The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 20, 2197

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Though Ulinthra herself could not be caught, because she left the timeline as soon as Leona did, all of her loyalists directly responsible for Brooke’s senseless death were apprehended by the Kansas City Police Authority. Vitalie remained partially on Leona’s pattern, but experienced it differently than before. She would sometimes wake up and it be tomorrow, and sometimes a few weeks later. She continued like this for the entire year until Leona returned, at which point, they were able to regroup, and prepare for their next move. Without bothering to figure out how to contact Ulinthra, they flipped their penny yet again, more as a symbol than anything. It did land on heads, though Leona was determined to follow through with the plan regardless of the outcome.

“You can back out at any time...while we’re still here. As soon as you make the jump with me, you’re on the hook. If this doesn’t work, Ulinthra will surely find a way to kill you, just as she has everyone else who’s helped me.”

“She hasn’t killed people who’ve helped you,” Vitalie argued. “She’s killed people you love. Unless there’s something I’m missing, I already qualify. If you try this alone, I’m still at risk. Hell, if we do nothing, I may be at risk, ‘cause Ulinthra be crazy.”

“This is true, but anything you participate in puts you at more risk. What you do does matter.”

“You’re right, it does matter. I just spent part of the last year looking for one of the only people in history who can get us where we need to go. You don’t need to convince me to choose a side. I already have. All you need to do now is say the word, and that woman comes into this room.”

Leona thought on it some more, just to be cautious. But the truth was that they still needed an advantage over Ulinthra, and she knew of only one person who could provide that for them. It would be a nice bit of poetic justice, because it was Ulinthra who once gave them this leverage against him, and if this went well, he would have the opportunity to return the favor. They needed Horace Reaver. But not just any Horace would do. They needed the OG Reaver, and in their current condition, he was a difficult man to reach. “Do it.”

“Come on in!” Vitalie shouted in the general direction of the door.

A woman came in with an apathetic look on her face. She reminded Leona of April Ludgate from Parks and Recreation. “Do you have it?”

“I don’t understand why you need this. Aren’t you powerful enough to get just about anything you want?” Vitalie questioned her.

“It’s not about me getting it. It’s about you going to get it for me. Yes, payment is hard to come by for choosers, because we’re so connected and powerful. But half of any transaction is sacrifice. If you want something, you have to work for it, even if I don’t technically benefit from it.”

“All right,” Vitalie said with a short sigh. “Here’s a diamond the size of my hand. Did people really value these things in your day, Leona?”

Leona took the diamond from Vitalie, and examined it. “In my day, most diamonds had to be found in the dirt. They had a certain...air of rarity that the jewelry companies imposed upon society. We were only starting to make them ourselves when I was growing up. Now, of course, they hold almost no value.”

The woman took a fancy cane from her magical bag of holding, and placed the diamond on top of it, to see how it looked. “They’re valuable, because they’re pretty.”

“Are we cool?” Vitalie asked.

“Seeing it now, I realize it’s not quite the cut I wanted, but it is what I asked for, so yeah...we’re cool.” She tossed the cane and diamond into her bag. “Are you carrying any citrus?”

“Of course not,” Leona replied.

“Then let us hold hands, like a coven of witches.”

“Is there any way I could know your name first?” Leona asked her.

“Transporter rules, sweetheart. No names. You can call me The Arborist.” She reached out her hands to grasp Vitalie and Leona’s. “Now, what year are we looking for?”

“2055,” Leona told her, “but we’re using an extraction mirror, so it doesn’t necessarily matter. I suppose it should be no earlier than that, though. Let’s say 2066, because I’m not certain when he died.”

“Why do you need an extraction? Why couldn’t you take him long before his death?” the Arborist asked.

“He undergoes dramatic changes to his personality, so the closest we can get to his death, the better. He’s in prison during the years leading up to that death, and we don’t want to interfere with that. Only the final version of him would be willing to return to his final moment.”

“Thanks for the life story,” the Arborist joked. “I’m to understand you have blended memories of the destination timeline?”

“Correct,” Leona answered.

“Good. It’ll be much easier to find. Please devote all of your thoughts upon it.”

Leona did as she was told. She had traveled through time many times before, in many different ways, but never like this. Time was extremely mutable. Choosing ones and salmon were constantly traveling back and forth, making small and large changes to the timeline. Each one sprouts a new branch of history, from the point of divergence, which was why this woman was called the Arborist. She could jump to alternate branches, supposedly without creating yet another branch. These older branches were delicate and precious. They were generally meant to be left alone, because any change could create a paradox. If anything a traveler does in a deprecated timeline negates the creation of the branch they first traveled from then they could never have come from that branch at all, but if they didn’t come from that branch, then they couldn’t have made the change in the old branch. This endless loop of impossibility was why not even the worst of the worst, like The Cleanser or Nerakali, trifled with old branches. No one really knows why so very few choosers were capable of traveling to old timelines, but those who understood the consequences were grateful for it. Leona would generally never risk it, but she was desperate, and they were only going to be there for a few seconds.

The Arborist pulled her hands away from theirs. “We’re here. Do you want some privacy?”

“We won’t be staying long, but this isn’t Palace Glubbdubdrib.” They were standing in front of a mirror, but not the one Leona had seen before, when she put the OG Gilbert Boyce back to his moment of death.

“I don’t really like that place,” the Arborist noticed. “I prefer this one. I assure you, it works, and it doesn’t require blood. Just say his name, and think of his face.”

Leona faced the mirror, and deliberately said, “Horace Reaver.”

The man could now be seen in the mirror, standing in his Easter Island cave prison, an explosion at his back. He was already in the midst of talking to someone from a completely different mirror. One of the men, whom Leona thought she should recognize, started angrily pushing a second man right through the event horizon. Reaver was assisting from the other side. A third man tried to help as well, but the victim pulled him through with him. Once it was done, Leona’s mirror managed to make time slow down, uh...again.

Reaver, noticing that his two new cellmates, were quite nearly frozen, stepped away. “What’s going on?”

“Come Horace,” Leona called to him. “It’s time to leave.”

“Leona?” Reaver asked.

“I don’t have time to explain. Just come through.”

“I didn’t think I could.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Who are those other people?” Vitalie asked, referring to Reaver’s security team.

“They have to stay,” the Arborist said sternly.

“Wait, that one is Lincoln. And that one is too!” Lincoln Rutherford was a security guard in this timeline, and in charge of Reaver’s imprisonment. But there was a second Lincoln watching the explosion from outside the prison cube, along with some other version of the guy Mateo forced through the mirror. Mateo. That was his name. Why did Leona know who Mateo was? Why was she meant to know him?

“You can’t save him,” the Arborist explained. “This version—these versions of Lincoln don’t matter. This is an old timeline, remember? We came for this guy, so take this guy, and we’ll put him back when we’re done.”

Reaver scoffed. “Screw that.” He went back over, and stuck his arms under Lincoln’s. He then leaned back, and started dragging Lincoln’s frozen body towards Leona’s mirror.

“You can’t do that!” the Arborist barked.

“Watch me,” Reaver countered. He stepped backwards through the mirror, pulling Lincoln with him. Once the latter’s last foot was all the way through, time restarted in the prison cube. The explosion overwhelmed the rest of the people left in there, and then the dimensional doorway closed completely, leaving them with nothing but their reflections.

Lincoln joined them in real time, and scrambled up from the floor. “What just happened? Am I not dead.”

Horace kindly placed his hand on Lincoln’s shoulder. “I just saved your life, brother. I couldn’t save everyone, though.”

“Shit,” the Arborist said.

“What?”

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Shiiit! Shiiiit!”

“What is it, Arby?” Vitalie asked.

“Did you see that?” the Arborist asked in a frenzy. “Horace Reaver and Lincoln Rutherford never go back to the cube, to their deaths. We would have seen it from this angle. You just changed the timeline, which means our timeline may never have been created.”

“We don’t know that,” Leona suggested. “Everyone may still think they’re dead. That explosion wasn’t just from an IED. It vaporized everything. There’s no way of knowing anyone survived.”

The Arborist was shaking her head. “I don’t think that’s right. I think we’re in trouble.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Horace said, stepped closer to Leona. “There was a time when she and I were an unstoppable team.” He stepped back. “Maybe we can find a way to get back to that.”

Leona reached up and wrapped her arms around Horace’s neck. “We’re already there. I remember everything.”

“What about Mateo?” Horace asked.

“Who?”

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Fervor: Fever (Part XI)

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Asuk fell in love with me pretty much as soon as we met, though he would never admit to it. When I tried to explain that I felt nothing for him beyond friendship, I realized that I didn’t understand it myself. I had actually never felt anything like that about anyone, and always figured that I just hadn’t yet met the right person. Before you get any ideas about me, I’m no sociopath. I experience empathy for others, and I care what happens to them, but I have no interest in romantic or sexual relationships. This was unheard of in the 1970s, and my life in the 2020s was so consumed by time travel, that no one had the chance to explain it to me before. Asuk understood completely, though, because in his day, all sexuality stigmas have been almost entirely erased. He said that I was asexual, and provided me with some resources to help me figure myself out.

After we made s’mores that first night, I agreed to stay with him that night, because he was afraid of being alone in the dark. He said that his camping lot was located in a region of Earth purposely left uncontrolled by weather satellites, but admitted the satellites contributed so much to the global climate, that it was still not all that natural. While the weather wasn’t as perfect as it was for most of the surface, it was a decent night on its own. I woke up the next morning, and waited for a sign. I allowed myself to wait until noon o’clock central for anything that would point me in the direction that Jesi wanted me to go, but nothing happened. And so I said my goodbyes, then I pulled up my phone, where I kept several photographs I took of April, 2025 Missouri, so I could return in a case such as this one. Unfortunately, I was unable to go anywhere. I could feel a slight burn in my eyes as I stared at one of the photographs of Cleaver Fountain, but I couldn’t actually travel there. I swiped through all of my dozens of saved photos for one that would work, including the scans I made of the pictures from my childhood camera. I only ignored the ones that would have taken me back to 1971. Anywhere is better than there. Nothing worked, but I kept trying...for about a week. Then I gave up, and surrendered myself to the time period. From then on, I only attempted to travel back in time about once a week, just in case whatever was preventing me from traveling wore off.

I stayed with Asuk and his family, who were living on Earth for that month. They were nomads, though, like so many others, and whenever they moved somewhere else, I would go with them. I spent some time on Mars and Venus, both of which had, through miracles of science, become just as habitable as Earth. We went back to what I now know is something called a dyson bubble. Basically, giant mirrors were suspended around the sun and Jupiter, allowing more solar energy than ever before to be harvested and used to power the worlds, connected via relay satellites orbiting these worlds. We also lived in habitat domes on two moons of Jupiter, which by the way, was now a freaking sun. Somehow, they turned Jupiter into a star, and no matter how many times my new friends tried to teach me how it was done, I couldn’t understand it. I don’t even understand why they did it, other than for the possibility of some of the larger of these moons to have their own atmospheres. Asuk’s family was planning to move to a different star system—and leave me behind, because I didn’t feel comfortable traveling that far from home—when disaster struck.

A mysterious pathogen spread throughout the entire system, infecting every biological species of some particular level of complexity that went over my head. It possessed an alarmingly long incubation period, which meant it transmitted out of control from person to person before anyone realized what was happening. The system was placed in quarantine, but experts believed these measures to have been far too late. Lightspeed ships were virtually unreachable while traveling at relativistic speeds, so the damage was done. Every organic human within a thousand lightyears would be infected, with little hope for a cure. Of course that meant it would take a thousand years to run its course, but all entities not created, or fitted, with artificial parts, would be dead by then. The oldest purely biological person living today was a hundred and thirty-two years old. The pathogen itself did not cause death, nor symptoms that could not easily be remedied. What it did was prevent someone infected from procreating. If the people working the problem were unable to solve it, normal humans would be wiped out. This is what Jesi wants to bring back to my time, and I have to do anything in my power to stop it, even if it means staying here for the rest of my life; even if it means dying today.

“Maybe we should go,” Asuk says. “Maybe you should come with us.”

“Where?” I ask him. “To Teagarden?”

“Why not? It’ll only take twelve years.”

“We’re still in quarantine.”

He brushes this off. “Eh, in a couple years, they’re gonna discover patients on Doma, and the quarantine won’t mean a damn thing. They’ll let us go, because it won’t matter anymore. Besides, I know a friend who can get us a darkburster.”

“Like from the twenty-second century? Didn’t they figure out how to detect those? Isn’t darkbursting impossible now?”

“Intentional obsolescence. They could detect darkbursters, but they don’t scan for them, because they don’t think anyone would be crazy enough to use them.”

“Because people who used them died half the time.”

“I’ll take those odds.”

“I won’t,” I say. “I’m not getting in a darkburster, and I’m not going to Teagarden. I’m perfectly fine here.”

“On Rhea?” Rhea is a large Saturnial moon that was considered too small for terraforming. It was instead gutted, and turned into the largest single-processor computational apparatus in the known galaxy. While the dyson bubbles are ultimately larger, they’re each composed of disparate parts, so they don’t count. Few people actually live on Rhea, but it’s a cool tourist attraction. We’re currently staying in what I can’t help but call a space motel.

“No, just here in general. I like moving around with you guys, but if I never go back to my time period, I’ll still want to be near Earth. It will always be my home. I won’t go past the Oort cloud.”

Asuk yawns. “Well, I suppose I have a couple years to change your mind, unless you would reconsid—”

“I’m not stepping foot in a darkburster.” Darkbursters are ancient ships capable of interplanetary travel without being picked up on sensors. But they resulted in too many deaths, and are fundamentally pointless these days. If you want to go somewhere, for the most part, you can. You really just have to ask.

“Preach, sister!” comes a voice from behind me. I turn around to see someone standing there with a hazmat suit on. There’s a glare on the face part, so I can’t see who it is until she moves slightly.

“Jesi.”

“This is a special suit,” Jesi says. “It doesn’t just protect me from germs, but also from this time. It’s basically shields me against everything, but it comes at a price. I can’t use my power while it’s on. I created a latent time bubble to get me here, but now I’m stuck.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad. The world is probably better off with you in one place.”

“Not so fast,” Jesi says. “I can’t take us back, but you can, and you will.” She holds up an injection gun. “I give you this, and your powers return. Then you take us both back home. Easy peasy..little queasy.”

“I’m not doing that.”

“Why not? Don’t tell me you’re in love with this kid?” Jesi gestures towards Asuk.

“No,” Asuk laughed a bit too hard.

“I’m not taking this pathogen back to 2025. Why do you wanna destroy the human race? Lemme guess, so choosers can start fresh, and bring about a new dawn?”

Jesi shakes her head at pathetic little me. “The pathogen is rampant in this time. We still don’t know where it comes from, but we know how it spread. Paige, it came from multiple places at once. It was this onslaught of slow and unavoidable death. It probably originated on another planet.”

“Sounds tasty,” I spit.

“You’re not getting it. There’s a reason I’m in this suit, and it’s not so I don’t get infected. I mean it is, but not because I’m selfish.”

“You’re not?”

“I’m not! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! I’m trying to save the world!”

“By destroying it, I get it.”

“No, you don’t.” She takes a deep breath. “I’m going to tell you a story. About a man.”

“What man?”

“His name...was Mateo Matic.”

“Never heard of ‘im.”

“I’m not surprised, he was erased from the timeline. Not even his wife remembers him.”

“Who’s his wife?” Asuk asks. He always loves a good story.

“Her name’s Leona.”

“Whaaaat?” I question overdramatically.

“It’s true, but that’s not the point. The point is that he once accidentally came to the year 3118. He picked up the pathogen, and then he took it back to 2025.”

“So he’s here right now?” Asuk asks.

“I just told you, he was ripped out of time.”

“Right.”

“You seriously like this guy?” she asks me.

“Get to the point!” I shout.

“This all happened in a different timeline. The reason you’re here, Paige, is to replicate what happened to him.”

“Yeah, I understand. You want me to destroy the world.”

“Christ, Paige, will you get off that? No. You’re one person, and you’ve been living here for the last several months. The disease has mutated since it first came about. It’s begun to focus on conserving energy, rather than spreading. When you go back to 2025, no one is going to become sterile. They might get a little fever, but they’ll get over it, and will be stronger for it. They’ll continue to evolve over the millenium, and by the time they get here, the pathogen will do them no harm. All of this will be erased. This guy here, if he’s even ever born, will not even know you existed.”

“That might be what you think will happen, but I have it on good authority that your plan does not work,” I counter.

“Oh, you mean the other version of me?” she asks. “Yeah, we spoke. Bringing you here was her idea. This is what fixes it. This is what fixes everything. Paige Turner Reaver-Demir, you are about to become mother of a multitude.”

“I don’t want that. I don’t believe this will work. I don’t trust you. Or her.”

“That’s fine,” Jesi says, confidently casual. “You’ll see, though, and you’ll be glad. Asuk will too, though he won’t know it.”

“Aha!” Asuk cries with glee. “You do know my name.”

“That’s what you took from this?” Jesi asks rhetorically.

I stare at Jesi, biting my bottom lip. I can tell that she knows what I’m going to do, but I still have to try. I spin around, and bolt for the exit, but something hits me in the back. Goddamn, I wish people would stop doing that. Next time it’s gonna be a knife. Next time, someone is going to literally stab me in the back. But for now, I fall to the floor. I’m not knocked unconscious, or anything, but the pain is enough to keep me down so Jesi can catch up to me, and force the power suppressor antidote upon me.

“I just won’t jump!” I scream as I’m flipping over. “I just won’t!”

She giggles. “I know you don’t have that much control.” She takes a fist-sized device out of a bag that I somehow know to be an icosidodecahedron. She drops her hand, and lets it hover a meter over the floor. Light explodes from its faces, releasing a sea of nearly a hundred projections, strewn all about the walls. Each one is a photo of a different part of Kansas City, and each one is strobing like the dance floor at a discotheque, overwhelming my senses. My eyes start to burn, so I look away, but they continue to burn. I try to close my eyelids, but somehow that hurts my head even more. I’m looking at a picture of Plaza rooftops when my power overcomes my will, and I jump hopelessly back to the past.

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Microstory 930: Writing

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As you can read in my bio, I started writing when I was thirteen years old. Before then, though, I had the sneaking suspicion that I was a good writer, and figured I would write science textbooks. In fifth grade, I half-assed a short paper about why I would never do drugs, and ended up winning a class-wide competition. Sidenote: I don’t do drugs, while it seems everyone else does, so maybe it worked. I had to read my paper aloud to an audience of other students and parents, and then they gave me a bunch of D.A.R.E swag. Then there was the fact that I rarely worked hard on my papers, and almost always received good grades for them. A couple years after I decided to switch to writing, I started thinking about my canon. I didn’t know to call it that back then, but up until that point, I had been focusing on fanfiction, in order to hone my craft. I wrote some Quantum Leap and Harry Potter stories, which have thankfully been lost by now, but it was time to try something original. I had recently returned from a trip to the Florida Keys with my Boy Scout troop, and my father. We spent a week on an island where I experienced no problems; no injuries, no fights, just fun. The beach smelled of rotten eggs, which is why I now like the smell of rotten eggs. That’s all it took to condition me. I struggled a lot with this first book, and it’s gone through a great deal of changes since then. It began as original, but I couldn’t help but find some way of connecting it to the Lord of the Rings universe. So I had to scrap it, and try again. It still wasn’t working out, so I scrapped the second draft too, and tried it a third time. I didn’t like that one either, even after ten years of this, so I buckled down, and started working on version number four, which is the one I have today. I’m looking for a literary agent to represent me, if you happen to know anyone.

While I’m glad I didn’t stick to my Lord of the Rings plan, it did make me realize that I would never be satisfied with individual stories that were completely separate from each other. I wanted to create a whole new world—or six worlds, as it were—and I wanted them to connect to each other in complicated, and sometimes subtle, ways. This too went through a number of changes, but at some point, I had a sturdy foundation, from which every story must originate. Later on, if I came up with a story that would not be internally consistent with the narrative, or even physical, laws set forth by other stories, I would have to create a new universe for it. But even that bothered me, so I invented a machine called The Crossover, which has the ability to travel between these universe, so in the end, I really do only have a single canon. Some stories are more connected than others, though. For instance, Magnate exists within a universe that allows none of the more—shall we say...unrealistic science fiction elements. People will start using it as a refuge from the craziness of time travel, ghosts, and whatnot. Anyway, I’m starting to talk about the planning of my stories, which is not what this post is about. This is about the writing itself, which I actually don’t love all that much. My fingers are in a permanent state of pain, so I can never type too long. I believe my strengths lie more with storytelling than with the narrative itself, or maybe I just feel that way because an artist’s work is never done. I would much rather come up with ideas, and micromanage every small detail of a story, then have someone else write it up for me. I believe they call people who do that producers. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like it at all. I still appreciate the feeling of typing out paragraphs, and seeing the finished product of my accomplishments. Hopefully the readers who are hopefully reading this in the future feel the same way.

Microstory 929: Netflix

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It was the year 2010. Some dumb team I don’t care about had recently won the superbowl. A good man was still president. And I had just graduated from college. My sister gave me three months of Netflix as a gift. I hadn’t thought much about trying the service before then. I had seen my evil roommate’s DVDs strewn about the apartment, but didn’t think I would get much out of it, especially since I did not yet have a job. I went to the movie theatre a lot during college, usually by riding my bike two and a half miles down the hill. My record was five movies in one day, which was pretty much the maximum with their hours. What I didn’t realize was that I was on the cusp of a better Netflix, and because of that, I ended up never cancelling the service, and still have it today. The library was already huge at that point, but was really picking up speed. It had existed for over ten years by then, but was only starting to become ubiquitous. Of course there are still plenty of people in the developed world who don’t have a Netflix account, but those people are becoming harder to find. The greatest part about the service is that it’s generally pretty reliable. It can be accessed on myriad devices, with varying levels of internet speeds, and they even let you download titles to your phone, to be watched offline. I still encounter errors, as one does when using a computer, but most can be solved fairly painlessly. Netflix has tons of their own original programming, and they keep them up there all the time. My OnDemand services usually only keep five episodes of a series at a time, and sometimes it’s not even the last five, but some inappropriately random order. Netflix does occasionally only offer certain seasons of certain shows, but I’m certain the fault lies with the studio from which they bought the rights for the content. I can say nothing more about it, except that they should renew Lost in Space for a third season now, instead of waiting until season two comes out. And they should do the same with season four of Travelers. Also, please Netflix, don’t change your intro sound effect. You’re going to try to “update” it in a few years, as some belated response to the Kevin Spacey scandal, and it’s going to upset me, because I find this one quite comforting. Oh, I do have one more thing to say. The phrase “Netflix and chill” never had to be sexual in nature. It could very well have described a pleasant evening sitting innocuously in front of a screen, but noooo, you people can’t help but ruin everything. So thanks for that.

Microstory 928: The Materianet

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I have to start this off by explaining what the word “materianet” means. It’s just the internet of things, but with a more succinct name. I’ve always hated the conventional term for the concept, because it sounds so childish, and on the nose. I don’t need it to be sexy, or trademarked, but come on...“internet of things”? Why did we all just allow that to happen? I propose this new term. It still describes what it is, and differentiates it from the more traditional form of internet, which is presently in its Web 2.0 state. The original world wide web was designed for basic communication only. Someone put information on a website, and people could go look at that information. There was some room for response, or collaboration, but for the most part, it was static. Now collaboration is the whole purpose. Even more static websites, like Wikipedia, require the input of millions of people. You’re always logged in, connecting accounts to other accounts, and leverage your social circles to crowdsource data. That is/was Web 2.0, but now it’s time for the next step. The materianet marks the beginning of Web 3.0. Those early elements are still there, but we’re starting to access them in new ways. It used to be a family had a single computer that everyone had to share. Then, individuals began owning their own machines independently. But now we each have multiple devices. A single person in the developed world will sometimes use several ways of connecting. They’ll have a desktop for long-term tasks at home, or at work, a laptop for portable long-term tasks, a phone for spontaneous needs, a tablet to play games while they’re on the toilet, and a smartwatch for convenience and behavior tracking. Google came out with niche glasses that were a bit ahead of their time, but are recently making a comeback, and a few companies are working on other types of glasses and goggles, so a few people have things like that too. And again, this is just all one person who owns all this, and few question those choices. Go back to 1960 and list all the computers you have to someone, and they’ll think you’re lying. Now things are expanding even more. Coincidentally, I just received my Google Home Mini speaker last night; free from a new wind energy program I signed up for. This uses extremely limited artificial intelligence to answer questions, keep track of my schedule and favorites, and even make jokes. There are tons of useful auxiliaries that the people who were working on the early internet could only dream of, if that. It can control personal security cameras, lights, thermostat, this machine that heats baby bottles to the optimum temperature, and more. We will one day be able to control everything we have in the home from a phone, or a smaller form factor, like electronic clothing. I haven’t even mentioned how much smarter cars are becoming, or how virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality, as well as true artificial intelligence, are already giving us glimpses of what may someday be called Web 4.0. So thank you materianet, or whatever your name is, for making my life easier, and keeping me connected to all my things. I can’t wait to watch you grow.

Microstory 927: The Universe Itself

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The anthropic principle is an infamous, and oft misused, scientific maxim that basically states that we exist within a universe that has itself come into existence to allow us to exist and evolve, so we can observe it. That was a bit of a whirlwind. So I’ll break it down some more. This does not mean the universe exists, or exists in the way it does, in order to support our lives. It simply points out that if it did not allow us to exist, we would not be observing it at all, and couldn’t remark on it. This may sound mundane, and even obvious, but it’s actually a perfect way to illustrate the rarity of life. Take this further, and recognize that even a minute change in the cosmic temperature would result in a wildly different set of circumstances. So we have heat going for us. Gravity is at a constant, allowing objects to coalesce, and form the heavenly bodies, so we have somewhere to stand. Atoms contain varying subatomic particles, which allow for an array of useful fundamental chemical elements, and by extension, molecules. Our solar system lies at an ideal distance from the galaxy’s central black hole, and the its edge, to support the creation of topographically asymmetrical rocky worlds. The gas giants, the moon, and interplanetary gravitational interference in general, protects us from many bolide impacts that once created life in the first place. We have an atmosphere and magnetic field to protect us from solar and cosmic radiation. The primordial ooze that started it all adapted to suit an ever-changing environment, to eventually evolve into the creatures we know today. Your biological mother and father joined at the exact right time, under the exact right circumstances, and your mother carried you under the exact right conditions to eventually make you the person you are today. I say all this, because it barely scratches the surface of what it took to get us to this point in time. While the universe is an unfathomably massive place, literally—and it would be practically impossible for alien lifeforms to not exist somewhere, in some way—the chances that anything exists is negligible. The math was never in our favor. The fact that the universe is here at all is, quite honestly, a miracle. There is just too much working against reality to allow for the creation of something, in place of nothing. A lot of people believe in a God, the creator; some supreme being that has determined what shall be, and what shall not, and some believe this entity continues to make decision. But I worship the universe itself, along with time and reality, because it’s far more a marvelous thing that it just suddenly came into existence, when it really shouldn’t have. This entry began as nothing more than an ode to the powerful force of the tides, but the moon and sun are only a fraction of what I’m grateful for cosmically speaking, so I just had to mention everything.

Microstory 926: Goats and Elephants

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I added this entry, because I didn’t speak much on animals themselves in my second post. I’ve had a lot of different favorite animals, for different reasons. Each time I add one, the others don’t go anywhere; they just all stay my favorite. I like penguins and polar bears, even though I don’t much like the cold. I like okapi, because they look like they should be related to zebras, but they’re not. I remember discovering them when a character mentioned them during the series finale of Six Feet Under. I had not once watched that show up to that point, but my aunt and I had nothing better to do. I ended up noticing a small okapi figurine in a museum gift shop soon thereafter. I still have it, and keep it on my desk. I like dogs and cats, because I’m a human being with a heart. I used to hate cows, because I thought they were stupid, which is less true than you probably believe, and even if not, that’s no reason to dislike them. I got to know a calf once, and she was great; never talked back to me. I like horses and donkeys, because they’re majestic and beautiful, and horseback riding is in my blood. And I like goats and elephants. I’ve met a few goats in my day, and though they weren’t the nicest of creatures, they were cool, and they always look at you like they secretly understand your language. Elephants are just great, because...well, look at them. Ya know, they bury, and mourn for, their dead, and when a mother dies, the rest of the herd will try to raise her young. They’re one of the few animals naturally born with souls. Not even dogs can boast that. I’m afraid I’m not feeling well, and need to go back to the Church of the Porcelain God, so this is where I leave you.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 19, 2196

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The world, and the way people lived in it, had changed dramatically since Leona’s original time in the early 21st century. The millions of cities, smaller towns, and rural countrysides were reduced to several hundred central locations. While still spread across the globe, people primarily lived in one of only a few kinds of constructs. There were the landlocked arcologies—like the one Leona and her friends had been living in for the last couple weeks—of varying designs of capacities. There were floating seasteads, for people who liked to wander around over the mysterious deep. They did so above underwater habitats, similar to those depicted in seaQuest DSV. Others lived in permanent orbiting satellites, off world on Mars, or the moons of Jupiter, or on generation ships bound for the great unknown. The rest lived in the Northwest Forest Circles, or the North Korean Isolate. Only a few pockets of anarcho-primitivists survived in secret camps, but most technology-resistant people were law abiding citizens of the inner forest rings.

Kansas City had asserted itself as the most dominant superpower of all exmunden establishments, which was the designation for any intelligent species ultimately deriving from Earth, be it human, android, combination thereof, or something else entirely. It was only used to distinguish from entities originating from alien locations, of which none had so far been discovered. It was odd being back in the closest thing to her hometown. Everything Leona had known had been completely demolished, and replaced with wildlife. This made her a little sad, but everyone else around her seemed perfectly fine with it, even those who had been alive to see the old world. It was time to move on, and what better way to do that than to lay her friend to rest in the safest place in the solar system.

A few ceremonies were performed to honor the fallen heroes who worked tirelessly against the Arianation, but a special one was scheduled specifically for Ecrin Cabral, and the cadet who had fought and died alongside her in the final battle, whose name was Platinum Creaser. Out of all the interesting names she had learned during her hurried journey through time, his was probably the best. The service was attended by tens of thousands of people, and watched by the whole world, along with parts of other worlds. A journalist had spent Leona’s interim year uncovering what she could about what had happened on that Panama arc, and how Ecrin had been involved. She had apparently uncovered proof of temporal manipulation, but agreed to leave that part out of her series for the sake of everyone. She even lied in one article in order to explain away why the memorial had to wait an entire year, by claiming that an important family member had to make the return trip from the inner Oort cloud. At the moment, Ecrin was probably the second most famous person in the system, bested only by Ulinthra herself. Even though her real name had long come out, most people were still referring to her as Arianrhod.

“That was a nice service,” Vitalie said to Leona as they were leaving the stage after having been silent honored guests. She had disappeared from the timestream about a week after Leona’s jump, and come back to it a month ago. Leona’s marrow transplant was waning in her, rather than quitting all at once. It was good that she would most likely eventually fall completely off of Leona’s pattern, but it also meant Ulinthra would not stay on it for much longer either. She had received a far smaller dose than the others, and if she returned to full strength before being found, things could get bad again. Brooke had spent the year leading the search, but came up short. Many presumed she’d managed to make her way off world in a darkburster, but this was unlikely. The few people who knew about time travel guessed she had escaped through some portal, but that was even less likely, because this was when and where Ulinthra had built her empire, and she would need to be here to do it again. No, she was hiding out somewhere, probably random, waiting for her link to Leona to be severed, so she could restart the war.

“It was,” Brooke agreed.

“What are you gonna do now?”

Brooke took a deep breath, then looked back at Ecrin’s service photo. “She and I talked about working together.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, she was gonna come out of retirement, and go back to her old ways.”

“Would you restart the IAC?”

“IPSEC.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Vitalie said.

“Interplanetary Security. It handles crimes committed on multiple worlds, or elsewhere in interplanetary space. I would be the pilot, she would be an investigator.”

“You would be perfect for that,” Leona said awkwardly. Though Brooke turned out to be a double agent, and still operating on their side, their relationship had not yet healed from the irreversibly traumatic experience.

“I’m cooking tonight,” Brooke said after they walked a little further, speaking only to exchange pleasantries with random mourners. “That was an invitation,” she added after they didn’t respond.

“That would be lovely,” Vitalie said cordially.

“Great, come at six. I think we should probably...catch up.”

Leona and Vitalie returned to the executive safehouse where they were staying with Governor-Councilor Tribaldos, who had spent the year running the Panamanian reconstruction remotely. It was a large mansion that accommodated all Panamanian arcstate leadership, like a trashy reality show, but without the cameras. They were presently locked in the situation room, where they were coordinating the continued hunt for Ulinthra, and her loyalists. Brooke normally led these missions, but she needed the week off. The two of them ate a little brunch, and then took a nap, before getting up mid-afternoon to prepare for the dinner.

That evening, they found Brooke’s door to be ajar, and an unusual smell coming from inside. Vitalie urged Leona to call security, and not go in herself, because of the baby, but Leona had spent this whole time as a time traveler doing things herself. She rarely had the luxury of calling for help, so it just wasn’t really habit anymore. She nudged the door all the way open, and cautiously stepped inside, keeping her head on a swivel. The place was a mess. It didn’t look so much like a struggle, but more like someone wanted it to appear like there had been a struggle. Objects had fallen out of their respective places a little too neatly. The cabinets above the food synthesizer were open, with rarely used supplies spilling out. That would never happen from a fight, unless maybe someone went looking for something afterwards.

The screen on the wall flipped on once they had come inside far enough. It was showing them either footage, or a stream of a group of soldiers walking towards a black ship. They appeared to be using helmet cams, but the view occasionally switched to a drone perspective.

“Is that a...?”

“Yes,” Leona said. It was a darkburster. They were a special class of extremely illegal, and dangerous, rockets. They were illegal because they used incredibly sophisticated stealth technology that rendered them almost perfectly invisible. They were dangerous, because the only way to achieve this level of invisibility was to block the darkburster’s sensors as well. Like human-driven semi-trailer truck drivers of old, who couldn’t see you behind them if you couldn’t see their mirrors, if the darkburster can see where it’s going, someone else can too. They were programmed to shoot straight up into the air, pass through the atmosphere, and head for a blindspot, while completely blind themselves. If something went wrong during this exercise, not even an artificially intelligent pilot would be able to compensate. They were used by smugglers and other criminals, to transport contraband and people between worlds, and their success rate was at about 50%. The more time that passed, the more advanced the solar system became, and the more difficult it was to avoid being detected without passing the system’s termination shock. Darkbursters were having to calculate longer and longer routes to stay hidden, and it was just not a sustainable business model. Before too long, the only thing small enough to not be sensed by a planet, a ship, or a monitoring buoy within the confines the helisphere, will be a coffin-sized escape pod.

The soldiers were not alone. The one with the helmet cam started slowing down, and allowing those behind him to pass. Two of them were dragging an unconscious Brooke Prieto between them. A small window popped up in the corner of the screen, showing Ulinthra at a desk, facing the camera. She was wearing a headset, and drinking a can of soda that was probably banned years ago. “Oh, I can see you. Can you see me? Can you hear me?”

“What are you doing?”

“Uh, you’re breaking up a little. Can you repeat that?” Ulinthra joked.

“Ulinthra! This isn’t funny! What are you doing?”

“Ah, you’re comin’ in better now. Yes, as you can see, this is footage of my personal darkburster, which I could have used to escape to Orcus and Vanth. I hope you appreciate what I’m sacrificing here.”

“Where are you taking her?” Leona questioned.

“I just told you. Orcus and Vanth.”

“Why?”

“Well, he was a god of the underworld. He punished betrayers, like Brooke. He’ll have a lot of fun with her.”

“Look up Orcus,” Leona whispered to Vitalie.

“What was that?” Ulinthra asked.

“It’s a bad place,” Vitalie said after pulling up a summary of the dwarf planet, Orcus on her tablet. “Only bad people live there.”

Leona glanced down at the tablet. “It’s a bloody crime den.”

“That it is!” Ulinthra agreed with excitement.

“She won’t make it. Not if you send her there on that thing.”

“Oh, not necessarily,” Ulinthra said. “She has a fifty-fifty chance. You seem to be such big fans of those, I thought I’d flip my own penny. I will admit that I flipped tails, but screw that, I make my own fate. Unfortunately, Miss Prieto doesn’t. The darkburster is going to choose for her. I promise that I have not sabotaged it in any way; I am a fair tyrant. If she lives, she goes to Orcus, and you might one day see her again. Hell, the powers that be might even just send you a solar teleporter, so you can retrieve her next year, who knows? That is a long time for her to wait, though. She’s gonna be there by tomorrow. If the darkburster doesn’t make it, then she dies. Not even a transhuman can survive the vacuum of space. But now it is out of my hands.”

“No, it’s not. Call them off.”

She sighed. “I’m good. But again, maybe the PTB are lookin’ to help you out. We can watch together, and see if Étude comes through for ya.”

Étude did not come through for them, and the darkburster did not survive its journey through the atmosphere. It barely made it off the ground before exploding. Just like that, Brooke was dead. Add her to the list.

“Now you really are dead,” Leona said.

“Nevertheless,” Ulinthra began, “she—”

“No,” Leona interrupted. “You can’t have that.”

“Fine.” Ulinthra frowned. “Bye, Felicia.”

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