Void: The Next Generation (Part XII)

« < » > Entire Story

At the end of the day, Leona and Serif disappeared from the timeline, and would return in one year’s time. Until then, the rest of her friends were going to spend every one of their waking minutes trying to convince Saga to return to Earth with them. Apparently they had been on a mission for the last several years, by orders of the powers that be, to retrieve Étude, who was purportedly the new and last Savior. A Savior was a special kind of salmon who teleported around the planet, helping people, generally by literally saving their lives. Saga had been through too much in her life to question the veracity of their claims, or the fact that Étude was physically incapable of being sent back to the homeworld through more instantaneous means. Still, when she left Earth all those years ago, it was doing okay on its own. A lot of the dangers that plagued earlier generations were no longer an issue. All forms of transportation were completely automated, and safer. Drones and surveillance were so universally ubiquitous, murder was laughable, at best. There were just too many ways to get caught that it was rarely worth it. Terrorists still existed, of course, but with all the safeguards, it was not usually logical to target human lives. Instead, they usually just destroyed infrastructure to make their points, which continued to go unheard.

The point was that surely this generation of Earthans didn’t need a Savior if the next generation wouldn’t. If Étude was destined to be the last anyway, then why couldn’t they just skip it? Camden’s sister, Xearea did a lot of good while she was in the position, but she will have been dead for years by the time Étude came of age anyway, so it wasn’t like there always had to be one.

“Unfortunately,” Paige began, “that doesn’t matter.” She was the captain of the small ship that brought them all here, and had seemingly been hardened from decades of immortality, and years of leadership.

They were sitting at Camden’s bedside, which was where Saga spent a great deal of her time. Now that the secret was out, and Étude was no longer safe from the world, she might as well honor her commitment to her partner. “Why?”

“The powers that be want your daughter, and they’ll have her,” she explained. “We encountered a trailing ship on our way here. Which means there could be a third ship, full of people who are not so nice. An entire fleet could be on their way to make sure you do what you’re told.”

“Plus,” Dar’cy said, “there’s no way to contact the powers, even if we thought we would be in a position to negotiate.”

“There’s a way,” Camden eked out.

“Cammy! You’re awake!” Saga carefully handed her daughter, who was still her usual patient and quiet self, to the ship’s pilot, Brooke’s arms. She placed her hands on Camden’s shoulders, and massaged them with her thumbs. “You’re finally awake.”

“How long has it been?”

“Two and a half years,” Saga answered him. “Did it feel like yesterday?”

He laughed and struggled to sit up a little. “Absolutely not. It was slower. Feels like centuries.”

Paige nodded. “Your brain would have been operating closer to computational speeds. Our programming prevents that from being an issue, but you’re new to transhumanism.”

“It’s like I could see the code behind the data I downloaded into my brain,” Camden described. “They were layers of blankets piled on top of me that I couldn’t get off.”

“Missy took those away two months ago,” Brooke explained, “so we could find Saga.”

“I remember that.” He nodded. “I still couldn’t wake up. I could hear you all, though. I’ve been here this whole time.”

“And you know how to contact the powers that be?” Paige pressed.

“We can worry about that later,” Saga said. “You should speak with a doctor first.”

He sat up some more. “I’m fine. Have you ever woken up after sleeping in all day, but it doesn’t feel like a waste of time, and it’s like you were making up for all the stress of the week? I feel great.”

“Your muscles have still atrophied,” Saga warned, calling upon her years of experience as a nurse.

“That’s true, but my brain is on point. Yes, I know how to reach the powers that be. Have you ever heard of The Emissary?”

“Yeah, he’s a bridge from the powers to the choosers,” Saga remembered.

“If you want to get your daughter excused from her duties, he’s the guy you talk to.”

“She’s your daughter too,” Saga realized. She took Étude back from Brooke, and handed her over to Camden. “I’m gonna need a lot of help from you...now that Andromeda’s gone.”

“Hi,” he said in his best impression of a bubbly voice. “I’m Camden.”

Étude just looked at him and smiled.

“She’s still not talking, huh?” he asked, having heard Saga discuss it with the others sometime in the last couple months.

Saga shook her head solemnly.

“And she’s not deaf?”

Saga shook her head again, and almost thought maybe Étude was shaking her own in agreement. “She’s physiologically totally fine,” Saga said. “She just...doesn’t talk.”

Étude acted like she knew her parents were talking about her, and even understood what they were saying, but was unmoved by it. She always had this, almost unsettling, old soul demeanor, like the reincarnation of someone who had lived many lives.

They sat in respectful silence for a while, then Saga looked around. “Obviously you all want to continue with this conversation about the Emissary. I know you’re all dying to get back home. What I want you to understand is that I am home. Everything here reminds me of her, because she had a hand in building everything, if not the only hand. I don’t wanna lose that. And I want Étude to see what her mother did, what she created. If I let you take her away, she’ll never see this world. She needs to see all of it, to grow up here, to live in a house that Andromeda made for her. She didn’t think I knew, but she constructed a place just for us in secret, deep in the high thickets. It was meant to be our home. I’ve not been able to go there yet, but Étude deserves to live there. Camden, how do we contact him?”

“We’re gonna need her.” He pointed to Dar’cy, who was one of only two choosing ones in this world.

“I mean...” Dar’cy stammered. “He contacted me specifically about this mission, but that doesn’t mean I know how to get ahold of him.”

“Have you ever meditated?” Camden asked.

Dar’cy burst out laughing, then stopped herself in embarrassment. “Sorry, it’s just, if you met my mother, you would know how funny that question is. Yes. Yes, I meditate every day.”

Camden smiled. “That’s great. It takes years to learn how to communicate with the Emissary, but if you’re as experienced as you sound, it should go pretty quick.”

“That’s all you do?” Dar’cy asked.

“It can’t be that easy,” Paige argued.

“Most choosers who have a way to contact them make it easy, because why would it be difficult? His method is the hardest, because he doesn’t want a bunch of salmon running around asking him to get them off their pattern. Like I said, though, Darcy shouldn’t have a problem.”

“It’s Dar’cy,” Brooke aggressively corrected.

“It’s fine,” Dar’cy said. “Do I seem like the kind of person who gets bothered by that?” She switched gears back to the conversation. “Tell me how the meditation works,” she requested of Camden.

“It’s best done by a large body of water.”

“That is not going to happen.” Dar’cy’s lakeside meditation worked. In only a few days, the Emissary had arrived to ask them what they wanted. He was not being particularly accommodating, or understanding, though.

“You mean the powers that be won’t agree to that, or you won’t talk with them about it?” Saga asked to clarify.

“Both,” the Emissary replied bluntly.

“Why not?”

“I think you misunderstand my purpose. I’m not a diplomat. It’s not by job to nurture relations between powers and choosers. I am here on their behalf. I only do anything on their behalf. I don’t come to them with requests, or news, or help. I just tell choosing ones what the powers that be want them to know, much in the same way The Delegator does with salmon. This is the one thing that everyone has trouble figuring out. Regardless of what power you have—what you can do with time, or how many people you can control—they control everything. And everyone. Your needs are completely irrelevant, as are everyone’s in the universe, at all times.”

“What, they think they’re gods?” Dar’cy questioned.

“Aren’t they?” the Emissary asked rhetorically.

“The Superintendent might have something to say about that,” she noted.

“Do not speak his name.” He was supremely offended by the mention.

“That’s not his name,” Saga assumed.

“If you do everything on behalf of the powers, then why did you come when I called?” Dar’cy asked. “Why is it even possible to contact you?”

“I came at their command.” He smirked. “You didn’t summon me. I got your message, and they told me to respond, but only to remind you that this is not a voluntary mission. You know what you need to do, and you’re going to do it. I’m not sure if I said this before, but you’ve been told to extract The Last Savior. Saga’s participation is completely optional. If you have to take that child from her, then do it. Oh, and as for why there’s a way to contact me, what you did, you can do with anyone. You’ll only get an answer from those who have a way of replying, but anyone with your patience and experience can see anyone at any point in time. I can’t stop that.”

“Which means that I could see the powers that be using the same technique.”

“You would have to know what to look for.” He turned to leave, “and trust me, you don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

“Wait.”

“When Leona and Serif return to the timeline, two people need to be on that ship: Leona, and Étude. Everyone else can space themselves, for all we care.”

“Saga, I’m sorry,” Paige said after the Emissary was gone.

She started on some breathing exercises. “It’s okay. I don’t know why we thought that would work. Come on, I want to see what Andromeda’s house looks like. There’s plenty of room for everyone.”

« < » > Entire Story

Microstory 805: Psychic Killer

< > Table of Contents

No one was quite sure how it was that Dezi Bavoss became the nation’s Prime Chancellor of Grade Schools, but it happened, and everyone had to deal with it. She clearly had no idea what she was doing, leading detractors to suspect she herself had not even once set foot in a school. As it turned out, this might not have been too far off the mark. I was put in charge of investigating a series of murders, with the only thing connecting the victims was that they were all proven psychics. Once I learned this truth, I knew that the best way to stop the assailant from continuing their rampage was to compile a comprehensive list of psychics in the entire country. This took several months to put together, especially since people tend to prefer their privacy, even while promoting their gifts as legitimate services. I was surprised to find out from one of these psychics, who was interested in helping develop the list further, that Dezi Bavoss belonged on that list, and was in danger of being killed. Now it all made sense. The more I dug, the more I discovered just how unqualified this woman was for her job. She had never thought for herself, obviously having cheated her way through nearly every obstacle in her life by reading the minds of those around her. When my superiors found this out, though, they could do nothing about it. There were no laws regulating the use of psychic powers for personal gain, possibly because it’s easy for a psychic to blackmail a policymaker using personal secrets against them. Since Bavoss was a public figure, I was removed from the main investigation, and placed at the head of her special security detail. She adamantly opposed this added security...unreasonably so, and this made me even more suspicious. I agreed to keep her new detail at a safe distance from her, so she could maintain her privacy, but I personally tailed her closely. After only two days of this, I found the truth. She was the so-called Psychic Killer, going around assassinating her competition so she could hold onto her power. Even when I confronted her with this knowledge, she seemed unperturbed, and unashamed. She thought she was untouchable. What she didn’t count on—and could not have known—was the fact that I’m the most powerful psychic of all.

Microstory 804: Through the Roof

< > Table of Contents

The two of us stand on the edge of the roof together. The sun has long set, but is still spilling faint light into the sky. It’s the very end of twilight. There is a light breeze, but nothing strong enough to knock us over. He begins to ask me the same six questions he always does, and I answer each one. I see two cars pass each other on the street below. One swerves towards the other, but catches itself in time, and gets back in line. After it’s passed, the other car swerves away from it in this bizarre delayed reaction. I hear a bird announcing to its flock that it’s time to sleep, or at least that it’s going to bed. I smell the rotting wood of a nearby water tower past its maintenance date, the sweet scent of pastries from a new shop right below called The Night Bakery, and a cigarette butt which someone must have just left up here somewhere just before we arrived. I taste the musky, metallic, sickly environment of a city that should have been torn down a decade ago. He remains silent for the next several minutes, which is unlike him. He’s supposed to ask me the final question, which is what do you know? The truth is that I know very little. He asked me to come up here, as he does every evening. It’s always a different place, and we’re always there for a different reason. Yesterday, we were measuring the height of waves coming up on the beach. The day before that, we threw rocks at people’s windows, only leaving once we’d both broken one, and it had been noticed. Two weeks ago, we popped every tire on some guy’s car, and then the next day, we anonymously delivered that same guy a brand new bicycle. I’ve seen him riding around with a big goofy grin since then, so it looks like we did some good. I can’t remember when I met my boss, or why I agreed to do everything he instructs me, but I always do, and never fail. He calls these tasks experiences, and though I don’t understand what they have to do with anything, or if they’re all part of some complicated grand plan, I enjoy them. I used to be a clerk at an auto mechanic, and never once felt fulfilled until I started doing whatever it is I do now. “What do you know?” he finally asks me, and the spontaneously answer comes to me. It’s always like that; I recite some random fact to him with no explanation for how I know it, as if the asking itself psychically imbued me with the knowledge. “A friend of mine is down there about to ask his crush out on a date.” I thought that would be it, but then something else comes to me. “The Rooftop Slayer’s next victim lives around here.” He sports a toothless smile, and nods. “Which one are we here to do?” I ask. “Help my friend ask out a girl, or stake-out a serial killer?” He just looks at me with a raised eyebrow. I don’t remember what happens next, but I get a call from my mother the next day, telling me my friend has been killed. I immediately call my boss, but he never answers, and I never see him again.

Microstory 803: Kicker

< > Table of Contents

My friend, Cooper invited me to a kickback party, which he prefers to call a kicker, but no one else does. It’s actually a little rowdier than I would have liked, but he’s having fun anyway, so I stay for about as long as he wants. Finally, though, I convince him to go on a walk with me out in the woods behind the apartment complex. There’s always been this sexual tension between us that I’ve wanted to explore, but I’ve never been able to muster the courage to talk with him about it. We’ve known each other since before either of us can remember, having been paired by our respective parents, primarily as an excuse for them to daydrink together. We walk under the light of the awkward moon for a few minutes before he asks me what that sound was. I didn’t hear anything, but we have this connection, so when he’s scared, so am I. He tells me he’s got goosebumps, and I tell him I have chicken skin. Before we can get into another argument about each other’s dumb words for things, there’s another sound, and this time I hear it too. We instinctively roll into the ditch next to the path, and huddle next to each other. My eyes dilate as we stare at the trail, waiting for us both to realize that everything’s cool, and there’s no problem. A pair of hooves appear in front of us and stop. He breathes a sigh of relief and points out that it’s just a deer. I ask him where the other two legs are, then suddenly receive my answer. No deer face looks like what we see bend over and hiss at us. Its head resembles that of a human’s, but more like those giant statues on that island in the middle of the Pacific ocean that no one knows how they got there.  The visage has places for eyes, and a nose, and a mouth, but it’s like the devil accidentally turned him on before finishing carving out all the features. It’s hard to tell in the dark, but the skin even seems more like stone than flesh. Oh, and it also doesn’t have arms.

The first thing it does is lean back and try to kick Cooper in the face. I pull him out of the way, and on top of me, just in time. But we both know that we can’t stay there. We scramble off the ground and start running, but it’s extraordinarily fast. I’m talkin’ comic book superhero fast, this creature is invisible when it’s moving. It kicks at Cooper again, and he dodges it again, but then it tries a third time, and makes contact. Having slowed down its first target, it now goes after me. I drop fast and cower submissively, but it just keeps kicking. “Stop!” I scream at it, but can it even hear me? Surely it can, ‘cause that’s how it knew we were there in the first place. By now, Cooper’s recovered, and is back on his feet. He decides to give the creature a dose of his own medicine, and kicks him literally in the ass, or rather what passes for an ass with this species. It stumbles back, stupefied at Cooper’s audacity. Taking this opening, I get back up and take my own shot. It trips back more, and tries to redirect its attention towards me, but it’s clearly confused as all hell. We give each other a psychic look, then we go full on crazy, kicking it as hard as we can. It’s squirming and twisting on the ground, but we don’t stop until it starts to laugh. Then we both notice it. Our goosebump chicken skin has turned the sickly grayish green that it has. The discoloration spreads all over our bodies, and then I feel my face melting off. In seconds, I don’t see, or hear anything. I just feel vibrations; the wind, the stream a hundred meters away, my friend next to me, and the creature—the creature, who is now our leader. All my brain is capable of thinking about now, though, is how good it’ll feel when I find a human to kick.

Microstory 802: Fountain of Truth

< > Table of Contents

The first thing I remember is standing in a brightly lit hallway, full of doors. I didn’t wake up, or come to. I just slowly started realizing there were these things around me that I could see, as if someone else had been driving my body, and I was slowly taking back control. “It has begun,” came a voice from nowhere and everywhere. “What do I do?” I asked. The voice instructed me to check my pocket. I expected to find a key, because of all the doors, but there was only a note that said I had to pick a fountain, and that the wrong choice would get me killed. I opened the nearest door to me to find a giant two story fountain. Leaves were carved into the base, and stone fish were somehow suspended in the jets. I stepped back out, and opened the door right across from it. There was fountain in this room too. Jets perpetually shot up from the bottom, and inexplicably disappeared into the darkness above it, forming the shapes of musical instruments. I opened a third door to find another fountain, just as large, but it couldn’t be that big, because I’ve already opened the one next to it. They should be overlapping. I’m supposed to choose a fountain, but I feel no connection towards these ones, nor with any other I check. So I run. I run as far down the literally endless hallway until I can run no more. Might as well let my muscles tell me which door to open.

Inside the room to my left is a fountain that’s much smaller than the others have been, barely reaching my waist. Water is bubbling out from the center, pooling to the sides, and spilling into a drain along the rim. It’s the simplest one yet. I’m reminded of a movie I saw once where the right choice was not the most extravagant, but the least. If this isn’t the answer, there is no answer. I reach my hand into the fountain, and let the water tickle my skin. After a few seconds, though, the water turns to acid, and begins to burn. I immediately pull it out, but the fountain isn’t about to let me off that easy. Burbling turns to spurting, which turns to shooting and spraying. The basin cracks, letting out more acid. It tips over and breaks open. Now the acid is rushing, out from the floor. I run out of the room, but by the time I get a few meters away, the threat behind me has grown into a full blown hurricane flood. There’s no way I can get out of this, but my survival instinct is not hampered, and I just keep going. Thinking I have no other options, I decide to open another random door, and hope the magic acid also magically can’t enter other rooms. “I did it! I got it right!” I hear. There’s another girl in this room, having presumably been given the same choice. She’s bathed in the luminous water of her fountain. The acid hasn’t burst open the door, but it has begun to seep under the door. The other girl is being lifted into the air, so I take a chance, and grab onto her foot. We’re lifted to safety together. Now I just need to convince her to help me figure out who did this to us.

Microstory 801: Burial Ground

< > Table of Contents

Growing up, the four of us were inseparable. Lawrence, Jessie, Frank, and I would do everything together. Our bond was so tight that we ended up getting jobs together. Whenever one of us was tired of working somewhere, we would all quit and find something else. We even moved halfway across the country together. But then Jessie needed to go back home and take care of her sick mother, and the rest of us just couldn’t afford to go with her. It was okay, though, because we were able to keep in contact with her pretty easily in this modern world. Until we couldn’t. One day, she stopped calling, and we soon discovered that her family hadn’t seen her either. She was reported missing to the authorities, but they weren’t able to find anything. Since we’ve had so many different jobs, though, we had made tons of connections with others. We used this vast network to conduct our own investigation, and eventually learned that she was last seen at the docks where her father worked before he retired. There were rumors that a crew of fishermen were secretly pirates, so that seemed like our best lead. After months of coaxing, we infiltrated the crew, and discovered that the rumors were true, but that wasn’t the worst thing about them. One of the crewmembers was even sicker than the rest, and appeared to be responsible for the abduction of nearly a dozen other women. We found a poorly scaled map in his quarters, and set out to find the X. In the woods, between the bay and the highway, in a relatively remote area, we found what we were looking for. Parts of the ground had been turned up and replaced, forming perfect human-sized rectangles. Each grave was marked with some kind of personal item. We started digging the one marked by Jessie’s lucky stone, which was a painted rock she bought in a gift shop because it “spoke to her”. We worked slowly, not relishing the idea of seeing our best friend’s lifeless body. When we finally opened it, our eyes widened. I immediately grabbed her and pulled the mask off of her face. “Start digging up the others. They’re alive.”

The Advancement of Leona Matic: August 25, 2171

« < » > Table of Contents

What Leona and Serif learned during their research was that this world was first visited by a boy named Escher Bradley in 1990. Over the years, others arrived, until it all came to a head in 2016, when an entire town was sucked into a portal. Springfield, Kansas was actually one of the largest cities in the state at one point, and had been systematically pulled into said portal, bringing with it no survivors, and while erasing everyone’s memories of it. Those who survived that final fall battled time monsters, and opposing human forces, starting as a despotocracy, but eventually developing a somewhat stable society. They soon found themselves led by a group of choosers they deemed the source mages, who were each capable of turning others into mages, making this planet likely the highest concentration of chosen ones in the universe.

Later on, the Mage Protectorate fell too, as the monsters were nearly wiped out in one final war. The destruction this war caused was blamed on a woman, which led to a twisted Republic designed to be formally misogynistic, retroactively termed the phallocracy. But this too fell, and—after a transitional period with a provisional government, and a brief salmon battalion military state—was replaced with the Democratic Republic, which better resembled most nationstates on Earth in the mid-21st century.

People they either knew personally, or had one-degree personal connections with, contributed significantly to the changes this world experienced over the decades. Hokusai, for instance, was responsible for preventing Durus from colliding with Earth. This close call was what cased Saga to be sprung up onto the world, and eventually meet Andromeda, who was responsible for using her time powers to literally build the cities of today. Andromeda recently gave birth and died, which was why her widow, Saga chose to hide from the world. For the last year, while Leona and Serif were gone, the rest of the crew of The Warren spent their days trying to look for her, completely unsuccessfully. Time was running out too. If they didn’t leave for Earth soon, they wouldn’t get back by the time the new Savior turned thirteen, and if that happened, well...what were the consequences of that? If this was so important, how come the powers that be let Saga go to Durus in the first place? Or was that unavoidable? Was her daughter the Savior only because she was born here, under these circumstances, with Andromeda as her carrier? Even so, the rule was that Étude couldn’t teleport beyond the confines of the planet she happened to be on, but Andromeda possessed no such limitation. Why was she not simply transported before giving birth? Maybe then, she would still be alive.

“Do you have any leads?” Leona asked.

“We don’t,” Dar’cy answered. “And we never did. We haven’t been trying to figure out where she would go, because her friends were already doing that before we arrived. We’ve really just been traveling to other cities, literally looking for a mother and her infant daughter. We knew we would have the whole year. It’s not like there are billions of people here. Someone should have seen something, and I believe we have collectively spoken with nearly everyone in the world...except for the only person who matters.”

“What about her friend, Xearea’s brother, Camden Voss?”

“He’s still in a coma.”

“Wow—” Leona said, realizing the irony, but stopping herself when she started thinking it wasn’t ironic at all, but completely planned. “Nerakali. She could have communicated with Camden.”

“Oh, that’s probably right. And you killed her.”

“I did not.”

Dar’cy was loudly silent.

“Okay, maybe I did.” She didn’t open the airlock, but she was the reason Nerakali chose to jumpstart her own fate. “Well, maybe we can bring her back. Is there an extraction mirror here? Or an extractor? Or we could contact The Warrior.”

“One does not...contact the Warrior,” Dar’cy disagreed. “One simply hopes the Warrior does not find one.”

Leona sighed. “You’ve checked everywhere? Every city, really?”

“Every street in every city.”

“What about the non-cities? I was reading about the thicket, which covers the majority of the globe.”

“We thought about that. Hokusai got her ship airborne again, and has been using that to scan for signs of life. She did find a few people, but none of them was Saga; just hermits who don’t want to be part of society.”

“You’ve checked the whole world...in this dimension.”

Dar’cy smiled knowingly. “We thought of that too. We looked in another dimension called Eboritur that the source mages used to live in.”

“No other dimensions, though?”

“There aren’t any that we know of.”

“What about ones we don’t know of? Who here can create other dimensions?”

“A few people, probably. We don’t have that data.”

“Then let’s get it. What would be the easiest point of access to the government’s internal network?”

“You mean, besides Camden’s mind?”

“That’s right, that’s perfect. He still has that thing in his head, right?”

“It’s probably the only thing keeping him alive.”

“Missy and I could interface with it,” Leona hoped.

“Yeah, and maybe kill him in the process,” Dar’cy warned.

“I have confidence in our abilities.”

“I doubt Camden shares your faith.”

“Dar’cy, we have a job to do. Now, you’ve been leading this charge for the last year, using the same people. It’s time you get some fresh perspective. Isn’t that why we’re talking here right now?”

Dar’cy was reluctant, but had to concede that they needed some way of finding her, and nothing so far had worked. Serif had been wearing the same clothes for the last several days since she hadn’t packed enough, so Loa and Brooke were taking her shopping. Leona and Missy went to the long-term care ward of the hospital, along with Dar’cy and Paige. They had to examine the cybernetic technology that had been merged with Camden’s brain, so they could figure out how to safely interface with it. Then they had to go back to Missy’s lab on the ship to build a device that could do such a thing. A few hours later, they took the device to back to the hospital, and plugged it into a human being. At first, it didn’t seem to have a good connection, but then the database started populating, and they had what they needed. A doctor named Pereira was nearby to make sure this wasn’t doing Camden any harm.

The database wasn’t organized in any comprehensible way. The original one was probably tagged, categorized, and searchable, but when it was downloaded into Camden’s brain, the information seemed to have rearranged itself into an association matrix. Perhaps both fortunately and unfortunately, this was not integrated into the rest of his cognitive system. This was presumably the reason he fell into a coma, because it was like his head now housed two separate consciousnesses—which it wasn’t designed for that—but it would also allow them to extract the information back to a computer, and free his mind of it. Paige and Dr. Pereira weren’t exactly on board with this procedure, but admitted they hadn’t come up with any better solution. Missy quickly wrote a compression program from scratch, and started the process. A few minutes later, the database was out, and Camden was actually showing signs of improvement.

“I am bound by my oath to protect my patients,” Pereira said. “To that end, I don’t think I can disclose the fact that you are now carrying the last unaccounted for copy of a database that was stolen from the government. As soon as he wakes up, though, I don’t believe my obligation to his mind will any longer extend to that...annex you have. I’ll be forced to report that the data was safely removed, so if you want something off of it, you better get it now.”

“Feel free to do whatever you want, whenever you want,” Paige said, taking the tablet from Leona’s hands. “I’ll only need a few moments.”

“What if what happened to him happens to you?” Leona asked out of worry.

Paige laughed as she was jacking the tablet into an interface port in the back of her neck. “Don’t hold your breath.” Her eyelids fluttered as she was assimilating the database into her own neural network. “Four candidates.”

“Four?”

“There are actually dozens, but many of them are already dead. Many more have not yet been born. Wow, this thing is extensive. It goes all the way to the year...never mind. Only four people are alive today, and older than fifteen.”

“What about younger than fifteen?”

Dar’cy shook her head. “Saga wouldn’t exploit the powers of a child. She’s getting help from an adult.”

Paige clicked her jaw, making it look like she was closing off her connection to the new information. “That is, if she’s getting help from anyone. Pocket dimension or no, she could have travelled to the past or future, or hell, even another planet, and this database wouldn’t tell us.”

“We’ll split up,” Dar’cy said. “Each pair will question one of the candidates. We need to regroup first, though, so everybody knows each other’s most recent telemagnet codes.”

Leona and Serif were assigned to speak with a man living in a city called Jaydecaster. Yes, he could create pocket dimensions, but there was absolutely no way Saga and her daughter would be in one of them. She was clear in a note written to her friends that she was leaving by her own free will. Mandis Romagna could only generate fear dimensions. It read the mind of anyone who entered it, and create their deepest fears to torment them. Theoretically these could be used as prisons, or tools of torture. Mandis, however, chose to pursue a life as a mental health professional. He regulated the dimensions to help people face, and ultimately rise above, their fears. He was quite accommodating and understanding of Leona and Serif’s needs, and even offered them a free session in one of his dimensions, but he couldn’t help them. Just as they were leaving, Brooke and Hokusai announced to the group chat that they had finally found the woman they were looking for.

They activated their telemagnet devices, and teleported to the rest of the group. Annora Ubiña could also create dimensions, but these were more traditional, and limited in scope.

Dar’cy was already holding Annora’s arms behind her back, which she called a necessary measure. “You’re going to take us to Saga’s dimension, and only her dimension. If I so much as suspect that yours are as inescapable as the last guy’s, you and I are gonna have words.” She pulled Annora’s arms higher when she didn’t respond.

“Dar’cy!” Paige rebuked.

“Ow, I’ll do it!” Annora cried. “You don’t have to hurt me! I need my arms, though.”

Dar’cy held firm.

“Okay, I don’t need my arms. Goddammit.” She looked up, and formed a bubble around them. When the seams were fully smoothed out, they were all the way into the other dimension, in front of a nice little home.

Hokusai knocked on the door impatiently. They could hear voices on the other side, “...I’ll get it, since we don’t know who it is.”

Some other woman opened the door, but they could see Saga behind her, nursing her daughter. “Let her go!” Saga screamed.

“Whatever,” Dar’cy answered, doing what she was asked. “It’s not like I need her anymore. We finally found you...after a year!”

Paige stepped forward, composed. “We’re here to take you back to Earth.”

Saga had this look on her face that unambiguously told them, hell no.

« < » > Table of Contents

Void: One Who Lives (Part XI)

« < » > Entire Story

After the death of her wife, Andromeda, Saga felt a void in her life. The only way she could keep it from swallowing her up was to hide her daughter and herself away from everyone. Her baby was kept in the magical floating womb for the next several months, until birthing from it into a tub of water that Saga had the instinct to place underneath. On August 15, 2169, little Étude came in at six pounds and nine ounces. She looked a lot like her mother, despite sharing no genetic code with her. She looked a lot like Camden too, but almost nothing like Saga. Maybe this was just all in her imagination.

Speaking of Camden, the ordeal had left him in a coma. That device he forced Pereira to install on him was designed to interface with computing technology. That was really all they knew about it, except that it was likely from the future, having either been left here by a time traveler, or fallen into a spacetime anomaly. Upon inserting the memory stick Morick had given them into it, Camden downloaded all the information contained therein, of which there was quite a bit. It was a database of all residents on Durus; past, present, and future. The download itself might have left him fairly healthy, but in an attempt to save Andromeda’s life, he expedited the process by the scanning the information all at once. This allowed him to extract that woman from the future, who had the ability to create the artificial womb...somehow, but at the price of his consciousness. The doctors weren’t sure whether he would ever wake up, or if it would eventually kill him. For now at least, machines were keeping him alive, and Saga knew there was nothing more she could do for him.

She gathered minimal belongs, along with her daughter, and left town. Over the years, Saga and Andromeda had gathered a number of friends, who might have been best described as fans, or even followers. People expressed varying levels of gratitude for Andromeda’s service to them; native Durune, and Earthan refugees alike. Camden’s experience as a secret agent had caused him to encourage them to keep track of these people. When he was working for IAC, he and his partners kept a mental note of everyone they had met, all over the world. And since they trusted each other implicitly, they shared this information with each other. One time, Camden found himself alone and badly hurt in Kamchatka Oblast, Russia. He only needed to make his way to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, where he found an old and minor coal miner contact of his partner, Yadira’s. This man didn’t know Yadira well, and didn’t know Camden at all, but just hearing her name was enough for him to agree to provide Camden sanctuary. Without it, Camden might have died. He instead got himself patched up, and made his way home in a few days.

The moral of this story is that you never know who might help you...who you meet will be vital to your future. This is why it’s always important to garner respect from people around you. They don’t necessarily need to like you, but when you’re bloodied and starving in the middle of a foreign country, their memory of you needs to inspire them to help. This was how Saga was able to disappear from her old life, and escape to a new one. She knew that a baby born from a gestational bubble outside of her mother’s body would be coveted by others. Perhaps if she kept Étude away from prying eyes, she would also be keeping her out of the database Camden used. Fortunately, she remembered someone who could help. Annora Ubiña had the power to create psychically impenetrable pocket dimensions. These could not be very large, but they were free from pollution, had an endless supply of metawater, with each molecule originating from a different source, and a food invocator powered by temporal energy. Most importantly, there they were safe from anyone looking for them, using any means, for any reason. At least theoretically.

There was no telling how old Saga Einarsson was. She had spent decades in the past, and was then reverted to a younger age. Even beyond that, time travel being what it was, true duration spent was hard to pin down. During her travels, she met a number of people, some of whom possessed time powers. One such was Sanela Matic, who was Darko’s grandmother. She could travel anywhere in time, but only as an intangible observer. If she wanted to interact with the world at a different place and time, she needed some other traveler. Saga and Vearden opened a door for her once as a quick little favor. They didn’t get to know each other very well, but for some reason, Saga could sense when she was around, and using her power. It was just some kind of temporal fluke. Today, she was watching Étude in her crib, when she started experiencing that rare, but familiar, feeling.

“I can feel you there,” Saga said. She still couldn’t see anything, and it might not have even been Sanela at all, but it had to be something. “Sanela, are you around here somewhere?” She decided she wasn’t going to freak out, and just hope for the best. She tilted her head, because she could almost make out language. Yeah, two people were talking, but it was extremely muffled and quiet. Perhaps they were concerned with her, and what she was going to do without Andromeda. This was unwarranted. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill myself. Étude means far too much for me to do that. I’m all she has, so you can go.”

The feeling disappeared as Sanela apparently left. But then someone knocked on the door, which was unusual, because Annora usually just opened it unannounced when checking in on them. Saga opened it to find nothing on the other side but an endless grayish void. Out of it came Sanela.

“I thought it was you,” Saga said. “Come on in.”

“You called?” Sanela asked.

“I did not. What do you mean?”

She gasped. “Who is this precious person?”

“My daughter, Étude. What do you mean, I called?”

“She’s adorable.” She stared for a little while. “Oh, umm...I put a tag on your voice. I’ll come whenever you need me.”

“I didn’t say your name until you were already here.”

“I just got here. You opened the door for me.”

“No, you were standing over me, watching. I could tell.”

“That was not me,” Sanela said, sure of herself.

“Well...maybe it was a future version of you.”

She shook her head. “No. It wasn’t. That was someone else, Saga, watching from another dimension.”

“This is another dimension. They don’t really...mix well.”

“Well, I promise that it wasn’t me. I came because I felt you needed help.”

“I guess that’s true. My host is great, but we’re not that close. She knows what happened to us, but I can’t really talk with her about it.”

“What happened to you?”

“I met a woman. Andromeda.”

Oh, it was such a relief to unload all of her trauma, and have someone she trusted listen to her. It was no surprise that Sanela was such a good listener. After all, her whole situation was watching other people like they were characters in movies. She probably didn’t spend a whole lot of time speaking, but no doubt had an unrivaled understanding of the human experience. When Saga was nearing the end of the story, Étude started belting out her hunger cry, so Saga had to start nursing.

“I thought she wasn’t yours? I mean, I thought you were the egg donor, not the carrier.”

“I was, but I started lactating as soon as she was born.”

“Yeah, I guess I’ve heard of that. She needed you, so you provided.”

There was another knock on the door.

“Tell me that’s a past or future version of you.”

“Like I said,” Sanela reminded, “I would know. That’s not me either. I’ll open it for you, though.”

When she did, she saw Annora standing there, but she wasn’t alone. Dar’cy Matigaris was holding her arms uncomfortably behind her back, like she was a prisoner. Behind her was Hokusai and Loa, along with Missy, Paige, Serif, and Leona.

“Unhand her right now!” Saga ordered, Étude still oblivious, and happily attached to her breast.

Dar’cy did as she was told. “That’s fine. We don’t need her anymore. Do you have any idea how long we’ve been looking for you?”

“Why?”

“It’s time to go back to Earth.”

No.

« < » > Entire Story