Microstory 842: Band Together

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I’ve seen enough weird stuff in my career in the agency that it’s pretty hard to surprise me. I’ve encountered ghosts, monsters, aliens, and people with special powers. Everything has a logical explanation, whether it follows the public’s understanding of science, or not. Even time travel has its set of rules, and by the time the first temporal anomaly was discovered, my division had already come up with protocols to deal with it. This last assignment I’m working on has me all confused, though, because while it seemed a classic case of past life resurgence, there appears to be a time component as well. My subjects can’t explain what happened to them, but from what I gather, they were first born a few decades ago, but die in a bus crash a few decades from now. This means that a version of each of them is already out in the world, living their lives as thirtysomethings in a local band, still trying to get a record deal. Somehow they die in the future, and instead of being reincarnated sometime later, their souls were transported back into the past, and now they’re teenagers. Nothing like this has ever been recorded before. Our researchers have been looking into it since they first started claiming to remember their past lives, but they can’t come to any sound conclusion on how this happened. What’s clear is that there is definitely a still-living band, and that these teens are genetically identical to its members. Now, like I said, we have protocols for this. Normally, we would send any traveler from the future incapable of returning home to pocket dimension that a race of friendly aliens designed for this very thing. Theoretically, they’re meant to live out the rest of their days in there, and leave the timeline undisturbed. But my superiors don’t think this is fair to do to the band, because they didn’t ask for this, and returning them to their original point in time would be just as dangerous to the timeline as leaving them here. Besides, since they were born and spent the majority of their new lives totally oblivious to the fact that they were reincarnations, we don’t really have the right. So the agency made a decision to use them positively. Recruiting people who have information on the future is not unheard of, but it requires special permission, from a very picky committee. They approved a program, however, that would allow these children to continue learning music, while also training to become agency assets. They chose me for this, because I have considerable experience in both fields, and they felt I would be a good influence on the youngsters. I hope they’re right about me, because I’m not totally convinced I can do this.

Microstory 841: Subtweets

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Birds. They have language. Most people think that animals aren’t really saying much when they make their noises, and for the most part, they’re right. Birds, on the other hand, are the second most intelligent species on the planet. Since Douglas Adams already took the joke about humans not being the first, I’ll just go ahead and confess that we actually are. It’s important to note that birds are in a fairly distance second place to us, but it’s possible to learn their words, and communicate with them. My mother, for instance,  is fully fluent in no less than twenty-seven avian dialects, of which she has attempted to teach me maybe half. As a normal child, with plans to only interact with other humans, I never paid attention to her lessons. There without the grace of God goes my brother, who listened intently, and now knows more bird dialects than mom, as well as squirrel sign language. Despite my reluctance to communicate with our feathered friends, I ended up learning more than I realized. Earlier this morning, I was walking through the woods, as I do, when I heard some chirping. I thought little of it, because that’s where those things live, so it wasn’t weird yet. I wasn’t even trying to translate what they were saying, because who cares? I admit that the songs they were singing drew me in, and I felt warm inside. It almost seemed like they were directed towards me, a possibility only reinforced by the fact that the songs never wavered, no matter how far I walked. Though it was hard to make them out through the branches, I started thinking they were following me around, like maybe they knew I was related to a birdspeaker. I decided that whatever they know, or think they know about me, I needed to find out what they were saying, just in case. I closed my eyes and harkened back to my school days, concentrating on remembering everything my mother tried to teach me. I was surprised to learn how much I had retained from that period in my life, and soon I didn’t have to try to so hard to interpret them. They were saying horrible, nasty things to me. I can’t even repeat them here, they were so bad. The closer I focused, the more I understood how angry they were with me, for no apparent reason. They were actually threatening my life if I didn’t get out of their territory right quick. Is this what birds are saying when we’re around? I thought they just talked about how pretty each other’s ultraviolet wing designs were, and reminded each other that they were related, so they wouldn’t accidentally mate. But if this is the truth, why did my mom not warn me about it? And if she did, why did she not make sure my mind was wandering. Anyway, long story short, I didn’t run out of their fast enough, so you tell me, Doctor; can Baltimore orioles carry rabies?

The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 2, 2179

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Vitalie was waiting for Leona when she arrived in pocket five in 2179. “This area has been cleared, madam,” she said like a law enforcement subordinate.

“What are you doing here? I thought your fathers weren’t going to let you interview people, or go anywhere alone.”

“I’m a rebel,” Vitalie answered in a British accent, “I rebel.”

“Vitalie...”

“I realized that it doesn’t really matter whether my dads are okay with me doing this or not. I’m capable of it, so I’ma gonna.”

“Typical teenager,” Leona said.

“I am Groot,” she said in feigned mockery. Leona had provided the pockets with a decent library of entertainment choices, which Vitalie was clearly making good use of.

“Well, I assume you’ve already cleared pocket six too,” Leona guessed.

“I have,” Vitalie confirmed.

“So...who done it?”

“The killer is not on the ship, or one of the six pockets.”

Leona just stared at her, knowing that Vitalie was just dying to reveal the truth.

She finally broke down and continued, “you would have never found him.”

“He’s in a seventh pocket dimension, isn’t he?”

“That’s right,” Vitalie said, impressed.

“And you’re sure?”

“I can’t actually get into said dimension, but I can feel that it’s there. It’s been eating at me since last year when we went to visit Serif and Saga. Like...interference. I have to pass it in order to get from my pocket to any other. I guess it’s something I’ve always been able to sense, but now I really notice it.”

“Well, looks like this has all been a waste of my time. I should have just asked for your help in the beginning. I even studied the manifest. I knew about everyone’s paramount powers before I went in.”

“I was too young to do any good back then, so it likely wouldn’t have helped. But it’s done now, and I assure you that he has not been able to hurt anyone else. He’s trapped there, just like everyone else.”

“Why did Annora create it?”

“That I do not know, but the ship’s sensors would have picked him up if he had left. He’s been there the whole time, and I’m fairly confident that he’s alone, but maybe that’s just because it feels pretty small.”

“Do you know how to get to it? Where exactly on the ship is the access point?”

“I don’t know that either, but I’m also fairly confident in your ability to figure it out.”

“Just...” Leona hesitated. “If I leave here, and you, umm—”

“Made a mistake?” Vitalie offered. “You will have wasted an opportunity to interview all these people, yes. You’re just gonna have to trust that I watched every single episode in the Law and Order Franchise, as well as 24, Homeland, Without a Trace, and of course, The Closer.”

That would have to do. “I guess I’ll go back and try to find this secret dimension, eh?”

“Call me if you need me. I figured out how to make one of those phone numbers that some choosers use to communicate across space and time. All you do is find one of those ancient Earthan one cent coins, and say, be the penny.”

Leona smiled. “Okay, I’ll remember that, and see if I can find one of those things lying around.”

Just after the sun turned back off, Leona activated her emergency teleporter, and went back to the ship.

The first thing she did was debrief her captain, Paige. Then she went to find Hokusai in her lab, hoping to recruit her to find the seventh dimension. Unfortunately, she was very not happy about being interrupted. Loa came from down the hallway, and pulled Leona out of the line of fire.

“She’s in the zone,” Loa said. “You can’t bother her when she’s like this. Believe you me, I tried many times back on Durus, which is why our relationship started falling apart. It took years for us to find each other again.”

“I need her help,” Leona explained.

“She’s already helping you, trying to get Serif and the other humans out of pocket four. She thinks she may be able to reopen the entrances to the pockets, using Annora’s DNA, but she wouldn’t be able to open only one at a time, or close them again afterwards. Until we find this murderer, she can’t risk that, so she’s frustrated.”

“That’s what I need her help with. Vitalie found the murderer. He’s in an unregistered dimension, that can be accessed on this ship somehow, so I need her to find it.”

“Oh, well if that exists, then it’s not on the ship.”

“How do you know?”

“That was one of the first things we did. Hokusai built a temporal anomaly detector, based on what little data Missy left for her regarding Ida Reyer’s Compass of Disturbance. We were looking for anyone who was invisible, or moving at superspeed, or, yes, even a dimension we didn’t know about. We found absolutely nothing.”

“Well, shit,” Leona said. “Vitalie was pretty sure of herself.”

“Well, there are six places on this ship that we couldn’t scan with the detector. It’s possible to attach a pocket dimension to another pocket dimension. Hindsight 20/20, we should have given you the detector.”

“So I’m going to have to go to every other pocket and scan them now? That’ll take too long, we’ll land before I’m done anyway.”

Loa thought about this. “Not necessarily. If the secret pocket can be accessed from another pocket, it was probably discovered by someone in that pocket; someone who lives there.”

“Okay...”

“Thankfully, we have someone who can transport herself to any pocket, without waiting a whole year in between.”

“I don’t know that I could ask her to do that for us.”

“I don’t know that you can afford not to,” Loa noted. “We have the full manifest, so all she has to do is run a roll call in each dimension. That should tell us who’s missing, which should tell us where they escaped. Now, as far as what you need to do to get to them, and get them out, I couldn’t tell ya.”

“So I do need Hokusai’s help.”

“I suppose you’ll need that done before midnight central, so you can use whatever she invents next year. And I suppose she can take a break from the pocket four problem to work on that.”

“So you’ll talk to her for me.”

Loa sighed. “I’ll do anything, just to be done with this horror film.”

Paige agreed to let Leona use the fabricator to create one tiny little penny, so they could make contact with Vitalie. After joking about how quickly after speaking that Leona needed her again, Vitalie agreed to do what they needed of her. Since there was no way to send even data between the dimension, she kept having to return to an interface terminal in the ship to memorize as many names on each manifest as she could at one time. She found two names missing; one from pocket six, and another from pocket three. Leona and Serif should have thought to do a roll call back when this began. That was a stupid error; one of many. Just to make sure they covered their bases, they continued with the head count in the other pockets. Since pocket four was so incredibly large by now—existing at the scope of an entire Earth-sized planet—Camden had to feed them the information. He had long ago memorized the entire list of original residents, who were now outnumbered by Maramon almost 600,000 to one. He had no reason to believe anyone had survived undetected at the earlier stages of development. Pocket two was so dangerous for Vitalie, even while supposedly protected by the astral barrier, so she never spoke to a single soul. Instead she was provided with profile images of all the residents, and checked them off one by one.

So it seemed the two missing persons could be found in either pocket six, or pocket three. They had always considered the chance that the killer was not working alone, which was a possibility they were clinging to now. Because if only one was the killer, then the other could be in grave danger, or already dead. Leona decided to enter pocket six, because neither suspect carried a dossier that made them sound more dangerous to the other. They were both big strong men who, while not leaders of the passenger rebellion that started this whole mess, were also not the caring and peaceful type like the kind Vitalie lived with in pocket two. It was really just a crapshoot, but as long as Hokusai found a way to detect and open the secret dimension before midnight, this issue would be resolved in at most a matter of two years.

Once this was all finished, Leona asked Vitalie for one last favor; to astrally project her fathers to the ship, so she could personally apologize to them. She then assured them both that Vitalie’s part in this ordeal was officially over, and that she would no longer accept any further help she tried to give. She was still a fourteen year old girl, who likely had a hard road ahead of her growing up on a planet she wasn’t born on. Wayne and Raphael wanted her to have a safer life, which was why they were bringing her home, but that didn’t mean it was going to be easy on her. She had already done so much, and it was now time for her to focus on her own mental health. They were appreciative of Leona’s words, but could not express happiness for how things went down, and they certainly weren’t planning any dinner parties with Leona and Serif once they arrived on Earth. That was fair.

With an hour to spare, Hokusai was finished retrofitting the temporal anomaly detector with an access feature. She couldn’t begin to guess what Leona would find in the secret dimension, or provide any way for her to prepare for it herself, but this was just going to have to do. Paige tried to give Leona a gun for her protection, but she had just spent the last several days without one, fully believing the culprit could be on the other side of every day. A weapon never occurred to her then, so it shouldn’t be necessary now. Still, she felt more comfortable with a little defense, so Brooke fabricated a graphene bullet-proof uniform, which Paige was completely happy to authorize. She also made it so that it would be nearly impossible to remove the emergency teleporter from Leona’s person. They didn’t want a repeat of the pocket one incident. Leona sat at the entrance to pocket six, passing the time before midnight struck by performing some meditative breathing techniques that Dar’cy had taught her. Then it was time to go back to work, and finish this.

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Missy’s Mission: Hotspot (Part VI)

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“It’s not possible for there to be more than one time book?” Dar’cy asked skeptically.

“There is nothing written in the time book. It is simply capable of absorbing and displaying any book within its own pages. In order to do this, it has to have a deep quantum connection to every single thing that has ever been written and published. And I mean every book, at all points in time, in all realities, and all universes, which would include other time books, if they existed. It’s like the internet, but better.”

“What makes it better? No videos?”

“That’s not the point, Dar’cy,” Missy said. “All we’re asking is for help finding the words to one book in particular, Mister...”

“Lorenz. But my first name is Ildemire.”

“Ildemire,” Missy continued, “is there any way for your time book to...intuit which book we’re looking for?”

“You would have to use the index.”

“Great, let’s try that.”

“In order to do that, you’ll need to start with the narrowest concept first. If you’re trying to find a certain book about horses, you wouldn’t search for animals, or living creatures. That would take too long. So how specific can you be? You said you don’t know which book, but what do you know about it?”

They thought about this, and the obvious answer was, “cure for time powers”.

“Too long,” he said. “And too broad. Like I said, you’ll be pulling books from multiple universes.”

“Cure for chooserism,” Missy offered.

“How about just chooserism, then we can narrow to cure for?”

“You’re the expert.”

He opened the book to the first page, and took out a pen. “Now, remember that I created this out of nothing. I couldn’t just wave my hand, and the book would magically appear. It took me years to program, so it’s not the most efficient. I am planning a newer version, though.”

“Okay,” they both said.

Ildemire wrote the word Index at the top of the page, underlined it, and waited for the following pages to fill up with almost nothing but blackness.

“What is that?” Dar’cy asked.

“It’s the entire index,” he started to answer, “written in text so small, that it’s completely illegible. That’s why we have to narrow it.” Right under his first word, he wrote the letter C, which caused the text to jiggle around a little, but it still appeared to be about as small as before. He wrote the h, then the o, and so on until he had completed the whole word. The text was still incredibly tiny, but they were starting to discern space in between the lines. He wrote cure for, and now they could make out actual words. The index seemed to be operating more on sounds, than on letters. They could see options for the cure for charisma, the cure for nazism, and the cure for terrorism. And evidently someone had, or will have later written books on solving the problem of tourism. “Here it is,” Ildemire said. “Cure for chooserism. There’s only one book about that. Let’s see, it’s called Missy’s Mission.”

“Oh, click on that,” Dar’cy said.

“No,” Missy warned. “That’s my book. We cannot read that.”

“It’ll clearly have the answers,” Dar’cy argued.

“It won’t if we read it,” Missy returned.

“Huh?”

“It’ll create an ontological paradox,” Missy explained. “If we only know how to get rid of my time powers because we read about a future where we get rid of my time powers, then where did the concept originate? Did I figure out how to cure myself, or did the book just tell me? The answer can’t just come out of nowhere.”

“But it’s already written. Future, past; what does it matter?”

“If we select this, and it’s written, all we will learn is of our failure. It cannot tell us something we don’t already know.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Ildemire said. “And what you said earlier given me an idea. You don’t need a cure, because your condition is not a disease. You just need to remove the powers.” He scratched out cure for on the input page, and replaced it with removal of.”

“Removal of chooserism makes little sense,” Dar’cy pointed out.

“It’s worked, though. One book came back as well, and it’s not your own. It’s not even from the future. Hotspots: A Look into Places of Great Power on Earth, and Beyond. Ever heard of it?”

They shook their heads.

“Well, let’s take a look.” There was no way to click on the item, which Ildemire hoped to be able to do in his second creation. Under everything else he had written, he penned the name of the book they were looking for. The rest of the pages transformed, leaving them with fairly large font. “Sorry, there’s no way to adjust that. It’s always goes from the first page to the last. It can’t remove pages, or just leave them blank. As I’ve mentioned, this was my first try.”

“This will be fine,” Missy said graciously. Thank you so much for your help.”

“Yes, thank you,” Dar’cy said. We’ll call if we need any further assistance.”

He laughed. “Oh, no. I don’t leave this book out of my sight.”

“Well, that’s gonna be a problem,” Dar’cy said.

“No, it won’t,” Missy corrected. “We completely understand.”

“We need privacy.”

“No, really, it doesn’t matter. He can always read the book himself after we leave.”

And so the three of them started doing research, trading the book around as certain concepts intrigued them. They ended up skipping all the information about Earthan locations, like Stull, Kansas and Mount Roraima, and went straight to the section on Durus. Words, sentences, and even entire paragraphs in this section were completely blank. There was clearly meant to be text, but it had been erased, likely by time itself. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Ildemire said in horror. “My time book reads every book. It’s not supposed to have any gaps.”

“Maybe the original edition of Hotspots is also special,” Missy suggested compassionately, “and they interfere with each other, like how the only thing that can cut a diamond is another diamond.”

“Or a laser,” Dar’cy added.

He sighed and dropped the book in Missy’s lap, so he could concentrate on palming his face. “Well, I hope whatever you’re looking for is in there somewhere. I don’t understand why it didn’t pull the whole text. That’s never happened before.”

“I have faith that what’s here will be enough.” She let him wallow while she lifted the book and started reading. “Few have ventured to this dark world, searching for a way to remove their time powers. Choosers, for the most part, like what they can do, but there are those who consider it to be a curse. There is no evidence that anyone has ever succeeded—where have I heard that before?—but if the answer lies anywhere, it’s in a terrible region derivatively known to the natives as The Abyss.”

Ildemire let out a chirpy laugh. “I’m sorry, it’s just funny. Of course the one place you’re not allowed to go is the one place you need to go. Fate would not have it any other way.”

“The Abyss sounds bad, what is it?” Dar’cy asked.

“Long ago, this world was overrun by monsters. My ancestors created the Mage Protectorate to secure our borders, and keep them at bay. But all they really did was stall, while the enemy enhanced their forces. A full-on war broke out, and humans were almost completely obliterated. But then one young woman with immense power turned the tide, and won it for us in less than an hour, at the end of which she closed the massive portal that was drawing those monsters from another universe. Still, the Abyss remains active, to this day. No apparent monster can come through to our side, but we have every reason to believe we can now travel to their side. Everyone who has tried to study what’s going on in the haze has disappeared for good.”

Missy and Dar’cy gave each other a look, remembering words of warning that all choosers who attempted to do what they were trying now had indeed gone missing. “Dar’cy, this is one of those moments where I remind you that you have no obligation to help me. I can move forward on my own, but if you try to go with me, you may never come back.”

Dar’cy picked up a little figurine on Ildemire’s desk. “Does this have sentimental or monetary value?”

“Not really,” he replied. “Why?”

She showed it to Missy. “We’ll take this with us. If we experience issues, we can always come back here yesterday.”

“Dar’cy I’m serious. Just because you have a way out doesn’t mean you should come along in the first place. Besides, we don’t even know whether this will take us to another universe, let alone if you can thread across them.”

“I know. But I am coming with you. We’re a team.” Dar’cy redirected her attention to Ildemire. “Can you take us to the Abyss?”

“I can show you how to get there, but I won’t take one step towards that place.”

After Ildemire gave them directions, Missy and Dar’cy went home to rest up for the week. While they were waiting to work up their courage, they decided to sell the house, which gave them enough money to afford a bag of holding, plus a year’s worth of food and supplies to take with them. Once they were ready, they started making the long trip out to the mysterious area where no one goes. Everyone they asked refused to teleport or drive them anywhere near it, so they were forced to walk, stopping to camp at the end of each day. Weeks later, they were at the edge of a slow and quiet storm. Smokey masses billowed in front of them, threatening to remove all sense of direction. An automated message from another one of those solid holograms, this one of a security guard, warned them to turn back. They ignored it, and pressed on.

They tied themselves together with a rope that was a few meters long, but they still tried to stay within sight of each other, which was difficult with visibility at maybe one meter. It seemed like a good idea at the time to give each other some breathing room, but it proved to not be good enough. At some point, the rope broke, either by being worn out, or perhaps because a mischievous monster left behind from the days of old cut it on purpose. However it happened, it separated them for what Missy believed to be several minutes. She just kept wandering around, eventually finding herself in a clearing of the haze.

Dar’cy came out of a farmhouse that was sitting in the middle of the open area, and walked out to greet her. “You’re finally here.”

“How long has it been?” Missy asked, afraid to know the answer.

“Two years.”

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Microstory 840: Low Man on the Ladder

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The Ladder. It is the single greatest challenge and honor. If chosen to ascend this monumental feat of engineering, it means your life is complete, that you gave accomplished everything you possibly can. Or so we’re told. Of course, as it is a challenge, just because you’re selected to attempt it, doesn’t mean you’ll succeed. Hundreds over the years have tried, and no one has heard of a winner. Perhaps that is the point, they say. They believe it to be one final lesson, that no matter how you lived, you die like everyone else. Which I guess is true, but that doesn’t make things any easier when most of the people are living in squalor, and the few rich want for nothing. Others think the point is to not climb, but to fall off, and meet The Abyss smile first. It is true that roughly three-fourths of selectees choose this route, and let go after working up enough courage. Many, however, still attempt to make the full climb. Few are given the privilege to watch—ritualizers, administrators, guards—and what little information on the truth of the event that leaks out suggests that everybody eventually falls. The rungs are far apart and slippery. The wind is fierce and unyielding. It would take a massive amount of physical strength to make it all the way to the top, if such a place even exists. The ladder rises above the clouds, so no one has seen the top. People have spent their whole lives training for it, only to find themselves never being picked. It would seem that the more you want it, the less of a chance you have in getting it. And I swear there’s a negative correlation between the amount of wealth you possess, and your chances of being chosen.

I never wanted it at all. I had no interest in trying to reach the top, nor in learning the reality behind it. I was always totally content just keeping my head down, and being me. So naturally, I was selected two days after my twenty-fourth birthday. “Any advice?” I ask the attendant as she’s preparing me for my journey. A few people have tried to run, and escape their fate, but none of them has ever made it, so what chance would I have? All I can do is hope for a quick death, because honestly, I don’t think there’s anything up there. I think our leaders just kill people. The attendant smiles at me shyly, and points to a patch of fungus in the corner of the cave. I kneel down to inspect it. “Powdernose. For traction. Perfect, thanks.” I tear some of off the ground, and rub it into my hands, as well as all up my arms, just for good measure. She directs me to the cave exit, where I can see the Ladder cross from bottom to top. The guards don’t look at me, nor do the ritualizers, whose chorus of speeches I ignore. They’re not saying anything that will help me through this. It’s all just a bunch of spiritualistic nonsense designed to make them feel better about what they’re doing. I wonder how committed they would be to their beliefs if they were ever chosen. I bet they’re exempt. My attendant leads me to the edge, and motions for me to begin my climb. With no choice, I hold onto the nearest rung, and swing around to face the mountain. She’s not smiling anymore. I reach up to the next rung, but the ladder begins to sink, which I wasn’t ready for, so I lose my grip and fall right off.

As I’m plummeting to my death, I’m imagining all those people up there, rolling their eyes, and joking with each other about how quick I lost. Maybe they’re paying one of them money, having bet on how long I would last. I can’t give them the satisfaction. I’m determined to catch the ladder once more, and at least climb far enough back up to see their faces again. I stick my arm back towards the Ladder, and grab onto the rung, holding on for dear life, knowing that my action will start it sinking once more. I don’t know how I manage, but I don’t break my arm. I scramble to get my feet back on, so I can restart. I have to get up there before most of them leave. The Ladderwatchers are literally always looking at the Ladder, but I want everyone to see before they go home for the week. I want to prove that I’m better than they think. Oh no, it was the adrenaline, which is wearing off now. I did break my arm, and it’s killing me. My God, I thought I knew what pain was. All I can do is cling to the wood, letting myself drift further and farther toward the darkness. As I draw nearer, I begin to hear incredibly frightening sounds. They’re cries of agony, and monstrous howls. Whatever is down there, I do not want to see it, but I’m too tired, and too hurt. Again, I just have to hope it ends quickly. But then the darkness passes, and I see ground below me. The Ladder continues to sink and be swallowed by the soil. I see bodies too; some fresh, some just bones. Once I’m only a few feet above the surface, I hop off, and take a look around. An old man comes out of the shadows with a huge grin. “You’ve figured out the secret. Come, friend. We built a better society here than we ever had on the mountain. We are all equal.”

Microstory 839: Alien

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My whole life, the only thing I ever wanted was to get out of the lab. The nice people taking care of me taught me all about the world outside, but never let me see it for myself. They recited histories, and read me current events. They let me listen to music, and personal interest stories on public radio. They didn’t let me watch any television or movies, though, which made it difficult to conceive how they worked. Still, they developed me into one of the smartest individuals in the world, simultaneously keeping me the most sheltered, and least experienced. Hell, I never even knew what they looked like. Everything was provided for me remotely, using robots and other automation tools. One mistake they made, however, was teaching me technical skills, which I ultimately used to escape my room. There appeared to be no security in the hallways, probably because they never dreamed I would ever do anything like this, and likely had no reason to believe anyone outside knew this place existed. Once I opened the door to the outside, though, the alarms started blaring, so I had to run as far as I could, as fast as I could. There was no time to waste gawking at all these new stimuli, filling my sense of wonder with brand new encounters, or to savor the moments. I just kept going, all through town. I could see some figures around me, but it was the middle of the night, so there weren’t a lot of people about, and I couldn’t make out any faces. Thinking it best to get off the streets, I ducked into an alleyway, and found an unlocked door to a movie theatre. This is a good place to hide out, I thought. It won’t open for another several hours, and hopefully my trail will have gone cold by the time I have to leave. I sneak into the auditorium, find a row of seats on the end, right up against a large pillar, and try to get some sleep.

When I wake up, I can hear people around me. The lights have risen to a dim, but I’m bleary-eyed and afraid, so I stay curled up, and hope that no one notices me, which they don’t. I must have overslept, but as long as I wait until the movie starts, I should be okay. The house lights go down, leaving us in relative darkness, and I finally feel safe enough to sit up. There aren’t many others in the first matinee showing, and no one pays me any mind. I look around with a smile, glad to be in the real world, and excited to see more. While I’m here, though, I might as well enjoy the film. They’re playing Paranormal Activity 2, which I remember reading about. Supposedly, a lot of people went into the first in the franchise thinking it was real, but I’m not sure I believe that. I really like this one, and don’t have much trouble understanding it, but they never explained why it was billed a ghost story when it’s clearly about aliens. I would have preferred my first time to not be so scary too, but I’m just grateful I didn’t wait to break out until next week when Saw 3D is released. Once the movie ends, the house lights come back up, and I can finally see the other people there. They look completely bizarre to me, with two large ears, and tiny beady eyes. There’s hair on top of their heads, like eyelashes, but a lot longer. Their skin is pink and translucent, and I don’t see a single person with a tail. Is this a theatre for aliens? They look exactly like the ones from the movie. How did they get here, and for what purpose? Then I realize that they’re not the aliens. I am. Now it all makes sense. They named me Géënmu, but I’ve never heard of anyone else with that name, and they even gave me a baby naming book to reference. I don’t know how I didn’t see it before. Géënmu. Genetically engineered mutant. I don’t belong out here. I have to find a way back.

Microstory 838: Man of War

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The galaxy is a big place, but we have mapped every single star, and conquered nearly all of them. Along the way, we discovered a few alien races, but life is so much rarer than even the most skeptical of scientists predicted. Most of our neighbors were technologically inferior to us, so when we declare a star system to be ours, there is little use for them to fight us on it. There are enough habitable planets here to satisfy the needs of every family, and though people tend to cluster together, it remains an option. Still, we set aside certain worlds for specific purposes, treating each one like our ancestors used blocks in a city. There’s one for giant immersive theme parks, and another for escape scenarios and scavenger hunts. I was on my way to a water world known for the best surfing in the quadrant when our ship suffered a cataclysmic failure, and I was forced to jettison myself in an emergency pod. I waited amongst the debris for two days, waiting to either be rescued, or at least make contact with other survivors, but I was running out of rations, and had to find the nearest system. Pods can’t last forever on the power they store—really just enough to make it a few light years, so I place myself in hibernation—and set course.

As my pod approaches, the computer wakes me up, and alerts me that the only planet with a satisfactory atmosphere is marked classified, and that I’m not allowed to land. That won’t be a problem, because I just need to hang out in orbit around the sun for a few hours, then I can make my way to the next system over. It’s tedious, and I may not find civilization for years, but it’s better than dying. The planet seems to have other plans for me, however. A message comes through, with the voice of an angry military man, scolding me for deserting the war. Obviously I’ve done no such thing, but some computer down there is programmed to react to a vessel in a certain way, and I’ve somehow triggered that action. I try to get out of its way, but it won’t leave me be. I try to explain myself, but it wasn’t programmed to recognize my responses. After some digging, I discover this to be an abandoned military training planet, built after the Bot Wars of the 22nd century, in preparation for a second uprising that never came. The messages continue, with the General telling me that my unit is counting on me, along with hundreds of thousands of other soldiers. Despite my best efforts, the training computer has designated me a soldier with an obligation, so it takes control of my pod, and drags me down to the surface. It lands me in the middle of a bunch of debris, proving that others have crashed before me. Once I’ve learned that there’s no way to fix my pod from inside of it, the exercise begins automatically, sending millions of robots to attack me, unaware that I am literally the only human even here, except for a bunch of corpses scattered around. From what I remember, I realize this must be a reenactment of the Battle of Kanapthes, which no human survived. I don’t know why they’re using real weapons, but I do know I have to get the hell out of here. I quickly learn that none of the other ships will work either, though, so my only hope is to reach the core processor of this training program, and shut this whole thing down. It’s only a few kilometers away, so I can make it if I’m smart about it. I peek over a ridge to inspect my surroundings, and a robot shoots me in the head. I roll down the hill, and die next to the other poor schmucks who probably had the same idea.

Microstory 837: Family Trip

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Our parents died in a plane crash when my two sisters and I were still just children. Well, it wasn’t so much a crash as a hole blew through the cabin, and their row of seats was sucked out. The rest of the plane landed somewhat safely on the highway. The news of it was overshadowed by certain other aircraft tragedies that happened on the same day a week earlier. The third man with them left a family behind too, which served to bring us all together. My older sister wasn’t quite eighteen years old, but she was given emancipation, and started taking care of all four of us. I didn’t appreciate until I got older how much she did for us. The youngest of our foster brothers was a child prodigy, and a scientific genius. We all moved into their house, and found it to be equipped with a full laboratory in the basement that would bring Dexter to tears. He became obsessed with time travel, as you can imagine, hoping that one day, he would see his parents again. He had no plans to change history, seeing that as far too dangerous. All he wanted was to be able to speak with them again, and we supported his delusion. We discovered nearly ten years later that he was not so crazy after all, when he asked us down to his lab to show us something, and dropped us all the way back to 1974 with absolutely no warning. He wasn’t exactly aiming for that year, but he apparently hadn’t worked out all the bugs, so this was where we found ourselves. Only then, standing at the welcome sign, did we realize our parents all grew up in the same small Iowa town. As far as we knew, my mother and father stepped onto that plane without knowing the passenger they were seated next to, or his wife, who had died of cancer two years prior.

But here we were in Watland, a town so small I don’t even think they bother putting it on the map in 2011. We asked our resident physicist to send us back, but he said his recall device was damaged in the trip and he would need time to fix it, so we decided to go ahead with his plan to meet the younger version of our parents, who were now still in grade school. It was a surreal experience, being older than mom and dad, smiling as they tried in vain to build a sand castle with the pebbles under the jungle gym during recess. We knelt down to help them, glad for the fact that the 1970s were a different time, and the staff was too busy smoking around the corner to be bothered about five grown adults at a playground. We talked about what their favorite subjects were in school, and who their friends were. Just then our foster sibling’s new parents came over. They really did know each other this whole time. We wondered whether they recognized each other on the plane, or if it was just this crazy coincidence, and they had been too long estranged. The bell rang to end recess, and we knew it was time to leave. Our brother flipped a switch, and told us he was ready, revealing that the device hadn’t really been broken, and he was just stalling for time. But he was wrong, because if it wasn’t broken before, it certainly was now. We were stuck in the past, and he didn’t have the materials he would need to build a new machine, and get us back home. He worked on it for the better part of the rest of the day, though, and realized there was some kind of temporal interference, which he was able to track by rewiring his device. It led us to the edge of a cliff, where we found an eclectic group of people, strapping themselves into parachutes, and other gear. They smiled as we approached, seeing our futuristic clothes, and knowing we didn’t belong there, just like them. They hinted that they were from further in the future than 2011, but wouldn’t say exactly when. They provided us with our own special parachutes, which would evidently read our unique temporal signatures, and take us back to our own time, while they went off to theirs. Our brother seemed to think this to be sound scientific logic, so we trusted them, and strapped in too, ultimately finding ourselves back in the basement we had left, not minutes ago. It was another twenty years before I looked at my adopted children, nieces, and nephews, and remembered that I had already met them...in 1974.