Fervor: Monkey Boots (Part V)

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Hilde and I turn around when we hear people behind us. A man and woman are standing a few meters from us in the lobby. They’re wearing extremely outdated garb, and looking around. “Hello,” Hilde says, as brave as Slipstream. “This might be a strange question, but what year is this?”

The man looks at his timepiece. “We were to understand it would be 2030.”

“That’s five years in the future,” I point out.

“It would be five hundred and twelve for us.”

“You were trying to go to the future?”

“Well, we weren’t really trying,” the woman answers. “We’re salmon, so it just happens to us. The math checks out. We should have jumped today.”

“Let’s go outside,” Hilde suggests, “before the other people in this building find us.” We step out and see nothing but trees and plants. The air is crisp and fresh, completely free from human pollution. We’re standing next to a wall of lavender. “I don’t think it’s 2030, or 2025. I think you’re still in...uh”

“1518,” the woman says. “By the Julian calendar.”

“That’s exactly what year it is,” another woman says, having walked out from the building. “Who are you people?” It’s a younger version of Jesimula Utkin. Is that good or bad?

“Paige,” I respond, not wanting to antagonize her just yet, or let on that we know something about her personal future.

“Hilde.”

“Laura.”

“Samwise.”

“Samwise?” Jesimula questions? “Like in Lord of the Rings?”

“Uhuh.”

“What year are you all from?”

“2025,” Hilde says. “We hitched a ride in your magical building.

“1994, originally,” Laura answers for the two of them. “I think your building interfered with our latest attempt at a salmon jump.”

“I think your salmon jump interfered with our building,” Jesimula counters. We were trying to get to 1491.”

“I think the powers that be wanted this to happen. That explains the time pigeon we received, telling us to come to these coordinates.”

Jesmula breathes to center herself, then redirects her attention to the two of us. “What were you doing in my building?”

“We were just looking for directions. We have nothing to do with this,” I lie unconvincingly.

“That’s bullshit. If you weren’t time travelers, you would be freaking out right now. Who are you? Are you trying to stop me?”

We don’t say anything.

“Answer me!”

“Yes,” I finally say truthfully. “We’re trying to stop you. We have witnessed the future you look forward to,” I say untruthfully. There’s no reason to bring Future!Jesi into this. “It does not end well. You should return, and cancel all of your plans. Try doing something good for the world.”

“I am doing something good for the world. I have no clue what future you saw, but I assure you that I have nothing but good intentions.” She gestures to her building. “This facility is in a unique position to study diseases and potential cures across all of time and space.”

“Have you never worried about cross-contamination?” Laura asks.

“We do,” Jesi affirms. “Which is why you four being here is such a problem. You’ve breached our safety protocols. Maybe it is you who creates the virus that spreads through the future you claim to have seen.”

“We didn’t say jack about a virus,” Hilde remarks.

“I guessed, based on the purpose of my company.”

“The virus isn’t from the past, it’s from the future. Everybody’s future.”

“Are you sure?” Jesimula asked, suddenly dead serious.

“Yes.”

“Who told you this? How did they know? When in the future did it come from? Be specific.”

“We don’t have specifics,” Hilde says to her. “We can tell you only that we can’t tell you everything, because it violates a rule of time travel.”

Jesimula shakes her head. “That’s not gonna fly. You’re all going to the hock until we get this sorted out.”

“You have your own jail?” I question.

“You don’t?” she asks rhetorically.

We spend a few hours being watched in the J.U. Mithra jail cell in the basement before the ad hoc guard gets tired of it, and leaves. As soon as the door closes behind him, we hear the flapping of wings from the floor, along with bird coos. “They must be studying bird diseases, or something,” I guess.

“I don’t think that’s it,” Samwise says.

I lean forward as the flapping and cooing continue, until a bird suddenly appears from the stones, as if they were nothing more than a hologram. It nearly takes off my face as it flies around, bewildered by the abrupt emergence into close quarters.

“Catch it!” Laura whispers loudly.

I try to go for it, but it’s way too fast. Then Hilde stretches her arm out, and the thing just lands right on it, like it’s finally found home.

“Are you a wizard?” I ask her.

“I have some falconry experience, believe it or not,” she answers as she’s unraveling the note attached to the pigeon’s leg. like it’s no big deal. “Birds just know this.” She clears her throat, and reads the note, “Paige, take a picture of the wall outside the cell. What the hell?”

“Should I do it?” I survey the group. They all just shrug, so I take out my phone, and snap a photo of the wall, because it sounds innocuous. Immediately afterwards, another version of me appears in front of the wall, shocked and confused. Shocked as well, I look back down at my phone and tap the little thumbnail to open the photo I just took. I get a strange sort of burning sensation in my eyes, and then I find myself on the other side of the bars, looking at the past version of myself. I then watch as she looks down at her phone, and disappears to close the loop. “What in the world just happened?”

“Have you never done that before?” Laura asks me.

“No.”

“I thought you were a time traveler.”

“I was a stowaway. I’ve never done it myself. I didn’t know I could.”

“Hilde,” Laura says, “show her the note.”

“My God, it’s in my handwriting,” I realize when Hilde hands it to me. I flip it over. “And it’s written on the back of my receipt for coffee this morning.”

“Yikes,” Samwise says, “you just bootstrapped yourself.

“I beg your pardon, I’m fourteen.”

“No, I mean if you don’t write that note, you may inadvertently create a temporal paradox.”

“You mean another paradox,” Hilde reminded him. “The bootstrap itself is already one.”

“What boots are we talking about?” I’m getting a bit angry being left out of this.

“It’s an ontological paradox,” Hilde starts to explain. “If you write that note, then the only reason you wrote it is because you’ve seen the note come to you from the future. But the only reason the note came to you from the future is because you wrote it.”

“So...?” I ask patiently.

“So, who came up with the idea to write the note? You didn’t. You’re only gonna write it because you know you’re supposed to. There’s no actual cause. It just comes out of nowhere.”

“They do that on 12 Monkeys all the time,” I bring up. “They meet someone one day who talks about having seen them years ago, so they go back further, to that moment years ago, and meet them again...for the very first time.”

“Yes, well that works because it’s a piece of fiction,” Hilde says. “This is real life.”

“Is it, though?”

“Just write the note,” Samwise says with his foot down, “and let’s get past this.”

“Well, how do I get that pigeon back here?” I ask as I’m taking the present-day receipt out of my pocket, and starting to write the note.”

Samwise and Laura give each other this look before she starts to answer. “Okay, well, it’s a little weird—and neither of us knows why it works this way—but you have to find a podium, or a podium-like object. Then you have to stand over it, and say, if he or she does their schoolwork seriously; does well, takes school.”

“It’s not even a real sentence, but that’s what you have to say,” Samwise adds.

“It might not be a pigeon,” Laura says. “It could be an owl, or a dove, or even a finch. Any one of them can take your message to wherever and whenever you want them to.”

I look around the room. There is no podium-like thing around, and certainly no podium.

“You might have to go somewhere else,” Hilde suggests.

“No, this is stupid. I can write the note anytime. What I need to do is get you three out of there.” I look around again. “The keys are usually on a hook on the other side of the room, just outside of reach of a rope made out of clothes tied together.” As I’m scanning the walls, we hear movement on the other side of the door.

“The keys aren’t gonna be in here,” Laura warns. “But you need to go. Get yourself out. Use another picture, if you have to.”

“I’m not leaving you,” I argue.

“Paige!” Hilde starts to say, but then the guard comes back in the room. “Run! Now!”

“Hey!” the guard shouts.

I turn to run, but I don’t get far. Something pokes me in the back, and I suddenly can’t move a single muscle. My phone slips out of my hand, and I fall to the floor. All I can see is my Blue Marble homescreen. My eyes start burning again, and before I know it, I’m on the ground, outside again. The pain has subsided, and I’m able to stand back up. I get into a crouch and gather myself before looking around. I see tall buildings, and old cars driving around. The people, their clothes, and everything around me; it all just screams 1970s. At the very least, I can safely say I’m no longer in the early sixteenth century.

A woman kneels down and helps me up. “My God, are you okay?” she asks in what sounds like a British accent.

“I’m fine, I just need to get back,” I tell her as I’m scouring the ground. “My phone. Where’s my phone?”

“Back at your place, I would imagine,” the woman says. “You couldn’t take it with you.” She laughs.

“Oh crap, I wasn’t holding it. I have to be holding it!”

“Okay, it’s okay. Where are your parents? Do you know where you’re staying? I assume you’re not from South Africa?”

“This is South Africa?”

“Quite.”

“What year?”

“Paige?” I hear a sickening voice I am all too familiar with. “Is that you?”

I close my eyes, and slowly turn around, hoping this is all just a nightmare. When I open them, however, I find that it is not. It’s just my nightmare come to life. Standing before me is my awful birthmother. Behind her is my just as bad birthfather.

“It is you,” my mother says in awe. She almost looks like she’s about to break down in tears of joy, but I know her too well. 

“It’s nice to meet you,” the woman who was helping me says with her hand open. “My name is—”

“Paige Turner!” my mother scolds me, ignoring the woman. “It’s been over a year. Where the shit have you been!”

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Microstory 900: Providentials (Introduction)

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At some point many moons ago, I was sort of hurting for ideas, so I went back through my old works, trying to figure out whether I could expand on them. I wrote a couple of fables, and figured I could come up with more. I quite enjoyed writing the Perspectives series, so I decided I could revisit that concept from time to time. And I realized that I could reapply my strategy from Bellevue Profiles to a Salmonverse Profiles version, of which two have already been posted. My salmonverse canon has become so much larger than I ever thought it would, and I think the audience might benefit from a source that sums up each character’s backstory. You’ll see these all come to fruition over the next few years. I also figured I could write an expansion of my 99th microstory, 99 Problems. What a great idea, right? I’ve already told you what I hate; now I can tell you why. It just seemed so perfect since I didn’t have anything else for the 900 block. Well, then November 8, 2016 happened. One of the worst people in the history of the world was elected King Dumpster of the Divided States of Russiamerica. I was heartbroken. Not only could this administration negate everything we’ve worked so hard for over the last two billion years, but it was a testament to how many hateful people there were in the country I once thought I loved. It was extremely clear to me from the very beginning that Donald Trump was, and is, a Russian spy (we can argue semantics all you want, but if you don’t think he’s Putin’s intelligence asset, then you are not paying any goddamn attention). It seemed to take a long time for others to realize this very obvious fact, and it’s going to be even longer before all the people who either deny it today, or aren’t bothered by it, simply turn over to the sweet release of biological death. His election, however unjustified and illegal as it was, turned out to be a major wakeup call to me. This is the world we’re living in. Nazis run the U.S., the United Kingdom wants to hide away in a hole, and the future is doomed. But as time wore on with Drumpf’s first year, I started to reject these ideas. Seriously, screw that. Screw him, and screw all the negativity. I’m not going to sit back and let this happen. I’m going to fight for this planet that has been ruined by—sorry to say it—you neurotypicals. You’ve had your chance for the last couple hundred thousand years. Maybe you wanna give someone else a shot? We might surprise you, and I doubt we could do worse than the pile of crap you’ve created. Let’s start with this. I’m cancelling my 99 Problems series, and replacing it with something less negative, because that’s what we need right now. I’m going to show you that there is still good in the world, and that we can get through this. King Dumpster’s people have made one final push against the future, but they will ultimately fail. This is my contribution, as a writer...my personal list of 99 Providentials.

PS: My Dream series was longer than normal. These will probably be on the shorter side.

Microstory 899: Tragic Magic

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A long time ago, before motor vehicles were invented, the pathways between buildings were narrow. The people of the time could not conceive of the need for wider roads. A couple individuals needed to be able to pass each other going opposite directions, but not much else. As technology progressed, the city of London grew larger, as did its streets. But the city center was still the same as it ever was, leaving little room for practical living. But the buildings were old, and made as beautiful architecture. Londoners did not want to destroy them, and build anew, so city officials struck a deal. Witches were commissioned to widen the streets with magic, by adding an extra dimension of space in between the space that we perceive. Normal people cannot detect this higher dimension, so we interpret it as nothing but emptiness. Over time, the memory of this act faded from people’s minds. Those who were around when it happened died off, and their descendants did not believe the stories. Eventually, even the stories stopped being told, and we were left with a normal city that only a few surviving believers were aware was actually held together by magic. Now in modern day, those original wonderful buildings have been upgraded, dismantled, and replaced, but the magic remains. Even amongst those who know the truth, only one family is aware of what happened to the witches. Some believed them to be immortal, and to still be living up to today. Others thought their descendants now protected the city. Both are right. Both are wrong. The witches have been passing their souls down their own generational lines all this time. Out of each family, three children are born. Two must live on, and live full lives. The other must relinquish their body, and agree to be supplanted by one of their own parents, sometime after adulthood, but before age-related fertility problems threaten the cycle. But of course, this has led to diminishing returns, and the last full-powered witch died yesterday.

It has always been my family’s responsibility to care for the remaining powered witches, but there is only so much we can do. With no equal mate, the last witch was incapable of conceiving any children who could bear the burden of her power. She married a nice man, and raised three lovely children, but they could not possess magic. So when she finally passed on, the London spell automatically dissipated, as did all other magical spells. The central buildings were suddenly sent hurtling towards each other. A great many people were killed or hurt in this, but most of the buildings themselves remained intact; if only closer together. Two buildings, however, were not so lucky. I met my wife three dozen stories up in the air, above the street. For whatever reason, the architect responsible for both of our respective buildings decided later to construct extensions from both of the penthouses, so they were only a few meters apart from each other. This allowed us to carry on conversations from opposite buildings. I was attending to the last witch’s body when magic turned off. The penthouse extensions crashed into each other. My father and wife, who were chatting up there, were quite nearly killed. But this was not the only spell affected. The last witch used magic to cure my wife of her cancer, as a sort of profoundly beautiful gift, but her illness returned upon the end of magic. A toy tiger that had been passed down the family, and presently belonged to my son, turned out to be a real tiger. We still don’t know which witch transformed it, when exactly, or why. As my father and his daughter-in-law were trying to make their way off the extensions, the tiger ran across it, and tried to attack them. My father was forced to pull it off the edge, sending both of them falling towards their deaths. But there was one more gift the witches bequested to us before their end. I had with me a secret reserve of magic that I was told would be good for one further spell. I used it to save my father’s life, as well as the tiger’s, landing them both safely on either side of a fence in the nearby zoo. But a second spell cast itself, completely out of my control. It turned my son into a new witch. And it was he who put the buildings back to where they belonged, repaired all the injuries and deaths caused by the temporary loss in magic, and erased everyone’s memories of the whole thing. But we don’t know what to do next.

Microstory 898: Gerrafy and Nanomouse

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Research log, July 31. A lot of people know that only one species of giraffa exists in modern day, but what I’m the only one who knows is that that is not true. There is another, extremely rare, but very much alive species that I have named the gerrafy. The few I’ve encountered were seven meters tall, but they were all female, and—based on giraffe sexual dimorphism—I believe they can reach upwards of eight and a half meters. I discovered the first specimen living in the depths of none other than the Amazon rainforest. If ever you were going to find an animal no one knew existed, it would be there, so I was not surprised. What I was surprised to find was a second hitherto unheard of species of mouse that I believe to now hold the record for the smallest in the world. The African pygmy mouse comes in at a length of only a few centimeters, but the shipayan nanomouse is barely one centimeter long, and I do not currently possess a scale sensitive enough to measure its weight. Even more interesting, these two phenomenal species seem to enjoy a symbiotic relationship between them. The gerrafy protects the nanomouse from predators, while the mouse rids the gerrafy’s fur of parasites, and other pests, which seem to be particularly fond of the oils its skin excretes. I’ve by now found a couple dozen specimens of gerrafy, and I’ve yet to find one that does not keep a nanomouse with her at all times. I’ve also never seen one of the mice away from its gerrafy companion. One would think there would be a population discrepancy between them, but I have not seen evidence of that yet. I will continue to study these beautiful creatures. I’ve taken one pair of them to the abandoned Museum Salinas, which was the only location I could find large enough to accommodate the beast. They have broken free of their cage, and are racing down the hallways. I believe they have made their way into my colleague’s truck. I will update tomorrow.

Microstory 897: Wrong Guy

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Depending on how you look at it, I was either in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the right place at the right time. I’ve always been a curious fellow, and fairly observant, but not particularly brave. Mine was one of the last cities to still have payphones, and I happened to be waiting for one when a man was inside of it, having a very heated conversation. I wouldn’t have been there if my phone’s battery hadn’t died, and I didn’t need to alert my daughter that I would be late that night. The man was trying to keep his voice down, but when people are angry, they’re known for having trouble controlling themselves. I could pick out a few good sentences when his back was turned to me. Unless he was acting, or just joking around, he had just kidnapped someone, and was demanding payment for it. My assumption was that I was on some prank show, be it a new one, a revived old series, or as part of a crappy attempt at online video superstardom. It seemed too risky to just ignore the possibility, however, that it was all real, and simply go about my business. As soon as he got out of the phone booth, he started speedwalking down the street, so if I had stopped to call the police, he would have gotten away. Besides, I thought, if he really is ransoming someone, the cops probably already know about it. So, like the right fool I am, I started following him all sneaky-like. He never caught on to my pursuit, and he led me right to his secret lair, where he was keeping a young boy tied up in a chair. I didn’t see anyone else around, so when the kidnapper was in the bathroom, I raced to undo the kid’s ropes, and carried him out.

My instinct was to get as far from the area as fast as possible, even if that meant going away from a phone I could use to call for help. I was right to not stop, because the kidnapper came out soon thereafter, and started chasing us. I noticed a woman leave her car running as she went up to a building to deliver flowers, so I stole her car, and drove off. I asked the boy where he lived, and he gave me the name of a small town that was thirty miles away. Clever, taking him so far away that the cops aren’t even looking in the right place. Worried that the man would have a car of his own, I didn’t stop driving until we were safely out of the city. We stopped at a diner, and I let him out so we could borrow a phone, which was just another dumb thing I did. Had I walked in there alone, no one would have paid attention, but everyone by then had received the Amber Alert. They were just sitting there, staring at us, like a scene out of Vanilla Sky. I tried to reason with them, and claim that I was the rescuer, not the kidnapper, but no one believed me. I tried to just leave the kid there, and let those people deal with it, but he refused. He must have developed an attachment in our short time together. Anyway, we got back on the road to strategize how I could clear my name, knowing full well that my picture would soon be part of the Amber Alert too. The cops set up roadblocks, and chased after us, and honestly, I thought it would only end in my death. But then the bombs went off, and none of that mattered anymore. Amid the chaos, I finally got us back to the kid’s hometown, but his parents were nowhere to be found. We’ve been traveling the country together ever since, just trying to survive, like everybody else. So that’s our story. How did you guys meet?

Microstory 896: No Small Parts

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Our only saving grace when the aliens came to take over our planet was that they severely underestimated our will to fight back. They didn’t send enough ships at first, and while they were able to enslave a good chunk of the population, they left the rest of us enough time to learn their ways, and come up with countermeasures. What we discovered was that once an individual was being controlled by one of the aliens, their minds could never be saved. Even if you killed the alien that was controlling them, they would just continue doing whatever their last order was; whether that meant walking in one direction without stopping, or shooting at other humans. We were forced to start killing our own kind, and I tell you, I do not envy the people responsible for that front. A team of brilliant scientists managed to capture some of the invaders, along with the humans they had enthralled. They spent months studying the permanent neural link between them, and could find no way of severing that connection. Then one woman showed us the way, but not because she somehow knew how to stop the aliens, but because was already a visionary before this all began. She was what one would call a transhumanist. She believed that man should shed his biological limitations, and “upgrade” to more advanced systems. While her achievements were remarkable, before the war started, they were also illegal in most jurisdictions. She had to conduct her experiments in secret, using a handful of extremely willing volunteers, as well as herself as guinea pigs. She realized that she and her people were incapable of being influenced by the alien mind control, if only to some degree. Simple math proved that the higher the number of upgrades one possessed, the easier it was for them to resist the control. That was our solution, but that doesn’t mean it would be easy, or quick.

Humans evolved to be what we are today due to a series of happy accidents, and genetic traits that mostly only passed down because they just happened to support the species’ ability to survive. All of our organs function automatically, so that we don’t have to concentrate on each process all the time. We feel pain to alert the brain that something is wrong. We form clots to patch wounds. We are simply not designed for modern medicine, which is why every major biomedical breakthrough has come after years of finding ways to trick the body into accepting aid. Just as it’s possible to transplant certain organs, under certain conditions, from one individual to the next, it’s possible to install nonbiological components. But this requires a lot of time, because the body always needs to adjust to the foreign object. It’s primed to reject it; because it could be a threat to the body’s survival, which means people can’t be upgraded all at once. The scientists began the process of upgrading as many people as they could, as fast as they could, but it was proving to not be enough. Finally I had to come out of the shadows. You see, transhumanists weren’t the only ones immune to alien control. Since I only had a sample size of myself, I had to guess, but I suspected the reason aliens couldn’t break my mind was because that mind is not what they expected. When I was in college, I was diagnosed with autism, which is a medical condition every single person I met told me was a disadvantage; something that we must try to correct. It took me a long time to get over the stigma, and to realize that I was not diseased; I was just different. Even before all this happened, if I could have flipped a switch, and stopped being autistic, I wouldn’t have, because it’s a part of me, and it’s made me the kind of person I am today. And the kind of person I am is one with the natural inclination to help and protect people. I didn’t need to replace my body with the upgrades, so I knew it was my obligation defend those who did need that. My latest assignment is to protect the princess, and she is proving to be a handful, but I’m honored to do it, because we have to win this war. We just have to.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 13, 2190

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Vitalie admitted with no shame that she chose to print the teleporter gun in 2188, against the group’s wishes, almost as soon as they had downloaded the plans for it. She had snuck into an empty unit in another wing to use the synthesizer in secret, then she hid it in the same cabinet where she ended up stuffing Hogarth. They fought about it as much as they could after Hogarth used the gun to completely dismantle Harrison’s substrate, but they were forced to move on to more pressing matters. Harrison’s systems were still partially online, since parts of his neural network still maintained a level of cohesion. Leona and Hogarth discovered that he wasn’t transmitting any data, but also that he was supposed to. There was no telling when Ulinthra was going to send someone after him to figure out why he wasn’t checking in. They had to figure out what they were going to do with him.

They took this opportunity to hide Hogarth away permanently in this arc’s secret floor, which they found to be at the bottom of tower 4. They instructed her to do absolutely nothing with her days, except watch TV, read, and eat. She was not to invent any new machines, or study the teleporter gun, or anything. If they were going to be able to use her as a secret weapon, they needed to bide their time. That was the reasoning behind waiting on the teleporter gun in the first place, and Vitalie’s failure to recognize could be their ultimate demise. By the time Leona and Ecrin returned from dropping her off, Brooke and Vitalie were nearly finished cleaning up the mess of android body parts, and consolidating them to a pile. Leona scanned each scrap to make sure they would not be any further threat to them. Then she hacked into his central processing unit, and storage units, to erase all data entirely. Ulinthra was going to have to find out what they had done at some point, but there were details they didn’t want getting out.

They waited all day for retaliation, but nothing came. If Ulinthra and her people knew that Harrison had been destroyed, they weren’t showing it. And if they didn’t know, then why not? Brooke crawled into her stasis pod just before midnight, while the other three crawled into their respective beds. They woke up the next year to still no reaction. This was making them nervous. Perhaps Ulinthra was biding her time as well, and letting the four of them stew in their guilt, and dread their consequences. Or maybe Harrison just wasn’t as important to her as they thought. While none of them was qualified to diagnose mental disorders—certainly not from only a handful of interactions—she did show all the signs of a psychopath, and if this was true, relationships would be difficult for her. Leona had the recollection of a timeline where Ulinthra was happily married to two lovely men, though. She was violet and dangerous in that reality, but not psychopathic. Was she the same person here, or different?

Leona couldn’t eat anything for breakfast. The others were okay, especially Vitalie, who was not at all apologetic for what she had done. Leona wanted to argue with her more about it, but also not really. Harrison in this reality was not the same one she met those years ago. Hell, he didn’t even look the same, but she still felt a sense of loss at his destruction. And there was still that fear for what was going to happen to them because of it. Vitalie asked her if she wanted to go ahead and make the call, but Leona decided against it. One of the biggest flaws in their plan was that Ulinthra could eventually catch onto it. If her Round Twos were too significantly different than her Round Ones, she would start to wonder why. In order to maintain the facade, they had to occasionally act like they were as powerless as anyone else. Today was a perfect chance to do that, because Ulinthra had to hear straight from them what had happened to Harrison, even if that meant hearing it for the second time.

Leona suddenly jumped up from the table, and opened the closet door. She pulled out the hover sled that the workers had left in case they wanted to rearrange Brooke’s pod. She dragged the blanket wrapped around Harrison’s body parts onto the sled, and started to leave. “Go about your business,” she said before closing the door. “I’m doing this one alone. No pennies today.” She clipped the sled’s proximity fob to her pants, and walked out of the unit before anyone could argue.

“Let her through,” Leona could hear Ulinthra order her personal guardsmen through the radio once she had made to the lion’s den.

Leona walked in and raised the sled high enough to drop it down on Ulinthra’s desk. “Do you know what this is?”

Ulinthra stared at the blanket. “You showed it to me the first time I lived through this day.”

“So I don’t need to explain what happened to him.”

“I would like to hear it again. Let’s call it...self-corroboration.”

Leona was going to be as honest as possible, while leaving out any unnecessary information, like the fact that a genius named Hogarth Pudeyonavic had suddenly showed up in their unit through an explosion, or that she was the one who had killed Harrison. “The real Harrison would never have taken his duties to you this far. This thing on your table was an imposter, and he was a problem. I believe I did you a favor. The other Harrison would have just left, like he did before. This one would have turned on you. You dishonored the real Harrison by giving this one the same name, and it sickened me. So I killed him.”

“How?”

“Non-food synthesizers are lined with a special coating on the glass that prevent external light from interfering with their sensors. This allows you to watch extraordinarily detailed objects being printed without affecting the instruments with minute changes in their environment.” This was not an entirely accurate explanation, but these high-level 3D printers were indeed built with special glass.

“Seems excessive, but okay...”

“When Fake!Harrison tried to teleport one of us to...wherever it is he would send someone, I held up a printer plate. The beam that reflected back at him was unstable, because it’s not really designed to do that. It teleported parts of him, to different places. We’re not sure where all of him is. This is just the bulk. I know we’ll be punished, but I am confident that it was worth it.” She started walking away.

“You overestimate how much he mattered to be,” Ulinthra shrugged. “He was just a toaster.”

Leona looked back over her shoulder. “You and I both know that’s not true. He was the only person in the world who knew exactly who you were, but still didn’t leave.”

“I thought you said he would eventually turn on me.”

“He would have, because everyone does. But in every reality where it’s happened, you never believe it until it happens.”

“You act like you know more about the continuum than I do. I’m the one who had her brain blended to a hundred and one percent.”

“That’s true, and it’s true that I didn’t even know that was possible. But I don’t have to know every version of you to know you. You’re gonna lose. You’re gonna lose everything.” Leona tried to leave again.

“How should I punish you? I may not have cared much for Harrison, but he was still my property.”

“I would be devastated if you killed yourself,” Leona lied unconvincingly.

This made Ulinthra grin. “I’ll think of something.”

Leona took a walk on the platform to clear her head, stopping only to grab some altitude gum. When she got back to their arcunit a couple hours later, her friends were all in the middle of naps, including Brooke. Leona was about to lie down next to her and get some depression sleep in too, but Ulinthra’s voice came on the arcwide system.

“Residents of Panama Arc Two, a few of you have decided to take it upon themselves to defy the Arianation. They have murdered a loyal supporter of mine; someone who has been with me since the beginning. But I am unable to punish them, so I have no choice but to punish you. Please direct your attention to the nearest viewscreen.”

“Everyone out of their room!” Leona ordered.

They came hustling out so they could watch together on the main screen in the living area. A drone was delivering a live stream of one of the hanging towers.

“Is that...?” Vitalie asked.

“The tower that Hogarth is in? It is, yes,” Leona confirmed.

“This is what happens when you can’t listen,” Ulinthra said through the speakers.

They watched in horror as a military drone slid into frame, and pointed its weapons at the base of the tower, which was attached to the platform. It was only a few dozen stories tall, which meant the bottom floor was still hundreds of meters up in the air. The drone fired its weapons at the base until it was enough to sever the tower’s connection to the platform. The streaming drone tilted its camera down so everyone could see thousands upon thousands of people fall hopelessly to their deaths. But then something happened. A massive portal opened on the ground below the tower, and swallowed it up. Where did they go, and who was responsible for taking them?

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Fervor: Clinica Titanica (Part IV)

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Famous female explorer, Ida Reyer, shaken from having thought she was gonna lose her precious Compass of Disturbance—which I had a feeling was more powerful than we could imagine—left the apartment, looking for an exit portal to somewhere quiet where she could make sure it was okay. Hogarth offered to take a look at it for her, convinced that what happened to her before was not going to happen again, but Ida was not so confident. She wasn’t really a part of this, and she felt she needed to get away from all of us as soon as possible. That’s understandable. Meanwhile, Hogarth was busy with her own situation anyway. She needed to have a good long conversation with Hilde, away from everyone else. I could hear them raise their voices every once in awhile from the other room, but it never seemed to get too heated. From what I gathered, Hogarth had just spent some time in the future, and in fact multiple points in time. Whatever the compass had done to her, it continued to have an impact on her relationship with the timestream, forcing her to jump around aimlessly. Since this involved Hilde, and people Hilde knew, Hogarth couldn’t say too much about what was going to happen to them, which must have been frustrating.

I asked Leona how she felt about all this, since she too could be seen on the other side of the portal that FarFuture!Hogarth opened. Leona just shrugged, revealing that it wasn’t the first time she’d encountered something like that. “Avoid alternate versions of herself,” she said. “Rule number four.” I also learned from her that she had created a whole list of time traveling etiquette, which were apparently in use amongst people like her throughout time and space. She typed up a copy of the list for me so I could keep it for reference. We spent our time last night looking through the Book of Hogarth. I’m no scientist, so I was having trouble understanding it, but she is, so she should have at least had some semblance of what it all meant. She admitted to being lost with it, though.  We worked on it for hours, looking for any clue as to how to decipher it, but anything she could interpret as meaningful was also somehow over her head. There was some pretty high level multidimensional math going on in there, whatever that was. As Slipstream was ordering me to go to bed, since I’m still a little baby, Leona appeared to be experiencing some revelation about the book that I was not given the opportunity to hear until the morning.

“Time,” Leona says simply over breakfast.

“Yes, it’s weirder than we thought,” Slipstream responds. “What about it?”

“That’s exactly right,” Leona continues. “Time isn’t linear. Make a mistake? Go back and fix it. Want to see what your great grandparents looked like when they were children? Easy. Need more time? Well,  that can be done too. But there’s one thing about time that can’t be manipulated, despite the fact that time and thought seem to enjoy a particularly close relationship.”

“What’s that?” Hogarth asks as the one person there who could truly follow Leona’s logic.

“Learning,” Leona says. “Learning still takes time. You have to practice, and reinforce, and you have to be patient.” She holds up the book. “This thing doesn’t just give you secrets. You have to earn the right to understand them, and that takes real time. It changes. Not before your eyes, but I’ve looked at a page, flipped to the next one, and then flipped back, to find it different. I still don’t understand it, but it’s changed. It’s adapting to my level as a reader, and scholar.”

“So only smart people have any hope of figuring that thing out completely?” Hilde supposes. “I guess I’m out.”

“No, it doesn’t take intelligence. It takes time. Yes, Hogarth and I may need less time, but that goes for anything.”

“How much time do you need to identify what we’re meant to do with the book in the first place?”

“That’s impossible to say,” Leona tells her while preparing to take a drink from her juice, “as I’m sure you surmised before I even answered that question.”

“All right,” Slipstream says. “I’m still not sure what we’re here to accomplish at all, so I guess take the time you need. My main job is to take care of Paige until her fathers come back.”

“No, it’s not,” I argue calmly. “Mireille was my babysitter. You just stumbled upon this.”

“No, that woman said I was placed here to be on the team, or whatever. And...”

“And what?”

“And she wasn’t the only one. Someone I trust implicitly encouraged me to help with this,” Slipstream says vaguely.

“What exactly did they tell you?”

Slipstream looks between me and the book. “He said to turn to the next page in the book of my life. I didn’t emphasize those words; he did. It was a clue.”

“That could mean anything,” Hogarth points out.

“It means this,” Slipstream begins. “We’ve all been asked here to stop some virus. We were asked to do this by the future version of the woman who is apparently responsible for it, in this weird 12 Monkeys sort of situation. I don’t know what this book can do for us, but I know I have to help. Not all of you know who I am, of what I’ve done. But I hesitated when I was asked to help rid this city of gun violence. I didn’t see the vision right away, and I actually charged for my services. I regret every roadblock I put up that stunted the effort, because I think Kansas City is better for having achieved what it did. My experiences over the last several years have taught me that when something needs to be done, you have to assume that no one else is going to do it. We’ve been putting one thing off throughout this whole thing, and I think that’s a mistake.”

“What have we been putting off?” I ask.

“We need to find out who the present day Jesimoo—uhh, help me out here.”

“Jesimula Utkin,” Hogarth says.

“Right, her. We need to do recon on her. Who is she? Where is she now? Is she already in the process of releasing this virus? Has she already released it?”

By the time she finishes her sentence, I’ve already pulled out my phone and run a simple Google search. “Jesimula Utkin,” I start. “Founder of CEO of J.U. Mithra Labs. It’s a small pharmaceutical research outfit, based in Independence, Missouri.”

“Oh, God,” Hilde says. “Not Independence.”

“What’s wrong with Independence?” I ask, not having grown up around here.

“Don’t worry about it,” Slipstream says, shaking her head.

“Well, either way it’s about a half hour away,” I say, having mapped it.

“Okay.” Slipstream stands up. “I’m leaving in thirty minutes. Anyone can come help...except for Paige.”

“Ha,” I scoff. “Your friend told you to turn the page. I’m the Paige Turner. He never said anything about leaving me behind.”

“You’re a child.”

“I’m sixty-six years old.”

“Paige,” Slipstream scolds me.

“Fine, I’m fourteen, but—”

“She’s coming,” Leona said, inexplicably my advocate. “I’ve been doing this a long time. If someone as powerful as Jesimula Utkin wants her to be involved, she’ll be involved. Things get worse when you resist. If you leave her here, she’ll end up somewhere we don’t want. So keep her close.”

Slipstream continues to doubt, but is on her way to changing. “It’s just recon,” I remind her.

“I guess you wouldn’t be the first VIP I’ve been charged to protect. Twenty-nine minutes.”

We pull into town an hour later with no plan. We park in a grocery store lot next to J.U. Mithra Labs, and sit there. When I ask what we’re waiting for, Slipstream reminds me that we’re just doing recon. I think we should go in and check it out, but Leona is hard at work, studying the history of the company. While they do conduct clinical trials, they don’t just take anyone off the street. You have to apply online, and that’s only after first being approached by one of their representatives, usually at a career fair. It’s all very secretive. If one of us walks in there, they will not be doing so with very good reason, and will immediately come off as suspicious. I get antsy after hours of waiting, though, so if no one is going to actually do anything, then I guess I have to. That’s what Slipstream just taught us with her big speech in which she came this close to acknowledging the title the newspaper gave her: Champion of Kansas City.

I’m sitting in the middle seat, so I can’t just slip out, but I can lie about having to go to the bathroom in the store again. I try to sneak out the back exit as soon as I get in there, but then I start thinking about how people like me in movies always use the bathroom excuse, yet rarely do those same people ever actually have to pee. They spend the rest of the film running around in their adventure, but never do they have to stop for real. It’s an innocuous thought that should have been fleeting, but it manages to make me have to pee, so I turn around and take care of that first.

Hilde is waiting for me when I finally do make it to through the door. “I saw what you were going to do,” she says with a smirk. “I realized I had to go soon after you left, so I wasn’t stalking you, or anything.”

I look around. “Why didn’t you call the others?”

She looks around too. “Why would I do that? Five people walk into a clinic and ask for directions, and the receptionist finds it strange that half of them didn’t just stay in the car, so they get arrested. Two people walk in asking for directions, and it seems normal.”

“You’re helping me?”

“I’m the next youngest one here. I know what it’s like. Let’s go, before they close.”

We cautiously cross the void between the store, and the laboratory. I think about rolling on the ground like a secret agent, but it’s not necessary, and I know I’ll regret it later.

We walk into the building just as the receptionist is leaving. “Uh, can I help you?” he asks us in a fake chipper voice.

“We were just looking for the interstate.”

“I can tell you how to get there. We should go, though.”

A voice comes on the intercom, “this is your final warning. All nonessential personnel, please exit the building.”

“We really do need to leave,” the receptionist says. “They’ll be locking the doors.”

“Departure imminent,” the voice says.

The receptionist suddenly stiffens up, and his eyes glaze over. “I must go,” he says in an even more robotic voice. He does an about-face turn, and leaves, as do a couple other people who appear to be in their own trances. We hear the doors click locked behind them.”

“Departure in thirty seconds,” the voice announces.

“What does that mean?” I ask Hilde, but of course she doesn’t know.

“Get me in this building!” Slipstream shouts at Leona and Hogarth from outside. They either saw us come in here, or started getting worried. The two geniuses have opened up the security console, and are trying to unlock the doors. Sparks fly out of it, and knock them back.

“Initiating memory field,” the voice announces. Light radiates from the walls of the building itself, and spreads out. As it covers my three friends, they act drunk and confused, and stagger towards the parking lot.

“Prepare for departure,” the voice says finally. The space outside the building warps as my friends instinctively stumble back away from it. But then they start walking towards it again, quickly going right back to where they were. Then they suddenly leave, walking backwards. The few workers who just left come back in, also rapidly walking backwards, but they’re not really inside. They’re just briefly occupying the same space as we are. We’re not going back in time so much as time is reversing, and it’s doing so faster and faster. We watch traffic moving backwards, days being unlived, and buildings being unbuilt. Weeks become months, become years, become decades, become centuries. The city disappears, and we’re left in the middle of nowhere.

“Reintegration imminent,” the voice informs us.

We stop, at some point in the past, before the area was settled.

“Titan,” I whisper, because soon after I was transported from my original time period of 1971 to 2023, I started immersing myself in as much time travel fiction as I could find.

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