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Current Schedule
- Sundays
- The Advancement of Mateo MaticTeam Matic prepares for a war by seeking clever and diplomatic ways to end their enemy's terror over his own territory, and his threat to others.
- The Advancement of Mateo Matic
- Weekdays
- PositionsThe staff and associated individuals for a healing foundation explain the work that they do, and/or how they are involved in the charitable organization.
- Positions
- Saturdays
- Extremus: Volume 5As Waldemar's rise to power looms, Tinaya grapples with her new—mostly symbolic—role. This is the fifth of nine volumes in the Extremus multiseries.
- Extremus: Volume 5
- Sundays
Thursday, November 8, 2018
Microstory 969: Holidays
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
Microstory 968: Evolution
Scientists can study the traits of various animals, plants, and other organisms all they want, and they can infer what might have led to any given mutation surviving in a species, but no one really understands what it took to get to this point. There are only a handful of examples of evolution happening right before our eyes. Most of our understanding of it comes from a fairly static perspective of its present state, because we’ve not been observing scientifically for very long. I want so badly to go back in time and watch the Tree of Evolution split, and split, and continue to split over aeons. I want to experience the changes in real time so much that I’ve created characters that are time travelers and immortal, so this is exactly what they’ve chosen to do with their lives. I just haven’t found a good story to introduce them, but they’re coming. Education is a very linear construct. You learn simple stuff when you’re young, and gradually introduce more complex concepts. A few people have a bunch of degrees, but most of them are geniuses, because colleges don’t really expect you to keep coming back. It is simply not a feasible or affordable life plan. Yes, there are other options, like educational online videos, but I still think it would be best if I had an authority who could prepare a structured syllabus for me to follow. No one told me how amazing evolution is, especially not since I grew up in Kansas, where half the people were telling me that God made humans from scratch six thousand years ago. In case evolutionary biology is your thing, and you still haven’t reached a point of no return, then this is your opportunity to change course. Don’t you wanna know why platypodes and echidnas are the only mammals that lay eggs?
Tuesday, November 6, 2018
Microstory 967: Let America Vote/Jason Kander
Monday, November 5, 2018
Microstory 966: Kansas City
Sunday, November 4, 2018
The Advancement of Leona Matic: September 27, 2204
Something told Leona that they would want to get an early start next year, so she went to bed with enough to wake up by midnight. She dreamed again, but this time much more vividly. It started in the first timeline; the one where she was married to Horace Reaver, and working with a team to save lives day after day. Mateo Matic showed up, having been skipping each year on his own for awhile, having long left his family to go on without him. The reality ended when Mateo accidentally caused her death in a car accident. The timeline began again. She was meeting Mateo for the first time in a hospital, after drinking alcohol for the first and last time shortly before her sixteenth birthday. The years continued as Mateo tried to figure out his place in life, and Leona tried to help him through it. Years later, she fell onto his pattern, and they pressed on together. They fought Ulinthra, Reaver, The Rogue, and the Cleanser. Then Mateo went back in time to kill Adolf Hitler, and the second timeline collapsed.
She was now in the third timeline, meeting Mateo for the first time on a Texan battlefield. The Rogue was hurt, but slowly transforming back into a better person, thanks to Mateo’s help. She struggled against her fate, having been told of the other realities, but not wanting to suffer similar fates. Yet they caught up with her when Nerakali Preston forced her way into Meliora’s Sanctuary, and returned the conflicting memories to her mind. Armed with this knowledge, she and Mateo took her down, along with her brother. But their sister, Arcadia was not happy with this. She marooned them on an island on a planet millions of lightyears away from Earth. They worked to overcome further challenges, with friends at their side, until one by one they were erased from the timestream. In the end, they won, though not everyone had survived. In one final cruel twist, Mateo Matic himself was erased, leaving Leona to move on with her life having never known him.
She woke up at a minute to midnight, and ran out of the room. The others were sitting around, working or reading. “I remember him!” she shouted. “I remember everything! The astrolabe must have fixed my memories.”
“That’s great,” Vitalie encouraged. “What can you tell—”
“—us about him?” she finished one year later, without skipping a beat.
“He. Is the life of my life,” Leona said. “And Ennis was right, I was also in love with Serif. It was the three of us, but not for as long as I believed. Now I know what I have to do.” She pulled back her sleeve to show a glowing compass tattoo. “We’re going back to Durus to get them both.”
Of the four of them, only Kivi had never been to Durus, though there was every reason to believe some entirely separate version of her lived a whole life there. Getting to the rogue planet was set to be easier than the last time, when they had to fly through hazardous space. Still, it wasn’t the easiest thing ever, because the Compass of Disturbance didn’t just take a traveler right to where they wanted to go. It only exploited natural breaches in spacetime that were usually invisible, but even when accessed, only went to a second specific point. They didn’t always know when and where they were, but they rarely had to walk too far before the compass showed them an exit point. There were evidently a lot more breaches all around that no one ever even noticed. Or perhaps they impacted normal people’s lives on a regular basis, but since they had never been observed, no one attributed their feelings of behavior to them.
One of the first locations took them right to the door of someone Leona and Vitalie already knew. It was Dubravka, the woman with the ability to skip time at will. She was basically just like Leona and Serif, except she could control it. “What are you doing here?”
Leona looked down at her tattoo to double check the readings. “There is a tear in the spacetime continuum that will get us back to Durus.”
“Why in hell would you want to go back there?” Dubra questioned.
“We’re on a quest for several magical objects,” Kivi replied enthusiastically.
“I’m also hoping to get Serif back,” Leona added.
“You are? From the fourth pocket?”
“Yes, I believe we’ve found a way.”
“Then what are we waiting for? I’m sick of 2204 anyway.”
“It’s 2204?” Vitalie asked. “But you’re still so young.”
Dubra smirked. “I wasn’t always around; tried to skip over the boring parts. Let me pack a few things, then we can go. Come on in.”
Once Dubra was ready to go with them, they continued on with the mission, sometimes still around the turn of the 23rd century, but not always. They even once found themselves stepping out of the three main dimensions. They were walking through some kind of extradimensional tunnel. The only undarkened spot besides the exit looked like a window, through which they were witnessing a man keeping a woman chained up in a cabin. They tried to climb through the window, but were unable to. There was no way in. The woman managed to get her hands on her captor’s knife, and was attempting to cut him with it. He finally gave up trying to stop her, and just ran out of the cabin. In a final desperate move, she threw the knife towards him, a second too late, burying it not just in the door, but also in the trench coat hanging on it. From inside of the coat appeared The Maverick. The woman had stumbled upon Darrow’s cloak and dagger summoning protocol. “I should have rethought this,” he said as he was removing the knife from his back, and suspiciously looking in the direction of the magic window from which the travelers were watching. “Anyway, ‘tis all right, ladies. I will get her out of this. You may proceed to your next rift.”
They waited, unsure if he was for real.
“Who are you talking to?” the frightened woman asked.
“Go on,” Darrow urged. “I have no intention of harming her, I promise. I’ll help her find whoever did this to her.”
“Let’s go,” Hogarth said. “I believe him.”
“I don’t,” Vitalie disagreed, but she walked through the exit just the same.
“Do you know that guy?” Dubra asked them.
They faced the ground and blinked their eyes rapidly, trying to adjust to the abrupt bright light. Once Leona could see again, she looked up to get her bearings, thinking at first they were just somewhere on Earth, but it couldn’t be, because there were two suns.
Kivi was having the most trouble adjusting. “Are we here?”
Leona looked at her compass tattoo. “It’s dark. This is our final destination.”
“What year is it?” Hogarth asked.
“No idea.”
“It’s—” Hogarth gave up trying to explain it before she even started. She went over and looked at Leona’s arm. “September 27, 2204. Same day it’s supposed to be, that’s interesting.”
“Huh?”
“I’ll show you how to tell time on the compass later. We’re looking for the Rothko Torch, right? Well...where do we go?”
“You’re lookin’ for the Rothko Torch, eh?” A man was walking up to them.
Leona squinted. “Ludvig? Is that you?”
He tilted his head, and pointed at her. “Yeah, I remember you too. Leon, right?”
“Close enough.” She turned to the others. “You know Hokusai and Loa? Well this guy and Loa were—”
“We never labeled it,” Ludvig interrupted.
“How are you still so young?” Leona questioned.
Ludvig raised his arms to indicate the whole world. “This is paradise. Nobody dies here, not anymore. We fixed that whole established misogyny thing, both politically, and socially. Thank you for your part in that. The Warren was instrumental in showing us how foolish we were.”
“Why did you program two suns?” Leona asked.
Ludvig looked up. “Those aren’t temporal tricks. Those are our suns. We were picked up by a binary system last week. Well...to be honest, scientists realized we were headed in this direction, so a group of powerful paramounts got excited, and sped us up. Earthan scientists call it Ophiuchi Seventy, or something. If you’re looking for the flashlight, you don’t have much time. It’s located smack dab in the middle of The Abyss, which the aforementioned suns are gradually destroying. If you’re here to get your time powers removed, you better hurry up.”
“We’re not,” Hogarth said. “We need the flashlight for something else.”
“Either way,” Ludvig said, turning around, “we better get going.” He started walking away.
“We?” Leona asked.
“You don’t have time to find it yourself! Chop-chop, young ones!” he called back.
They followed Ludvig across the thicket, and over the plains, finally coming upon a hazy quiet storm a few hours later. A holographic guardsman appeared. “Travelers. You’ve reached The Abyss. By God’s two eyes in the sky, the darkness will soon be defeated. If you would like to pass, we urge you to wait a good week before proceeding.” He smiled warmly, but admonitorily.
“Ignore him, obviously,” Ludvig said as he walked forward. “It was a lot denser, even just yesterday. We should run, and no matter what you see, do not stop moving. I mean this. Don’t. Stop. For anything, or anybody, not even each other. Got it?”
“Understood,” Dubravka said while everyone else just nodded.
They started racing through the hazy odorless smoke. As they ran, they passed dozens of Vitalies, all astral projections. But there were also several Kivis, all of whom were solid, which Leona learned after accidentally shoulder-checking one. Hogarth was not able to run at all. Every time she took a step, she disappeared in a small explosion, and appeared in some random other spot. Leona also saw other people wandering the haze, recognizing a few of them. Lucius kept spontaneously disintegrating, and reintegrating, yet he kept moving. Curtis teleported around, seemingly uncontrollably. Missy Atterberry appeared frozen in one of her own time bubbles. Before too long, she could see a dilapidated farmhouse in the center. It was literally crumbling before her eyes, like a sandcastle, and would soon be gone. Dubravka had disappeared as soon as she stepped foot in the haze, and only now returned on the inner edge. It would seem that only Leona was getting through completely unharmed, except for that time she was clotheslined by a rope Missy and Dar’cy had tied around their waists, a mishap which severed it.
The six of them made it out of the haze at about the same time. Leona looked back to see it was already thinning even further. “Why didn’t it affect me?” Leona asked. “All those people, and nothing happened to me.”
“There weren’t any other people,” Ludvig explained. “If you saw others, it’s because you jumped back into the past. The haze reflects and refracts your powers.”
“Oh.” So it had affected her.
Ludvig jogged over to the farmhouse, and quickly lifted one of the vinyl panels to retrieve the flashlight just before that section of the house fell apart. He jogged back over to them. “Okay, we can go now.”
“That’s it?” Dubravka asked. “What about my—Serif? What about Serif?”
“If she’s where I think she is,” Ludvig said, “this flashlight will get you there, but there is no coming back. No one ever comes back.”
“We’ll risk it,” Dubra cried. “Just tell me what to do.”
He handed her the Rothko Torch, and pointed back towards the haze. “Shine it in that direction. Meanwhile, I’ma get the eff out.” He ran away as fast as he could.
Dubra switched on the light, and pointed it where the man said. Three people appeared, like translucent ghosts, fading in and out as Dubra moved the light around. This was clearly just a vision of the past since they totally ignored the witnesses. One of the women was dragging the other towards the house, as the victim seemed to beg the man for help, but he was not giving it. The flashlight didn’t have sound, though, so Leona couldn’t be sure what they were saying. The attacker passed energy into her victim, who ultimately succumbed to it, and died. The survivor took hold of her head, and appeared to be screaming in pain. She frantically gestured away from the house, prompting the man to flee in that direction. The power she had consumed was apparently too much. A wave exploded from her, and spread out in a large radius, before snapping back towards the center.
Leona could see Dubra struggling to keep the flashlight in hand as it attempted to fly back to its place in the wall, which no longer existed. As the energy around them intensified, there was a burst of light, and then it all stopped. Leona was on her hands and knees in the middle of a crowd. A few were human, but most...were Maramon.
Saturday, November 3, 2018
Brooke’s Battles: Besieged (Part V)
After secret agent Camden Voss and his subordinate rescued Brooke from the Vanth outpost, they rendezvoused with The Sharice, and got the hell out of trans-Neptunian space. The agents returned to their own time period, and Brooke to her crew and AI daughter. Unfortunately, the incident concerned a lot of important people, who decided to remove both the Sharice, and Brooke, from duty. They were placed together in quarantine on an unnamed asteroid in the inner belt, completely removed from the interplanetary network, and alloted limited communication with their friends. This went on for months until Brooke was called back to the front lines due to intel that suggested the details of her transhumanistic upgrades had escaped the asteroidal moon. Rumors pervaded that someone had synthesized the data, and was planning to sell the plans for unregulated artificial intelligence to the highest bidder. In a word without money, what exactly were they bidding with?
Most of the crew of the Sharice were on indefinite furlough, including Captain Cabral, but a skeleton crew was operating out of a much smaller ship, with which Brooke was intimately familiar. Despite deepened protests against letting her out of quarantine, she was requested to once again helm The Elizabeth Warren. They traveled all over the inner system, hunting for the source of the rumors. Their investigation eventually took them back to Earth—Panama, specifically—where they believed key system leadership had been replaced by sundry criminals. Due to centrifugal forces, space elevators generally worked better when anchored at equatorial locations. However, not everything needed to be absolutely efficient, and solve a global problem. The Panama Anchor was built primarily to see if it could be done, but after infrequent use over the last three decades, it was finally scheduled to be dismantled. Its final trip was broadcast to the public for posterity. A load of nonessential cargo was ultimately being sent to Mars, while a group of Earth leaders were just along for the ride. According to a couple prisoners on Mars, the final voyage of the elevator compartment was nothing more than a front for a secret meeting of bidders for the plans for UAI. Unfortunately, this meant that the team couldn’t trust anyone else, so they would have to handle this themselves. Brooke was pushing the Warren to the limit, and ignoring all safety protocols along the way.
A normal vessel wanting to travel to a particular destination would need to accelerate to a given speed, then flip around, and begin to decelerate at the same rate. Like the Sharice, however, the Warren came equipped with special temporal components. The idea was too continue acceleration until reaching two Earth diameters of Earth, then immediately make a jump to the end. Teleportation usually came with built-in momentum dissipation, but that was because it usually took place in a frictioned environment. To avoid flying off at the speed they were already going upon making it to the elevator, Holly Blue had to program momentum dissipation manually. Then Brooke was going to have to execute the maneuver perfectly. They were quickly coming up on the moment of truth, so there was no time to question their plan, but Dr. Étude Einarsson stepped onto the bridge to do just that.
Étude was The Last Savior of Earth. For thousands of years, certain peoples were chosen to spend their days teleporting all over the globe, mostly just saving people’s lives. These missions sometimes took minutes, but usually only seconds, and were fully out of the savior’s control. As the world became safer—or rather, mature enough to take care of itself—fewer people were called upon to be saviors. For decades, there was only one at a time, and for decades more, the world experienced interim periods between the latest savior’s retirement, and the time when the next was old enough to work. Saviors usually worked until retirement age, or even their deaths, but Étude was allowed to retire young. Following her last mission, she enrolled in medical school, mirroring the path one of her mothers took. She was presently attached to the Warren as Chief Medical Officer.
No one has ever done this before, Étude signed to Brooke. She was mute from birth, having only said a single word in a moment of desperation for her entire life.
Brooke was really trying to focus on flying the ship. She wasn’t allowed to interface with it—not that she could have if she tried, since the necessary upgrades were removed from her substrate—so the job was much more difficult. “There’s a first time for everything.”
That happens, Étude signed earnestly.
“What?” Brooke asked, confused. She understood sign language perfectly, since most of her knowledge modules were left intact in her cyberbrain. She just didn’t know what Étude meant.
That happens, Étude repeated. There’s a first time for everything that happens. Not everything happens.
“That’s true,” Brooke had to admit. “I’m confident this one will happen, though.”
You’re going to kill us all, Étude warned.
“Okay, my confidence has gone down a bit. Maybe you have some words of encouragement?”
As CMO of this vessel, it is my duty to prevent you from causing needless harm to its crew. I order you to decelerate immediately.
“We’re more than halfway there!” Brooke shouted. If I flip now, we’ll overshoot our target.”
Once we reach safer speeds, you can teleport us back.
Brooke shook her head. “There’s not enough time for that. We won’t reach so-called safe speeds until we’re way past Earth.”
Étude paused for a moment. Then we try Holly Blue’s integrator.
“How’s that any safer? It’s just as untested.”
I’m at the most risk if something goes wrong. Everyone else will be fine regardless.
“Your mother would never forgive me,” Brooke argued. “Besides, you’re a planetary teleporter, just like most people. What we need is someone who can jump in the AU range.”
Étude appeared to be hesitating. I don’t need the range. If this plan won’t work, then I can do it a different way.
“What other way?”
Étude sighed. I can jump us back in time.
“What are you talking about?” Brooke questioned. “You can’t travel through time.”
Yes, Étude replied simply.
“Why can you travel through time?” Brooke asked.
My father, Étude explained. She was referring to Camden Voss, the salmon who could make century-long time jumps. A doctor used Saga’s egg, and Camden’s sperm, implanting them in the womb of Saga’s wife, Andromeda.
“Can you build things too?” Andromeda was a paramount who could magically make entire structures spontaneously exist without spending so much time and effort building them by hand. It was one of the most impressive time powers anyone knew. Someone who could do this would apport parts from all over time and space, and rapidly rearrange them to construct something artificial and complex. If Étude had inherited it from her mother, she would be the fourth of only four people with this power.
Étude pointed her hands towards the corner of the cockpit. She waved them around like a Filliorian king as wood and hardware appeared and organized themselves into a nightstand.
Brooke watched in awe, then slowly turned her head back to face Étude. “Warren,” she said to the computer that controlled the ship, “flip thrusters. Max output. Adjust heading to avoid Earth’s primary sensors.”
“Beginning sequence,” the Warren’s computer said.
Étude nodded moderately triumphantly.
“All right, let’s go talk to the butterfly,” Brooke said, setting the ship to autopilot, and standing up from her chair.
“Can’t she just jump herself back in time, to some point when we’re closer to the threat, and lay in wait,” Holly Blue asked after hearing the plan. “Surely our past selves would believe her.” They were on their way to a random point in interstellar space, and couldn’t do anything until they were moving slow enough for Étude to jump them back time.
“It’s best to not alter time if you don’t have to,” Brooke explained to her. “It could make an impact on the elevator ride, and then we would have to start the investigation over. Besides, it would create a timeline where there are two Études running around, and she doesn’t want that.”
“All right,” Holly Blue began, “so we slow down enough for Étude to use my integrator, jump the entire ship back in time just far enough for us to make it to the elevator at standard speeds without alerting the UAI bidders, and without interacting with ourselves.”
“We’re already on radio silence,” Brooke said, nodding.
Holly Blue sighed. “I wish you had brought this to me earlier. I would have told you that the integrator is not ready.”
Étude began to sign at Holly Blue, who didn’t know sign language. “It’ll work,” Brooke interpreted for them. “I have faith in you. We both do,” she added for herself.
“No,” Holly Blue insisted. “Can’t do it. I’m sorry.”
Brooke walked Holly Blue over to the nearest chairs, and sat her down. “I’m going to tell you something maybe I shouldn’t, but since all my information comes from a different timeline, I think it’s safe.”
“What is it?”
“Your real name is Holly Blue. But in the world of salmon and choosers, you’re known as The Weaver...because you’re one of us.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have powers. You’re not inventing these machines that manipulate time. You’re using your own abilities to imbue them with those properties. I believe that’s why Ulinthra hired you in the corrupted timeline. She already knew who you were meant to be; that you’re not human. I know the integrator works, because you’re not capable of making something that doesn’t. Judging by your face, you already suspect this about yourself.”
“I didn’t want to say anything, but I don’t always know why the things I design even work. They’re like sleeping pills; I was just relieved they functioned properly, so I didn’t question it.”
Brooke nodded. “The integrator is fine. Étude will be fine. We’ll all be fine.”
Holly Blue took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m in. Still, let me run a full diagnostic before we try anything.”
“We have all the time in the universe,” Brooke joked.
Holly Blue first came up with the idea of an integrator when she was working on giving the Sharice the ability to teleport very short distances. She wanted to extend that range, and if they found a human with the right powers, they might be able to integrate that person with a machine, and multiply that power enormously. Brooke had to return to the helm while Étude and Holly Blue were activating the machine, so she didn’t see how it looked, but she imagined it to be a glorious sight. Once it was over, and they were back in the past, she plotted a course to the Panama elevator.
“I need help,” Holly Blue shouted through the intercom.
Brooke set the ship to autopilot once more, and ran down to the lab. Étude was still in the machine, bracing herself on a metal bar above her head. Space was warped all around her. It looked like she was trying to let go, but couldn’t.
“I can’t get to her,” Holly Blue said. “I can’t shut it down, and I can’t get close enough to pull her hands off.”
Brooke pinched her lips as she was trying to figure out what to do.
“Is this room getting bigger?” Holly Blue stopped to ask.
Brooke looked around. “Oh, not again.” This ship was already larger than it was meant to be. The third person who was able to create things out of thin air did so during the Warren’s first mission. “Étude, you have to stop. The Warren is big enough.” Her arm terminal began to beep. She looked at it to find the vessel to have traveled much farther than it should have by now. Maybe Étude wasn’t really trying to let go.
“Nearing Earth,” the computer alerted.
“On screen,” Brooke ordered.
They could see the compartment of the space elevator broken from its tethers. It was falling down through the atmosphere, set to kill everyone on it, and anyone in its path on the ground.
Étude closed her eyes and started to scream. The room grew larger still, faster and faster, until it was the size of a warehouse. The compartment disappeared in a blink, and reappeared in the room, right next to them. It tipped over, and fell to its side. Finally, Étude removed her hands from the integrator bar, and collapsed to the floor as well. What the hell just happened?
Friday, November 2, 2018
Microstory 965: Renewable Energy
Thursday, November 1, 2018
Microstory 964: Women
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