Microstory 859: Wash Out

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The last thing I expected to find when I went out for what was to become my last day of work as an exterior cleaner was a bunch of people sunbathing on top of a roof. This was no nice and flat roof, by the way. I was at a very steep angle, but they were just lying there, wearing nothing but their smiles. I didn’t see any other ladder around save mine, so I couldn’t figure out how they got up there. Perhaps they did have a ladder at some point, but then someone stole it, and they were taking it in stride. I asked them if I had the right address, and they confirmed that this was exactly where I was meant to be. I asked them if they were going to move, so I could clean it, but they just laughed and stayed put. I called my boss up, and she said all I could do was start my work, and hope they wise up, and get off on their own. I was incredibly uncomfortable doing that with such toxic chemicals, but if I went over to the other side, and started off slow, maybe it would all work out. Before too long, I had stalled long enough, and was drawing dangerously near the sunbathers. As if this was the first time they realized I was even there, they all hopped up as soon as I got too close, and flew away. I was so stunned, I slipped off the roof for the first time in my whole career. Of course, I was perfectly fine, strapped into my harness, so I just hung there for I don’t even know how long. I couldn’t figure out how they had done it. They actually flew. Humans. I had heard rumors that some guy had learned how to fly in his dreams, and managed to bring his lessons into the real world, but like most others, I didn’t believe it could be true. But I’m here to tell you, folks, that it is one hundred percent true, even though I obviously can’t personally prove it to you. I sought out the teacher—my now boss—immediately, and started my lessons. Unfortunately, what we discovered is that not everyone is physiologically capable of flight. We can predict the likelihood of your success, but we need quite a bit of information first. So yes, it is absolutely imperative that you fill out these health histories with perfect accuracy, and go through the rigorous physical assessments. You don’t wanna end up in a chair like me, do you?

Microstory 858: Scorpion Virus

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The Scorpion Virus. My people first encountered this deadly pathogen millions of years ago on our home planet, which you now call Mars, in your primary language. Symptoms begin like any flu, but quickly become something much worse. Your body weight will dramatically shift to the upper body parts, and your legs will become weak. Within days, you won’t be able to hold yourself up, and you’ll be forced to crawl on your hands and knees. Over the course of the next few weeks, a tumor will develop on your lower back, and curl upwards, resembling a tail with a barb on the end. It will keep you alive like this indefinitely, but only if you do what it tells you. Now, while it’s a highly intelligent virus, it is not capable of taking over your mind. In fact, our scientists never found any significant change to the neural makeup of the infected. As long as you agree to become a vector, and spread the virus to healthy individuals, it will let you live long enough to do so. If you refuse, or if you do not detect any nonsymptomatic people around, it will cut its losses, and kill you. S3V9 nearly wiped out our entire species, leaving only a few survivors who managed to sequester themselves on a secret island while the rest of our planet succumbed to this pandemic, and died. The majority of these survivors were engineers and scientists, but they also included a hefty portion of general laborers. Some of our ancestors wanted to wait the virus out, but there was no proof it couldn’t go dormant, then return once they tried to go back to the mainlands. Their best option was to simply leave, and fortunately they were on a mineral rich island, so they built two giant exodus ships to take them offworld. At the time, we had only progressed far enough to reach just over half the speed of light, but we did know how to place people in stasis, so we set the ships on autopilot, and went to sleep.

One ship ended up in a galaxy millions of light years away, so you may ask, why didn’t we find some new world closer? Well, we believe the second ship did just that, but we have not seen them since. The people on the first ship wanted to be as far from ground zero as possible. My people have a history of intense paranoia, which is why we positively decimated the surface of our home planet as we left. We hit it so hard that it destroyed our atmosphere, and our magnetosphere. We wanted to be absolutely sure that the virus would have no way of surviving, which we’re not certain was good enough. Once we settled on our new home, we set about populating it, and developing our technology, starting pretty close from scratch. Generations later, some of us became curious about where we had come from, so we used our faster-than-light ships to come back. We were surprised to find you humans in this solar system, having evolved independently right next door to our old home. Had we stayed, we could have been neighbors. But seeing you made some of us angry and spiteful. Our forefathers spent all this time traveling so far away, and it was pointless. We could have gone somewhere closer, and been so much more advanced by now. Hell, we could have gone to Earth, and lived amongst you, if we wanted. Envy supplanted the anger, and a faction has now formed that’s intent on making you suffer the way our species once did, just because they don’t think it’s fair. My team and I think they are on their way back here as we speak, planning to wipe you out with samples of the virus that we kept preserved in the exodus ship, which many of us now worship as a holy place. They will start a war trying to get to the samples, and our projections show them winning. We can protect you, but you have to do what we say. Firstly, we need to study a few specimens from your homeworld that we believe hold the key to understanding how the virus started on Mars, and whether it already exists on Earth. I believe you call them...scorpions? It’s an interesting coincidence that we are eager to understand.

Microstory 857: Drive Out

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My best friend and roommate, Deena Norup comes up with the craziest of theories, and as absurd as they sound when you first hear them, they start making a bit of sense the more she explains her reasoning. And she has been right every single time. She thought that our neighbors to the North were cheating on each other with our neighbors to the South. She insisted that the North house husband was sleeping with the South house wife, and vice versa. I didn’t believe until the truth finally came out a week later, and we watched the four of them get in a huge screaming match on our lawn. Deena also predicted that the mayor of our town was actually featured in a number of scifi B-movies in the early 90s, but always while wearing some alien or monster costume. This turned out to be one hundred percent true, and I still don’t know how she discovered it. He only ever did it to help his second cousin, who was a filmmaker, and he was never credited for his parts. She just sees connections that other people don’t. So when I tell you she believed the paralegal at the law firm where she works as a receptionist was secretly an inventor with hundreds of patents, you know I was on board with proving it. The paralegal dressed in modest inexpensive clothing, treated everyone as if they were his boss, and didn’t seem to have a personal life. No one but Deena would expect this guy to be a multimillionaire who carved out an extensive underground lair under his one house, but it turned out to be there, just as she said. We put on our comfortable black clothes, broke into his house, and snuck downstairs, where we found a massive garage full of rare classic cars. We went another level down to find a laboratory with tons of equipment and machines that neither of us could name. The third level was finished, but almost completely empty, like it was waiting to be designated for some interesting purpose. The only thing in it was another car, but it was of no model we recognized, by no apparent make. He must have built it himself from scratch.

The car gave Deena a bad feeling that only increased the nearer she got to it. She begged for us to leave, but we were this close, so how could I not at least check it out? I opened the door and crawled inside. Right away, I could see that this car must have come from the future. The windows turned opaque, and displayed full 4K screens. There was a coffee maker, and a stove; both of which were built into the interior. The passenger seat lifted up to reveal a toilet, and the back seat turned into a tub. Once my foot was clear, the front door closed on its own and locked itself. I couldn’t open it from the inside, and Deena couldn’t let me out either. The screens indicated that the vehicle was in vacuum mode, which freaked me out, but I could steal breathe, so maybe I was misinterpreting what that meant. Still, I needed to get out somehow. By now, alarms were going off in what must have been the whole lair, but Deena was just standing there, as calm as ever. “Drive,” she said simply. What the hell did that mean? I continued looking for an exit, but there was nothing. The only way I was going to solve this problem was with help somewhere else, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to trust what Deena says. I turned the engine, and started driving forward, hoping to find an exit somewhere. The wall in front of me opened on its own, and let out to the yard above. There waiting for me was a horde of angry men and women with guns. They were all wearing suits, so I assumed them to be federal agents. The paralegal was there too. He spoke to me through his wrist watch, “Miss Norup should not have shown you that. It is not for you.” I was desperate to get out of there, any way possible, and it was like the car read my mind. It started hovering over the ground, then rose higher and higher. Through cameras on the side of the car, I could see that the wheels had turned into rocket engines, and were flying me away. It just kept going and going, high above the atmosphere, and I finally realized what vacuum mode was. I looked at the back camera feed, and could see the agents had followed me with their own flying cars. This must be part of some secret government program. A friendly voice spoke to alert me that the drive-in theatre was now populated, and that the end had come. The screen showed me footage of a parking lot filled with a bunch of vans. Then the Earth disappeared...literally. All that survived were that parking lot, and these spacecars.

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?”