there is one undeniable truth that must not be ignored. Time travel can happen by one of two ways: it either can not, or should not.

Microstory 762: Snowman

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In the late nineteenth century, a group of people with a lot of money got together and started questioning the future of planet Earth. They did not believe in the bible, or any other religious theory on the end of the world, but they could not deny that it was a possibility. Something happened to the dinosaurs, and the surface of the planet was not always as hospitable as it would become. New technologies pose new threats, and humans are fickle and dangerous beings. They didn’t know for sure what might happen to humanity, if anything at all, but they figured the only safe bet was to find a way protect the continuity of the species...just in case. They formed an institute, and started recruiting. They developed plans, and built facilities. They started watching over people. At first their subjects were random, but as science progressed, they were able to choose the right subjects with the right genetic makeup. They weren’t looking for perfection, nor any superficial trait shared by all. What they were looking for was diversity. What they realized was that the healthiest people in the world came from genetic diversity, which was why inbred offspring often come with defects. It was absolutely vital that their subjects be compatible with each other in a way that no algorithm could, or should, predict, because that was how evolution operated in an uncontrolled environment. Afterall, they weren’t trying to save this small sample, but the future of the human race. As the years went by, they continued their work, in complete secret. They monitored people they now deemed inheritors at a one to one ratio. They built underground bunkers capable of surviving any number of extinction-level disaster scenarios. These bunkers were placed in strategic locations, far from each other, for if one, or even almost all of them failed, perhaps one might survive.

They calculated the optimal population, turned over older inheritors to new generations, and kept the system alive for decades. Over a hundred years from their beginnings, nearly all bunkers were complete. They still had an interstellar vessel planned, but technological limitations prevented them from constructing it yet. Should civilization have ended before such time, they would just have to do without it. While they were waiting, a woman noticed a problem that others had seen without voicing their concerns. Inheritors were being protected half their lives by people called sentinels. These brave men and women were fully aware of the contingency program, and knew that there would be no room for them in the bunkers, should they be activated. But this woman, named Nevra Adkins decided that she was unhappy with this scenario. Though she was no sentinel herself, and would be lucky enough to be placed in one of the bunkers in a leadership position to help the inheritors acclimate to their new lives, she sympathized with them. She did not feel it right for the institute to demand loyalty from their sentinels, knowing that their jobs would end only in death. She broke away from the organization, and formed Project Snowman. With no intention of designing a repopulation strategy, she wanted to create a special bunker, just for the sentinels, and perhaps their families, as sufficient compensation for their dedication. She carved out some land in Antarctica, and broke ground within months. Unfortunately, she spent all of her money on this, and was unable to raise significant funds beyond it, so she would not be able to actually build the damn thing. And so her former institute started allocating money to help her build Snowman. A couple of years later, the coordination efforts were becoming needlessly complex, and Adkins was reabsorbed into the original organization. She had successfully convinced them that this was positively necessary to not only maintain good relationships with their sentinels, but to keep their souls clean. They were there to save humankind, should they be needed. They recognized that they would not be able to save everyone, should they be able to save anyone, but if they didn’t even try to save the true heroes in their ranks, then perhaps humanity did not deserve to be saved at all.

Microstory 761: Trey

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Trey Austin was a dancer. More importantly, he was a performer. He never felt quite as comfortable as he was when he was up on stage. He was having a rough go of it, though. Though he was brilliant with his craft, he had had no formal training. His family did not have enough money to send him to the schools that would help jumpstart his career. He tried performing in the park for passersby, but there was nowhere in his mid-level Kentucky city like Central Park. People were around, but no one was watching. He considered just buying a bus ticket up to New York City, but without a guarantee of success, he didn’t feel it was worth it. Besides, he was too anxious and insecure to give that a shot, and he certainly had no naïve delusions that he would just one day suddenly become famous. Still, he kept dancing in the park—not to hip-hop, like one might expect, but interpretive, and contemporary. He preferred slow and rising music that felt like it was telling a story. One day, a woman appeared in the park, and started admiring his number. He noticed her right away, but wanted to continue with his piece, so he would look self-assured, and professional. Once he was finished, she walked towards him, and clapped. Then she handed him a business card that felt much heavier than it should have. She told him she would like to hire him for a special tour coming soon, but that it was far away, and he might not see his family for weeks. She left, and he returned home to discuss it with his parents. Before he arrived, though, he had already decided. This was his chance, he had to go. He at least had to call her back and ask for more information. As soon as he dialed her number, the business card began to glow. The light started crawling up his arm, and then all over his body, and when once again he could see, he found himself in an empty auditorium. She was a time traveler, who was planning performances all throughout time, but only for people like her. Only they would be able to see him dance. He was amazed by what he was learning. It took some getting used to, but he eventually found his footing. He never knew dancing could be even more exhilarating and magical than it already was. The theatre was packed with people, but not everyone was there to see him. Only those wearing special glasses were able to witness his movements, for he was performing from another dimension. The woman made it look like he was floating in the air, high above the stage, where a band was playing that was entirely unaware that he existed. Trey swayed and spun to the music, like he had in the park, but this time, just because the floor was one direction, it didn’t mean he had to be pointed towards it. Gravity could be altered towards any direction, so he had to choreograph a special routine to account for the invisible sphere. He became a hit, and more spacetime locations were added than his superior had originally planned. He was the first in a special class of people with time powers known as The Zephdancers.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: August 17, 2163

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Leona and Serif jumped out of bed and opened the door. Lights were blinking, along with the alarms, but in a recognizable pattern. Paige’s voice was echoing through the passageways, “please proceed to the atterberry pods. Please proceed to the atterberry pods.”

“Where are those again?” Serif asked.

“Follow the lights,” Leona said. She could remember exactly how to get to the pods, but lights on the walls were directing their path, just the same.

They climbed down the steps and hopped over to the wall of pods. Brooke and Dar’cy were in two of them, the third being empty. “Can both we fit in one?” Serif asked, her panic intensifying.

“There’s another empty one on the other other side,” Leona explained. “You get in this one.” She helped her love step into the alcove, and programmed it to release her at the same time as the others. She then went over to the other side of the ship where three more pods were waiting. Missy was in one, Paige in another, and Nerakali Preston was in the third. “Son of a bitch,” she exclaimed. There were only six pods total, and they were all taken, one by an evil psychopath. She closed her eyes for two seconds, and took a deep breath. The air was thin, though, which was a clue. “Computer, report!”

“Speed, nominal. Course correction, functioning. Hull integrity, eighty-three percent. Automated repair, damaged. Life support, near failure. Please enter atterberry pod,” the artificial intelligence responded in Paige’s voice.

“There are no more pods!”

The computer took a beat. “Please enter atterberry pod.”

“Computer, personality at a hundred percent!”

“Morning,” the computer now spoke with a far more casual tone. “How ya feelin’?”

“What happened?”

“You don’t remember?”

“I wasn’t in the timeline!”

“Really?”

“I’m a time traveler!”

“Oh, gotcha.”

“So, can you tell me what happened to the ship?”

“A micrometeoroid struck the forward viewport in the cockpit.”

“When was this?”

“Two-hundred and sixteen days ago.”

“Why wasn’t it patched up? That’s an easy fix!”

“Repair contingencies were damaged.”

“Well—” Christ, that’s annoying. “Computer, silence alarms!”

The alarms shut off. “Better?”

“What about repair redundancies, don’t we have those?”

“I don’t have that information.”

She tried to take another deep breath, but it was not easy. “Find me a maneuver suit,” she ordered.

“Follow the lights,” the computer replied, lighting up the walls once again to illustrate her path.

         Leona opened the equipment panel and removed a special kind of vacuum suit that provided her more maneuverability, so that she could repair the damage herself. She then commanded the computer to open the hatch to the cockpit. It closed immediately behind her, to protect the rest of the ship. Had the micrometeor struck the bulkhead itself, the material would have been able to heal itself. The polycarbonate window, however, was a different story. Viewports were few and far between, to lower the chances of something like this happening, but it was obviously not impossible. A robot should have been dispatched to correct the issue, resulting in maybe a day of the crew being in stasis, but that apparently failed too.

About an hour later, though, Leona had the problem corrected, with a little good old-fashioned human tenacity. She ran a complete diagnostic of the ship’s systems, ordered an environmental radiation scrub, replaced the air recyclers, and disengaged the atterberry pods. She wanted to be waiting for Serif, to comfort her immediately, since temporal bubbles could be disorienting, but she needed to do something else. As soon as Nerakali stepped out of her pod, Leona sucker punched her in the jaw, and bound her wrists with a zip cuff.

“I told you she’d be pissed,” Nerakali said, wiping the blood off her chin.

“You were meant to stay in your room,” Paige said.

“It’s not my fault the ship went haywire,” Nerakali complained.

“I know,” Paige said.

“What the hell is she doing here?” Leona demanded to know.

The other three crewmembers came around the corner.

“She’s our...” Paige began, at a loss for words.

“She’s like a psychologist,” Brooke jumped in. “This will only be eight days for you, but for us, it’s more like seven and a half years. We need something to keep us entertained. Nerakali creates virtual worlds in our minds for us.”

“Humans have that technology already,” Leona argued. “You didn’t need her!”

“The powers that be did not allow VR. We don’t know why, but they wanted her with us.”

Leona got all up in Nerakali’s face. “I suppose you know what happens to you in the past.”

“Of course I do. I also know that my killer was wearing the Hundemarke. I can’t stop it. But...I can put it off, and I can do some good before it happens.”

“Can you?” Leona asked rhetorically.

“Right now,” Nerakali started, “no one knows when in my personal timeline I go back to to 2107, and get myself killed. It could be in a century, or in a minute. If I try to harm you, fate will intervene, and send me right to that moment. You are perfectly safe around me.”

“I’m not worried about you hurting us,” Leona said, almost sinisterly. “I’m worried about creating paradox when you piss me off so much, I kill you before fate gets its chance.”

Nerakali tried to calm herself down with a deep breath. “It’s hard to breathe.”

“I had to replace the cardio brooms,” Leona informed her, rather professionally. “It’ll take some time to get LS back to full operation.”

“Thank you for fixing the ship,” Missy said graciously. “Had I realized how bad it was, I never would have entered my pod. I should have known.”

“It’s okay. “It’s fixed now, and we didn’t miss a beat. We’re still right on time.”

“I should have seen it coming anyway,” Brooke said in sadness. “What we didn’t realize is that Durus, as it moves away from Earth, is leaving behind tons of debris. We’ve had to adjust heading to avoid them, but one still got through.”

“I failed as well,” Dar’cy said. “I shouldn’t be here. I need to be able to help when we get to the planet, but I’m wasting resources by being on the vessel during its journey. You should have had your own stasis pod,” she apologized to Leona.

Leona approached her. “I would have had one, if that asshole weren’t here. But if that asshole has to be here, then I need a badass like you to protect everyone from her. No way am I letting you thread an object to the future.”

Dar’cy looked to Paige for guidance.

“You heard the lady,” Paige said in her captain voice. “This is my crew. It may not be the best, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. The Warren is lucky to have every single one of you—even Nerakali, in her own way—and even Leona and Serif, despite how little time they can spend with us. I want you all to understand that violence and animosity will not be tolerated here. While you are on the roster, you are under my care, and anyone who threatens that, threatens the mission. The Savior, as exceedingly unimportant as the role is becoming, is one of Earth’s greatest assets. We were given the honor, and the responsibility, to bring her home safely. Anyone who has a problem with that, can spend the rest of the journey in a pod.”

Of course, no one wanted that, they all wanted to contribute. Still, Leona intended to keep as much distance between her and her girlfriend, and a very dangerous Nerakali, while still being able to maintain vigilance over the others.

After a nap, Leona let Serif stay asleep, while she went down to grab a meal bar. Each pack—known as a brick—comes with three bars; one each for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They’re stuffed with every nutrient a human needs to function throughout the day, according to standard macro ratio. Since it’s composed of the chemicals themselves, it’s almost completely tasteless. Boxes come with little flavor strips to put on the tongue before eating, which can make the bar taste like literally anything. Without these strips, astronauts would suffer from space madness after having to eat bland nothingness day in, day out.

Missy must have seen her go into the mess hall, because she followed soon thereafter, somewhat ardently. “I need your help.”

“With what? Ship going okay?”

“It’s fine right now, but as you saw first hand, that’s not always the case. I’m worried this mission comes with danger we cannot predict. Something else you might have noticed is that we lack redundant systems. We have one bot to repair hull damage, and when that failed, we were SOL. We have one extra pod should something go wrong, as long as you or Serif don’t need one. And there’s only one engineer. If I’m incapacitated, and something else goes wrong, there will be no one there to help. I need you to be my backup.”

Leona wiped her mouth. “You’ve just brought up the fact that I can’t help. Honestly, we got lucky that the ship sealed off the damaged section, and kept going without a crew. One false move, and it’s flying in the wrong direction. If I’m your backup...what if that hypothetical crisis happens literally tomorrow? Do you think the ship will survive an extended period of time until I can return?”

“Maybe not,” Missy said. “But you’re our only hope. You were a scientist in another timeline, and you’re an artist in this one, so you have a rare gift of synthesis, and creativity. I know the odds of you being around at the right time are low, but they’re better than zero. Brooke dies, who’s gonna pilot the ship? Paige dies, who can lead us? You can do anything and everything. Even if it’s just one day, that’s better than no day.”

Leona finished her bar and scooted closer to Missy. “It sounds like you need some cross-training. What you’re looking for is an easy solution, and that doesn’t exist here. I am a terrible backup plan. If Brooke...if she can’t pilot, then you have to learn how to do it. If your special pods lose power, Dar’cy needs to be able to fix them. And if Nerakali goes crazy, and tries to kill everybody, Paige needs to slit her throat. There’s a reason Serif and I weren’t given jobs. Whatever they are, we can’t do them. You have to pretend like we don’t exist, because most of the time...we don’t.”

Missy nodded her head. She already knew all this, but didn’t know what they could do about it.

Leona got an idea. “Start a school. You want something to do everyday, because it’s bored without Nerakali’s virtual realities—which I didn’t know she could make—then spend that time educating each other.” She stood up and threw her bar wrapper into the material reclamator. Before she left, she turned back once more, like a wolf. “You’re women. Get it done.”

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Void: Lost in Space (Part III)

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They soon met this Hokusai Gimura, and understood why Ludvig thought they must have already known her. Everyone living on this world had been born and raised here, the most recent in a line going back seven generations. This planet was called Durus, and its first inhabitants arrived in the late 20th century, according to its oral history, but the majority of them arrived in 2016, when an entire town was sucked into some kind of portal. They found themselves on something called a rogue planet, which meant it was flying through interstellar space, having been voted off the island of its original solar system. There is no atmosphere, no sun, no water, no light. Everything it has it borrows from Earth, and possibly other worlds. Without these portal leaks, everything here would be dead.

No Earthan human had made their way here since 2016 when Hokusai came just days ago, looking for her daughter, who was in the town when it fell into the portal. Naturally, Ludvig assumed all Earthans knew each other, because he was kind of stupid, and maybe racist? Like most men, Ludvig was also always suspicious of women. Apparently, women have been involved with a number of disastrous events on Durus over the last century and a half, leading to a gradual shift backwards in gender equity. As one of Saga and Camden’s new friends here, Opal put it, “men were always there as well, and in fact, if you look closer, you’ll learn that a man was every time truly responsible for what hell was set upon them anyway. So if anyone’s to blame, it’s them.”

Hokusai was their savior, though, and this no one could deny. Durus was on a collision course with Earth for decades, but she stopped that from happening. This was what Saga and Camden witnessed in the sky, and it was also what magically brought them here. They weren’t the only ones, though. In what’s being called The Deathspring—a play on words with the original arrival, which was called The Deathfall—hundreds of other Earthans were pulled to it. Hopefully this one would come with far less danger. The first generations suffered great peril from terrible beasts, powerful and evil choosers, and the looming threat of Earthan annihilation. With the monsters gone, and the bad choosers turned over to time, maybe everyone could build a safe life here. They not only retained their connection to Earth, but formed a stronger one when they passed over it. While the sun had always provided them with warmth, it now once again featured cyclical daylight. It rained everywhere and anywhere, instead of just in one single location. The soil was rich with nutrients, and plants were back.

As far as Saga and Camden’s personal lives went, they never bothered trying to return to their home on Earth. These were the cards that fate had dealt them, and they were going to embrace that. “Here is as good a place as any,” Camden said of it. And so Durus was where they spent the next year, mostly free from excitement, but that was soon to change.

The Durune were not entirely happy with the new arrivals. They had built this independent civilization, and considered themselves to be an entirely separate peoples, perhaps even species. Of course, the Earthans didn’t want to be there either, but there didn’t seem to be any way back. Each Earthan landed in a different spot around the world, but they were eventually all rounded up and placed in a refugee camp called Pallid. They were provided with tarps, and some wood, but they had to build the shelters themselves. The only regular supplies of resources that came in were water and food, and only that by private volunteers. The new-forming Durune government did not have time to provide for the refugees when they were still trying to rebuild their own homes. One of the first things they did, however, was make sure it was illegal to house an Earthan refugee in a Durune home. It was not, somewhat fortunately, against the law for a Durune to be, or even live, in Pallid. This was nice for Hokusai, who still had familial descendants, and friends, here.

One day, a middle-aged woman approached Saga and Camden’s tent. “You are the mages,” she asked.

“We are not,” Saga tried to explain. Mages were really just choosers—people with natural time powers—who were born to an ignorant world. They once protected these lands, but died off with the monsters.

“Then you are mage remnants, at least,” the woman tried again. Some of their descendants remained today, but their powers were usually rather weak, and no more thrilling than a minor parlor trick.

“Where we come from, we do not use these terms,” Camden said to her. “Nor are the two of us like the mages you read about in your history books. We have little control over our powers. We are controlled by others. But we have since been abandoned.”

The woman shook her head. “I do not need your powers. What I need is someone who understands how they work.”

“What do you need from us exactly?” Saga pressed.

She was nervous, afraid to say too much.

“We can’t help you if you’re not honest with us.”

“It’s my daughter,” she said. “There’s something wrong with her. I think a mage remnant is hurting her somehow. Or...haunting her. Please, can you help?”

“We’ll do what we can,” Saga said, still not really knowing what they were to expect. “You will be in more trouble than us if you take us over the boundary, though.”

“I have no choice,” the woman said. “My daughter needs you.”

They quietly weaved between the tents of Pallid, careful to wake no one. One might think all Earthans would support each other, but the Durune guards that kept watch often traded favors for information. A few extra rations here, a clean blanket there, and the whole camp is the Eye of Sauron.

“You couldn’t bring her to us?” Camden asked.

“She cannot leave the house,” the mother explained.

Once they were at the boundary, she stopped and looked around. “The guards will be changing shifts in a few minutes. That is our best time to make our move.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Camden said suggestively.

“Camden,” Saga scolded.

“Do you have a better idea?” he asked.

“What if they have glitchhounds?” These were the only monsters that still existed today. They could sniff out temporal disturbances, like dogs with powers.

“If they did, then they would probably be at this woman’s house already.” That was a good point.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Saga worried.

“I believe in you.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Give it a try.”

“Give it a try?” Saga echoed. “And if we end up in the vacuum of space? Again?”

He smirked. “Then I’ll rescue us. Again.”

“I don’t know what you two are discussing,” the mother said, “but if you can get to my daughter safely, then I’m in.”

Saga stepped between them, and took each of them by the hand. “Don’t hold your breath,” she warned. “I mean that literally. It could cause an aneurysm.”

She stepped forward, over the boundary line, but not to the other side. She let her time power pull from the thoughts of the woman standing next to her, using them to try to transport all three of them to the house, without traveling through the space in between. It did not work. They ended up in a house all right, but not the one they were looking for. This was of far older design, and cleaner, like it wasn’t built out of reclaimed wood. Saga had seen the houses people lived in these days, and this was not it.

Three people were standing in front of them, not too surprised to see three others suddenly appear. One of them was a younger man, and was quite protective of the other two. “They are my responsibility,” he said with authority. “If you want to question them, you’ll have to go through me. I am prepared my denounce my oath if it means stopping you from harming them.”

“We don’t plan on harming anyone,” Camden assured him.

“We must have gotten lost,” Saga said. What year is this?”

He squinted at them. “New Age seventy-four,” he answered.

“2090 in Earthan years,” the mother translated for them.

“You’re from Earth?” the homeowner asked. She was intrigued. “What’s it like these days?”

“What do you want?” the protector questioned.

“Morick, calm down,” the man who appeared to be the homeowner’s husband said. “They’ve told us they won’t hurt us.”

“And you believe that, Jörm? Sadie, I suppose you do too.”

“We are from 146 NA,” Saga told them in her calmest voice.

“I’ve never heard of anyone traveling through time that far,” Morick said. “Not since our people lived on Earth.”

“Things have changed,” Camden said. He addressed Saga only, “you need to try again. If this is the past, we should not stay.”

“Isn’t going to the past kinda your thing?” Saga asked with a smile.

“Not anymore. Let’s go. Open that door.”

Just then, a small object flew through the window. “Memory grenade!” Morick yelled.

On instinct, and recalling his training in the agency, Camden threw his whole body on the grenade, and let it go off. Morick pointed both hands at the window it had come through, and sealed it up with drywall, like the window had never been there. He then did the same to the other windows. “We need to go!” He tried to pull Jörm and Sadie towards them.

“I can take you so far from here, they’ll never find you, but you have to help me with his body,” Saga pleaded.

“He’s not dead,” Morick said.

“Well, he’s unconscious, so help me get him up!”

Jörm and Morick lifted Camden off the floor while Saga opened the door to a portal. They could see a different house on the other side. A woman was curled up in the corner. “Mom?”

Saga ushered everyone through the portal. She stepped through herself just as the walls were coming apart. She closed the door, and knelt down to feel for Camden’s pulse. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He protected us from the memory grenade,” Morick explained. “He’ll wake up later, but he won’t have any memory of who he is, or what’s going on.”

“You must be in big trouble for someone to throw one of those things at you.”

“It only lasts a few hours,” Morick clarified. “It just makes it easier to transport people for questioning.”

“Mom, who are these people?” the woman in the corner asked. Suddenly, a bed sprung up under her body. After a few seconds, it disassembled itself, and disappeared.

“They’re from Earth. They can help us stop this.” She tried to approach her daughter to comfort her, but the bed reassembled itself again, and got in the way.

Morick chortled once. “She’s a builder.”

“A what?”

“Special class of mage,” Morick went on. “They’re the ones who construct all the buildings in our towns. I’ve never seen anyone manifest their powers so quickly after the mage games, though.”

“She wasn’t part of the mage games,” Saga reminded him. “This is the future.” She tore off Camden’s shirt to inspect what she hoped was a superficial wound on Camden’s chest from the grenade itself. “There are no more mages.”

Morick took something out of his breast pocket and climbed on the bed to the frightened woman, who shrunk even deeper into the corner. “It’s fine,” he said. “You can’t hurt me, and I won’t hurt you.” He showed her the little pouch he was holding. “This will suppress your powers. Just temporarily, so we can get a handle on them.”

Still afraid, she tentatively took the pouch.

“What’s your name?” he asked of her.

“Andromeda.”

Despite wanting to focus on Camden’s health, Saga couldn’t help but notice what a beautiful name that was...for a beautiful woman. Andromeda.

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Microstory 760: Dime

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In 1825, a new Director of the United States mint was appointed to her new position. She was born in a small town in Kansas called Twin Hillsides, which one year prior became the site of a new minting facility; designed to be the largest ever, serving as the primary provider in the country. To commemorate their new facility, Director Isika Stawski decided to generate a new design for the ten cent coin. She opened submissions to everyone in the office, whether they were in the design department, or otherwise. The entire agency voted on the best submissions, ultimately settling on a beautiful depiction of the Ruins of Cargaley that remain standing in Northern Alabama. Due to a clerical, however, precisely ten coins were made of a completely different design before anyone realized what was happening. They are referred to as the Camel Dimes. Unlike what one might expect, no camels are printed on the coin. Instead, it portrays two hillsides, but as one worker pointed out, they better resemble humps on a camel, which is exactly why it was not chosen. Despite pressure from her superiors in government, Stawski decided that there was no reason to not place the ten mistakes in circulation. They were released into the wild with all the rest, and disappeared into obscurity for a long time. People continued to use them, usually without even looking at the one in their possession long enough to notice that there was something different about it. They didn’t start gaining notoriety until around 1921 when a history buff came into possession of one, and realized what it was. They have been increasing in value ever since, as you might imagine, and are now each worth up to 2.8 million dollars, depending on condition. The largest collection of these belongs to Magnate magnate, Manus Burke, who owns four of them at the moment, which total roughly ten million bucks. That’s why I’ve gathered you all here today; the best of the best. We’re gonna steal ‘em. Who’s in?

Microstory 759: Butts

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You’ll be pleased to learn that recreational drugs are not nearly as much of a problem on other worlds as they are here. They do exist, yes, but always under vastly different conditions. Early humans would experiment with what is healthy to consume, and what is not. They test out foods, drink water from new sources, and try out various herbs to see if they hold any medicinal value. Like on Earth, many of these substances end up altering the cognitive abilities of those who tried them. On some worlds, they assimilate these experiences in their spiritual superstitions, believing them to provide them with visions of the future, or some other truths. As civilization forms, however, these outrageous beliefs are always discarded in favor of reality, even while religious devotion persists. As science progresses, professionals begin to study these substances, codify them, and scientifically declare them to be unfit for normal consumption, if that becomes the case. The ones that do end up having some use in the field of medicine are studied further, and modified to be used safely. They are never inhaled as smoke, for the particulates would damage people’s insides, thus unbalancing any benefit they may come with. Side effects, though present in all medicinal drugs, are lessened to the extent possible, with usually even stronger regulations than we have in most countries here. Likewise, alcohol is determined to have little health value, and any positive impact it has on the human body is outweighed by its negative effects, and therefore supplemented by something more responsible. It is simply not worth it. Because of these cultural differences, the drug scene is a deep underworld. It’s harder to find, harder to avoid its consequences, and harder to get out. Few studies have been conducted on the long-term effects of recreational drugs, so recovering addicts find little help by others, even if they decide they want to get better. So that’s one downside. There is less variety on these worlds as well. Alcohol can be made by one fermentant, or another, but people generally don’t come up with interesting variations, or combinations. If you want to get drunk, you take what’s available, and you’re usually unconcerned with taste, or the nuance of ingenuity. On the other hand, this makes some things a bit safer. Nobody would think to add fiberglass to the ingredients for smokable substances, or most of the hundreds of needlessly toxic chemicals found in Earthan cigarettes. The people who make them don’t have those resources, nor the support of society. So, what’s the point of this? Why do I bring this up without tying it into discernible narrative? I’m just letting you know that your dumb way of doing things isn’t the right way...it’s just the one you came up with. I guess that makes me the wild card in this story.