Microstory 834: Insight

< > Table of Contents

“Now remember,” the scientists says, “you can’t change the past. It has already happened for us. All you are there to do is recon. Find out exactly how the world ended, and hopefully how we can make life better moving forward. Anything you try to do while you’re there will have an effect on the future, but only in that reality. Time travel within a single timeline is impossible, because just by traveling to an earlier moment in time, you create a new timeline. You can’t save your family; not your real family.” I nod, because I understand this truth fully. She has me remove all of my clothes, then she takes my measurements and vitals again. It’s important for the machines to calibrate the trip according to my specifications. If they’re just a little bit off, I could wind up rematerializing without a finger, or the part of my brain responsible for remembering my daughter’s name. I volunteered for this mission, and I can think of no greater honor. It’ll be strange being back in a world before everything turned to shit, but I can’t take it for granted. Those aren’t my people, and if I don’t get back in time, those I actually care about will never see me again. She submerges me in the solution, letting me suck on some oxygen with a rebreather, but I won’t be able to take it with me, which means I may have to hold my breath for up to four minutes, once the process gets underway. It feels so good to be in water again. After the shortage began, baths and swimming became illegal. It took years for this team to procure enough of it for their experiment, wasting a lot of it along the way as they worked towards perfecting it. The project leader is a brilliant woman, who reminds me of my late wife. I feel so fortunate to be part of this endeavor.

She holds up the okay scuba diving hand signal, and waits for me to return it. Then she removes the rebreather, and activates the machine. The water tenses up, almost like it’s become solid. I can feel an electrical current surging through me. It’s painful, but not debilitating. Bubbles form at the bottom of the tank, and start shooting up towards the surface. It’s getting hotter and hotter, and I’m thinking I’m going to pass out, but I don’t, because I can’t. For a moment, everything stops, and all I see is darkness. Then light begins filtering back to my eyes, and I feel myself moving. The electrical current is gone, replaced by a river current. I pop out of the water, swim over to the bank, and crawl onto dry land, cry-laughing uncontrollably for having survived the journey. After a decent walk, I find out that I had surfaced in the Yangtze River, upstream of Shanghai, China. I start studying the problem there, remembering the water shortage began in this region. It would seem some mysterious contaminant made its way into one of the largest drinking water reservoirs in the world, by population served. Shanghai needed to source their water elsewhere for a long time, which caused strain the world over as the dominoes continued to fall. It was me. I caused the end of the world. Distraught, I make my way to Russia, where the scientist I meet in the future now lives, and break a rule of time travel by telling her that I think I actually did land in the same timeline that I came from. She just smiles at me and says, “good. Now I know for sure that my plan works.”

Microstory 833: Cold War

< > Table of Contents

Long-distance skiing isn’t exactly my forte, and I positively hate the bitter cold, but it’s not like I have any choice. There aren’t any roads way out here, but something up ahead is luring me towards it. So I continue, stopping only when I need to pee, or melt drinking water. After hours of trekking, I see a wooden building of some kind, peeking out from the snow. As I move nearer, I realize it’s actually a few little cabins clumped together. If I didn’t have this intense feeling of accomplishment, I would think to stop and rest here, but this is it. This is where I’ve been trying to go this whole time. I keep trudging into it, and recognize it as a ski resort. The world no longer has any need for a ski resort, so this place has been completely abandoned, left to provide shelter for the birds, and other animals. I’m alone. At least no one responds when I call out. As I approach the bottom of the hills, I can see a giant red crystalline structure, floating a couple meters over the ground, slowly turning counter clockwise on a vertical axis. I get as close as I feel comfortable with, worried about disturbing its position, and causing it to fall on top of me. It looks like I’m supposed to see through the crystal, but smoke is billowing around inside, like an oversized lava lamp. I’ve never seen anything like it, in this new world, or in the time before the fall. “Here, boss!” I hear on the other side of the resort. A man with nicer equipment than I have has spotted me, and the crystal. He’s waving to someone I can’t see yet, to come and check out this magnificent technological mystery. I see a head appear from behind one of the cabins, then another, and another. Nearly a dozen men and women appear, some on skis, but most just with snowshoes. They walk towards me, defensively, but not with a great deal of fear, and I quickly see why. It’s the Dowder Gang, and they’re afraid of nothing. They were once my rivals, but since they killed my entire survival group, they don’t consider me much of a threat anymore.

The leader, Shabel Dowder grins when she sees that it’s me, and promises not to kill me. I’m neither surprised, nor concerned that she’s lying. The Dowders always leave one alive, to tell the tale of their misdeeds. They don’t kill for no reason, mind you, and they don’t torture people. They come in with purpose, and get it over with quickly and painlessly. They’ve done a lot of good in this world too—I give them that—about as good as good gets, since the bombs dropped. We were even allied for a time, but a personal quarrel led to an accidental death, and the Dowders couldn’t let that go unpunished. I don’t know why we’re all here now, but once we’ve all gathered around the crystal, it begins to speak, glowing brighter according to the speaker’s volume. “Survivors of Earth, herein lies the souls of your fallen comrades. Inside Oakleaf Cabin, you will find a reserve of replacement substrates. You must bring the bodies here to transfer your friends’ consciousnesses. But be warned, if any one of them dies at the hands of each other, or one of you, you will all die. In order to continue living, you must find peace amongst you. You must learn to work together.” Shabel and I look at each other. The others in her gang might not agree with her choices, but their opinions are irrelevant. The only two people whose positions had any impact on what would happen today were her, and me. She asks me if I can set aside my animosity, and I say it’s possible, if we break the country in three; our third, their third, and a neutral zone. The crystal voice informs us that no individual may be beyond ten meters of someone from the other gang. We discuss terms for a few more minutes, but the voice urges us to finalize a deal. So we agree to form a new gang, proud of one undeniable certainty: the Sherlee-Dowder Family will be an unstoppable force.

Microstory 832: Doesn’t Kill You

< > Table of Contents

Two days ago I died. I remember it remarkably well. As soon as I woke back up, I could recall even the smallest of details. The circumstances don’t matter all that much, though, because I have more pressing issues to deal with. I sit up from the table, finding myself face to face with my killer’s sister. She’s holding up her hands defensively, unsure if I’ll react poorly to being killed, or to being resurrected, or just because I know exactly who she is. I have no intention of doing her any harm, so I nod politely with my eyes closed, and relax my muscles. She slowly reaches for a newspaper sitting on the table, but she’s anxious and impatient, so I tell her she doesn’t have to snail around me. She begs me to hold the paper under my chin, and let her take a picture of me, which I oblige. I know what she’s doing, and it doesn’t seem like I would be okay with it, but I am. Though my murder to me feels like it just happened, I’ve already lost my anger about it, and I’m not the kind of person to hold a grudge. She earnestly crops the photo, and adjusts the lighting, then sends it on its way. While we wait for the response, I continue to remain calm, asking her questions about what I’ve missed in the world over the last couple days. Not much, as she tells me. She’s worried about going to prison for bringing me back to life, which isn’t on its own illegal, but the procurement of the ingredients is. The solution requires a number of various chemicals, many of which can be interchanged to accomplish different “flavors” of resurrection. She was nice enough to afford me standard health rejuvenation, making me feel better than I ever did when I was first alive. It’s also possible to just bring back a rotting corpse, or a head in a vat, but she went above and beyond, even though she didn’t have to. The two active ingredients are concentrated bladapod blood, and plant life that grew in a place unaffected by the global bladapod gases that now cover almost our entire world. I know this woman isn’t authorized to procure any sample from a bladapod, let alone a living one. There is also no way she qualifies to enter Iceland’s borders, which is the only place the gases don’t reach. I’ll do my best to prevent her from being convicted of these crimes, but I’m obviously pretty biased, so my word can only go so far.

She didn’t resurrect me out of the kindness in her heart, of course. She did it for her brother. They tell each other everything, so she knew he had killed me immediately after he did it. This gave her time to mix the solution for me, before the investigation could lead the authorities to follow the right lead. While the ancillary crimes generally render resurrection an untenable option, there are still laws governing its use. The one she’s trying to exploit now precludes the culprit in a murder from suffering legal consequences for their crime if they’re not caught before the resurrection takes place. I watch her face as her phone rings, and she receives the news. The volume is up loud enough for me to pick up some keywords. From what I gather, the police caught up with her brother before she sent my proof of life to them. But that’s not what the law says. The law says the resurrection itself must come before an arrest, not the proof of it. I whisper this loophole to her while she’s holding her hand over the mouthpiece. This gives her hope, so now they have to somehow prove they moved against my killer first. They’re gonna have a hard time doing this, though, especially since I intend to fib the timeline as needed, to back her up. I’m not doing this out the kindness of my heart either. Her brother, my killer, has something I want, which was why he killed me in the first place. Now that I’m back, I have some leverage over him, and as soon as I get him out of this mess, he’s going to deliver, whether he likes it or not. He won’t have much of a choice either, because the only kind of murder that’s legal these days is when you kill someone who killed you first.

Microstory 831: Devil and the Deep Brown Sea

< > Table of Contents

People think I hate everybody, but that isn’t entirely accurate. I only hate certain types of people; generally those who aren’t self-aware, or aware of how others feel about them. I’m talking about people who smile because they’re awake, or volunteer so they can tell all their friends about how much they volunteer. I’m talking about the phonies, the hypocrites, the judgmental jerks masquerading as empathetic altruists. The douchebags, elitists, oversharers, good ol’ daydreamers, emoji-users, PETA donators, hunters, and Trump voters. I don’t like fist bumps, anyone who says yaaaaas, Nazis, or climate change deniers. And worst of all, I hate talk shows. Being on, or even having to sit through, a talk show would be my worst nightmare, my hell. I guess it’s no surprise that when I found myself on my way to an actual hell dimension, that’s exactly what it was. I’m in a transparent bubble, floating around in what I guess you could call limbo. On one side of me is the real world. All those things I’ve listed are there, but it’s also got things I love. My family, my favorite music, and the greatest city in the world. Alyssa Milano and Emma González are there, fighting the good fight, along with millions of bright millennial activists, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. To the other side of me is actual hell. I can see it playing, and hear the muffled voices of the hosts, growing clearer and clearer. They’re talking about some “lifehack” that doesn’t make things any easier than traditional methods. One of them is taking a sip of her coffee, and giving the audience a thumbs up, which causes an uproar in clapping and cheering. The other is shaking his head, pretending that one of these days...right in the kisser. I keep trying to swim towards the real world, but it’s becoming more difficult the harder I try. The coffee talk hell wants me, and it’s not going to stop until it gets me. I have to get out of here. I have to escape. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about anything bad I ever said about the world I live in. From now on, God, if you promise to send me back, I’ll only focus on the positive things in my life, and try to accept the things I cannot change, or whatever. Just please don’t make me experience even one more second of this show. Then my bubble bursts, and I begin to fall away from both worlds, into the empty void, forever denied my wish for a second chance. But it sure beats a talk show, and for this, I will literally be eternally grateful.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: Fall of 2176

« < » > Table of Contents

Not long after Leona would have returned to the timeline in 2076, a man appeared in the ship proper, using the former’s emergency teleporter. He was out of breath, and holding onto his chest. He collapsed to his knees. Brooke left her controls, and knelt down to him. “What happened?” she asked as she was helping him up.

He was struggling to catch his breath. “They attacked us. Her,” he corrected. “They attacked her.”

“Leona?” Brooke confirmed. “Who attacked her?”

“Everybody,” he said. “They’re angry. I tried to protect her, but they were too strong. With her dying breath, she begged me to take the e-porter, and get out of there.” He sighed and stammered. “I shouldn’t have broken the news like that. But it’s true. She’s gone.” He paused for effect, as if traumatized by the event. “She’s gone.”

Paige casually walked into the cockpit. After sizing him up, she crossed her arms, and looked at Brooke.

“Sir?” Brooke offered to carry out orders.

“Put him in Nerakali’s room,” she commanded as she was turning around. “Get that teleporter to Hokusai, so she can figure out how to send it back to Leona.”

“Captain!” the man cried. “You are the captain, right?”

Paige turned back to face him, but didn’t bother answering.

“I told you, Leona’s gone,” the man continued to lie. “Don’t waste the teleporter on a dead body. Two of the people who killed her will just use it to come here, then you’ll have a real problem on your hands.”

“Why didn’t you bring her with you?” Paige asked, still as cool as a cucumber that’s been sitting in a refrigerator. “You can teleport dead bodies.”

He took a moment to come up with a reasonable lie. “We got separated. I couldn’t get to her, and...and I was in danger. I just had to go. I’m sorry you can’t give her a proper send-off.”

Paige smirked. “Not a bad attempt at recovery. It might even be believable, except for one truth you could never have known.”

“And what’s that?” he asked, almost breaking character.

“There are only two people on this ship—or any of its extra dimensions—whose lives actually matter. Leona is one of them. She can’t die. And I don’t mean that like, it would be really bad if she died. I mean she literally can’t, not until her mission’s complete, and maybe not even then.” She nodded to Brooke, who picked the lying man off the floor, and carried him kicking and screaming to Nerakali’s room, which they had successfully transformed into a fully-functional brig.

After the deception of the man who claimed he would help her, Leona felt hopeless, trapped, and scared. The mob outside was showing no signs of changing their minds about wanting to kill her. Sweaty and freaking out, she started pacing and spinning around the room, looking for anything that could help her; a weapon, or...cash, maybe. Anything She opened the closet door, not just in the search, but also hoping one of Saga’s magical portals would appear in the frame. She found only a couple blankets. She hadn’t realized right away, but this must have been one of the guests rooms, so nobody’s belongings were in it. She was about to slam the door shut in a rage when something on the inside of it caught her eye. Scratched on the wood was an odd bathroom stall-style note, In a bad time // call Jayde Mercy // 937-724.

Well, she certainly was in a bad time, but how could she call this Jayde person? She didn’t have a phone, and even if she did, it wouldn’t likely work all the way out here. And even if it did, there were only six digits in the number, and she knew not even Durus operated like that. She started working on the math in her head, trying to figure out whether the numbers would have anything to do with someone’s telemagnet. When coming up with the telemagnet network system, the Durune knew they couldn’t rely on traditional phone formats, like those found on Earth. If contacting somebody in another time period, one first needed a four-digit year code. Since the sun was fake, the year was then broken up into one thousand arbitrary days. There were ten months in a year, ten weeks in a month, and ten days in a week; all of which led to a three-digit day code. An individual then required a full twelve digits, which would allow all of Durus history to ultimately have just under one trillion people. They probably wouldn’t even run out of numbers. Basically, all this meant that this six digit number had nothing to do with that. What else could it mean?

Before she could come to any logical conclusion, the door burst open, and the mob flowed in. Out of desperation, Leona blurted out the message, “I need to call Jayde Mercy! Nine-three-seven. Seven-two-four!”

The frontlines were about to strike her with their various and sundry weapons, but hesitated. “Say that again,” one requested.

“I need Jayde Mercy,” Leona said.

They still lunged towards her, but apparently knew they couldn’t. “What’s goin’ on up there!” someone from the hallway demanded to know.

“She’s called Jayde Mercy,” someone in the front answered back.

“This ain’t Durus,” the other one reminded her.

“But we are Durune, and we will honor that!” she said.

“We’re not all Durune!” another one shouted.

“We are honoring the mercy petition!” the leader declared. “Everyone out!” she ordered. “I’ll be acting diplomat in this matter.”

They all reluctantly left, except for the leader, and one other woman.

“You may go,” the leader said to the other one.

“I am nine-three-seven-seven-two-four,” she explained.

The leader looked back, and thought this over. “Your inmate code. That was yours?” She looked back at Leona. “Did you want to speak with her?”

“Umm...yes. Her.”

The leader left the two of them alone.

“How do you know me?”

Leona stepped aside, revealing the closet door behind her. “I don’t know you, Jayde. But I still think you can help.”

“My name isn’t Jayde,” she said, like Leona was stupid. “It’s Dubravka. You requested Jayde Mercy, which means no one can hurt you until diplomatic solutions can be explored.”

“Oh,” Leona said. “Actual mercy.”

“Yeah.”

“Then why is your inmate code scratched here too?”

“No idea. Who did this?”

“No idea,” Leona echoed. “It may not have anything to do with me, and this was left for someone else, but would there be any way for you to help me? Are you, perhaps, a paramount?”

“I’m The Slipper. I can skip over any future period of time. It’s not really that useful since I can’t go backwards.”

“It might be, if you’re trying to escape from an angry mob,” Leona pointed out.

“Oh, no,” Dubravka argued. “I help you get away from them, they come after me.”

“I can get you out of here,” Leona promised. I just need time. If we can get them to go back to their normal lives for a few hours, and forget about us, then I can find a way back to The Warren. I will take you with me. You don’t seem to wanna be here, or to deserve to be.”

Dubravka was silent.

“Please.”

They could hear a ruckus outside. People were running back up their stairs, and not in a sort of happy dancing jog, but a rageful sprint.

“Dubra, please!” Leona begged.

Just before the mob ran into the room, Dubravka took Leona’s hand, and jumped them into the future.

Hokusai spent the entire day trying to find a way to send Leona’s emergency teleporter back to her, but had no luck. She was drenched in sweat as midnight central approached, knowing that if she didn’t get this right soon, they would have to wait an entire year before it could do Leona any good. She could be dead by then, if even one part of what that lying man said was true. If she was in as much danger as she seemed, she could be dead by now. Then midnight struck followed by dozens of other midnights. It was weeks before she discovered how to send the teleporter back to the other dimension, which it did so on its own. A week later, Leona’s body fell onto the floor beside her, from out of nowhere. She stared at it shock, knowing that she had failed.

A few days after that, decisions had been reached. Leona was to receive an airlock funeral, accompanied by the man they held responsible for her death. Paige did not take her burden of deciding the man’s fate lightly, and did not relish the idea of the Warren’s first execution, but he was a danger to the crew, and the mission. He needed to be dealt with more than he needed to be punished. She reasoned that he was the one who chose this, not her.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Hokusai said to little Étude. They had already said their goodbyes to Leona, and were currently placing a mildly sedated criminal in the airlock with her. She was still too young to see something like this. “Go back to our room.”

Étude refused, pushing Hokuai’s hand away, and trying to show her a little Buddha statue that Dar’cy had given to her before they left Durus.

“Étude, please. This is for grownups.”

“It’s okay,” Loa seemed to think. “She’s old enough to know what this is, and she’ll have to decide for herself whether she was right to stay or not. Go ahead, Brooke.”

Brooke wasn’t sure, but then she lifted her hand to open the outer doors.

“Stop!” Étude screamed. This was, as far as they knew, the first word she had ever uttered in her life.

“Étude,” Hokusai said, “you spoke. Can you do it again?”

She contorted her face, indicating the one word she did say felt gross in her mouth. She just held up the statue, shaking it in front of their faces, trying to get them to understand. They didn’t, so she threw it on the ground. It was too tough to break, but this seemed to bother her even more. She picked it up, and tried again, but failed. She shook it again, and tried to hand it to Paige. Once Paige took it from her, Étude mimed smashing the statue with her own hands.

“You want me to break it?” Paige asked. “This was a gift. You don’t break gifts.”

Étude was jumpy and teary-eyed, still pleading with them to listen to her, even though she couldn’t use her voice. Please, she implored them with her eyes.

“Trust her,” Loa suggested.

Paige mulled it over some more, then squeezed it with her hand, buckling the metal into a blob. She dropped it to the floor, but it never reached it. Dar’cy suddenly appeared, holding it in her hands. She looked it over with a sad face, and sighed. “I really liked this one. You guys must really need me.”

“Dar’cy, you’re here.”

“Yeah, Étude called me. It’s a failsafe. I always thread certain precious objects to the end of their life. If something like this breaks, I know something goes wrong. So what happened?”

The crew went over everything they knew, and everything they guessed, but didn’t know for sure. Having calmed down, Étude was able to express her thoughts as well. She came up with a plan to rewrite history without creating a potentially dangerous new timeline. They would keep reality about the same as it always was, but Dar’cy would go back to before the Warren launched from Durus, and leave a message for Leona to find in pocket one. All she needed to do was make a new friend in there who could help her stay alive long enough to find the emergency teleporter when she returned to the timeline in 2177. After all the specifics had been ironed out, Dar’cy hugged everyone, and threaded the Buddha back to her own time, to before the Warren had even left. Then reality shifted into a new timeline, so that no one could remember anything about Leona’s death.

« < » > Table of Contents

Missy’s Mission: Remorse (Part IV)

< > Entire Story

Somebody did die as a result of what the TAD officer called dimensional reestablishment. It was just the one person, but that was enough to make Missy feel absolutely awful about what she had done, and enough to prevent The Librarian from agreeing to help them. Missy and Dar’cy were not concerned about her decision, though, as the death weighed heavily on their hearts. People in their world teleported and time traveled frequently, and you just don’t hear about situations where they hurt someone in their landing. Though they can’t technically see where they’ll end up, it’s like the proverbial time gods compensate for any interference. If an amateur accidentally aims for the middle of a wall, or miscalculates the z-axis, time will usually pick the next closest safest spot to have them appear. This doesn’t always happen, but issues are rare. Generally speaking, you have to be pretty ready to die if you want your power to allow you to teleport into a volcano, or something.

Dar’cy might have been able to go back in time and prevent them from ever walking into the library, but that would have created an alternate timeline, leaving her with a duplicate of herself. “Object threading,” her father would always say, “is about exploration, experience, and adventure. It is not to be used to alter past mistakes. It would be irresponsible to have hundreds, dozens, or even just a few different versions of you running around the timeline.” Unlike other travelers, threaders were not capable of quantum assimilation, which was when two versions of the same individual merged into one, body and mind. Left unchecked, their numbers could grow disproportionately to the timeline’s historical population levels.

The Librarian and the library’s researchers were ruled innocent in the wrongful death of an elderly man named Oskari Belker. Missy and Dar’cy, however, as instigators of the incident, were convicted of a temporal crime, and sentenced to the number of years in prison equivalent to those their victim missed out on. If this punishment were legal on Earth, these years would have to be estimated, but here, there were people who knew exactly how long Oskari would have lived, if not for the two of them. Eleven years. They wouldn’t get out for another eleven years. Missy was ashamed to be grateful she hadn’t killed a child, and not for the same reason an emotionally righteous person would have. She felt like a sociopath.

Out of mercy, the court agreed to allow Missy and Dar’cy to serve their time together. Many wanted them to be separated, but the judge recognized their crime as unintentional, and she took that into consideration. Three years in, a young woman that Dar’cy recognized walked into their cell, holding a briefcase. Evidently, Kivi Bristol was a walking temporal anomaly. Sometimes she exists, and sometimes she doesn’t. She returns randomly, with different memories, from a completely different history. These aren’t just memory glitches, though. Every new version of her actually experienced the things she claims to have. A magical force reaches back in time and alters reality to account for every new version. About the only things that remains constant about her is her face, and her name. She isn’t even always aware of what she is. This one appeared to be fully cognizant.

“Good evening, I am the version of Kivi Bristol who was born on Durus.”

“It’s morning,” Missy pointed out.

Kivi looked at the sun shining through the window. Then she looked at her watch, then back to the sun. She sighed, and held her watch up to the window, deliberately pushing one of the tiny buttons, and twisting the face. Suddenly, the sun turned off, and was replaced with a night sky.

“What was that?” Dar’cy asked.

Kivi shook her head. “It’s an old trick, used to keep inmates submissive, and reliant on the guards. You eat when they say, and any hunger you feel is just in your imagination, because your mind isn’t remembering your past correctly.” This appalled her.

“I’m not sure I understand the reasoning behind that,” Missy started saying.

“You’ve been in here for two years.”

“That’s not right,” Dar’cy argued. “It’s been three.” She stepped aside to show Kivi the wall behind her. “See? We even etch away the days in stone, like a movie character who’s slowly going insane.”

Kivi pressed a button on her watch, and let the backlight shine brightly on the wall. As she passed over the etchings, about a third of them would disappear, leaving only roughly seven hundred that were truly there. “Your temporal perception has been decalibrated.”

“What would have happened when we thought we were at eleven years, but really weren’t yet?”

“You probably would have started screaming at the guards, and literally tearing out your hair.” She toppled her briefcase on the desk so she could open it. It looked like she pressed another button inside of it, and let out a bubble of distorted space. She adjusted the bubble so that it would grow, until it was large enough to accommodate all three of them. “Berg bubble,” she said vaguely. “A gift from another universe. No one can hear us outside the quote-unquote cone of silence.”

“Are you also a lawyer,” Dar’cy asked, presumably referring to another version of Kivi.

“Yes. I am, in fact, your lawyer, and I’m here to get you—” Before Kivi could finish her sentence, they could hear this extremely loud and sharp cry. It was coming from everywhere, and nowhere, all at once, echoing off the walls of the so-called berg bubble. She just waited there patiently, as the cry grew fainter, then finally faded entirely. “—out of prison,” she finished, as if having paused for nothing more than a sneeze.

“What in the actual ass was that?” Missy asked in shock.

“I heard that before, when I was stuck in a different timeline,” Dar’cy recalled.

“It’s the Time Shriek,” Kivi explained dismissively. “Don’t worry about it.”

“You were saying something about getting us out?”

“Indeed,” Kivi said. “New evidence has come to light regarding sentencing procedures. It seems the deathwatcher who predicted Mister Belker’s true moment of death was a friend of a friend of an acquaintance, who was related to the victim. An unbiased deathwatcher has come forward with the truth that Oskari would have actually died six years after the unfortunate incident, not eleven.”

“Oh,” Missy said sadly. “So we still won’t get out for another three years. Oh no, I forgot, four years.”

Kivi smirked. “This was a major violation of ethics, and a breach of this world’s judicial system. I will be appealing for early release. This revelation, coupled with the unauthorized time torture you’ve been experiencing, is enough to get you out within a week.”

“We’re getting off on a technicality?” Dar’cy questioned.

“I always hate when that happens,” Missy noted. “Usually to rich, privileged white people.”

“You’re not getting off,” Kivi told them. “Your parole would have been up in six years, which is over half your original sentence. Though you have only been here the two years, you perceived a full three. It’s their own damn fault for doing that to you, and now it works to your advantage. I never make guarantees, but we have a very strong case.”

“I don’t know about this,” Missy said with worry. “I’ll want to continue with my mission when I get out, and who knows who will be in a position to help us? Even if the system lets us go, we still have to contend with public opinion.”

“She’s right,” Dar’cy surprisingly agreed. “We need the Durune on our side. We should go through the whole six years.”

Kivi wasn’t happy about this, but she was outwomanned, and it wasn’t really her call. Still, she wasn’t going to back down so easily. “Four years,” she negotiated.

“Five and a half.”

“Five.”

“Five and a quarter.”

Kivi took a beat, then repeated, “five.”

Missy didn’t want to back down either, but Dar’cy was done. “Deal.”

“I need verbal confirmation from both of you,” Kivi said, calling her berg bubble back into the briefcase, and closing it up.

“Deal.”

Eight days later, Missy and Dar’cy found themselves once again standing in the courtroom, their no nonsense lawyer at their side. The proceedings were being broadcast on LoaTV. Their old friend, Loa had the ability to create little spatial windows all over the planet, and let others witness events at one location unfold remotely. Before she left on The Warren with everybody else, her power was adapted to technology, because people were too used to it to lose it.

Kivi began her argument, “your honor, these two have been model citizens in prison for the time they were in there. They don’t cause trouble, and they work to contribute positively to society by manufacturing emergency teleporters, and temporal anomaly detectors. Frankly, this court has failed them by allowing this terrifying oversight to force them into a sentence they don’t deserve. Furthermore, I have uncovered evidence that the facility has been using time tort—”

“Yes, yes, yes,” the judge interrupted. “I don’t need you going over this again, Miss Bristol. What’s your first name, again? Kiwi?”

“It’s Kivi. It has, like, a quicker v-b sound, uh...never mind. Sorry, go on.”

The judge went on, “Look, I know all about what went down with the deathwatcher, and I’ve been apprised of the conditions at Silversmith Penitentiary. So get on with what you want.”

Kivi looked to the defendants one last time, hoping they would change their minds. “We are requesting my clients to serve a total of five years, carried out at Westland Rehabilitation Center. We no longer trust the leadership at Silversmith, and they deserve better conditions.”

The judge widened her eyes. “Their feelings on the facility are fair, but I’m curious, why are you not asking for them to be released immediately?”

Kivi looked to her clients once more. “My clients feel a deep sense of sadness and regret at the loss of Oskari Belker. They feel it is in this planet’s best interest, and their own, that they honor his legacy by completing the majority of his sacrifice. We’re only asking for the one year to be removed because of the unlawful hardship they went through.”

The judge was impressed, but not entirely convinced. Kivi continued to explain their reasoning behind making them remain behind bars for three more years. The judge actually managed to talk them down to two. Due to pressure from public protests, they were out in one.

< > Entire Story

Microstory 830: The Hunted and the Elite

< > Table of Contents

We have learned from the mistakes of our past, but we have not forgotten their value. When we overthrew the king, we knew we would have to come up with something else, and do so rather quickly. Fortunately, we already had everything we needed at our disposal. Over time, people have noticed that objects, and sometimes people, often mysteriously fall into our world, from distant places. We used to believe these events to be random, or at least unpredictable, but a few smart people did the math, and now they can be forecast with extreme precision. This gave our group an advantage over the others, but we did not all keep these treasures for ourselves. We just control them, and we decide who gets what. The treasures are a commodity; a resource. If you know when and where they’re coming, you don’t have to work for anything. We call the people who receive most of these treasures The Elites. All Elites have everything they need, and we protect them from the dangers of the world. But this life comes with a price, in that it’s dull, and uneventful. They don’t have access to some art, like film and theatre. They don’t have interesting jobs, full of stories they can go home and tell their families. Sure, they live in luxury, but when choosing your place, you have to decide whether that’s really worth it. If the answer is no, then you can choose to be The Hunted. Though they do not live in luxury, they too are provided with enough food to survive, at no cost to them. Except they have to find where that food is hidden, and fight to keep it out of other people’s hands. Meanwhile, they are being hunted by our world’s criminals, so they’re also fighting for their survival. It can be a lot of fun, though, if you form the right alliances, and come across the right treasures. We don’t know if this is the best way to maintain a civilization, but it’s the best we have ever had. It perfectly blends elements from our past, and we will not give it up easily.

Microstory 829: Broad Side of a Barn

< > Table of Contents

My squad is by no stretch the imagination an elite team, but we are known for being reckless and crazy. We move into dangerous situations without thinking, we disarm bombs without blast suits, and there was even one time we attached our ankles to the back of a train, and let it drag us. You kind of had to be there for our choice to make any real sense. If we were part of a real military force, we would each and every one of us have been relieved of duty long ago. But this isn’t your average contingency, and we’re not fighting an average war. Technically the people we’re fighting are aliens, but technically they’re not. Experts aren’t sure how it happened, but ancient aliens appear to have displaced half of our populations thousands of years ago. They progressed scientifically faster than us, and recently came back. Their first target was the real military. It was gone before we knew what hit us. Fortunately, their plan to dismantle our government was about as far as they had figured out, so after they succeeded, they didn’t really know what they were going to do, or what they were up against. New military factions sprung up to fill the void, and though we were less trained, our enemy no longer had the benefit of surprise. In response to our persistence, our alien brethren just up and left the planet, and for a time, things were okay. The only active members of the military were people like us, who had grown too used to the life, and fancied ourselves new ad hoc police. We didn’t do our jobs very well, though, because a new conflict began right under our noses.

Known as the Barn Wars, these were fought between opposing factions, many of whom did not personally fight in the Human Aliens War. Resources were thin on our blue planet, and everyone started realizing the only way they were going to live was if they became farmers. The cities were just too torn apart to do anybody any good. There wasn’t enough farmland to go around,though, so the fighting continued. My squad and I found ourselves in the middle of a fight in an actual barn, perpetuating a more literal interpretation of the name of the war. We quickly realized we had fought in this particular barn many years ago. A member of our squad, and one of my best friends, sacrificed himself so that the rest of us could escape. But he was here, alive and fighting, as if no time had passed for him, except now he was on the other side. Though he was completely okay with killing anyone else, he hesitated to do me any harm, so this gave me time to ask him what the hell was going on. All he said was that he had been against us the entire time, but he didn’t say why, or what he was meant to accomplish by infiltrating our group. The battle ended, and we went our separate ways. It was one of the last of the Barn Wars, because few people were even left alive to fight, and those that were had little competition. Anyone who still wanted to farm was able to do so in peace. A few weeks later, my former friend hunts me down, and admits that he was actually a double agent; that he was just trying to gather information for us. I don’t believe him at first, but then he says he’s discovered the Barn Wars were fabricated by the alien humans. They were designed to lower our population, so they could come back, and more easily take over. This is apparently going to happen in only two more weeks, so now I have to decide if I don’t believe him, or if I’m going to agree to work with, and try to warn all surviving factions.