Microstory 856: A Bridge Too Far

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We’re walking slowly, which I’m grateful for, because even though I’m in good enough health to move as fast as these horses normally walk, not everyone here is. The guy tied behind me is absolutely emaciated. He must not have eaten for weeks. If the men leading us to our deaths were pulling us along as fast as they sometimes do, he would probably fall down and die right here. I look up at the lead ranger. He has kind eyes, but they’re also sad. He feels a lot of empathy, and does not appear to personally want to be doing this, but it’s his job. He notices the starving man as well, so when the other guards aren’t looking, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of bread. He hands it to me, and jerks his head over my shoulder. If he weren’t asking me to give it to the other one, I would have done it anyway. And I’m not just saying that because I’m going to die anyway, because I’m not. Unlike everyone else here, I’m lucky to have lived in this county most of life, and I know a secret about these tracks that no one else does. No one here is going to die; not if they listen to every word I say, and trust me. Execution by train is a fairly new concept in these lands. In the olden days, it was too dangerous; While 999 times out of a thousand, the train would be fine, that thousandth execution could lead to a derailment. Now that even rural areas used maglev trains, the government decided it was a good way of getting rid of its undesirables. It’s quick, and nearly impossible to survive, and they always do it over a high bridge, so the bodies fall off, and disappear downstream. If the prisoners try to escape, they’ll just fall and die anyway, so no harm done. They picked the wrong bridge today, though.

The extremely tall man ahead of me is actin’ real shifty-like. I can see his eyes dart from side to side, and he’s twisting the rope on his wrists, hoping to eventually get them off. But even if he does, he’s only a third of the way there. All of our arms are tied to the stomach of the man in front of us. All of our ankles are tied together as well, and the same goes for our necks. It’s possible to shake these restraints, but by the time you get all the way done, a guard has noticed, and then he’ll just shoot ya. Some men try this, thinking it better to die from a bullet to the head than the strike of a train goin’ four hundred miles an hour. They may be right, but chances are, they’ll be caught quickly enough to just be tied back up, and then it was pointless. Other prisoners have tried coordinating massive escape plans, which caused the guards to keep people scheduled for the same time and place locked up in separate locations until it was time to go. That didn’t stop every attempt, so they started adding emaciated people like the poor schmuck behind me, so the team has no chance of getting too far. Fortunately for this group here, they’re with me, and I have a plan; a plan that doesn’t work if the guy ahead of me tries his own fool’s errand. I sneak up when even the nice guard isn’t looking, and try to whisper to the other prisoner that he needs to trust me. We have to make it all the way to the bridge for this to work, and it will work, but he has to let go of whatever he’s thinking. He doubts me, but he knows how hopeless his situation is, so in the end, he gives up and agrees. Just in time too, because a guard turns around, and starts lookin’ at us suspiciously.

As we step onto the bridge, we begin to feel the vibrations, and hear the train up ahead. One of the guards urges us on. It’s best for us to be nearly on the other side, so we’re not thrown clear back to the road. But there’s a special spot on this bridge for what I want to happen to work, and it’s about three-quarters of the way there. I whisper up to the guy ahead of me again, and also the guy behind that they need to jump when I say. I can’t get any message up to the other prisoners, so the weight of us three will just have to pull them over. We hit the spot, and I can see the greenish ripple in the air that you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t staring at it. I scream for them to jump, and we jump. The guards try to stop us, but they’re not strong enough, nor do they think we have any hope of surviving the fall. What they don’t know is that the ripple in the air will transport you to the other side of town in an instant. No one in the county knows what it is, or how it got there, but we all know about it, and we all agreed to never tell anyone else. The old world is over, though, so the secret no longer matters. I remember jumping through the ripple as a child, and having so much fun with it. I also remember the three kids who died because they missed the ripple. You gotta go right at that ripple, or you just fall. Other people grew out of the exhilaration, but I never did. I continued to enjoy it all the way up until the world turned to crap, and today, I’m extremely grateful for it. We land on the edge of the Humphrey Farm, just like we’re meant to. I’m the only one on my feet, but the others scramble up quickly, relieved and excited about what happened, but still so very confused. I smile, and help the man ahead of me get his ropes off. The others start helping each other too, and we make plans to get as far away from here as possible, but then we hear rustling in the trees behind us. A half dozen men with guns come out and grin at us. One of them points his shotgun right at my gut, and cackles. “You didn’t think we knew about the spatial distortion, did ya? Glad to disappoint.” Then the firing squad squeeze their triggers.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 5, 2182

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Serif and Adamina were running up the hill, almost at the exit, but the crowd of Maramon chasing after them was also nearly upon them. She pushed the girl through the exit, and ordered the woman to break the universe apart now. As she turned around, instinct took over. She took a deep breath and blew it out over the enraged Maramon. She sent her nanites all over the area, programming to fight her enemies off, instead of healing them. “Now!” she screamed.

The destroyer was trying her best, working as fast as she could. One Maramon got through before she was able to do her job and destroy the dimensional entrance. When she turned around, she saw the crowd dispersing. The sound of metal clanking against metal rang out through the vessel as it expanded. Rooms were expanding by the minute, and new rooms were being created, threatening to enlarge the ship to unsustainable proportions. All of the pocket dimensions appeared to be closed off again now. The ship just kept getting bigger, and Adamina acted like she couldn’t stop it.

Saga made her way through the crowd, which was becoming easier and easier, and approached the girl. “You can stop this,” Saga said.

“Don’t we need more room?” Adamina asked.

“Yes. But this is enough. You can stop now.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“You can. You’re powerful, and if you don’t try, we’re all dead. The ship won’t be able to fly anymore, and we’ll just be floating out here in the middle of space.”

Adamina had spent her whole life with this, being treated as a god, and knowing no other way of doing things. Reining in her power seemed to sound like a grave insult of her character. She was still a child, though, and easily influenced by the grown-ups around her, which was what got them all into this mess in the first place. After pondering it for a few seconds, she nodded and closed her eyes. The clanking metal noticeably slowed down, but didn’t stop. “I can’t stop it totally,” she apologized. “It’s hard enough making it go this slow.”

“Okay, okay,” Saga comforted her. “Just take a deep breath, and try again.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Adamina squealed. “This is just who I am. I have to create space. It wouldn’t be any easier to stop than it would be to stop breathing.”

“Adamina, you can do it.”

“Can you stop breathing!”

“Sometimes,” said a woman who had finally come up from the crowd. She placed her hand on the girl’s shoulder, and spirited her away.

“Where did you send her?” Saga questioned.

“I...” the woman faltered.

Leona walked up, having just come out of pocket six. “Dubravka? What did you do?”

“I sent her to the future,” Dubravka replied.

“How far?” Saga was treating this like an interrogation.

“Whenever,” Dubravka shrugged. “I can bring her back when I want, and before you say anything, she’ll fall back if I were to die, so she won’t be stuck forever.” She scanned the floor of the room, suggestive of anyone and everyone. “I’m expecting a bunch of smart people to work on this problem in the meantime, and have a solution that allows that little girl to live a normal life...in a normal universe. For now, though, I think she should remain in the void outside of time.”

“Dubra, you can’t just tear people out of time.”

She sighed and shook her head, while holding her arms up to the walls of the ship, which were considerably farther away than they once were. “I won’t apologize for what I’ve done. She’s the problem, not me. So find a solution, or I’ll spend the rest of my life looking for immortality water, and you’ll never see her again.”

“What’s immortality water?” asked one of the random onlookers.

“I need to go check on the ship,” Leona said, knowing there was nothing else they could do. “Hopefully it hasn’t been too damaged.”

She walked into the cockpit to find Paige and Brooke staring through the viewports and a big blue marble.

“That’s Earth,” Leona declared.

“Mhmm,” Paige agreed.

“How did we already get to Earth?”

“Check your watch,” Brooke suggested. “It’s 2182.”

It was. “How? Did Dubra jump everybody to the future?”

“I don’t think so,” Paige said. “I think we were in a time bubble. The inside of the ship, but not the outside.” That would certainly explain why Leona was still around. She must have walked into the bubble after jumping back into the timestream while still in pocket six.

“Confirmed,” Brooke said. “I’ve been alone for the whole year. Nearly ran out of emergency rations. Thank God I’m superhuman.”

“Oh, Brooke,” Paige could only say.

“It’s fine,” Brooke said. “I was in hibernation most of the time. Ship ran smoothly, despite being several times larger than it was meant to be. We’re currently in standard orbit, awaiting authorization. They’re cautious about a ship that disappeared twenty years ago with no apparent destination, suddenly returning larger than before. I think we got a mole inside, though.”

“Warren, this is Orbital Management. Are you there, Warren?” came a voice on the communications system.

Brooke sat up, and replied, “this is the Warren, go ahead.”

Paige pulled Leona aside while Brooke was doing her thing. “I need a full report on the state of this vessel, and everyone in it. Find Camden, assuming he made it through before the pockets closed back up, and get him to do a headcount. Get Hokusai running a full diagnostic. I need you to personally do a spot check. Figure out exactly how big we are, and take inventory of anything that didn’t exist before Adamina walked through that portal.”

“Understood, Captain,” Leona said, then she ran off to complete her tasks.

One of the passengers saw Camden duck into a room that wasn’t there yesterday. When Leona went in, she found him there, carefully watching one of the Maramon like a good security guard. “Good, you’re here,” he said.

“What is this?”

“I need someone to find me restraints. I heard the ship’s bigger than before. Do you guys have a real brig now?”

“There’s one in another dimension,” Leona said. “After asking you to take roll call, I’m supposed to go off and answer questions like yours.”

“I assure you, Captain,” the Maramon said. “I mean you no harm. I considered it my duty to protect the primary god, but I can tell when I’m outnumbered. Even a warrior as formidable as I am is no match for a centurion of secondaries.”

“How did you know my callsign?” Camden asked.

“Your what?”

“That’s enough bickering,” Leona commanded, turning around. “If he moves, shoot ‘im. I’ll see what I can do about permanent detainment.”

“Sir,” Camden acknowledged.

She found Hokusai with Loa, the latter of which agreed to take on Camden’s role as attendance-taker. Then she started walking all over the new ship, taking note of the current dimensions of the old rooms, and those of the new ones. There wasn’t any new furniture around, nor any new instruments. Everything that existed before was still around, and the only things new were the barebones of the ship. It seemed to be perfectly intact too, not having suffered any wounds or damage. The Ubiña pockets appeared to be stable on the other side of the barriers too. When she met back up with Loa, they learned of a few stragglers still trapped in them, but there was no reason to believe they were hurt. She then found Vitalie to confirm that they had survived just fine in the housing, though most of them weren’t entirely happy about having done so alone for a year. She could not reach into pocket four, though, even after receiving a sedative to help her focus on her astral self. Serif was still stuck in there, along with Esen and his fanatical religious loyalists. Leona had to resign herself to the fact that this more than likely meant her girlfriend was dead. How could she have survived that?

Brooke made up some story to tell Earth that was good enough to garner them access to the Panama Space Elevator, but Leona never found out what that was. She helped unload the passengers, but stayed on the ship with the rest of the crew. Loa, on the other hand, traveled down with the first group. It was hers and Hokusai’s intention to help the refugees transition to their new lives on Earth. Acclimating would be one of the hardest things for them to do, even for those who were from there, and had only landed on Durus because of the Deathspring. Hokusai needed to stay behind to figure out either how to get the dimensions open permanently, or execute a rapid rescue plan, and then just destroy them entirely. For this reason, along with the crew, Vitalie was still there, as well as the dimensional destroyer, whose name no one bothered remembering. Lastly, Ecrin and a small contingency of her security team was still around, believing the prisoners in pocket seven to be her responsibility.

Right now, everyone was standing or sitting around the lounge area, not sure where they were going to start. Even Paige was at a loss for words. Camden started to try to break the ice with a joke about the Maramon prisoner, but was stopped by the sudden appearance of a young boy.

“Who are you?” Paige demanded to know, tensing up in preparation for needing to protect her people.

“The Emissary.”

“Ah, shit.”

Saga stepped in front of her daughter. “You can’t have her.”

The Emissary took a beat. “No, she doesn’t belong to me, or even to the powers that be. She belongs to Earth.”

“Do you always show up when it’s time for a new Savior to be called upon, or it just because she’s the last one?”

“It’s because she has family who cares for her, and because she’s the last one, and because she will be retiring early. I cannot divulge when that is, but she will not be an old woman. You will be able to enjoy a life with her,” the Emissary promised. “You will just have to wait before it begins.”

“I want to spend time with her now,” Saga argued. “I want to raise her. We’ve already missed so much.”

“Nothing is perfect,” the Emissary responded. “But you have it better than many. I suggest you do not take that for granted. Étude will begin her responsibilities at the strike of midnight central. You have until then to say your goodbyes. I will start.” He paused for effect. “Goodbye.” He disappeared.

Paige glanced at her wrist out of habit, even though she had an innate sense of the passage of time, and never needed to read it somewhere. “Leona, the elevator will be coming back shortly. You should go with the next batch, so you’re not stuck on the station when midnight hits.”

“But the pockets, and Étude,” Leona respectfully protested.

“Say your goodbyes now, and don’t worry about the pockets. Hokusai opened them once, she can do it again.”

Leona sadly agreed, but waited until the last moment before walking out of the ship, and into the elevator. Her time on the Warren was finally over.

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Missy’s Mission: A Place Beyond Time (Part IX)

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“No,” Curtis said. “We are here to destroy this universe. Helping these people is not part of the deal.”

“What was the deal?” Missy questioned.

“None of your bloody business.”

“Hey!” Dar’cy shouted. “You work for some mysterious entity who’s asked you to destroy Ansutah, right?”

“Indeed,” Lucius answered. That one word, in his voice, gave Missy chills.

“Well, you need my power to go back in time, and I work for Missy, so whatever Missy says, goes. We go nowhere without everyone else.”

Curtis sighed. “Then I suppose we should go get them first. We broke out of the our cell, but didn’t bother opening all the others.”

“Lead the way,” Missy said. “Please and thank you.”

Curtis tried to lead them back to the jail, but was too disoriented. Now that none of the natives were around, it looked a lot different apparently. Lucius still knew where to go, so he took over as guide. There were twice as many humans as Missy had thought there were before. While Lucius evidently used his time power primarily to kill, he could do it with anything. He could ripple space, separating individual atoms from each other by teleporting each one to a slightly different location. He destroyed the bars and doors from the cells with ease, letting everyone out so they could congregate in a common area of what must have been some kind of police station.

“Missy?” one of them asked while Missy was helping usher people down the hallway? Another one she knew from before. She turned her head to find herself face to face with none other than Leona Matic. They had last seen her years ago when she boarded The Warren with the rest of the ship’s crew, along with over a hundred other passengers.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Umm...I came to get Serif back,” Leona said.

“What happened to her?”

“She was stuck in Ansutah when it separated from the Warren.”

“Saywhatnow?”

“In here,” Leona said, ushering Missy into one of the now open cells, along with some woman she didn’t recognize. “You remember how Annora created those pocket dimensions on the ship, so we could fit all those passengers?”

“Yes,” Missy recalled.

“Well, a child was born in one of them that could make it bigger and bigger. And by could, I mean that just by being alive, her power made the pocket’s size increase exponentially. There was another who could create these monsters you’ve already seen; one monster with every breath he took.”

“My God. Are you telling me it’s only been a few years since this universe was created?”

“No, it’s been thousands. My guess is the monster-maker eventually died, leaving them to propagate the species on their own. The universe expander, on the other hand....” she looked over at the other woman, “was removed from the pocket at the last second. Her power started putting the ship at risk, so Dubravka here took her out of the timestream. Besides retrieving Serif, we came to let the girl out, so she can go back to making this world bigger.”

“She doesn’t seem happy about that,” Missy pointed out.

Dubravka looked like she was sucking a lemon. “I never wanted to come back here.”

This confused Leona. “What? You were never in pocket four.”

She was irritated, and wouldn’t make eye contact with either of them. “I grew up here. When we were told that we we would get Serif back if we did this, I didn’t think it meant eight years after I was born! I thought we were going to stop it before it happened.”

Missy still didn’t understand, nor did Leona. “Eight years, you’re—holy shit.” Leona seemed to have figured something out.

“What?” Missy asked.

“Are you...?” Leona began to ask.

“My daughter?” came a voice from around the corner. Serif appeared, holding the hand of a young girl. “Yes. Adult!Dubra, meet Young!Dubra. Young!Dubra, this is what you grow up to be.”

“I suppose I could do worse,” a sassy Young!Dubra said.

“Mom, I thought we were going to change the past,” Adult!Dubra said to Serif. “But it’s all happening exactly like it did before!”

“I don’t want you to change the past,” Serif said. She was many years older than before, having aged across thousands of real-time years since either Leona or Missy would have seen her.

“I do!” Adult!Dubra cried.

“This is your home,” Serif argued.

“My home sucks,” both versions of Dubravka screamed simultaneously.

Missy leaned towards Leona. “If these two get too close to each other, is this building gonna blow up, and turn the leaves red?”

“What? No.”

It was a fair question.

Serif let go of Young!Dubra’s hand, and gave it to Leona. “You need to go with Mother Leona now. She’ll take you to our universe.”

“Miss Atterberry, you need to get out there to the meeting with all the other people who want their powers to be removed. Dubravka, go with her,” she said to her adult daughter.

“Why would I do that?” Adult!Dubra asked.

“Stick with her, and you’ll end up exactly where you’re meant to be. I promise you won’t spend much more time in this universe. Don’t get separated from Missy and Dar’cy, though. Remember to pull Adamina back into the timestream before you leave.”

Presumably after having not seen her mother in many years of her personal timeline, Adult!Dubravka took Serif into a bear hug, and deposited about a gallon of tears on her shoulder.

As Missy was leaving with Adult!Dubra, she caught a bit of Leona’s conversation with Serif. “Is Mateo the father?”

“Yeah,” Serif answered. “Same for yours?”

Who the hell was Mateo?

When Missy and Adult!Dubravka arrived at the crowd, they were in the middle of clapping. Dar’cy was on a raised floor acting as a stage. She too was clapping, at a young woman from the audience who was blushing. Curtis was standing in the corner with his arms folded, still not really in favor of figuring out how to save everyone. Lucius stood at the women’s flank, arms folded too, but scanning the crowd like a nightclub bouncer.

Missy waved at Dar’cy to get her attention, then held up the international gesture for huh?. Dar’cy thanked the girl on stage, then stepped down.

“What’s goin’ on?” Missy asked. “Did someone just get an award?”

“That girl up there. She’s a supercharger.”

“Like an air compressor?”

“No, like she can enhance my powers. I can get everyone out of here.”

“Correction,” Dubravka said. “You can get everyone to the past, but still in this shithole.”

Dar’cy frowned. “And who is this lovely woman?”

“Dar’cy, Dubravka. Dubra, Dar’cy.”

“Well Dubra...vodka, you’re right, but this is what everyone here wants.” She gestured to the mob in general. “Are you in, or out?”

Dubra scoffed. “My powers are fine. I don’t need them to live whatever kind of life I want. But I don’t need them gone either. I was told I had to come with you to survive, so I’m in, but as soon as that stops being the case, I’m out.”

“She’s positively charming,” Dar’cy noted.

“Leona brought her,” Missy said.

“What?”

“She’s Serif’s daughter.”

“What?”

“Dar’cy!” the apparent supercharger called down. “It’s time to go!”

“You two stand next to me and the Wrench of Creation,” Dar’cy said to Missy and Dubra. “If this doesn’t work, at least you’ll make it through.”

As the three of them snaked their way to the stage, the crowd started clapping again. Dar’cy was already a hero, and she hadn’t even done anything yet. The four women stood on stage together. The supercharger and Dar’cy held onto either end of the plastic wrench toy. Missy held Dar’cy’s other hand, while Dubravka held hers. An energy pulsed between them, like that middle school science experiment where students stand in a circle and use their own bodies to close a circuit. They held up the wrench, letting a bubble not unlike the kind Missy could create emanate from it. It eventually encompassed the entire crowd, which had huddled together.

Dubravka’s watch beeped. “We have to go now!” she cried. “The maramon are coming back into the time stream!” She held up her free hand, and aimed it to the outside of the bubble. She released her own energy pulse, which revealed a young girl, standing there, confused.

The bubble started becoming more and more opaque as a bright light formed from everywhere at once. When the light receded, and the bubble collapsed, they found themselves in the middle of a desert. A younger Serif was now suddenly standing in line with them, holding Dubravka’s hand. “Uhh...what’s happening here?”

At first they thought it worked, but a brief glance at the crowd showed that half of them had not come through with them.

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Microstory 855: Stab At It

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When my family first moved to this town, and I started attending this school, I never thought I would be fighting off a demon within my first week, but that’s exactly what happened. People back home warned us that things were getting as bad ‘round these parts as they were where we had come from, but my parents didn’t want to hear it. Kansas City was overrun with the creatures, and they did not want to believe that a small quiet town like this could be anything like that. I tried to tell them that I had to learn to battle the darkness sooner or later, so they decided on the later option. I’ve been secretly training on my own, and I’ve not been happier I did than I am right now. Despite my parents’ beliefs, fate had other plans for me, and for this town. A mangle of nickels came into the school and started stepping on all the students’ toes. Since things were so bad in the big city, my old school had protocols for this sort of thing. Every student walks around with nickel mace, and every teacher is armed with banishing powder. This one horse town, however, is not so well-equipped. When the mangle came through, the demons spread out, but after I got started defending my classmates, they changed strategies, and ganged up on me. I punched and kicked at the evil little Hell minions, but they just kept coming. Somehow they contacted another mangle nearby, who quickly came in as reinforcements. By then, though, my peers realized that they were strong enough to fend off the beasts, and they came to my aid.

Pretty soon, all the demons were banished or unconscious; except for one. I don’t know what she was, but she was no nickel. She was as tall as a human; taller, even. She walked with a sense of purpose, an air of confidence, and the patience of a monk. The thing about battling demons in a school is that there aren’t very many good weapons around, so when she came after me, all I had to defend myself were a tin of pencils on the teacher’s desk. We wrestled for half a minute before I was in a good position to grab one of the pencils, and it took a little longer before I found a moment to take my opportunity to take her down. I stabbed her right in the heart, at least I thought I had. That was where humans kept their hearts, and so did nickels, but this thing seemed to be different. I pleaded for help from the few people still left in the room, but realized when I looked into their eyes that the only reason they hadn’t escaped with their friends was because they were experiencing the freeze acute stress response. So I was alone in this, and I had find a way to kill her, or she would kill me, and I would soon be fighting this war against the armies of darkness from a completely different front. I just kept stabbing her with pencils, trying to find the right spot. All the while she was cackling like a green-skinned witch, assured that I would never succeed. But then she changed. The more I hurt her, the less she fought me, and the softer she became. She even began to encourage me, and it was like she was doing absolutely everything she could to try to tell me where her heart was, but something was stopping her. Finally she got out two words, “it..moves.” The heart? Her heart moves around her body? If this was true then there would only be one way for me to find it. I would have to slow down, and listen carefully. I closed my eyes, and tuned out all the sounds around me, focusing only on the thump-thump-thump of the heart. I could hear it on the side of her neck, and before the side of her that didn’t want me to kill her stopped me, I took the last pencil from the desk, and jammed it right in the jugular. The demon shrieked in pain, and pushed me to the floor. The neck wound cracked wider, ultimately running all the way down her leg. Her gooey skin fell away from itself, and slinked down to the floor. The human girl now standing in her place took a desperate breath in, like she had just come up from the water. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for freeing me.”

Microstory 854: Between Man and Wolf

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When I was a child, my grandmother would tell me stories of a new species that showed itself to the world when she was younger. They were hideously deformed, but a naïve girl had convinced them to reveal themselves, believing that people would treat them kindly. While no one was hurt or anything, the creatures decided it was best to go back into hiding, and eventually, the truth of their existence was transformed into legend. No one in my day believed they existed, but I was always convinced. I spent my entire life savings on a trip across the ocean, and to the Dolomiti Forest. It took me days to figure out exactly which village housed the girl from the stories. I was surprised to learn that she was still alive, but also unwilling to help me in my quest to meet the hyperintelligent Dolomiti wolves, and learn from them. So I began my search the hard way, tirelessly trekking through the forest, looking for any evidence of an intelligence, and just hoping they hadn’t move somewhere far away in order to avoid people like me. Finally I came across their encampment, and the pack that lived there. It seemed that I had merely found a group of a few dozen humans who lived amongst some very large wolves. They greeted me politely, provided me food and a place to sleep, and told stories around the fire. Of course, they told them in Italian, so I didn’t understand a word they were saying, but they sounded wondrous. Though they did not speak English either, they clearly understood that I was there to see whether werewolves were real, so they made it clear there was nothing to be found. Still, I was suspicious that the rumors could have been borne simply of a tribe who had domesticated wolves. I indicated that I was leaving, but instead circled back around to watch them in secret. I soon learned that I was right, but the reality was even more astonishing than I was told. The wolves in the camp, thinking no one else was around, could transform themselves into humans. Meanwhile, those I met as humans were capable to turning themselves into wolves. The stories were true. They were all true, and more. Smiling at my success, I left for real, respecting their wishes to remain a secret.

Years later, I was still in Italy, having fallen in love with the city of Verona, and also a man. I told no one of what had brought me to the country in the first place, or what I had ended up experiencing, yet out of the blue, he suggested we take our honeymoon in the Dolomiti Forest. Thinking there was no way we would run into the werewolves again, I agreed. What we didn’t know was that the area was experiencing a severe drought, and resultant forest fires. Many woodland creatures had died, or been forced from their homes. It was not uncommon recently to see a herd of deer on the road, or an owl in the daytime. We still wanted to go on the trip, though not so much on a honeymoon, but to see if there was anything we could do to help. We were staying in that same village again, which had actually grown since I first visited. We were eating outside when a young wolf came up. Though he was thin and malnourished, he was quite a bit larger than your average wolf. His fur was mangy and dirty, and he was obviously thinking about eating us. The only thing that stopped him was that there were two of us, and he was probably trying to find a way to incapacitate us both at the same time. He attacked me first, but since I had lived my life well-fed, I was able to knock him away from me. I yelled at my husband to run away, which he did for a few meters, but couldn’t bring himself to leave me entirely. Yet he stayed back when he saw me take a brick paver from the ground, and threaten the wolf with it. “Yes,” I said to him in Italian. “You know what this is. It can be a weapon. Show yourself.” He just growled. “Show yourself!” I yelled. “I know what you are; that you know what I’m saying.”

Cautiously, he absorbed his fur, twisted his bones, adjusted his face, and stood up. Now in human form, his sickliness was even more obvious. “Please,” he begged. “I’m just hungry.” I told him that I understood completely, and that I was perfectly happy to help. We gave him the rest of our food, then we took him back to our room, and let him sleep in the bed, while my husband and I shared the corner on the floor. My husband, the more proper of the two of us, watched in horror as the werewolf ate breakfast like an animal the next day. He had quickly accepted what this individual was, but didn’t agree with the way behaved. He said that the forest is no longer an acceptable place for him and his people to live. We were evidently going to teach him to be civilized, and if it worked, we would do the same for the rest of his pack. The wolf looked between the two of us, and seemed amenable to the idea. But then in one final surprise, he asked, “what about all the other packs?”

Microstory 853: Sleeping Gods Lie

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I am a dreamwalker, which not only means that I can enter other people’s dreams, but also exercise full control of my faculties while I’m traveling. Most people believe that dreams are just the mind’s way of understanding their past experiences, and consolidating new information. Though this is indeed true of sleep’s biological necessity, it is not the full story. The unconscious mind is capable of entering independent parallel universes, called branes. These worlds are inhabited by free-thinking individuals who generally aren’t aware that you don’t really belong. They also don’t last very long after you wake up, because you were the only thing keeping their world alive. There are some worlds, however, that are created by someone else, but which you can enter while asleep. Dreamers can’t usually tell the difference, but since I have such acute control over where my mind goes, I can actually do this on purpose. I don’t do it for fun, though. Many years ago, I started noticing some odd behavior from the “locals”. They expressed an awareness that they lived in a simulated reality, even though that description does not really do them justice. They are real, just short-lived, except these people weren’t even that, because they lived in dreamworlds that should have long ago collapsed. I started tracking these strange occurrences, hoping it would lead me to the source of the problems. It took me weeks of real time, but I finally figured out where the culprit lived. At first, I thought I had just met another dreamwalker; one using his power to harm others. I even entertained the possibility that he had learned how to deliberately stabilize dreamworlds, and perhaps didn’t realize that he was harming them. But the truth was far more sinister than I could have imagined...and I have a pretty good imagination. I found myself face to face with a god-monster that had started out merely as a non-playable character in someone’s dream, but had spontaneously become self-aware, and was now spreading his evil influence to others.

Despite his hideous appearance, and clear disdain for me, I attempted to reason with the monster, hoping to show him that he didn’t have to be like this. “The point of becoming self-aware is that you now get to choose how you live your life,” I tried to tell him, but he refused to listen. I was forced to fight him, but he was much more powerful than he seemed. He was able to wake my mind up in my own world, but keep my body from knowing it. People experience sleep paralysis all the time, and as an expert, I know how to free myself, but this time was different. I was stuck there for an entire day, missing out on work, but unable to notify my boss. To this day, I’m not sure if I got myself out of it, or if the monster eventually just let me go. The next day, I confronted him again, armed with more determination, and a few dream weapons I didn’t think to bring last time. In the end, I was forced to kill him, which I didn’t want to do, since he was technically a new lifeform, but he did not give me a choice. I stopped walking through dreams for years as a result of what I had to do. As soon as I felt safe and comfortable enough, though, I went back out there, and learned that I had been terribly wrong. The god-monster was not dead, but instead had continued his wicked ways starting about a year ago. I sought him out once more, which was considerably more difficult than last time, because now he knew someone like me might come after him. It was worse than before, with entire worlds being turned apocalyptic. I had to stop him, even though I was afraid, so I figured my best bet would be to contact what few other dreamwalkers I knew. We pooled our resources, and shared information. A week later, they called me to a meeting in a neutral location, claiming to have found the monster. When I arrived, they tied me down with ropes, and started interrogating me. I had no idea what they wanted from me, or what they thought I knew, but after hours of torture, he showed up; the god-monster. In the mirror. I had not killed him at all, but had somehow absorbed him into my own mind. He cackled and freed us from the ropes, then he killed every single one of my friends. I tried to tear him out of my mind, but I was powerless against him. He forced me out instead, but now I wish he had killed me. I’ve broken the record for the longest time in sleep paralysis, by about five years.

Microstory 852: Evil Noisemaker

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I am the youngest deer in the herd, and the others tend to try to protect me. Today, however, they believe it’s time that I venture out on my own and complete a mission. There is a noise coming from the square trees down the hill, and my herd believes it’s being made by some kind of evil demon. Most of my kind would run away from this, but we’re different, and we’re worried about the creatures living in the square woods. Our ancestors used to run scared whenever they heard something they didn’t recognize, as will other deer today, but we’ve learned better what is dangerous, and what is innocuous. Some of the square-tree dwellers do everything they can to prevent us from seeing them. They build their squares on our trees, and they slither on the ground like snakes. These are the bad ones; the ones that are trying to kill us. If a square-dweller, on the other hand, is trying to get noticed, and walking towards us with wide eyes, and showing its teeth, it is a good one. It wants to meet with us, and be friendly. My mother was once trapped in the teeth of a headless, bodiless demon. One of the square-dwellers came to her rescue, freed her leg from the demon, and took care of her. She started this herd on the idea that deer can live in peace with the square-dwellers. And if there’s a chance the evil demon down the hill is planning on hurting one of them, we have to go down and destroy it. For all we know, this is retribution for the dweller who helped my mother those years ago. I don’t know why the herd decided that I would go off alone, but I am honored by the opportunity, and ready to prove myself a contributing member of our society. I am the only doe with antlers, so if anyone can fight this evil off, it’s me. I run through the woods, but stop when I hit the clearing. This could be a trap, so I have to be cautious. There are no places to hide here, though, so I don’t think any of the bad square-dwellers are waiting for me.

I race down and enter the realm of the square trees. The evil noisemaker I’m looking for has not ceased, and now I see why. It’s coming from one of the smaller squares, spreading its deathly blaze all around. I hear the crackle of the fire, the popping of the wood, and the screams of the dwellers inside. Mustering all my courage, I smash my antlers against the tree, over and over again until it breaks apart. The fire is all around me, but I’m determined to complete my job. I focus my hearing, and home in on the where the noise is coming from. The demon is smaller than I thought it would be, a small disk hanging on the square branch above me. I jump up and break it apart, ending the noise successfully. Unfortunately, the evil noisemaker’s fires remain active, even now that it’s dead. I can still hear the screams of square-dwellers in another part of the square tree. I leap over the fires, and headbutt the tree just once, tearing it apart with ease. The dwellers on the other side are huddled together. They’re the little ones of their species, and are even more afraid than deer are when we hear a frightening noise. I lower my neck to the floor and wiggle my tail. Getting the hint, the young square-dwellers climb onto my back. I leap over the fire again, and race back out of the square tree. I hear more demons running towards us in the distance as I’m letting the dwellers off. I get in a defensive position and snort at the demon cavalry, but the square-dwellers stop me. “No,” one of them says. “They’re here to help.” That’s so strange, I didn’t know I could understand their language. I wonder if they can understand me too, so I wheeze and grunt at her, but she doesn’t seem to know what I’m talking about. She just shows her teeth and giggles. The apparent good noisemaking demons come upon us, and I can see that I’m no longer needed. I say goodbye to the children, knowing they don’t know what I mean, but hoping they get the message anyway. Then I run off and return to my herd to tell them that everything is okay.

Microstory 851: Preacher Man

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Flying is difficult. It’s not like in the movies where someone will just jump up and go. It takes a lot of energy and concentration, and you’re always at risk of falling. In many of my dreams, I’m either capable of flight, or just jumping to incredible distances. Sometimes it’s a hybrid of these two abilities, allowing me to jump up really high, and then jump again while I’m still in the air. Most of the time, being able to do these things doesn’t seem strange at all. I’m living in a world where they’re possible, and my avatar doesn’t realize life could be any other way. But other times I’m lucid, and aware that I’m just dreaming. One thing I’ve learned about dreams is that they are also real. Dreaming literally transports you to other words, inhabiting new bodies, most of which are synthesized specifically for you, while others belong to preexisting characters. The majority of these dreams take place in unstable universes, which means they can only exist while you believe they do, and they collapse soon after you leave them. Other can exist permanently, or semi-permanently, and we tend to call them fictional stories. LOST, for instance, is about a group of very real people who exist in a parallel universe, and whose adventures are merely being reenacted by actors in our universe. Their world is self-sustaining, but limited to the scope necessary to tell the story. Other galaxies in the lostverse don’t exist, because they don’t need to. Not even the stars are real, because there is no plotline within the context of the story being told where travel to them, or even study of them, is mentioned. Now, as I said, the characters who live here don’t think any of this is strange, and are totally unaware that things are different in other universes, and that most of us think they’re not real. When a dream becomes lucid, you are reestablishing your consciousness in your own universe, while still maintaining a presence in the dreamverse. This acts to stabilize the dream world even more, allowing it to have a fighting chance of surviving past your morning alarm, though that is no guarantee. While in this state, you are to varying degrees capable of manipulating events to your liking. You are, at the very least, able to analyze your surroundings, and solve problems with the benefit of two personalities; those of your true self, and your dream counterpart.

I not infrequently become lucid during my dreams, and in one such instance, I was also able to fly, which gave me a sense of joy I could not usually feel in the real world. I encountered a preacher in this world, who told me that he was a real person in my world, and that if I found him when I was awake, he could teach me how to fly for real. He gave me his address and everything, so this was not a difficult task. I scheduled some last-minute vacation time for next week, which my boss wasn’t super happy about, but also not too upset. I got in my car and drove across the state to find this preacher, knowing full well that this was more than likely all in my head. I found myself to be wrong, though, when the preacher opened the door with a smile. He looked exactly like his avatar did, and claimed to have been waiting for me. We made use of my holiday, and immediately started my training. This involved meditation, sedatives, and a lot of time just standing on the roof of the church, “getting to know the wind.” After a week of this, much to my surprise, I started making some real progress. I could actually hover a couple meters over the ground, proving that this was all very real. The preacher man said my studies were over, and that I now had the tools to practice on my own. I went back home, suffered through work the next day, but went back to my exercises in the evening. And I continued to do this this every day, working extra hard on weekends, to get better and better. After months, I was able to fly anywhere in the area at will, still having to concentrate on what I was doing, but no longer afraid of falling to my death. I was midflight when I woke up in my bed, and realized all those lessons were simply another level to my dreams. Only a few hours had passed in the real world, and I hadn’t actually taken any vacation time. I was so disappointed, but out of desperation, instead of driving to work, I jumped off my backyard deck. And that’s how I became the real world’s first ever human capable of self-propelled flight. That’s right, folks, I can actually fly, and for twenty dollars a class....I can teach you too.