The Advancement of Leona Matic: August 27, 2173

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The two year-skippers were happy to learn that the whole hostage situation was resolved within the week. The violent-leaning members of the rogue group that terrorized them were excluded from all negotiations, but most of the rest were accepted as passengers of The Warren. Though Annora’s dimensions were a little too small for that many people, she was able to garner help from other paramounts who had the ability to create pocket worlds. That combined with the technological expertise of Missy and Hokusai, they were able to retrofit the ship so that this would all work. Leona agreed to skip her own system’s check, and just trust that all the other smart people who had been working on the launch for the last several months, and beyond, had accounted for everything. The passengers were assigned their pockets, while most of the crew gathered in the cockpit. The passengers were generally expected to police themselves, and were only allowed within the ship itself while crossing into each other’s pockets, but Loa was assigned liaison between them and the crew. Had Dar’cy still been a part of this, she would have handled security. Instead, she and Missy were remaining on Durus, hopeful for a way to remove the latter’s time powers.

A paramount on the ground was hired to apport their entire ship from the surface, into orbit, and it was there that they began their long journey back to Earth. They watched on the screens as Durus grew smaller and smaller, and they ventured out into the dark nothingness. Eventually, since the sight was so dull, the adrenaline from the launch wore off, and all unnecessary personnel dispersed. Leona decided she wanted to get to know her new crewmates better, while Serif wanted to check out one of Annora’s pocket worlds.

“So, how long have you two been together?” Leona asked.

They looked at each other for the answer. “We’ve been off and on for about twelve years,” Hokusai answered.

“How did you meet?”

“Umm...” they stammered a bit before Loa took over the story. “She was not welcome here when she arrived. The world was quite different from what you see.”

“I heard that. Quite the misogynistic government you had,” Leona said, hoping to not sound too judgmental, but also kind of wanting to.

“Yes, well, she changed all that. People were afraid of her, because they knew she would. My father was different, always has been. He and I share the same power. We can create windows across the vast reaches of space, and he used that to study Earth. Your ways inspired him to rise above the conventions of our world. He imparted those beliefs on to me, raising me to be a feminist. Tried to do the same with a friend of mine, who never quite understood that I wasn’t promised to marry him. Anyway, my father was known for his sympathy for women, and appreciation of the Earthan lifestyle, but they couldn’t do anything about it. They had honestly written very few laws governing the lives of men. We have such a long history of oppression that they didn’t want to hinder any man’s desire to do what he wanted, even if what he wanted was to oppose them.”

Hokusai took over, “I don’t know how it happened, but when they first captured me, I asked if there was anyone there that would be willing to be on my side, to advocate for my needs. Despite what was obviously not an obligation for them, they allowed me to meet her dad. A bunch of things happened, there was a battle royale,” Hokusai said casually. “I ended up back at his place, seeking sanctuary, and she opened the door. Then we all worked together to get back to my ship, and stop the world from colliding with Earth.”

“Oh yeah, your ship. What’s become of your ship? Did you just leave it there?”

Hokusai shrugged. “Can’t take it with us. It fits one person. Don’t worry, though. I removed all of its guts. It’s just a hunk of fancy metal now. The Durune can’t exploit it. Not that there’s anywhere they would need to go. The planet is constantly moving away from its last position in empty interstellar space. You try to leave, you can’t come back.”

Leona nodded in understanding. “So, what about you, Loa? Now that women are legally equal there, are you gonna miss it? Did you hesitate, or did you know you would want to leave? You’ll never see your father again.”

She became sad. “He’s passed. I’ve no one there. My family’s right here.” She wrapped her arm around Hokusai’s shoulder. Just the four of us; Saga and Étude included.”

“And you,” Hokusai added. “And the rest of the crew.”

“So tell us about you,” Loa suggested. “What’s the deal with you two skipping a year every day?”

“It’s been this way since I was twenty-eight years old. On my birthday, midnight hit, and it was suddenly a year later. That’s how salmon do. We’ve no control over it, it just happens. You don’t seem to have salmon on Durus, which is interesting.”

“But you and Serif are the same. Did you know each other before it happened?”

“That’s complicated,” Leona admitted. “I mean, you’re very familiar with how...paramount powers work, but it’s gotten a little crazy, even taking that into account. I have memories of meeting Serif not long after this happened to me, but the truth is that all of that is a lie. We only met a few weeks ago, actually, from our perspective; barely a month. There’s someone with the power to create entire people out of, generally clay, I think. A friend of mine isn’t quite sure how it happened, but he was trying to build someone else, and before he finished, the statue came alive, and poof, Serif suddenly exists.”

“Really?” Loa asked, eyes wide.

“She’s five months old?”

“Yeah, pretty much. My memories were altered to remedy the temporal inconsistencies, as were her own,but yeah, she’s almost like a baby.”

“So, is your love for her real?”

No one had asked her this before, and had presumably not asked Serif either. It was true that her feelings towards Serif would be forever coupled with an asterisk. The fact that no one else around her had memory of Serif existing before the statue was carved didn’t seem to matter. In their world, people come from alternate timelines, with full lives and histories that never took place, so in the end, how was Serif any different than that? Leona could remember being married to a different version of Horace Reaver too, as did he, even though neither one of them actually experienced any of that. But did that sort of thing justify hers and Serif’s love? These memories were entirely false, not just extracted from a different reality. Had they taken the memories and emotions for granted? Had they been wrong to not question them? Should they sit down and have deep discussions about whether their relationship had any merit?

“Oh, that was a bad question,” Loa said apologetically.

“Yes, very rude,” Hokusai scolded.

“No, it’s a very valid question,” Leona assured them. “I’m only not answering you because...I’d never deigned to ask it myself. But I should, shouldn’t I?”

“We all have different stories,” Hokusai said. “Different origins. Your relationship isn’t any less valid than ours just because it started a little strangely. Why, I know a guy back on Durus who fell in love with a quantum duplicate of himself. They grew up separately, and didn’t meet until they were in their twenties, so they’re very different people, but they’re also somehow compatible. And they seem to make it work, I don’t know them that well.”

“That’s a lovely story, honey,” Loa lied transparently.

“I’m just saying, we’re not living in the same world normal people do. We don’t have nine-to-fives, and mow our lawns. People have powers, and reality is more fluid than we can even comprehend. Love is love is love is love, right?”

Leona smiled and nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“And hey, I love these meal bars,” Loa said. “They’re ingenious.”

Leona stood up. “You’ll get over that when you notice how few flavor tabs there are to choose from.”

“What flavor tabs?” Loa questioned. They were practically flavorless without them, so Leona wasn’t sure why she liked them so much.

“I’m gonna go check on Serif. Do you remember which pocket she went into?”

“I think it was pocket three,” Hokusai guessed.

Leona went over to the Ubiña pockets, and tried to enter the third one. She was met only with the back of the cold black half-pipe. She backed out, and stepped back in, trying to get it to activate. Still nothing. She looked over at the console, and started messing with it. “Energy levels normal,” she muttered to herself. “Doors should be open. I thought we decided to keep them open at all times, for safety reasons.”

“We did.” Paige had heard her, and had come up to see what was wrong.

“They’re closed.”

Paige tapped on the console as well, but of course, came to the same conclusion. She then went over to another pocket. “Try all of them.” Now she was getting worried.

Together, they tried to each each of the six different pocket dimensions, and gathered information from their respective consoles, but they were all the same. The dimensions appeared to not have collapsed, but the doors on them somehow closed back up, and they were unable to open them through tech. They would have to go straight to the source. They walked into Annora’s cabin, which was where Nerakali used to sleep, but it was empty.

“Computer, locate Annora Ubiña.”

“Unable to comply,” the computer responded, likely as a joke. “Annora Ubiña cannot be found on The Warren.”

“What the hell happened to her?”

“Direction unclear. Please repeat request.”

“Drop the Star Trek jokes, and just...” Paige tried to think up the right way to communicate what she needed. “What was Annora Ubiña’s last known location.”

“Annora Ubiña was last seen in microponics.”

“Let’s go,” Paige ordered Leona.

The ship was very small, so the microponics lab was about as remote as you could get, except maybe the gravity disk interface terminal nook. Had Annora stepped into one of her pocket worlds, which the computer wouldn’t necessarily be able to detect, she would have at least been clocked somewhere in between here and the Ubiña pockets. They walked in and looked around, until Leona found why the computer hadn’t recognized her lifesigns. Annora was dead. Obviously they would need a full investigation into what happened, but judging from the lack of blood on the edge of the seed table she was laying right next to, it was unlikely due to a fall. Her face looked bashed in. Blood had pooled around her head, and was still slowly spreading further away, so the death was relatively recent. And they could almost be certain it was murder.

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Void: Taken (Part XIII)

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One week. After accepting the truth that she had no choice but to take her daughter to Earth, Saga took some time to get past it. Since they would not be able to leave until Leona and Serif returned to the timeline anyway, she decided to make the best of her situation. She joined a gym, learned how to meditate, and continued doing what professionals suggested to encourage her daughter to speak. She tried to be more patient and understanding with those around her, cognizant of the crew of The Warren’s position, and appreciative of what they were trying to do for her. In the end, even though Durus was now her home, it wasn’t the first, and only. She had lived in the early 21st century, mid-19th century, mid-18th century, and the turn of the 16th century. She had been a globe-trotting photographer, an alien revolutionary, and a nurse. She spoke four languages, built a full-scale replica of the Colosseum, and was quite literally torn out of time. She’d lived through multiple lifetimes, across multiple timelines, and experienced an array of adventures she would always remember. Her meditation instructor, Dar’cy taught her to think of this one as but the latest, and to prepare for the next. But then...one week.

When Leona returned, she really needed to do her own inspection of the ship before she would let them leave. Saga was in support of this, because if that took an entire day, they would have to push the whole thing a whole other year. That would just give her more time to teach Étude about where she was born. A three-year-old is capable of some independent thought, but people tended to not recall much from this early in their lives. If she wanted her daughter to have full and intact memories of life on Durus, she would have to at least make it to four. As badly as Saga wanted this for her, she didn’t want it like this. Not if it meant having to endure this one week.

Serif was helping her check the house Andromeda had built for their family for any belongings they would want to take with her. Despite the diminutive size of the vessel, Annora would be coming with them to create a pocket dimension. They would live comfortable in this parallel world, able to forget the stale and metallic world that lay just beyond. It also meant they would have room for just about anything they wanted to keep. She thought she had all they needed, but then Saga remembered the doorknob to their bedroom closet, which Andromeda claimed was a family heirloom that possessed great power. She went back upstairs to retrieve it, leaving Étude with Serif on the street. Suddenly, there was a great explosion outside that shook the whole house. She ran back down to search for her daughter, but found nothing. She looked all around, but there was no sign of the two of them. Hoping they had activated their emergency teleporters, Saga activated her own, and jumped all the way back to the ship. She was relieved to find this to be the case. Everyone else on the crew was already there, having undergone their own attacks simultaneously. They thought the worst of it was over, but then both she and Étude were taken hostage...separately. For one week.

The people who had attacked them were part of yet a new fringe group of Durus. Comprised fairly evenly of Earthan refugees and Durune natives, these people no longer wanted to live here, and decided it was the Warren’s responsibility to take them to Earth. Had they not known Annora would be creating a relaxation dimension, this group probably never would have formed. It was clear how few spots there would be on the ship without her. But they indicated they understood so many more people could fit, and they felt entitled to proverbial tickets, for all two hundred of them. Annora tried to explain that her worlds were of greatly limited scope, and would not be large enough to accommodate that many people; not for a years-long journey, at least. If they were just traveling to the other side of the world, on a trip that took a few hours, that would be fine. But they expected to live on top of each other for almost a decade, and that just wasn’t going to work. Still, they were determined make this happen, and their leadership proved to be completely capable of hurting people to achieve their goals. They weren’t sure how long this standoff was going to last, but definitely long after midnight central, which was the end of their departure window. Leona and Serif were taken out of the timestream, destined to not return for another year. Yes, Étude would be four-years-old by the time they could leave, but at too great a cost.

A man with the knife kept Saga in one of the ship’s cabins for the whole week, refusing to so much as give her his name. The only words he spoke—aside from whispered conversations with his people on his phone—were used to demand food from the crew left on the rest of the ship. He even refused to give Saga updates on her daughter’s condition. For all she knew, she was long dead, and her own life was completely over. Apparently Dar’cy managed to negotiate herself to become a hostage, in exchange for Étude’s return. Though they agreed to her terms, they went back on their word, and just kept them both as hostages somewhere outside the ship. Days later, the Durune police force—which had established itself as highly reputable, organized, and legitimate division of the world’s government—made their move. They raided the hostage-takers’ lair, recovering both Étude and Dar’cy, who were as healthy as could be.

A few days later, the police chief presided over peace talks between the crew of the Warren, and the hostage-takers, who were now identifying plainly as The Passengers. Obviously, the Warren owed these people nothing. As Captain Turner had pointed out when this all began, had they asked nicely, they might have been able to work something out. Their gut reaction to use violence to get what they wanted had immediately spoiled any good relationship they could have forged. But the situation was not so simple. These people were not happy with their lives on Durus, and since the government kept a reasonable tally of unhappy citizens, everybody knew that this was the limit of their numbers. If they could make Annora’s dimensions large enough to fit these two hundred, they would not have to be any larger. Furthermore, since they no longer wanted to live here, Durus was, quite frankly, better off without them. They were just bound to cause more problems down the line anyway, so if the Warren could take them off the government’s hands, they were for it. Again, it was not that easy. While Annora and Missy were using the borrowed access to the paramount database to see if the technical issues could be resolved, Paige and Saga were sitting down with the Passengers.

A man named Faustus Lambert was their founder and highest leader. He was given the authority to speak on the behalf of the Passengers, but Saga was not convinced every one of them was in favor of this decision. When she spoke to some of them privately, she found a general consensus that few were happy with the way he handled their plea for safe passage. Perhaps he was not the man they should be speaking to, and so Saga took it upon herself to color outside the lines.

“Mister Lambert, do you speak for the people?” Saga began the questioning, looking for a way to lead into what she was really trying for.

“I speak for my people.” He clearly felt no remorse for the pain he had caused others, and was still fully convinced that what he had done was necessary; honorable, even. Saga guessed he expected to go down in history as a great leader.

“Were you voted into this position of power?” she asked.

He smiled wider. “Well, no, that’s not how it works. I started something, and they follow me, because they believe in it.”

“They believe in holding people against their will?” she pressed.

“I did what I had to do to protect mine. I stand by it.”

She nodded, feigning acknowledgement of his predicament. “You don’t think there was a better way?”

“Like what?” He looked towards Paige. “Asking nicely?”

“Exactly.”

“Would you have even entertained the idea if we had just requested it?”

Saga stood from her chair, and leaned on the desk with her fists. “To be quite unambiguous...yes.”

He scoffed, and didn’t believe it. “You would have done exactly what I did. Get off your high house.”

“It’s high horse,” Paige corrected.

“What the hell is a horse?”

“I don’t think we should be speaking to you,” Saga said, moving on. “Because I don’t think you represent these people anymore.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I spoke with some of them. Sounds like there was some trouble in paradise. Sounds like a group of parents had to step in, and protect my daughter, from you and your...violent cohorts.”

“They exaggerate, I wasn’t gonna hurt anyone,” he defended himself.

“I don’t believe you,” Saga replied. “The man who trapped me on the ship had a knife. Held it to my throat. Drew a little blood. Did anything like that happen, to my daughter, or Miss Matigaris.”

“Absolutely not.”

“You know we speak the same language, right? The two of them and I. And they have memories. You didn’t erase them. They told me how they were treated, and how bad you were. And how scared they were of what you would do.”

“Lies.”

“I’ve spoken with the police too. They tell me they’ve already been investigating your connections with the Dawidux, and the terrorist known as Barbwire.”

“He wasn’t a terrorist, and he was a great man, and a great leader, and you did something to him!”

“So you did collude with him?” Saga asked, still as calm as ever.

“Lies!” He stood up angrily. “It is you who works with terrorists! Crooked Saga!” He looked over to the police, who tensed up. “There’s evidence of her involvement with the Earthan Uprisers! I have it, and can show you. Maybe tomorrow, just you wait. I’m an upstanding citizen. Saga has been working against this world since the Deathspring, long before I became the leader of the Passengers. Also, no collusion!”

Saga sat firmly, and waited patiently for him to come out of his rage. “That right there, sir, is how I know you’re a terrorist, and have been plotting against us. I don’t know how you maintained control over the Passengers, but that ends here.” She directed her attentions towards one of the police guards. “Please send in Miss Kistler.”

“What?” Faustus questioned. “Her?”

Camden came through the door, ushering in a woman named Lavitha Kistler, who had been the most upfront to Saga about her dissension to Faustus’ poor conduct. She hovered over Faustus.

“The police asked me to bring out your true side,” Saga announced. Apparently they can’t charge you with anything without an understanding of your attitudes. They need to see how you really think, and how you treat others. I don’t remember that being in the Constitution, but okay. You, and those who directly carried out your violent orders during the hostage situation, will be excluded from negotiations. I think that means we only have to worry about, what, a hundred and eighty-four people? The Captain and I will be continuing these negotiations about the rest of the Passengers with Miss Kistler here.”

“You can’t do this,” he argued. “I’m the leader! I started this, and I’m gonna goddamn end it!”

“People like you make me not regret agreeing to leave,” Saga said to him, still calm.

“No!” he screamed. In true form, he reached over and removed a teleporter gun from the nearest police officer. They were nonlethal, of course, but were inconvenient. Once someone was teleported into a holding cell, it took a lot of paperwork to get them out. He pointed it at the crowd, and literally backed himself into a corner.

As if having been called, Kolby teleported into the room. He was a career security guard from Earth, whose job it was to incarcerate choosing ones who had abused their powers to the detriment of mankind. “Mine’s bigger,” he said in a phony gravelly voice. And he was right. His own transporter gun was massive, probably because it had to be able to send people through both time and space. He shot Faustus with it.

“He’s not a chooser,” Camden pointed out.

“We’ve expanded the prison’s reach,” Kolby explained. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have over a dozen more on my list.” He walked out of the room.

As promised, Saga continued talks with Lavitha, and the Passengers. Though they didn’t show it specifically during the hostage situation, a few of them had somewhat violent histories, and were considered too dangerous for the ship. Several others felt bad about what they had done to the crew, and especially Étude, so they volunteered to be excluded from consideration as well. They assured the government that they would continue to contribute positively to society, and not cause problems on Durus. Yet still more strongly believed in the Warren’s companion ship, the González, which was supposed to arrive mere days after the first. These Passengers were convinced that it still would, even after all this time, when the most likely scenario was that something had gone wrong since the Warren lost contact with them. They agreed to stay behind as well, though, leaving the number at a perfect gross of a hundred and forty-four. Annora and Missy were confident that this was a tenable number, with some modifications. Now all they needed to do was wait yet another year, which was when it was finally time for Saga to return home. The Durus chapter of her life was finished.

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Microstory 810: Driverless

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I woke up in a bed, but it wasn’t my bed. I thought I was in the middle of an earthquake, but when I tried to sit up and take a look, the whole room turned. No, quakes don’t move like that, so something else was going on. I rubbed my eyes and got a better look around. It wasn’t a room at all, but a van, completely hollowed out, and filled to the edges with this van shaped mattress. Despite having no apparent driver, it was rolling down the highway. I looked out the deeply tinted windows, where it was either early morning, or late evening. Other cars were around, but none of them was towing this van, so it was probably being operated remotely. Why anyone would kidnap me would be a hard enough question to resolve, but trying to figure out what their reasoning behind putting me in this thing was beyond unanswerable. Of course, I tried opening the doors, but the handles were removed, and they wouldn’t budge without them. I took off my shirt and used it to protect my fist as I pounded on the glass, but that wasn’t doing any good. I might have tried a shoe, but they had taken those as well. I crawled up to the front to at least see where I was going. As soon as I drew close enough, a blue light lit up the windshield, and a soothing voice alerted me to the fact that autopilot had been disengaged. The van immediately started swerving, so I reflexively willed it to straighten back out, which it eventually did. We were coming up on one of the busiest stretches of the highway, so I wished the van would exit to the side streets, and as if the vehicle could read my mind, it exited. Or maybe that was exactly what it was doing; reading my mind.

I continued to think about where I wanted to go, and the van would comply. When it was necessary to stop for a light, or stop sign, or slow traffic, it didn’t seem to be planning on reacting properly, unless I deliberately thought that it should. Yes, it was quite clear after several tests that the van was responding to my instructions telepathically. The most pressing question now was where was I even going? I realized I could make these minor adjustments to my route, but ultimately, I was heading in one direction. The van was still working somewhat autonomously, and was apparently programmed to take me somewhere specific, whether I wanted it to or not. I kept trying to get it to just take me back home, but nothing was working. After hours of this, I was getting bored, having resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t really in any control, even though I still had to keep my eyes on the road. Finally, it pulled into an abandoned drive-in movie theatre. There were dozens of other vans already there, and a few more coming in behind me. Once everyone was apparently there, all of our doors opened at the same time, revealing that no one else knew what was going on either. The movie screen turned blue, and radiated different shades as the voice on the speakers spoke. “Welcome to your new home. Everything you need can be found in your gloveboxes. No one may enter your van without your permission. But have no fear, there are no criminals in this new world. The only rule...is that you must remain here forever. To leave means death.” Then everything outside of the parking lot disappeared, as if the world had fallen out of orbit, leaving only us standing.

Microstory 809: Seven Year Stitch

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From the moment I was born, I knew that I was put on this Earth to protect people. Okay, well that might be a bit of an overstatement, but no matter when I realized this about myself, it’s a integral part of me that I can’t change. I had no short supply of options when it came to what I was going to do with my life. I had a few ideas, but they all seemed to be so minimally impactful. I worked as a lifeguard in high school and college, but that was generally uneventful. I would have to move to a beachtown to be any sort of active protector, and even that was only on an individual basis. What I wanted was a way to protect massive numbers of people; something more general, perhaps even something secret. I went to the Bureau academy for a little while before I was recruited into the CIA, which seemed like the best choice at the time. What I didn’t know then was that there was a lot going on in the agency that seemed pretty unproductive, and I wasn’t likely going to be an international spy. I was ecstatic when I was told I would be joining an elite reconnaissance team in the midwest, but that excitement quickly faded when I realized what I was in for. The term elite was being used in this context to describe a group of agents operating mostly autonomously, but that didn’t mean they were doing anything of great significance. I was given a new partner, which was the most thrilling aspect of the situation, because we were then planted in a small town to do practically nothing. As part of something deemed Operation Stich, we were instructed to act as if we were happily married, and live the simple life, doing little work beyond taking mundane notes on everything we encountered.

Now, I’ve never been one to belittle the contributions that so-called unimportant workers make, but this was almost literally nothing. We kept track of what our neighbors were doing, which was nothing interesting or illegal, and sent encrypted emails to an address that never responded. After years of this, we started questioning whether what we were doing at all mattered. Was anyone on the other side of those emails, or did they forget about us? What were they doing with the information? Were we missing something about some kind of underbelly in this town? Was it ever going to end? We started coming up with explanations for why we were there, each one more imaginative than the last, and not one of them making any real sense. And then after seven years, everything ended. I mean, the whole country went down the tubes. Every single major city was attacked by some unknown enemy, all at once. The only people left alive were those living in smaller towns, and rural countrysides. Someone rode right up to our house on horseback, and revealed that Operation Stich was now fully activated. When we asked what that meant, she handed us a manila envelope, and rode away. The documents explained that we were there to create a new world order, as a contingency plan. Should anything happen to the original form of government—which was exactly what ended up happening—we were meant to pick up the pieces, and join a new national police force. We requisitioned two of our own horses and began our journey halfway across the country, to the provisional capital of this, the nation we live in now. And that, kids, is how your mother and I became founding fathers of Nusonia.

Microstory 808: Diamond in the Rough

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When I was younger, I used to hang out with the neighborhood kids. As I grew up, I realized that we weren’t so much friends as our proximity simply made it really convenient. We grew apart when our age differences became more noticeable, and a couple of us moved away. But before then, we liked to sneak into construction sites, and our neighborhood had a lot of them, because it was still quite nascent. One day, we strayed a little too far from where we all lived, and discovered a site we didn’t know about. It was completely cordoned off with barbwire fencing, and warning signs. Now, you have to remember that this was the late 90s, when parents let their children go out for hours at a time. We didn’t have cell phones, and we didn’t tell each other everything. It was perfectly normal for us to be so far from home, and in such a dangerous place. Being the ever mischievous ones, we found a point of weakness in the fence, and broke in. At first, it all looked like any other site. It was particularly large, so it probably wasn’t designated for a single house, but otherwise, nothing was out of place. There were tools leaning up against an office module, a pair of work gloves accidentally dropped on the ground, and various heavy machinery scattered about. Then one of us—I can’t remember which—noticed something shiny on the ground. I picked up the gloves, and used them to brush away more of the dirt, fancying myself a junior archaeology excavator. It almost looked like diamond. But that couldn’t be true, it was larger than a manhole cover. Reena, who had the ability to move particles with her mind, came over, and spread the dirt some more, revealing the diamond-like surface underneath to be even larger than we believed. Glenn grabbed a pick axe, and tried to break into it, but couldn’t even make a scratch. It must have been a diamond. Ralph, our resident mechanic, hacked into all the vehicles, and moved them off to the edges. Reena swept away the rest of the dirt, revealing the full diamond, which was in the shape of a baseball diamond. Knowing we wouldn’t be able to lift the thing out of the dirt and sell it, or something, we ignored our fantastical ideas of greed, and just decided to play baseball on it. I never liked sports, but that was definitely the best day of my life. When we went back the next day, the diamond was gone, having left only a giant crater behind, and a group of clearly confused government agents, who thankfully didn’t catch us. And so here we are at the brink of my upteenth archaeological dig. I think I’ve finally figured out what the diamond baseball diamond was, and what happened to it. Madam, if you would just provide me with the funding we need, I can prove my theory that these diamond structures are ancient spaceships. I eagerly await your response.

Best Regards,

Dr. Herbert Ruff

Microstory 807: Shower Scum

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I was never the kind of person to claim that I was living my best life, or that I didn’t make any mistakes, or that I was happy with how all of my relationships turned out. But I think I ultimately did okay with the cards I was dealt. If I ever thought I could have stood to keep a few friends from the old days, my experience earlier today has relieved me of that sentiment. The first to show up at my house was Bobby. He and I were the best of friends in grade school, but when I realized that I was always interested in what he had to say, and he was never interested in my thoughts, I decided I had to break it off. I hadn’t spoken to him in nearly a decade when he just knocked on my door, and invited himself in, as if we had made brunch plans. I was so stunned, I didn’t even have the mental capacity to ask him what he was doing here, let alone kick him out. As soon as I closed the door, the bell rang again. It was my worst enemy in high school, who used to torture me incessantly, for no reason but his own psychological insecurities. Time had not been kind to the space between us, and I still hate him as much as I now hate Bobby. Again, he walked in and passed me, like he belonged there, and the two of them started chatting it up. I demanded to know who they thought they were, and they just gave me this look like I was the crazy one. The doorbell rang again, and it was my first supervisor when I worked at the grocery store. Now, he probably thought we were on pretty good terms, I’ll give him that. I had to pretend to like him, though, to keep from losing my job. He was actually a completely unaware despicable human being, who used to treat the girls at the store so disgustingly. I had always regretted not standing up to his sexual harassment, but maybe some higher force was giving me that opportunity. Had I won some kind of lottery I didn’t know about, or did I accidentally pray to God one time, and just forgot about it? One my one, two by two, and so on, more and more people came, and all of them terrible people. Eventually, I gave up trying to figure what the deal was, and just decided to be patient.

The trend continued as every single person who came in was someone I despised to some degree, and generally wished I would never have to interact with again. They didn’t act like they felt the same about me, which made sense for some, but was unbelievable for others. Then the last girl walked in without ringing. It was Carly Braddock. I had been in love with her all through since the seventh grade, but never said anything. We slept together once just a few months ago, after we bumped into each other at the library. I was so nervous about finally getting close to her after all this time, that I acted like a jerk, and haven’t felt like I could contact her again. She greeted me warmly, and rubbed her belly with a knowing smile, completely ignoring the fact that I had blown her off. I immediately felt bad for noticing that she appeared to have gained a little weight. As much as I hate myself, I’m not supposed to be that shallow. As I was trying to shake off my untoward thoughts by trying to enjoy what was shaping up to be a party, I realized what was happening. I had just died. Yes, I suddenly remembered everything about the teacup, and the fire, and the bridge. But I hadn’t gone to heaven, or hell. This was limbo. To my right were all the people I hated in my life, and to my left was the girl of my dreams, along with a future baby that I desperately wanted. Now all I needed to do was determine whether I was being given the choice of which afterlife I would have for eternity, or if it had already been made for me, and this was simply a cruel form of torture.

Microstory 806: The Future and the Past

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During spring break, I had nothing interesting to do, so I just decided to go back home to visit my parents for the week, which I hadn’t done in a couple years. I was having trouble sleeping, and thought that it was just weird to be back after all this time, but another part of me was urging me to go to their basement. In almost a haze, I stuck two fingers in a hole in the wall paneling, and started ripping it all out. Then I just kept going, tearing out all the insulation. I had this uncontrollable belief that there was a subbasement I never knew about, and that this was the way to get to it. I felt validated to see a light on the other side, but was surprised to discover that it was not another basement, but instead, I was back in my bedroom...the past. It was so far in the past that we hadn’t even moved there yet. I had to sneak out quickly, not wanting to disturb the nice family that lived there. At the risk of screwing something up with the timeline, I contacted an old friend, and asked if he would take me on his relativity ship. The idea was to fly around for ten years, until I was back in my own time period, and then go back home. He agreed, but something must have gone wrong, and we found ourselves decades in the future, on another planet. And instead of coming out the same age I was before, I was ten years older, which was unfortunate, because this planet turned out to hold the secret to immortality. You had to be young enough for the immortality solution to work, though, and I had just barely passed that threshold.

The rest of the crew realized they would have to stay there in order to stay alive, so I took the ship myself, and headed back home, even though I knew it would be the year 2130 by the time I arrived, which meant everyone I knew and loved would be long dead. What I didn’t count on was learning that Earth was secretly being run by angels, nephilim, and demons. And the only reason they even told me about it was because they thought I was an alien, and wanted to include me in their future plans for the humans. Out of fear of what they would do to me when they found out I was one of those humans, I booked passage on a time machine, hoping it would finally take me back home. Once again, I was detoured, this time 300 years even further in the future. I made my way to an information booth, and asked what things were like now. The booth attendant explained to me that the secret of the supernatural creatures had long ago come to light. Humans were now hunting angels, paving the wave for nephilim to take full control, for they lacked the weakness that their angel parents possessed. Things were actually going okay in this state, but demons were slowly gaining power. Seeing me as an valuable outlier, a group of independent supernaturals who wanted to see the world return to what it once was, bequested me special nephilim powers, hoping I would use them to fight the demons.

Still seeing myself as an outsider, I tried to use these powers to return home, which is all I ever wanted, but of course this could not be. I accidentally jumped millions of years into the future. Most everything was the same as it was while I was first growing up, as some sort of cyclical timeline sort of thing. I discovered myself to be a particularly notable historical figure, even though I hadn’t ever actually done anything to impact the world. Hoping to capitalize on this, scientists had been researching for years how to clone me. They ended up creating a genetically engineered daughter from my DNA, whom they considered to be close enough to their goals. She still needed someone to take care of her, though, and now that I was back, I was the obvious choice. I decided to take her out on a stroll so we could get to know each other. Somehow, I walked several miles before I realized she was no longer even with me. I tried to retrace my steps, but I never found her, and no one seemed to be bothered by this. They shrugged and said that if she was to be their savior, she would have to find a way to survive on her own. So that’s why I’m here. I’m hoping to find even a small remnant of the ancient nephilims and angels. They’re the only ones who can recharge my powers, or send me back to the past, where I can work to stop any of this from taking place. Can you help me?

The Advancement of Leona Matic: August 26, 2172

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It took the crew of The Warren that remained in the timestream days to convince Saga to leave the safety of her pocket dimension. Once she and her daughter were out, they spent a lot of time in Camden’s hospital room, and Saga was still hesitant to agree to go with them back to Earth. She wanted to stay on Durus, where they had built a life. Her wife had used her time powers to construct a lot of the buildings in the world, and that wasn’t something a loved one just turned their back on. The crew desperately wanted to respect her wishes, but they were at the mercy of the powers that be. If the Warren didn’t take little Étude to her responsibilities, someone else would be called in to do so, and they might not be so pleasant about it. When Camden Voss finally woke up from his coma, he helped them contact The Emissary, who served directly under the powers, and it worked, but the Emissary refused to hear them out. Saga had to come to the realization that she never had a choice. And now that Leona and Serif were back, it was time to leave.

While Leona was running her own check of the ship’s systems, just to double check everyone else’s work, Paige and Missy approached.

“Could we have a word?” Paige asked.

“Sure,” Leona agreed, but kept working. “Is this a good word, or a bad word?”

“More like a sad word,” Paige answered. “We need to catch you up on what we’ve already been discussing.”

Leona lowered the wrench, and hung her arm down. “Should I be sitting?”

“It’s not a multitasking kind of conversation,” Paige explained. “Let’s go into one of the cabins.”

They went into Leona and Serif’s room, and closed the door.

“There have been some changes to the ship’s manifest,” Paige started back up. “We won’t be leaving with the same people we came with. Some are staying...new people are boarding.”

“Like who?”

“Missy and Dar’cy.”

Leona looked to Missy inquisitively. “You’re staying on Durus.”

“I came here for a reason. I’m trying to get rid of my powers.”

“Why would you do that, you’re not salmon?” Leona questioned.

“She has her reasons,” Paige said solemnly.

“That’s okay, Paige. I’m not keeping it from her.” Missy took a moment to gather her thoughts. “I have a stalker. A time stalker.”

“Who is it?”

“It doesn’t matter, but he wants to kill everyone with time powers, and he seems to be heavily focused on me, at least from my perspective. I knew if I were on the ship, the powers that be would protect me, but that won’t last forever. There’s a way to get rid of powers somewhere on Durus. I don’t know what it is, but I’m gonna stay here, and try to figure it out. He’ll leave me alone if I’m just a normal human.”

Leona shook her head with general disappointment in humanity. “He sounds like The Cleanser.”

Missy squirmed in her chair, and Paige sat up straighter.

“Holy shit, is it the Cleanser?”

“He’s a time traveler,” Paige reminded her. Just because Gilbert killed him, it doesn’t erase him from the past of his own personal timeline. Before he goes back in time and gets himself killed, he jumps around the universe, working on his...mission. That’s what she’s experiencing now.”

Leona closed her eyes and leaned back to face the ceiling. “My God, it never ends.”

“Like I said, she’s been talking about it for awhile. We’ve looked into our options, and she feels this is her best way to survive. Obviously, we can’t kill him, because his death is a fixed point in history.” Paige took Missy’s hand, like a protective mother showing affection and care. “This is how it has to be.”

Leona got out of her chair and gave Missy a warm hug. “I’m sorry you’re going through this. I feel responsible.”

“You’re not,” Missy said. “I was part of this before you were born.”

“Weren’t you born after me?” Leona asked.

She grunted. “Eh, time, right?”

Leona gave her a respectful moment of silence, then said, “looks like we’re gonna be out an engineer.”

“Actually, we have that covered,” Missy said.

“Hokusai Gimura, Saga’s friend,” Paige said. “She and Loa will be joining us.”

“Along with the woman who created Saga’s pocket dimension, Annora. She’ll also be replacing me. I need to be there for the atterberry pods to work properly, so we converted them to Ubiña pockets. You’ll have six dimensions to choose from at any one time. I guess that means she’s replacing Nerakali too.”

“Are the powers that be okay with you doing that? On our way here, you weren’t meant to use the atterberry pods the whole time.”

“Screw ‘em,” Paige said with a shrug. “They’re getting Étude on Earth, so they can be happy enough with that. What we do on our way is our business.”

“Yeah, Étude is, what, three years old now? Must be talkin’ a mile a minute.”

This made the other two uncomfortable. “She appears to be mute. She’s never said a word. The doctors don’t know why.”

“Oh. That reminds me of baby Dar’cy, though. Why is she staying? Is the Cleanser stalking her too?”

“She’s staying for me,” Missy said. “She’s appointed herself my personal bodyguard. If all goes well, we’ll find a way back home later. Hell, we may even beat you there.”

“Well, I’m glad for the new friends, but we will miss you...Missy. Is that why that’s your name?”

Missy started to laugh, but was cut off by the sound of the ship’s alarms. They ran out of the room to find Serif standing in the cockpit, shaking with fear, and holding little Étude’s hand.

“What happened?” Paige demanded to know.

“An attack,” Serif answered, unable to elaborate.

One by one, all the crew members, new and old began to emergency teleport here. Loa, then Brooke, then Dar’cy and Annora together, and then Hokusai. Finally, Saga arrived, freaking out. Upon seeing that Étude was already here and safe, she picked her up, and started crying.

“Report!” Paige ordered.

Brooke was busy working on making sure the ship was secure. “A horde of people. They found out we’re leaving today, and they want a ride.”

“And they just attacked you?”

Brooke looked around. “It would seem they attacked us all at once. They were organized, and watching us.”

“Missy, are the power dampeners operational?” Paige asked.

Missy just stood there.

“Missy! Are they working!”

“I haven’t tested them since the upgrades,” Missy said honestly.

“Brooke, turn them on anyway.”

“Already done,” Brooke replied.

“Too late,” said the voice of a man behind them. They turned to find him holding a knife to Saga’s neck.”

“They took her,” Saga said. “Before Brooke turned on the shield, one teleported in and took her from me.”

“Well, we need hostages on both sides of the barrier, don’t we?” the man asked rhetorically.

Paige stepped forward. “My name is Paige Turner Reaver-Demir. I’m the captain of this vessel. State your demands.”

“I wanna get the hell out of here,” the man answered.

“Did you forget to ask nicely?”

“What?”

“Depending on how many there are of you, we may have agreed to take you. Was your first thought to kidnap and threaten people? Or did you even consider that we could have done this civilly, and nonviolently?”

He was flabbergasted by the question. “We’ve been through this before. The salmon battalion—or whatever they were—refused us outright.”

Paige stepped closer, but stopped when the man adjusted his blade. “We’re not a military contingency. We do things differently. You should have tried. Now I’m just pissed off.”

He was still stammering. “It..doesn’t matter. We have the little girl, and I have you. There are two hundred of us, and we all want in. If that means some of you can’t go, then I guess that’s what we do.”

“We can’t take two hundred. Does this ship look that big?”

“Screw you, we know you have a pocket dimension creator.” He nodded in Annora’s direction.

“Not enough for two hundred,” Paige argued. Then she asked Annora, “how many could you take?”

Annora kept her attention on the hostage taker. “My dimensions are small, especially if I’m going to be maintaining six at once. I estimate a hundred. And that’ll be tight. The point is to have room to breathe, so we don’t feel so claustrophobic.”

“That’s sixteen per,” Leona noted, but regretted it when Paige looked to her and shook her head sharply.

As the hostage-taker thought this over, it was becoming clearer that someone else had organized his group, and he was more brutish than intelligent. They’d probably intended more people to teleport in, but he was the only other one who made it through. “A hundred and fifty,” he proposed. “I think I can trim some fat.”

“This isn’t a negotiation,” Annora argued. “I can only make the pockets so big. My powers have limitations, just like anyone else’s.”

He still didn’t understand what she was saying. “Hundred-twenty. Final offer.”

Annora sighed and threw up her hands in defeat. There was no reasoning with someone like this.

“Yes?” the man asked, tilting his head to indicate he was speaking with someone using an earpiece. He listened for a moment. “Okay, we’re gonna wait you out, let you sweat. We know you have to leave by the end of the day.—What!” He was interrupted by the person on the other end of the line. “Well, if you don’t want me telling them something, you should tell me not to...tell them.” He listened some more. “We’re gonna wait until you give us the answer we want.” He started backing up, still holding onto Saga.

“You have my daughter,” Saga told him. “You don’t need to threaten my life when you’re already threatening hers.”

“But I do need to protect my own life,” he said, backing into Nerakali’s room. “Close and lock this door,” they could hear him say once inside. The door closed.

“I don’t suppose Étude has telemagnets,” Paige suggested.

“No,” Serif answered. “Saga says she’s too young to use them properly. Which she is, according to this world’s conventions.”

“Does she at least have a tracker we can use?” Brooke asked.

“I don’t know,” Serif said. “And we can’t ask Saga, or it’ll tip of the hostage-takers.”

“Goddammit,” Paige said. “Son of a—shit! Dammit! Son of a bitch, goddammit, shit!”

“I’m sorry,” Dar’cy said sadly. “I should have protected her. I should have protected all of you. That is my one job.”

“You can’t take on a whole army, Darce,” Paige said, still rattled. “Shit!” Everyone let her calm down, and try to think clearly. “Is there any way you can stretch the pocket dimensions to fit two hundred people. What if they’re on...multiple floors of a building inside of it?”

“Ten people total, on multiple floors in any one dimension is what’s normal,” Annora explained. “Maybe fifteen. You double that, and you’re just huddled together. There’s no privacy. You think this situation is bad? Just wait until thirty people have to share that small a space. People start getting hurt. Like that Earthan TV show, Snowpiercer that Loa got me hooked on a few months ago.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Serif said. “We shouldn’t be trying to figure out how to accommodate these evil people. We should just be trying to get Étude and Camden back. If we help them, something like this is just waiting to happen again.”

“She’s right,” Leona agreed. “We can’t help them. Not if we wanna stay alive for the next several years.”

“You mean, if we want to stay alive,” Brooke corrected.

“Exactly. She and I get to leave the timestream every year. You don’t have that luxury, so you have to choose carefully who you spend that time with.”

“We don’t know who’s out there. They’re not necessarily all hostage-takers. Some, I’m sure, were against it,” Missy pointed out.

“Yeah, sure. We’ll just ask them to send us only the good ones,” Paige spat.

They argued about this for most of the rest of the day. Eventually, they all realized there was no way they would be able to solve this problem by the time midnight central hit. They would have to wait to leave in a year. Things were headed in the direction of letting some, if not most, of the mob come on board. In order to do this, though, Annora would need more time to get clever with the architecture of her pockets, and maybe garner some help from someone else. They would need to look through the paramount database that Paige lied about deleting from her memory. Once Leona and Serif were gone, hopefully things would settle down a bit. It was impractical to hold Étude hostage for the entire interim period, and it wasn’t like the crew of The Warren could leave before then anyway.

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