The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 23, 2200

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For centuries, civilized humans struggled for their rights and livelihoods. Life was a long and violent land rush that only ever ended in death. You took as much as you could, and hoped the heads you stepped on didn’t rise back up and retaliate. The sooners were the rich, and stragglers the poor. But as time wore on, people started realizing that there was no real point to this. Having a lot of money, and a lot of things, were unfulfilling exercises. As the old guard died off, their descendants began looking at life differently. They found that having everything they wanted was not more enjoyable just because there were those without. They still slept well at night in their comfortable beds knowing that others were doing the same; better even. Priorities shifted from the individual to the common good. It started to feel more rewarding the less poverty there was as a whole. Perhaps it was the promise, or threat, of an alien encounter, that only drew nearer as the years went by. Perhaps children are generally just better people than their parents. Whatever the cause, the reality was clear: money was a waste of resources.

Crime plummeted exponentially once society realized that the majority of them were perpetrated by those who felt slighted, underappreciated, and wanting. Early signs of this peeked through the global consciousness in the 21st century when superior paid services were chosen over inferior or illegally free ones. There was little place for illegal online downloads, for instance, when great content was affordable and easy to access. But it would take decades to truly see the potential of a world where labor and capital were not valued more than the benefits they provided. Still, crime was not entirely extinguished, for need was not the only reason. There was just no way to safely satiate the hunger of those who just want to hurt others. Virtual reality simulations alleviated some of this, but without a real sense of risk, they could only take it so far. Terrorists, rapists, serial killers, and the like, still felt the need to explore their impulses, and no amount of placating would be able to stop them.

Étude Einarsson was born with a destiny, to save the lives of strangers. Her predecessors had extremely strenuous careers, but hers was relatively easy. The world just wasn’t all that dangerous anymore. Deadly accidents were almost exclusively the stuff of legends and histories. The real danger came from operating in outer space, which was outside of The Savior’s purview. Even that was becoming safer anyway. And so the biggest problem positively contributing members of society faced was human nature. The Last Savior’s Last Save was seen firsthand by a couple hundred people, though nearly all invisible. A special choosing one named Sanela Matic had the ability to travel through time as witness to historical events, but was unable to interact with it. As The Screener, she could present an event to others, like a four-dimensional film. Normally she did this on an individual basis, but this was an important moment in time traveler history, and the powers that be wanted it to be shared. She and her audience were not the only ones there, though. Loa recorded the entire thing in her own brain, which was a secondary skill she had been working on for years. She would now have it for her lifetime, and anyone capable of contacting her would be able to request a viewing.

At the very last fraction of a second, Étude was teleported between the would-be killer, and his intended victim. He was reportedly not a well man, who became obsessed with murder mysteries as a child. He had apparently grown up studying these crimes, ultimately deciding to make a plan to see if he could get away with it, even in this day and age. At the end of the 22nd century, it was hard to do anything without people knowing about it. They accepted the lack of privacy since it was replaced by a deep sense of apathy. Just about anything one does could be discovered by others, but few worried about it, because—unlike the olden days of ubiquitous social media—few cared enough to do so. With the population of the solar system quickly approaching the first hundred billion, there just weren’t that many public figures. If you wanted to be famous, you had to agree to a level of transparency formally considered absurd. Even without fame, the hopeful murderer was easily caught by authorities, shortly after failing to hit his target. The bullet harmlessly struck Étude’s distribution vest, and that was that.

When Leona returned to the timeline, she heard Étude had been given a real identity, and was presently testing her way into medical school in one of the midrange circles. There weren’t many human medical professionals anymore. While other fields had plenty of room for people who just wanted to expand their knowledge, humans were too dangerous and inefficient at medicine. It was typically illegal to practice medicine without a certain threshold of operational upgrades. Even then, most patients preferred fully automated treatment, so not even many transhumanists had much work. The less advanced regions of the planet, and less developed offworld colonies, were the only ones willing to stoop to that level. Étude was supposedly sick of being limited in her movements to the one world, so it was believed her intentions were to travel to one of the exoplanets, where she could theoretically have plenty of opportunities to demonstrate her skills.

Brooke and Ecrin had been recruited into an elite task force, or something, overseen by the aptly named Overseer. They were jet setting around the solar system, investigating crimes, and rescuing people during classified missions. There were rumors that they were leading a team of people who helped destroy Ulinthra, as well as the timeline she had created when taking over the world. If true, revolutionary Holly Blue would surely be part of the team as well. Paige left without saying where or when she was going. Vitalie was finally starting to grow up, having been fully removed from Leona’s pattern. It was unclear as of now what kind of lifestyle she was planning to lead, and whether she would ultimately choose to die like a normal person.

The two remaining were presently sitting in their apartment, finishing up breakfast, when someone knocked on the door. Leona opened it up to find someone she recognized. “Kivi Bristol. How nice to see you.”

“You know me?” Kivi asked.

“Of course not,” Leona lied without skipping a beat. “Come in, though.” Kivi was an interesting person, whose temporal circumstances no one seemed to understand. There were multiple versions of her, born under completely different conditions, at different time periods, who were each generally unaware of her counterparts. She always had the same name, always looked the same, and was always about the same age. There was no telling how long she would last, and once she disappeared, it was sometimes a while before anyone remembered she had been there, and realized she was gone.

“Thank you, I’ve been walking for a while. Yours was the first place in this circle that opened when I knocked.”

Leona nodded. “Yes, people are having fun in their virtual environments, even here. Where are you from?”

“Center circle.” She tilted her head, not in pride for her answer, but willingly prepared for what she assumed would be the inevitable ignorant questions. The outer circle was the most advanced of all, though still less so than most pockets of civilization on Earth. Each further circle was more backwards than the last, until reaching the center. Some people there lived like ancient pioneers, with no electricity, or even the simplest of comforts, while others stayed in shelters they fashioned out of the materials in their environment. They weren’t, strictly speaking, isolationists, but they did reject technology. They warmly welcomed visitors, but not if they came with too many distractions. It was also a no-fly zone. Drawing on memories of Amish and Mennonite Rumspringa, residents of the center circle are encouraged to go out and see how people lived in the other circles. Unlike Rumspringa, this happens at different ages—sometimes as late as the last legs of life—and sometimes involves multiple trips. Conversion to the lifestyle was also a lot more prevalent, so their numbers balanced out, and remained pretty consistent.

“So, what can we help you with?”

“I was hoping you had some water.”

“Sure, I’ll get it,” Vitalie offered.

Kivi continued, looking directly at Leona, “and I was hoping you had some clue as to why I recognize your face from a recurring dream I’ve had.” She graciously took the water, and started gulping it down, but maintained eye contact.

Leona shrugged. “Eh, time, right?”

“Pardon?”

Leona sighed, not knowing how to get into it. How do you tell someone they’re not as unique as they may have thought? “Vitalie, you’re the only one who can explain this. Why don’t you sure her what you got?”

“Really?” Vitalie wanted to confirm. “Do we just do this for everyone we meet?”

“I already know her,” Leona explained. “She’s not just some random center circler. Please.”

Vitalie created a projection of herself on the other side of the room. It smiled at waved, then quickly segued into a not impressed expression. People in the future tended to be fairly receptive to the truth about time travel. A lot of science fiction tropes ended up becoming real, so there was a little less wonder in the world. This did not always work, though. Kivi looked between the two Vitalies in shock. She seemed confident this wasn’t just a hologram, possibly because she had likely never seen one of those either, and it caused her to faint.

She didn’t wake up when she fell to the floor, but something did fall out of her pocket. Vitalie picked it up, and opened it. “What is this?”

“It’s the Compass of Disturbance,” Leona replied as she was dragging Kivi to the couch.

“That sounds morbid.”

“Temporal disturbance,” Leona added. “It finds and stabilizes tears in the spacetime continuum. It’s a tool.”

“Why does this girl have it?”

“I do not know.”

“Should I splash water on her face?”

“Should I even answer that?”

“Well, we do need answers.”

“She’s not dead. We’ll get them. Help me clean the table while we wait.”

Kivi woke up a few minutes later, and drank more of her water, but couldn’t say anything at first.

“Are you feeling okay?” Leona asked.

Kivi nodded “Yeah, I was just...surprised. I’ve never seen anything like that before. We don’t even have television.”

“Where did you get this?” Vitalie asked her, not wasting any time.

“My friend gave it to me,” Kivi answered. “She said to walk towards the outer circles, and not stop until I started seeing double. I didn’t know she meant it so...literally.”

“Who’s your friend?” Leona asked.

“A million bucks says you’ve already heard of the person she’s talking about,” Vitalie bet.

“She didn’t say anything about you two,” Kivi said. “She just gave this to me as a gift, and told me to keep moving. I needed to go on my walkabout anyway, so I didn’t question it.”

“What’s her name?”

“Shuhana. Shuhana Shenare.”

“Never heard of her,” Leona admitted. “You owe me a million dollars,” she said to Vitalie.

“I would seriously doubt it,” Kivi said, finishing the glass. “She’s just a humble shepherd.”

“Wait, is she a shepherd, or The Shepherd?”

“Hmm,” Kivi began. “Ya know, she does seem to act like she’s the only one in the universe.”

“Scratch that, Vitalie,” Leona said, eyes fixed on Kivi. “I owe you.”

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Brooke’s Battles: Beginning (Part I)

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Things were not normal in Brooke Victoria Prieto-Matic’s life. She was born on an island millions of lightyears from where her parents belonged. She was taken from those parents at a very young age, partly because of her condition. Her father was a time traveler with no control over his own travels. He and some of his friends had angered another traveler; one with enormous power, who forced them to remain away from Earth. She was apparently, however, not without mercy. Knowing that Brooke would be born without the ability to experience nonlinear time, she arranged for a friend to transport her across the universe in a small alien ship. It took millions of years, and though Brooke was asleep the entire time, the ordeal had forever bonded her to the life. When they finally arrived safely on Earth, humans were only starting to venture out into space. Brooke always knew she wanted to be a pilot, but in order for it to be exciting, she would have to wait until civilization had progressed further. And in order to do that, she needed to live long enough to see it. While a lot of her friends were capable of reversing their aging, or being some level of immortal, or just skipping over the boring parts, she had to rely solely on science. She decided to become a transhuman, and augment her body to survive longer, under strenuous conditions.

While time travel itself was still out of her reach, its influence on people she cared about would still have an effect on her. For almost the last twenty years, Brooke and a team of friends were on vacation. They spent time in Panama, Kansas City, and a few other places, before settling on the Northwest Forest circles. But that was not the whole truth. Also for the last twenty years, they were trapped under the rule of a tyrant with the ability to rewind every day once, then use her foreknowledge to control others. They had not only defeated her, but used a special weapon to undo everything she had ever done in her entire life, leaving the few of them with conflicting memories of two contradictory timelines. She could remember her extended sabbatical, which according to everyone else in the world, was what actually happened. But she could also remember being poisoned, tortured, and even killed. And so her break from work could not be over, because she was traumatized, and tired as hell. But of course, that wasn’t how life worked.

Early this morning, a message from a mysterious stranger appeared on her handheld device, as it did for one of her friends. Ecrin was not immortal, nor was she transhuman, but she was naturally ageless, and presently a few hundred years old. “I am not doing what they ask,” Ecrin said, “and neither should you.”

“Do we have anything better to do?” Brooke asked her, just playing devil’s advocate. “Besides wait for Leona?” Leona was another one of their friends, who only lived for one day every year. She was due back soon.

“Not die,” Ecrin offered. “We’re really busy not dying. For most people, it’s a passive endeavor, but for people like us, we have to actively work at not dying.”

“This true.”

“I don’t care who this is, or what they want, I’m staying as far from it as I can. The only thing that would get me to go is if I thought someone I cared about was in trouble.”

Their handhelds beeped. This is not an option. Please come at once.

“Argh!” Ecrin shouted slightly. “They’ve hot miked us!” She broke her handheld in half. “Break yours too.”

“What?”

“Come on, just br—” She was unable to finish her sentence before she literally disappeared, which was something that happened to people in their world from time to time.

Another message came to Brooke’s device. Doubt will not be tolerated. I’m only not apporting you here as well, because you’re pristinely ungifted. Please proceed to the highlighted route. Your friend will not be harmed either way. Brooke left immediately, and started running.

She only stopped upon reaching her destination, which was a small two story building. Most of the structures were wiped from the surface of the Earth, because they were wasteful and unnecessary. People nowadays lived amongst millions of other in tight clusters in strategic locations once belonging to independent nations. The rest was given back to the plants and animals. Still, a few disparate buildings remained, some to aid communication, and safety in the wilderness, but others were just kept secret.

She had to break herself into the front door with brute strength, into a medium-sized, darkened room. Ecrin was there already, in the middle of a conversation with some woman. Dozens of others were wandering around. None of them looked like they knew what they were doing there.

“Brooke, this is Holly Blue,” Ecrin said, nodding at the woman. “From the other timeline. She was one of the leaders of the resistance against Ulinthra.”

“I was what?” Holly Blue asked. Brooke remembered the name, and the individual, but had never had the pleasure of meeting her.

Another woman began to walk towards them from across the room. “A leader, like me,” she said in a Louisiana accent. “That is why you are here. You’re also a damn fine technician.”

“Explain,” Brooke demanded. The rest of the people wanted to know as well, but in a more puzzled way, since they had no frame of reference for any of this.

The woman in charge turned around and stepped back to address everyone. “My name is Magnolia, but you can call me The Overseer. I have gathered you here because each and every one of you was directly involved with the ultimate downfall of Ulinthra, a.k.a. Arianrhod, whether you remember it or not.”

Someone in the crowd held up his hand, but didn’t wait to be called on. “Who’s Ulinthra?”

“Exactly,” the Overseer said. “She was a time traveler from the past...a shockingly powerful one, who used her gifts to take over part of the world. You all helped rid her of the timeline, which is why you now don’t remember it.”

A lot of people scoffed and shook their heads.

The Overseer continued, “where were you just moments ago? You were scattered all over the word—one of you was all the way on Luna—but now you’re here. How? I apported you here, using my own power. Any doubts you have about the validity of my claims will soon be eradicated, I promise you this.”

“Why do you remember her?” Ecrin asked. The few of them had had the memories blended into their brains, but no one else should have had any clue.

“I have my sources,” the Overseer answered. “The real reason you’re here is I’m not the only other one who remembers. Ulinthra was obsessed with maintaining her control. She sought a number of contingencies, should anyone exercise an advantage over her. One of her experiments involved protecting a small group of her most devout followers from an alteration to the timeline. Their job is not to find a way to bring Ulinthra back from nonexistence, but to continue her legacy and vision for a world under rule. You are here to stop that.” She gestured for both Brooke and Ecrin to stand at either side of her. “This is Brooke Prieto. She will be your pilot. This is Ecrin Cabral. She will be your leader. Both of them remember Ulinthra, and all the terrible things she did. They were both killed by her doing, and have more reason than anyone to fix this before it becomes a real problem. I have reason to believe Ulinthra’s loyalists are organizing on Orcus and Vanth, so you will be starting your investigation there first.”

Orcus was a distant dwarf planet used primarily by criminals, who rejected modern unity in various ways, for various reasons. Since mandatory work was eliminated, so too was money itself. At this point, crime was something somebody did because they liked to do bad things; not because they just needed to get by. They were the worst kind, because they couldn’t be helped. If you were looking for a bad person, there was a good chance they were on Orcus, or its moon, Vanth, or at least had ties to them. They had no limits, no moral code, no guestlist. All were welcome, including law enforcement, because they held zero sway. It was a lawless nation that the current decision-makers didn’t feel were harming the solar system significantly enough to warrant being stopped. Many disagreed.

A man named Platinum Creaser stepped forward. Brooke remembered him from the other timeline, where he died fighting alongside Ecrin. He spoke partially to the Overseer directly, but also the rest of the group. “I don’t much care what you think you know about some alternate version of me. And I don’t care what everyone else is going to do, but I’m gonna go.” He started walking towards the door. “I suggest you do the same, before this crazy person gets you killed.”

As Platinum was walking away, the Overseer waved her hand towards him, and created a black portal on the floor, into which he fell. “I was having my doubts about him anyway. Anyone else want to pass up a once in two lifetimes chance to save the world?”

No one said anything, because though Brooke was confident that the Overseer had simply apported the deserter back home, it looked like she might have killed him.

          “Good.” She took hold of a small, blue device attached to her belt loop, and pressed a button on it. The floor started lowering below the ground. Some of the less-enhanced humans stumbled at the sudden movement, but nobody fell over. “Then I present to you, your home for the next however long it takes for you to ensure the Ulinthra loyalists are taken care of.”

“Is that...?” Ecrin began to ask.

“Yes,” the Overseer confirmed, then went on to explain what they were looking at, but Brooke didn’t need an explanation. Before her was one of the most magnificent creatures she had ever seen. It was the kind of vessel she had dreamed of flying. Yes, it was chock-full of weapons, but it was also possessed the most resilient of bulkheads in history. Such an elegant design, and always underestimated. Lots of enemies tried and failed to destroy her years ago, before the nations were united towards the common good of the world. She was old now, but still looked as beautiful as when she was first built. Brooke actually witnessed her launch back then, and remembered reading the reports of her heroic peacekeeping efforts over time. She was decommissioned after the fighting ceased, and never brought back online, not even in the alternate reality with Ulinthra. A man named Darrow had once predicted that Brooke would be piloting something like this, but had not given a name. Today, Brooke knew that he was telling the truth about her future. Never in a thousand years did she think she would be at the helm of a warship, certainly not this one; the most glorious ever. “Ladies and gentlemen...The Sharice Davids.”

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Microstory 945: Google

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In the early days, you had several choices for a search engine, and since few people fully grasped how the internet worked, or what it could become, they were all about the same. You chose Dogpile if you wanted to donate to charity, or you chose any of the others based on what features they had, or even just how pretty their homepage was. Then Google came along. As my father was a mathematician, I already knew what a googol was, and ignored the irony that I was otherwise terrible at math myself. As time went on, the world started to see the same thing I did. Google was quickly edging out all competition, until the only real contender was Yahoo!, plus whatever Microsoft was calling their service at the time. And then there was one. I early on saw the potential Google had to completely transform how we access information, despite being a wee boy with no programming aspirations. Though I didn’t know how big they would be, I did predict they would start adding unrelated services all the way back when all they did was search. I expected the internet to be one day entirely controlled by them, and while it’s more complicated than that, they are today the gatekeepers. We all know that person who still has a Hotmail account, and while most people aren’t dedicated power users like me, it still makes you giggle. Why is that? Just because you use Gmail, why in this world defined by apathy, does it matter to you? Well, because it’s absurd. Google is best at nearly everything they’ve tried, even if they ultimately shuttered a given service. They couldn’t crack social, and I don’t exactly understand why they keep trying. While I believe they could have out-Netflixed Netflix before Netflix got so big, they never seemed to see it coming, and missed that boat. Though Google Fiber is considered a failed experiment, they were the best internet service provider I ever had, and only don’t have it still, because I had to move. I use all the usual suspects: search, Gmail, YouTube, Google Calendar, Chrome, Android. But I use all the others too. There’s a reason you’re reading this on a website made by  Blogger, instead of WordPress. There’s a reason I’m typing this out on a Motorola (formerly owned by Google) phone, and one which uses Google’s Project Fi cellular service. And there’s a reason I’ll revise and post it once I get home to my Chromebook. The reason is the same for everything, which is that they are superior to all competition within their field. It’s as simple as that. I have been a fan and supporter of this company since before I cared about much else beyond my own life. Despite their just absolutely god-awful customer service, I still love them, and will never use anything but. So, search on, my friends.

Microstory 944: My Family

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I’ve had a lot of struggles in my life, and despite countless opportunities to be better, I’ve wasted nearly all of them. I had some behavioral issues when I was younger, which we now know was partly due to my autism, but that’s not a very good excuse in my case.  I’ve mentioned the classes I’ve failed, but never really gave you any numbers. I still won’t, and I can tell you it’s never been enough to keep me from graduating, but it has cost money. My job search was even worse. I finished college in 2010, but only really found a good fit about a year ago when I found this position I have now. Yet through it all, my family has been there for me. They have repeatedly given me extra chances, funded my doomed endeavors, and received little return on their investment. My father is an economist, and works as a human resources consultant. He’s taught me so much about how business and how the market operates. I’m a pretty simple guy, who sees a lot of excess in the world. Without his lessons, and constant guidance, I would be so confused and lost about all the things most people take for granted, like how insurance works. My mother is a crafty financial advisor with an unmatched capacity for compassion and understanding. I can talk to her about almost anything (and do). She gives the best advice, because she not only gets how the world works in reality, but also how I see it, and how I think it ought to work, which is decidedly different. My sister is my best friend, and like a third parent for me. I needed a lot of help when I was a kid, and still do. She helps me organize my thoughts, and tackle challenges. And she has had to support me financially as well. I have a bit of resentment for shows like The Originals and Supernatural, which teach you that blood relations are everything, because that is not how I was raised. I think ours is the preferable option, since those people are consistently dying, and even killing each other, yet that hasn’t happened to us even once. You absolutely can choose your own family; maybe not as much when you’re too young to fend for yourself, but certainly when you get older. Even though my real family happens to be related to me, it doesn’t necessarily have to be like that. I’m related to a ton of people neither I care about, nor who care about me. I’m sure you’ve heard the idiomatic expression, blood is thicker than water. You’re probably using it wrong, though, because the original phrase referred to blood of the battle versus water of the womb, which makes a level of sense, because what other water might it be talking about? The water of friendship? I wasn’t born with a lot of privilege, but instead acquired it later. My parents didn’t have it easy when I was born, but the three of them worked their butts off, and by extension, I benefit as well. Without them, there is very little chance that I would still be alive today.

Microstory 943: Constructive Criticism

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As I told my therapist a couple years ago, I’ve always been a lot better at taking criticism than praise. Accolades always make me uncomfortable, because I don’t know how to respond. Do I say thank you? Okay, I do that, but then they just keep going, I guess because I’ve just validated their insight, and they don’t think they can stop. So, do I say thank you again? I make good use of a thesaurus for writing, because I don’t like repeating myself too much, as you can see with praise and accolades. I tire of affirming their compliments so quickly, and assume they’re secretly resentful of me for not somehow magically absolving them of their continued admiration, and allowing them to move on without throwing me a friggin parade. While I understand that most people need a lot of validation for the things they do, I need very little. I really just need you to tell me that it was right, so I can lock that behavior into my procedural memory, and go on to the next challenge. What I truly thirst for is criticism, but as you may have guessed from the title, only the constructive kind. I don’t like being berated or insulted any more than anyone else, but I do need to hear what I did wrong, so I can correct the behavior, and lock it out of my procedural memory. Because if you say nothing, then I’m liable to do it the same way again. I personally enjoying finding efficiencies, and perfecting a craft, if given the chance, so I won’t necessarily be stuck there, but if I have too little motivation, then I will. One of my favorite lyrics from the band, Muse comes at the end of their song Hoodoo. It goes, I’ve had recurring nightmares // that I was loved for who I am // and missed the opportunity // to be a better man. I think it speaks for itself quite nicely.

The lack of constructive criticism is one of my biggest pet peeves, because I’ve struggled so much with it my whole life. I will be a part of something for an extended period of time, and then at some point after it’s over, I hear all this garbage about how poorly I did. If true, these people had every opportunity to help me before, but they chose not to, for whatever reason. Perhaps they just like complaining about other people, and attacking them. Or maybe they’re so out of touch with reality, that they don’t even recognize the disconnect. Or—and this is the most likely explanation since I’m so introspective, and don’t generally have the confidence to trust my own past actions—they’re just lying about the whole thing. If this is the real truth, maybe they’re upset I didn’t need their help as much as they thought I would, or they don’t like me for some other reason, and feel the need to justify their hostility. Whatever the case, nothing they’ve done has helped whatever it was we were trying to do, now there’s a chance I didn’t help it either, and I certainly can’t grow and learn much from my experiences. Most of my teachers chose deliberately to not use red pens when grading assignments, because of the negative connotation, but I’ve always loved seeing all that red. It illustrates a clear distinction between what I thought was right, and what’s actually right. If I cannot pick on on that difference—be it for a piece of writing, or more abstractly for any other scenario—then nothing gets better. The world is as crappy as it is today, because too many people have been indoctrinated to believe that we have no room for improvement. I don’t believe that, and if you don’t either, then come the next two elections...#votethemout.

Microstory 942: Language

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When I was in seventh grade, I found myself failing English class. I was blowing off every assignment, and bombing every test. It got to be so bad that my teacher had to call my parents, which led to an awful fight. It was the weekend, and another test was coming up, but I had no way of studying, because I didn’t bother bringing the booklet home with me. My dad made me start calling my classmates one by one from the student directory to ask them if I could borrow their booklet, make a copy, and take it back. I don’t remember how many I had to call—which, as an undiagnosed autistic boy, was about the worst thing you could make me do—but I remember there being several of them. I cracked open the booklet, and was surprised at the material. They called it Greek and Latin Roots and Stems. You mean to tell me the string of letters -ing means “continuous action”? Well, of course it does. And -ed denotes the past tense? It couldn’t be anything else. In a matter of weeks, I ended up with one of the highest grades in the class, because this was my field of study. I just didn’t know it yet. Over the course of the next few years, I would regularly start failing English class, only to make up for it once I actually agreed to pay attention, and try. Still, I was into my second year of college before I discovered Linguistics. People in movies often struggle to decide what kind of classes they want to take, but it wasn’t so up in the air for me. There were tons of general requirements, and you had to take a great deal of classes at a certain level or higher. And in order to reach that level, you had to take prerequisites. I’m not saying we all took the exact same classes, but there was quite a bit of overlap, regardless of your major. I ended up falling in love with the linguistics course that fulfilled these requirements, and decided to minor in it, while continuing to major in film. Though, by the time the next semester rolled around, I had realized that no one in the film department liked me, and I was better off switching completely.

True to form, I kept failing my classes, but this time I had to retake them, because college professors are far less forgiving than high school teachers. Still, because I basically started as a junior, with nearly the maximum number of transfer credits, I was able to graduate in four years, just like most people. And here I am today as what’s easiest to describe as a permanent office temp. I have a multitude of duties, at dozens of different locations, and not a single one of them is at all related to the study of linguistics. The name of my degree is, every single time, misleading to people who ask for it. Some think it means I know every single language, which would be tough, since there are/were literally thousands of them. Those who understand it better, want to engage me in an intellectual conversation, which I am unable to provide, because I was a horrible student, no matter how you look at it. I know a little about a lot of things, but I don’t know much about any one thing; not even linguistics. And don’t even get me started on what kind of job people are meant to get with this degree. The answer is, the one I have right now, asshole. Most people don’t have their dream job, but thanks for quite deliberately making me feel like a failure. Fortunately for the people who paid my way through school, the entire ordeal was not technically a waste of time. As a writer, I use the skills and knowledge I picked up every day. My foundation allows me to seek out answers without being completely lost, unlike when I try to research, say, how to repair an automobile. I love language. I love all its little twists and exceptions. I love learning about who speaks what languages, where, when they started, and why. I find it fascinating that the term a napron was so decisively mistaken for an apron that few people even know the truth behind it. And I love that English is the only Germanic Romance language in the world. Language isn’t everything, but if we didn’t have it, we wouldn’t be able to talk about all the other things that matter.

Microstory 941: Sex Workers

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As I believe I’ve said before, though perhaps only in fictional settings, I do not believe the sex industry should be illegal, nor so stigmatized. I often hear people defend their own vices by comparing it to those of others. Despite what the South Park writers would have you believe, being fat is not “just as bad” as smoking. Smoking is a bizarre behavior on its own, but in the end, I don’t care so much what you do to your own body. The issue arises when you do it in public, and you poison other people. Same thing goes for the difference between recreational drugs, and sex. When done wrong, both sex and recreational drugs are bad. They cause friction between loved ones, diseases, and financial hardships. When done wrong, recreational drugs are bad, because they cause friction between loved ones, diseases, and financial hardships. When done right, however, sex is good. It releases pleasurable chemicals in the brain, creates a bond between partners, and in some cases, propagates the species. Yes, there are a lot of bad things attached to the prostitution industry. People are thrown into this life against their will, forced to take drugs to keep them docile, and treated extremely poorly. There’s a lot of violence and blood and abuse that comes with the territory, but it doesn’t have to be this way. I’m not saying that simply making it legal would solve all of its problems. Governments would still have to regulate it, but guess what, the government regulates nearly every other industry anyway, so I’m not asking for anything crazy. Create laws that would protect workers from harm; others that would keep children from all sides of it; and stop making it seem to clients that these people don’t matter. Like the homeless, sex workers are treated like objects, to be used, and if desired, discarded. If they had rights and security, it would be a whole lot harder for someone to not treat them like real people. I don’t know what this all looks like in the long-term. Maybe once most of us have merged our bodies with artificial components, sex won’t seem quite as important, but I know that something has to be done today. People aren’t getting hurt and dying because they’re having sex. They’re getting hurt and dying because they’re not having sex the right way, and because too many oppose proper education, and acceptance. So, let’s hear it for the noble sex workers. I would raise my glass to you, but I don’t do recreational drugs.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 22, 2199

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The first thing that Leona Matic could remember was being killed by one of the mercenaries that she had commissioned to break Ulinthra out of her prison cube. She could recall the sting of the bullet, and the flow of blood spilling out of her wound. She could feel the light of her life dim little by little until there was nothing but a single pixel left. She never actually experienced that pixel being destroyed in her very, very final moment, but it still made her feel small. Though, through the magic of alternate timelines, she knew she had died before, no one had ever shown her what it truly felt like before. But she had apparently asked for it, and she had to trust her own past. The memories began to return to her backwards from there. Interrogating Ulinthra to find the ardusite dagger, retrieving an alternate Horace Reaver from the extraction mirror, watching Brooke Prieto die in a darkburster explosion. They just kept coming at an accelerated rate, until everything she had done before had finally returned, added to the ever-growing pile of parallel memories. The Warrior removed his hands from hovering at the side of her temples.

“I’m not screaming,” she noted. “Why am I not screaming? The others screamed. It always makes you scream.”

“Not always,” the Warrior explained. “You’ve had your brain blended before. It gets easier each time, and your brain is particularly...magnificent. Plus, the way you changed realities has never been done before, as far as I know. That dagger seems to have come from a completely different universe, so there’s no telling what other side effects it brought with it.”

“Where’s Horace?” Leona asked.

“He was never here,” Vitalie told her. “He and I followed Ulinthra to where she hid the ardusite dagger. Despite the fact that cops have been playing that trick on criminals throughout all procedural drama history, Ulinthra fell for it. She couldn’t help but check to see if we were bluffing about already knowing where it was.”

“Who did it?”

“He did, of course,” Vitalie continued. “He tried to tell you; that he knew it would mean his own demise. Ulinthra never existed. We are the only few people who have ever heard of her. Unfortunately, if she never existed, then we had no reason to go get Horace from the alternate reality either. As soon as he stabbed her with it, reality changed around everyone, leaving us with this, and without him.”

Leona shook her head. “We needed Horace to erase Ulinthra from history, which meant we didn’t need Horace, but if we didn’t have Horace, then Ulinthra couldn’t have been erased from history. It’s a vicious circle. A paradox.”

“I can’t tell you why it’s not a paradox,” Vitalie said. “Let’s just let it go, and be grateful that everything worked.”

“Yes,” Brooke finally spoke. Let’s.”

“It appears to be unanimous,” Ecrin pointed out.

Paige sighed. “The motion has passed.” She mimed banging a gavel.

“If that is all,” The Warrior said, “I will be going.”

“Yes,” Leona said, almost thinking they ought to give him a tip, as if he were a helpful bellhop. “Thank you so much, Anatol..for everything.”

The Warrior nodded respectfully, and disappeared.

“Well, he’s right that this feels different. Before, I got blended memories of different times. But this just went back through the last two weeks of my life, with only a little extra from having encountered Ulinthra at Stonehenge before we left for Durus.”

“Yeah, that’s what’s interesting to me,” Brooke said. “There are minor differences in what happened to us between the first time we saw Ulinthra in this time period, and when we saw her again in Panama, but nothing big. I have conflicting memories of recharging my systems on the ship one day, instead of going over navigational calculations; or of Dar’cy and Missy arguing over something trivial, when that actually never happened. But no one died who should have survived. No one was born that shouldn’t have, or anything like that.”

“I guess, in the end,” Ecrin began, “despite all the havoc she wreaked on the world, she wasn’t really all that important. It makes you wonder, do any of us matter? How different would the universe be if any one of us just disappeared?”

“Yes, about that,” a man said as he stepped through an invisible door in the middle of the room. In the timeline that had since been erased, they spent most of their time in Panama, but in the real timeline, Leona only got one day there before everyone went back to Kansas City. A couple years ago, they decided to move to one of the outer Northwest Forest circles, which was where they were now.

Ecrin tilted her head in friendly, mild surprise. “Ennis, how nice to see you again.”

Ennis looked like a mailman, complete with shorts, a cap, and a large satchel. He also had terrible burn scars on his face. “Miss Cabral, hello.” He tipped the cap.

“What do you have for us?” Ecrin asked him. “Anything good.”

“I guess,” he said.

“What did you mean, about that?” Leona asked. “About what?”

“Oh, you were talking about people disappearing, and I have something for you that is relevant to that.” He pulled a thick folder out of his bag, but did not hand it to anyone. “I was meant to come to you earlier, but I’m not allowed on Durus, and I don’t do moving vehicles. I could have given it to you after that, but I was told to leave you alone during the Ulinthra corruption. So I’m here now, at my earliest convenience, to give you this.” He handed the heavy folder to Leona.

Leona didn’t open it, but looked to Ecrin for guidance. She trusted her judgment.

Ecrin nodded. “If The Courier hands you something, it belongs to you. He’s legit.”

“Mrs. Matic,” Ennis began.

“Miss,” Leona corrected.

This confused him a bit. “I’m sorry, but aren’t you pregnant?”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Leona asked, appalled and offended.

“Well, it’s just, I was told...who’s the father?”

Now Leona was getting really offended. “That is none of your business.”

Ennis scratched at his chin, then took a notepad out of his bag, and started looking them over. “Oh, you’re only starting to remember. Hmm.”

“What? Are you? Talking about?”

“Okay.” Ennis clapped his hands together to begin his explanation. “There was a man. This man..was named Mateo. A...bunch of stuff happened, and then a really powerful asshole took him out time. Kind of like what you did with Ulinthra. And also kind of like Ulinthra, he owned a planet, but in this case, it was legitimate, and the people who lived on it actually liked him. Since he’s no longer here, however, the rights to that planet fall to his next of kin, which is you.”

“You’re telling me I have some relative that I don’t know about, because someone erased his history?” Leona had seen a lot as a salmon, and knew there were entire timelines she had no recollection of, but this was sounding fishy.

“I’m telling you that you had a husband you don’t remember. He’s the father of your child, which means that child is proof that Mateo Matic did indeed exist. His history wasn’t erased. He was erased. You don’t remember everything he did, nor do most people, but he still had an impact on the way things are today. And the days before, since we’re time travelers.”

Leona once again looked to Ecrin, who clearly had no memory of this either. “Again,” she said, “this man doesn’t lie. If he says this dude existed, then he existed.”

“The more the baby grows inside of you,” Ennis went on, “the more it will have an effect on you. You will start remembering. The Superintendent can do a lot, but he can’t stop that. I didn’t mean to suggest you had to be married to have a child, I just thought you were far enough along to start getting your memories back.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Leona said, trying to wrap her head around having a husband she couldn’t remember. “I’m not saying I believe it, but I’m not saying I don’t. Assuming it’s true, is there any way to prove it? Can you..show me something? Can we get the Warrior back here?”

Ennis shook his head. “The Warrior and The Blender can give you quantum memories from an alternate timeline. But this isn’t an alternate timeline. It’s a corrupted timeline, but still the same timeline. Same same, but different.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, I got blended memories from the Ulinthra corruption, which is what you called it.”

“That shouldn’t have worked either,” Ennis began, “but you made arrangements so that it would. You spoke with The Warrior before Horace used that dagger thing, and prepared him to help you today. That’s not gonna work here. I want to make it clear—and Ecrin can attest to this—I am quite literally the messenger, so don’t shoot me. I didn’t erase Mateo, I can’t put him back, I can’t prove that I’m not lying, and lastly—this is an important one—I can’t put you in touch with the Superintendent. He’s the one who did this, and like a witch’s spell, only he can undo it.” He pointed at the folder, which Leona had yet to open. “That is, if you even wanted him to undo it. Dardius is pretty nice this time of millennium.”

She didn’t know the answer to that. Surely if her memories had been removed against her will, she would want to get them back. Yet this was her life now, and though no sane person would call it a good one, it was one she understood. While she would likely never see Serif again, Leona would never want to lose the memory of her. If they only got together because Mateo wasn’t there instead, then what would happen to her? Could she give up one love for another? “What would that mean for Serif? Was what we had even real?”

“Oof,” Ennis said lightly, “that’s a loaded question. Was Serif real? Technically, no. She was fabricated, but she was fabricated...before Mateo was removed from time.”

“But she was, what? Just some friend?”

“No, you were with her; you and Mateo both. Don’t ask me to give you details on how your relationships worked, I just met you today. Some things I know, some things I don’t.” His watch beeped, as did Leona’s, though she didn’t know why. “Oh, look at that, it’s time. Are you guys going to the show? Do you have tickets?”

“Tickets to what?” Brooke asked.

“The Last Savior’s Last Save? It’s today, in just a few minutes.”

“You mean, she retires after this?”

“Yep, it’s over. The Age of Saviors is kaput. I can hook you up, if you want. I’m pretty good friends with Sanela. Hey Leona, she’s your, uhh...great-something-grandmother...in-law. Umm. Twice removed? I don’t know how it works, your family tree is crazy.”

This was getting to be too much.

Ennis kept going, “so do you guys want to go, err...?” He trailed off an awful lot.

“That would be lovely,” Paige said.

“Yeah, sure,” Leona agreed. She was the last to step through Ennis’ invisible portal. It would be nice to see Étude again, but honestly, all she could think about was what she was going to do about this Mateo guy.

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