The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 10, 2187

« < » > Table of Contents

When Leona Matic first started helplessly jumping through time, one of her first thoughts was of her loved ones. If she couldn’t stop what was happening to her, she would lose them all in a matter of months, from her perspective. Her heart was filled with such dread knowing that she would one day blink, and someone she cared about would suddenly be gone. And that process would be repeated until they were all dead. Everyone would be dead by the time she had a hankering for Chinese food again. But that wasn’t what actually happened. Ever since her first jump, family and friends would die, not of a long life long-lived, but at her responsibility. She never had to watch any of them grow old without her, because every single time, through her action or inaction, they would be killed before that was possible. She tried to run away from them once, with Serif, hoping to just leave them out all of this. She should have stuck with that plan. She should have tried harder. If they had just gone off on their own, all these people would either still be alive, or passed in peace, including one Paige Turner Reaver-Demir.

Paige was at least a hundred and seventy-five years old at the time of her death, though the exact length was difficult to discern when attempting to account for the time travel variable. She stayed alive as long as she did by utilizing biomedical developments, as well as other technological advances. She had not been fully human for a long time when Ulinthra struck her down with what could be best described as a power overload. Many would count her age as a blessing. She surpassed the conventional human lifespan by a century, at least as measured by the time period of her birth, but Leona recognized that this made it worse. As terrible as it might sound, killing a mortal is not as bad as killing someone like Paige. If you were to end the life of a normal eighteen-year-old human, for instance, you would at most, be robbing that individual of maybe ninety more years—as erred on the the side of exaggeration. If you were to end the life of an eighteen-year-old immortal, on the other hand, you would be stealing eternity from them. Kill a four-thousand-year-old immortal, and you’re still taking eternity. Because we don’t punish murderers for taking the memories of a person’s experiences. We punish them for stealing the memories that their victims can now never make.

While Leona felt guilty for everyone who had lost their lives because of the decisions she had made, Paige belonged to a special category of dead people whose deaths were directly tied to her inefficacy. Leona was at fault, for how she had handled the Ulinthra situation, and no one would be capable of disabusing her of this assertion. Fortunately for her, no one was interested in disproving her. They didn’t outwardly blame her for it, but they didn’t sugar-coat it either. They just stayed there with her in solidarity, having already spent a year grieving for their loss during Leona’s interim year. And then, as if called to action by a great psychoemotional need, Vitalie Crawville suddenly showed back up to help, reportedly on break from the year-long bicentennial celebrations.

Though she didn’t have the time to get particularly close to her, something about Vitalie reminded her of Paige, and she couldn’t help but break down crying when she saw her face. Vitalie didn’t say a word, but held Leona close for as long as she needed it.

“How did you know to come?” Leona was finally able to ask through the last of her tears.

“I just kind of got this feeling; not that Paige had died, but that you needed me,” Vitalie answered. “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other anyway. We were due for a five-year reunion.”

“I’m just so tired of losing people. It would be one thing if I had a job to do, or some kind of calling, but I’m just...here. Camden is a secret agent, Saga starts revolutions on other planets, what do I do? Nothing. I just keep getting forced into these situations, and the only real goal in place for me is to get out of those situations.”

“That’s kind of how life is, though, isn’t it? Most of us don’t have what one may call a purpose. We just do the best we can to survive to the end of the day. Then we wake up and do it again.”

“I guess that’s true, but those people exercise control over their lives. I’m salmon.”

“Everyone has their limitations. A poor person can’t go to the best college, get the best job, and buy the best house, unless maybe they’re really smart. Maybe. A celebrity can’t scratch their ass at a grocery store without making headlines. And you can’t leave Panama until you defeat Arianrhod. That’s your calling. Right now it is, so answer it. When you’re done with the...conversation, as it were, hang up. Then answer the next call.”

“I can’t defeat her,” Leona complained. “She’s too powerful. Everything we try, she’s already seen, because we can never know whether we’re living through the first time she experienced this day, or the second.”

Vitalie sighed. “That’s true, it’s a crapshoot, but didn’t you do this before, in another timeline? Didn’t you stop a man with the same powers? What did you do then?”

“I garnered help from The Gravedigger, who’s so obviously hiding that he’s one of the most powerful choosers I’ve ever met; and I met someone who created an entire universe.”

“Well, let’s call the Gravedigger again.”

“It won’t work this time. There was a warrant out for his arrest, and that’s not the case here.”

“What did he do to get into trouble that Ulinthra isn’t doing. If taking over the world doesn’t get the powers that be to step in, then I don’t know what does.”

“It’s complicated,” Leona said. “Way I understand it, Beaver Haven isn’t just a prison for people with temporal powers who are also criminals, or even the ones who use their powers for bad things. It’s just for people whose actions threaten the security of the rest of us. As far as the powers are concerned, Ulinthra can do whatever she wants, as long as she doesn’t expose us.”

“Then let’s do that,” Vitalie suggested vaguely.

“Do what? Expose us?”

“Get her to expose us.”

“How would we do that?”

Vitalie shrugged. “Dunno, but there’s gotta be a way.”

“I think if you tried something like that,” Brooke said from the doorway, “you would just end up getting yourselves locked up.” She walked into the room. “We’re in mixed company.”

A stranger in a uniform walked in behind her, followed by a hover sled, on top of which was some kind of chamber. “Where do you want this?” he asked.

“Just in the corner, over there,” Brooke directed him.

“What is that?” Leona asked, grateful that she had finished crying before Brooke returned.

“It’s my stasis pod. If I don’t get into this by midnight central, I die.”

“What?” Leona scrambled up from her seat. “Die from what?”

“I don’t know what it is, but Ulinthra infected me with something. This pod is scheduled to close at the end of every day I’m awake, and will keep me alive for a year, until I wake up and do it all again.”

“What are you talking about? What did I miss?”

“Vitalie, you should go,” Brooke said to her, “lest you be caught up in this.”

“It is too late,” Ulinthra said, walking in from one of the bedrooms, like a creeper.

“What is this about? I demand answers,” Leona said angrily.

“A few months after Paige’s death,” Ulinthra began to explain, “Brooke and Ecrin tried to go after me. They succeeded the first time around, but then time reset for me, and I did better on the next go. My problem was not that they tried—it was actually impressively courageous of them, if not bonker balls—it’s that you weren’t there. You and I have a history; several histories, actually. In only one of them do we get along. Even when you were married to Horace Reaver, we were rather cold with each other. As much as I remember about these things, I couldn’t tell you why we almost never have a good relationship, but I can tell you why we were friends in one of the realities.”

“Get to the point already.” Leona rolled her eyes.

“We were friends,” Ulinthra continued after she was so rudely interrupted, “because in that timeline, I gave you the greatest give I have.”

“And what was that? Your suicide?”

“Morbid much? No, it was my powers.”

“What?”

“I made you like me. Permanently.”

“Why would I have wanted that?”

“You were bored. You were just a human then, but I gave you a way to have fun. Together we wreaked more havoc on this planet than a giant groundhog on amphetamines, and when midnight hit, we’d go back in time and relax.”

“I don’t believe you. In no reality am I anything like you.”

“Well, I guess I can’t ever prove it to you, except to say...dougnanimous brintantalus.”

“We’ve established that my secret time password has never been a secret.”

“True, but I want you to start thinking about whether it’s possible that I’m being totally honest. You can do it while you’re on the table.”

“On what table?”

Ulinthra smirked, and motioned towards Brooke’s stasis chamber. “I had that built, because Brooke is pristinely ungifted, and I have not been able to find a way around that, even by using her umbilical cord pendant. Sorry about that again, Brooke.”

Brooke was showing her blankface.

Ulinthra went back to facing Leona. “I destroyed it while I was studying it. I didn’t do it on purpose, though. We all make mistakes.”

“You can go back in time and erase all your mistakes.”

Ulinthra pretended like this hadn’t occurred to her, but purposely in an unconvincing way. “I could have done that, couldn’t I? Damn.”

“You still haven’t gotten to the point.”

“Right, Ulinthra said. “Ecrin and now this young woman here, whoever she is, will be permanently placed on your temporal pattern.”

“Vitalie, go, now,” Leona ordered immediately.

“You think I didn’t know you’d say that?” She looked over at Vitalie, who was making no attempt to escape. “You won’t make it down the hall if you run.”

“I gathered,” Vitalie said.

“Good. I need your bone marrow,” Ulinthra said to Leona. “Blood can work, but it’s unreliable, and short-lived. I need the marrow to make Ecrin’s and Vitalie’s bodies generate your salmon juice on an ongoing basis.”

“You don’t even feel a little bit bad about killing Paige,” Leona pointed out.

“That was a non sequitur, and no, I suppose I don’t. To paraphrase Captain Malcolm Reynolds, someone ever kills you, you kill ‘em right back. Paige saw me threaten you with a knife on a security camera on your day a year ago. What I didn’t realize is that removing her life extension upgrades would reactivate her spawn power. That was my bad, and I paid for it with my life. Needless to say, Paige needed to die, so that I could be saved. Now go take a sonic shower. I want you clean so you don’t pass on some disease.”

“Should I even bother pleading for you to reconsider, or for you to at least give me one day to mourn?”

“You can mourn tomorrow with everybody else, but no one cares about your feelings. Now go. You can fight me on it next year when it no longer matters.”

« < » > Table of Contents

Fervor: April Fools (Part I)

« < » > Entire Story

Nine months ago, my adoptive fathers were in hot pursuit of a madman who was threatening the safety of everyone in the Kansas City Metropolitan area. They actually seemed to think he wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, but was trying to help the world, and didn’t think through the consequences of his actions. He has a special temporal power, as do many other people throughout time and space. He can open microscopic tears in the spacetime continuum, which are mostly only large enough to allow tiny particles, and waves, through. With this, he can alter his environment, by sharing it with some other environment, from some other time. He created a summer snow that the city was not prepared for. As far as I know, no one died from this, and even if they had, their deaths would have been erased from history, but that doesn’t make it any less wrong. My fathers ended his reign of terror in the city, by somehow going back in time and preventing it from ever happening at all. Ace hasn’t given me the details, saying only that I would understand when I was older. I usually hate when adults say this, but the way he says it, it’s not dismissive. I think he literally means only Future!Me will have all the facts.

Unfortunately, in retaliation for what my dads did to his little global warming experiment, the madman enlisted the help of some friend of his, and created an exact duplicate of the entire metro. There is a second version of nearly everyone within the blast radius, running around some nearly inescapable pocket dimension. Only a few people were spared duplication, but that doesn’t mean they have it easy. My other dad, Serkan remains the one and only, but he is now stuck over on the other side, and I’ve been worried this whole time that we would never get him back. Ace was with him when they finally caught up to their enemy, who in one last desperate attempt to prevent our collective happiness, set off a powerful explosion. There were two magical jackets capable of crossing the dimensional barrier, each of which can only carry two passengers at a time. One of them caused the explosion that sent Ace, a new friend of his, and the friend’s son, I guess, back to our side. The problem is that, not only did Serkan not make it through—and may even be dead—but the other jacket was damaged.

The man with them apparently imbued the jackets with their power, but was not able to fix the surviving one right away. He claims to have been working on the issue since Ace hired him to get Serkan back, but it has been so long, and still nothing. I know I should be patient and compassionate. After all, he’s raising two versions of the same baby, pretty much on his own. Yet I can’t help but think that, with each passing day, week, month, my father gets one step closer to being lost forever. Time is not kind to people in our world. It jerks us around, moving us through the stream in the wrong direction, and forcing us to places we don’t want to be. The longer he stays there, the less time we can spend together, and that’s not fair. I wish I could do something to help, but I’m just a dumb teenage anachronism. I was born in 1959, but Serkan and Ace accidentally brought me with them when they tried to get home a couple of years ago. Like I said, time moves differently for people like us. But my coming here was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I will always be in those men’s debt for taking me out of a horrible life in the 1970s. I have to have both of them. I don’t know what I would do if we never find Serkan. I just don’t know.

Ace is knocking on my door, even though he knows he’s not supposed to. We had to start going to family therapy right away. Here I was in the future, surrounded by technology, cultural norms, and topic references that I didn’t get. The only people who could take care of me were willing to do that, but it was a complex situation. They had only just met each other—as sort of a love at first sight, brought together by time travel, kind of thing—so I was just another complication. Anyway, of course we couldn’t tell the therapist absolutely everything, and I think she picked up on that, but she gave us some good advice. She said that I need to adjust to living in a new country, which was what we claimed had happened. In order to feel comfortable here, I need to be able to spend time alone, and not bombarded by constant attention. Together, we decided on a rule. For one hour after school, I am to remain alone in my room. I’m meant to sit quietly and reflect, or even meditate, but I usually just put on my headphones, and catch up on a half century of movies and television. We’ve come a long way since Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Hawaii Five-O, and Ironside. Now we have Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Hawaii Five-0, and Ironside.

Ace is still knocking. It’s not loud, but it’s persistent, and annoying. It’s his way of being cute. “What!” I finally yell through the door. “This is Paige’s Hour!”

“I have a surprise for you,” he says, fairly quietly.

“Let me guess...you’re gay.”

“Ha-ha. I’m pan, you know that. No, it’s an actual surprise. I think you’ll be happy.”

“I’m never happy.”

“You once were.”

“For, like, a second, when Serkan was here,” I argue.

“That’s the surprise,” he barely says before I’m one more arm day from tearing the door of its hinges.

“Really?” I look over his shoulder. “He’s back?”

“I...guess I should have worded it more carefully. He’s not back, but I am going to get him. The jacket is fixed. Jupiter sent it via courier, and it will be here soon.”

What the hell? “He’s having a one-of-a-kind interdimensional portal opening piece of highly volatile equipment sent via courier?”

“It’s someone from the tracer gang,” Ace says in a reassuring voice. “It’ll get here.”

“If that’s true, then I don’t doubt it, but why isn’t Jupiter going to take the jacket himself? He’s the one who built it. He’s the one who destroyed it, and he’s the one who fixed it. This is his mess. He owes us.”

“He has to stay for his son.”

“You have to stay for your daughter.”

“I promise, I’ll be back. And I will be with Serkan.”

“Why don’t you promise that Jupiter will be back instead?” I suggest. “If you’re that confident.” I think I have him now.

He sighs at my rebellious attitude. “I’m confident in my ability to complete this mission, not his.”

That...is sound logic, and I can’t argue against it. I switch to my mature face. “You get him back. You find him, you come back, and you bring him with you.” He doesn’t say anything as I’m trying to muster my courage. “But if you can’t find him, or if there’s nothing to find, you still better come back.”

The doorbell rings.

“I promise.”

We head down the stairs together, and open the door to find none other than the infamous Slipstream herself. She was not just any member of the tracer gang, but its founder. She was instrumental in the creation of the New Gangs of Kansas City by protecting the original Gunbenders, and starting a movement of anti-gun violence by promoting a form of martial arts that emphasizes the well-being of everyone, including one’s enemies or attackers. She did more for aikido than The Walking Dead ever could have hoped for. She’s pretty much my hero, and she’s standing at my door.

“Hi,” Slipstream says.

Oh my God, she just spoke.

“I’m Bozhena, and I’ve been sent to deliver this.” She hands Ace a package, wrapped in that ol’ timey brown paper, tied up with twine.

“You introduced yourself with your real name?” I ask.

Slipstream smiles. “That ain’t my real name; not anymore. I’m just trying it out. A friend got me wondering whether I should hate it as much as I always have.”

I’m speechless.

“That was what you were looking for, right?” Slipstream-slash-Bozhena asks.

Ace opens it up, and reveals the special jacket. “This is it,” he confirms. “Thank you so much.”

“Do you wanna stay for tea?” I offer as she’s trying to leave. I’m such an idiot. Why would I ask that? Dear God, send me back through that Stonehenge portal. I’ll take my abusive birthparents over this humiliation.

“Uhh...sure,” my idol says. She actually said yes. I wanna go live and announce that she said yes to all my friends online, of which I have none since my birth certificate is fake news, and they don’t allow that sort of thing anymore. “If it’s all right with your dad, that is.”

“Fine with me, I trust you. I do have to go. He starts whispering to Slipstream, but isn’t really trying to keep me from hearing. “You can leave anytime, though. She can spend a little time alone, and the babysitter will be coming soon.”

“Da-a-ad,” I groan. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

“But you love Mireille.”

I try to play it cool with Slipstream. “She’s not my babysitter, we’re friends. She’s only, like, three years older than me.”

Slipstream doesn’t make me feel like a child. She smiles genuinely. What a cool chick.

“All right, play nice,” Ace says, determined to embarass me. “I’m going to grab a few provisions, then be gone. I’ll be back by end-of-day tomorrow.” He kisses me on the forehead. “I love you.”

“Love you!” I call up to him as he’s walking upstairs. “Leave a note in the usual spot if you get trapped in the past!”

“Will do,” he says. We actually have that. It’s an old tree stump that we check regularly for messages from ourselves, or each other. We’ve not seen any yet, but all three of us know the protocol, and only us three.

I realize that a stranger just heard me casually mention time travel to my father, but instead of covering, I act like it’s totally normal. I don’t mind being a mystery to her.

She stays longer than I ever thought she would, and when Mireille shows up that evening, we decide to throw an old-school slumber party. We watch movies and eat popcorn. That’s really it. We don’t braid each other’s hair, or talk about cute boys, which is good, because I’m not interested in boys. I keep expecting they’ll offer to give me a makeover, but actually make me look ugly, then take pictures and shout, April Fools, but it never happens. We just laugh about how I’ve never seen the Captain Marvel trilogy, then we fall asleep on the couches. We wake up the next morning to an explosion from the other room. Mireille cowers in fear, while Slipstream tries to protect me from whatever that was. But I know it’s my fathers, back from the other dimension. I slip under her arm, and race around the corner, but I don’t see Serkan, or Ace. Instead, it’s two random women. This feels like the beginning of something that’s not perfectly great.

« < » > Entire Story

Microstory 880: Lights Out

< > Table of Contents

You do not know my name, for even if we once met, no recollection of me survived what happened. I was hiking in the Amazon rainforests, just because I had the money, and wanted the experience. I’ve climbed great mountains, swum in freezing waters, and seen all four corners of the Earth. It took a great deal of effort to get to this point in my life, but it was something I always wanted. I have little technical expertise myself, but I can spot talent from a lightyear away, while wearing a blindfold. I managed to befriend a nerd I went to high school with. I could just tell he was destined for great things. He got all his homework done on time, and aced his tests, but never seemed to pay any attention to the instructors. He just wrote furiously in his notebooks, and when we grew older, he started typing on a little keyboard attached to an even smaller screen. He wasn’t taking notes, which was what those little computers were designed for. He was writing code, and even though I didn’t understand it, I knew it would become something important. As it turned out, it was the software side of the framework of the early internet. Everything you do online today, and the way you do it, was at least partially based on his vision. And I found him first; together we built what people today would call a startup. Then when it was all finished, we sold it to the Canadian government, and went our separate ways. Until the incident, we would email each other on a regular basis, and were on excellent terms—which you probably didn’t expect from this story—but I have not seen the man in person in probably a decade. He used his half of the deal to fund more technological breakthroughs, and I started to travel.

Everyone wants to find a way to make as much money as possible, doing the least amount of work, in the shortest amount of time, and in this I succeeded immensely. I don’t want to brag, but I had it planned out well, and I followed through perfectly. This. Is. The. Life. And the last thing I did with that life was to bring about the greatest change this world had ever known, and I’m not talking about the time I helped invent the internet. I am not writing this, and you are not reading it, because this story cannot be told. In my final moments, I entered an uncharted cave, which was just one of many in the region. I found a small puddle of water on the floor, and in my reckless bravery, I sipped at it until it was gone. I immediately felt a disquieting stir, but it was not until later that night, after I had left the cave, that things really started to change. Millions of tiny lights began fluttering inside of me, trying to get out. Instead of going up through my mouth, they decided to tear through my skin; one by one, two by two, and so on, at an accelerated rate. It hurt at first, but then I became numb to it, for now I was more ethereal light than I was man. As the last of the lights escaped, I saw a flash of all of time and space in this universe, including the introduction of a new species, called the bladapods. I was giving birth to the first of these creature right now, and after the last light floated to the trees to continue their development, I stopped existing. While no one will ever know what I did, I live on...in them.

Microstory 879: Eyes Glued

< > Table of Contents

Most people would say that I have superpowers, but a lot of the things I can do are uncontrollable, and I would say that you are the ones with powers. Your bodies have been refined over time by evolution, with each passing generation developing better and better traits to help them survive in the world. When your skin is cut, tiny little extensions of you race to the wound, and seal it up. When you’re dehydrated, you become thirsty; tired when you need sleep, itchy when something around you is not quite right. My kind, on the other hand—if I’m even of a kind at all—is stuck doing all those kinds of things manually. I use external instruments to measure my body, so I can stay alert to what it needs me to do, and that is always a lot of work. I do not experience thirst, but I still require water to transport nutrients, and lubricate joints. Sure, I can lose a limb, and put it back on later, but I also can’t heal myself, so if I don’t fix it quick, I’ll bleed out. I don’t know what I am, or where I came from. I woke up one day in the middle of the woods, and have lived years knowing nothing about myself. I often return to that spot for answers, but have found none, so I mostly just try to live my best life possible. The scientists who ended up lucky enough to respond to the claims of my existence can’t explain me either. Some wanted to call me Data, because I apparently act like a particular character in a TV show that I now feel compelled to avoid, on principle. Others wanted to name me Frankenstein, because my physical attributes most closely resemble a monster created through spare parts. But I was not born of amalgamation, and I was not built to specification, but rather modeled upon my creator’s vague memory of a generic human being, or so it would seem, because they didn’t do a great job. I believe I was designed as a prototype. I figure they left to die in the wild while my creator moved on a better version, but this is nothing more than speculation, because I really don’t much care who they are, or what they were hoping to gain.

I was found by a mother and daughter on a camping trip. They knew someone who knew someone working in the field of robotics. Of course, I am no android, but her knowledge has not been unhelpful in understanding how to deal with me. I suppose if I had to label my family, I would call her my mother. She cared for me like a mother would, and protected me from those who would exploit me for their own ends. I was fortunate to have her, as well as her colleagues, for I cannot say I would have turned out so well-adjusted if not for them. As unbelievable as it may seem, I lead a fairly normal life. I have a decent job where only a select few know that I do not consider myself human. The rest assume I have autism, and most of those treat me with kindness because of, in spite of, or unrelated to, that assumption. I do normal things, like set off fireworks, and cuddle with puppies. When I eat, I’m eating regular food, and just like everybody else, I have to make sure it’s not too much. My stomach might rupture if I fail in this, so that’s different, but still not too far off from how it is for you. Right now I’m at the beach for the first time, and I’m still not sure I like it. My mother thinks I’m capable of incurring first degree burns, and insists I spread sunblock on my skin. It’s oily, and gross, and I don’t like it. Plus, there’s sand in my eyes now, which is another advantage you have over me. You’ve evolved tears that can wash foreign particulates from your eyes, but I don’t, so it just won’t come out. I’m going to have to remove them entirely, which I know will be unsettling for the other beach goers, but we can just claim we’re filming a prank show, like that time I lifted a car to retrieve a soccer ball. No one seems to be paying attention, but neither am I. I reach into my mother’s bag, looking for those eye drops she uses for her allergies. Before I realize I’ve grabbed the wrong bottle, it’s too late. My eyeballs have already set into the fast-hardening super glue. If I had known this was going to happen, I would have made sure I didn’t insert them backwards. I can’t see a thing, but please, keeping telling me how great it must feel to swim underwater for two days straight.

Microstory 878: Edison Phone

< > Table of Contents

Most people may not know this, but it’s not, on its own, illegal to fake your own death. Where people who try this go wrong is when they commit some crime that’s more of a side effect. If you really want to disappear from society, you’ll need to make a few arrangements, and even if you succeed in these, you still won’t be able to reinstate yourself with a new identity. Your only option would be to start living off the land. But it can’t be your land, because you have to pay property taxes on that, so someone would have to give you permission to live there, but if they do, they could be party to fraud as well, depending. Before you leave, you can’t have any outstanding warrants, or unpaid debts. You can’t skip out on filing your taxes, so you pretty much won’t be able to do anything from a financial standpoint between the first of the year, and whenever you file for the year before. Lastly, you can’t do this in order to collect a life insurance payout, not even for your loved ones. That’s where I come in. My company will only pay the survivors of a death if that death follows certain legally binding criteria; the primary requirement being that it actually happened. As an investigator, it’s my job to make sure these claims are legitimate ones. You would be surprised how many times I catch someone trying to commit fraud, if only in some minor way. A faked death is pretty rare, especially since, as I’ve mentioned, any number of other agencies and departments are going to be scrutinizing the same case. Otherwise perfectly normal, upstanding citizens can make one mistake when they’re desperate, and as much sympathy as I feel for them, I have to uphold the law.

My current case is an interesting one, because she seems to have followed every piece of advice I would give to someone committing pseudocide, which is the term we use in the industry. The only suspicious thing about it comes from the life insurance policy, which was only flagged because she named her sister beneficiary within too short of a period of time before her supposed death. She technically passed the waiting period that’s designed to prevent this sort of thing, but only by one day. We don’t disclose to our clients that we continue to monitor that for longer. I do my due diligence, and discover that a fairly remote friend of hers just subletted her apartment for a year-long stint in Japan. That would be a perfect place for the alleged fraudster to hide out, because I can find no record of the individual renting the unit out at the moment.  I knock on the door, and hear a voice telling me it’s okay to come in. Sitting at the kitchen table is the now confirmed fraudster, totally alive, and smiling at me, with a phone up to her ear. I try to introduce myself, but she knows exactly who I am. She recites my name, social security number, and a bunch of personal anecdotes, many of which she could not have possibly known. She hands me her phone, which I see now is attached to a machine in the corner that’s about the size of the refrigerator right next to it, which seems to be helping keep it cool. I place the phone to my ear, and listen as my great grandmother scolds me for bothering this poor girl. She demands I leave her to her business, and insists that she is doing good work; that she’s helping people like her find closure. I try to maintain the conversation, but Nanaboo doesn’t want to talk anymore. I hang up the phone, and stare into space for an indeterminate period of time. “That woman has been dead for over twenty years,” I say. “You built a machine that can talk to ghosts?” The young woman smiles wider and nods. “And you help people?” She nods once more, so I think this over for another moment. “Do you need an assistant?”

Microstory 877: Man Planes, God Laughs

< > Table of Contents

When I was seventeen years old, I found myself at a farm party. I don’t really know how I ended up there, because parties aren’t my scene, but I must have known someone who knew someone. Since we were coming from pretty far away, we arrived really early. Some guy there owned a plane that, I guess he used for spreading seed, or something? He spontaneously offered to take anyone up who wanted it. For some reason, I was the only one who did. The plane was small, and partially opened, so I could feel the rush of wind pass us as we soared through the air. I had flown in a lot of planes by then, some of which were rather small, but this was the most exhilarating experience of my life. I’ve always been afraid of heights and roller coasters, so I have no idea what possessed me to agree to this, but I fell in love that day. I held that with me for years as I moved on with my life. And that life was quite a struggle. I’m an artist by trade, but there’s little money in that if you’re still alive, so I became a barber. Most people don’t suddenly decide to get into the hairstyling business, but I had heard it was one of the least stressful jobs out there, and I just needed something to get me by that wasn’t shoveling french fries. I had all but forgotten my dream of becoming a pilot, but every once in awhile, I’d see a small aircraft, and I would be reminded. And so with nothing else interesting to do with my money, I decided to start setting a little to the side to actually make my dream a reality. It might have taken me longer than the average student, but I did eventually earn my license. That was great, but I still didn’t have a plane. I could keep flying if I became an instructor too, but there weren’t any open positions at the moment, so I spent the next few months just sitting on my license. Then my parents showed up to my apartment one day with a surprise. They made sure I was sitting down, then dad took out the little portable projector he would use for work. The image of an airplane appeared on my wall, with my parents claiming that it was mine. Unfortunately, it was in Mexico, because that was where they could find the best deal, but fortunately, that meant a nice family trip to Mexico.

We all went down together, and it was like falling in love all over again. She was a 1972 Delgado Crescendo; single-engine turboprop; just a hair over 500 miles on her engine; and exactly as many seats as we needed. She was perfect, she was everything. My sister joked that she wouldn’t let me fly it until she got to try it first. Overall it was a great little vacation, with the best gift I could have ever gotten. We were halfway home when my mother discovered that we had all left our passports in the hotel, and so we had to fly all the way back. I was going to miss work for another day, but I wasn’t worried. Not so shockingly, the hotel hadn’t seen our passports at all, but had probably stolen them, no doubt. Due to some weird political maneuvering going on in our government at the time, we wouldn’t be issued any emergency passports, and were going to have to wait for up to a week to return home. Like I said, that was fine with me; I had everything I ever needed, but the three of them had important jobs to get back to—that they would lose if they didn’t. We made the decision to sneak back over the border, which was very easy when you had your own private plane. It wasn’t at all legal, but I got us home safely, securely, and secretly. I knew where we could land where we didn’t have to go through customs. Of course, that meant when our new passports finally did come in, they would be sent to the address we gave the embassy in Mexico. My boss told me I would be fired if I didn’t get back to work right away, but this was more important. I took one last trip over that border, picked up the passports, mailed them to my family, and then I just kept flying. I haven’t been back to the United States since.

Microstory 876: Deer to My Heart

< > Table of Contents

When the first of the monsters started cropping up in the public, a lot of people thought they knew what they were dealing with. They had pale skin, sharp fangs, and drank human blood, presumably to survive. They only came out at night, and they seemed to be multiplying. People reported that their loved ones, who were once perfectly normal, suddenly acted different, and went after them like all the other attackers. Vampires. That was the word people were using to classify these new beings, because that was the one that made the most sense. Naturally, we assumed we understood what that meant, and how to fight them off. We were so wrong. What we discovered the hard way was that they would not be killed by the sun, or by ultraviolet light. They came out at night because their bodies preferred cooler weather, but that didn’t mean heat was deadly to them. They could be killed with fire, or decapitation, but that goes for just about any living creature on the planet. We also thought a vampire could be killed with a wooden stake to the heart, but a great many humans were either killed, or turned, failing to make that work. Though not impossible to kill, vampires were tough, and strong. It took more military prowess than the average civilian could demonstrate, unlike in the movies, where average joes band together, and save the day. It was I who discovered their unusual weakness, and I did it accidentally. Like any good doomsday prepper, I had a plan to escape the city, and just wait this out somewhere remote. Like a good doomsday prepper with no money, my plan was limited to a few ready-to-eat meals saved up, and some camping gear. I couldn’t afford a bunker, or a road tank, so my best bet was to just hope to find some small sliver of land away from the struggle.

I made my way out of town when the first legitimate reports came in, and monitored the situation via crank radio. I drove up to the nearest significant wooded area, which was Aldenroda National Park. Then I just started living off the land, finding food using the knowledge I gained from video tutorials online before this all happened, and supplementing what I never learned with instinct and improvisation. After a couple of weeks, things were getting worse in civilization, but I had still not encountered a single vampire myself. By then, anyone still around knew that wooden stakes and daylight wouldn’t help them, including me. I felt fairly safe where I was, but winter was literally coming, and I would die from good ol’ fashioned hypothermia if I didn’t travel south, or find some better shelter. Fortunately, I happened upon an abandoned cabin that was perfect. It was pretty well insulated, had a nice fireplace, and a good bed. I was doing even better than before when a vampire showed up out of nowhere, looking for some dinner. There weren’t any samurai swords around, and I didn’t think I was clever enough to set the guy on fire, so my options were death, or switching sides. Desperate for door number three, I grabbed the nearest weapon I could find, which was a set of deer antlers the cabin’s real owner evidently never got around to hanging up. They had just left them on the floor, and so had I. The vampire thought he had me cornered, but I got lucky when he accidentally fell onto the antlers, and straight up died. I was shocked and relieved. I had stumbled upon perhaps the easiest way to kill these things, and no one else knew about it. I now had a new pair of choices; continue to use this revelation to my advantage, or go back to the outside world, and spread the word. The choice was obvious. The world had never done anything for me, so screw ‘em. They can all die, for all I care. I’m the only person who matters now, I thought. Yet fifty years later, I’ll be dying soon anyway, and humanity is still here. I impart the secret of the antlers to you, stranger. Use it wisel—what are you doing with that machete?

The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 9, 2186

« < » > Table of Contents

A Doctor Mallory Hammer showed up when called using her special pager number. Ecrin shook her hand like they were friendly acquaintances, though Mallory obviously had never met her. The pager was designed to pull her from a time after encountering the person making the request, but that feature wasn’t always reliable. She ran the standard battery of tests on Leona, confirming that she was indeed pregnant. She also had advanced instruments that would give more information than even today’s technology could. As far as they could tell, Leona was carrying two genetically healthy babies. If the human doctor had known it was twins, she never said anything. Mallory also possessed a tool that could seek out the father of the children, even across time and space, but it came up with nothing. She said that she had never seen that before; it was like the father didn’t even exist. Paige guessed that it was due to some corruption in reality, but they had no way of detecting that, let alone correcting it.

Mallory did all she could that day, then fitted Leona with a wristband that would monitor her status before, and after her jump into the future, and also any time in between, if there was any at all. Come the next year, the doctor was there, waiting to run some follow-up tests, to make sure the time jumps weren’t having a negative impact on the fetuses.

“How are you holding up?” Mallory asked while listening to Leona’s lungs.

“I just learned I’m pregnant with twins who have no apparent father. I’m not great,” Leona replied.

“Well, there’s one test I’ve not done, because it’s experimental, and not necessarily ethical. It’s been requested before, though, so I feel I need to mention it. I am in no way recommending it, though. It’s important you understand that.”

“I can’t really understand that until I know what it is.”

“That’s fair.” She took a few notes on her tablet before continuing. Then she made a point of facing Leona straight on, and got all serious. “I have the ability to show you what your children will look like in the future.”

“Any time in the future?”

“All times.”

“Would I be able to speak with them?”

“Theoretically.”

“You said you’ve done this.”

“Other patients were too nervous to try actually talking with them. I only bring it up because you’re salmon. Sort of.”

That Leona did understand. “If the father is also salmon, they could be born as choosers, and taken away from me.”

“Yes. Before you answer, I’m sure you realize this might be your only chance to meet them. If they’re not like you, three years will go by like that. Someone else will have to raise them, whether they’re choosers, or not.”

Leona was nodding solemnly. These were good points, but there was something unnatural about meeting an older version of your own kid before they’re even born. Coming across people going different directions in the timestream happened all the time, but this would be very different. In the end, she had to decline the offer, which Mallory seemed relieved to hear.

“Hello?” came a voice from the other room. Then he appeared from around the corner.

“Dr. Sarka?” Mallory asked, surprised to see him, but not bothered.

Baxter wasn’t bothered either. “Dr. Hammer, I was assigned Leona’s case.”

“I came as a favor,” Mallory explained. “I’m not here to step on anyone’s toes.”

“No, it’s quite all right,” Sarka assured her. “Can’t hurt to have three medical professionals.”

Right on cue, a very young Saga Einarsson came through, carrying Sarka’s medical bag.

“Saga?” Leona questioned.

“Oh,” Saga said. “If we meet sometime in my future, be sure not to tell me about it.”

“Yeah, you’re right, I wo—” she stopped herself to work out the math in her head. “Actually, it’s not a problem. You’re the other Saga.”

“There’s more than one of me?”

“Something changed in the past,” Leona explained. “Something big. It rewrote everyone’s history, but a few of us remember. And a few of people actually survived the transition. You and your partner, Vearden were two of those people.”

“I had a partner?” Alt!Saga asked. “With a name like that?”

“I guess you never met in this reality. I guess you’re not even a doorwalker.”

Alt!Saga looked to Sarka, who appeared to know what that meant either. This was the curse of blending one’s brain.

“It’s about to get even more awkward.” Ulinthra was there, Harrison in tow.

“I’m sorry?” Sarka asked, confused.

“Wait,” Ulinthra said. “I timed that wrong. “Restart the conversation, I’ll come back in when you get to the right point.”

An exasperated Leona sighed heavily and loudly. “I thought I was supposed to try to catch you. Why do you keep attacking me?”

“Attack?” Ulinthra was offended. “How is this an attack?”

“Because I don’t want you here. This is a private moment.”

“I understand that, but it concerns me too,” Ulinthra claimed.

“How so?”

“I have been fascinated you since we first met,” Ulinthra began.

“In which reality?” Leona jumped in.

Ulinthra shrugged. “This one. I didn’t quite see what I could as powers. I had excellent intuition, like everything I was experiencing had already come to pass, and I just couldn’t quite remember. Turns out, that’s exactly what was happening. Keep in mind, that’s before I got my brain blended, and figured out how to use my full powers. But you know those movies where the hero meets some random person—often an old gypsy woman?”

“Racist. Where are you going with this?”

“Just be patient,” Ulinthra said. “Wait, is there a reason you three are still here?” She was looking at Mallory, Sarka, and Alt!Saga.

“Harrison, did you have enough time with that gun that that, uhh...security guard uses?”

“Mister Morse?” Harrison confirmed.

“Yes.”

“I believe I did.”

“Shoot them, please.”

“Now, don’t you dare!” Leona tried to fight them, but it was no use. Harrison removed his index finger to reveal the business end of a weapon. He fired a laser at his three targets, and they disappeared.

“Are they in Beaver Haven?” Leona asked, referring to the salmon-chooser prison.

Ulinthra smiled. “I can build my own jails, thank you very much. Now, where was I? Gypsy women, yes. They always give the heroes this weird look—sometimes they’ve been upset by them—but they curse them, or tell them some prophecy. Then the movie continues, and you don’t know for sure if she was the real deal, but then the future comes to pass, and it was, not quite like we all thought.”

“You’re not great with words.”

“You’re not great with your face!” Ulinthra volleyed.

Harrison couldn’t help but smirk. Leona might have an in with him.

“That was wrong of me, I’m sorry. Your face is actually amazing. My point is that I met a sort of gypsy woman when I was very young. I won’t bore you with the details, but I ignored her words at the time, as you’d expect. It wasn’t until I started learning about people with time powers that I suspected she may have been telling the truth.”

“And what was it that she told you?”

“She said that the Daughter of the Lion would be my downfall. That’s why your baby means something to me. She’s going to kill me one day.”

Leona pinched the bridge of her nose like Stan Marsh. “You just said said that the prophecies in those movies never turn out like you thought. Whoever you talked to said this...entity, let’s say, will be your downfall. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll die. And it doesn’t necessarily mean she’s my daughter, or even a person. Maybe it’s an actual lion. You can’t know if that’s all you have to go on.”

“Which is why you’re still alive,” Ulinthra said. “I have to know for sure if I’ve subverted that warning.”

“There’s another possibility,” Leona put forth.

“And what’s that?”

“That this person who told you this was nothing more than a charlatan, or mentally unstable. Maybe it means nothing, and the only reason you think it has anything to do with me is because my name means lion. If you had met a pregnant girl with a lion tattoo before me, you’d probably have obsessed over her, and not even given my name a thought.”

“That’s a good point,” Ulinthra said. “I may be freaking out over nothing. Then again, we’re all time travelers. Well,” she said as she was looking at Harrison, like he didn’t matter much. “Except for you.”

“Quite,” Harrison said simply.

“There’s one thing you have to remember, though.” She started walked around to the side of Leona’s bed.

“Oh no. Whatever you’re about to say can’t be good.” Leona was genuinely scared.

Ulinthra took out a knife and held it to Leona’s throat, and whispered into her ear. “I’ve already had this conversation.” She pointed to the corner. “And there’s a camera up there.”

“So what?”

Ulinthra swung her arm away from Leona, and aggressively jammed it into something right behind her. Then she swung the rest of her body around, revealing Paige to be the victim. A violently angry Ulinthra twisted the knife with her one hand, and forced her to her knees, which was something Paige could probably still survive. Her upgrades would keep her alive until she made it to medical attention, but Ulinthra had no intention of letting this happen. She lifted her other hand, and balled it into a fist, engaging a whistling electrical charge. Then she struck Paige right in the forehead, and electrocuted until the energy had reached critical mass, and the gauntlet lost all power.

Ulinthra’s rage was very gradually dissipating as Leona tried very hard to react. She couldn’t, though. She just sat there in fear and disbelief. Ulinthra continued to catch her breath, watching the motionless Paige on the floor, sparks still popping out of her mechanical parts. Then she looked at Leona. “I still don’t know if you planned this. If you somehow coordinated this...attack. I don’t even know why there’s a security camera in your room. But this is good proof that I will do what I must to survive, and keep what is mine. You remember that first reality; the one where I was a killer?”

Leona was unable to answer at first, but did eventually. “I don’t remember you as a serial killer. Horace just told me about you two later.”

“Well, there’s something you might like to know. That wasn’t the first reality. The only person you know who even existed in the first reality was Darko Matic. Are you two related, or something?”

“What?”

“Whatever. My point is that the you have memories of three independent timelines.”

“Right.”

Ulinthra nodded. “Well, I remember all of them. And in most cases, I was worse than you’ll ever know, because if you ever meet that version of Ulinthra...you’ll have no more than five seconds to live.” She started walking out of the room. “Clean that up, Harrison, then shoot Leona to the hock. I’ll see her again next year.”

“Hey, Yuli,” Leona said bravely.

Ulinthra turned back around.

“I don’t know what that fortune teller thought she knew, but I can tell you one thing.”

“Go on.”

“You’ll be dead before my daughter is even born.”

« < » > Table of Contents