Brooke’s Battles: Bounty (Part VII)

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Sharice’s code had not been corrupted, and she had not switched allegiances. Through months of bureaucratic debrief, Captain Cabral, Brooke, and the rest of the senior crew learned from her that the captain of the Zerzan had figured out a way to bypass the chain of command, and communicate directly with Sharice. He and his people had gathered intelligence leading them to believe that a different faction on their side was intending to destroy the center Northwest Forest circles in an attempt to escalate the war. The problem, according to them, was that up until that point, they were fighting against their enemy using that enemy’s rules. They believed there were no such things as rules of engagement, or war crimes. The difference between anarcho-primitivists, and the primitivists living in the center circle was the anarcho part. They were not content living with little technology all on their own. Either the entire populace fell in line, or they would have to die. Anarchy, like many other forms of social politics, doesn’t work if they’re constrained by some other form of government’s idea of civility.

For instance, in the 21st century, most countries were capitalistic. Everything was valued at whatever anyone was willing to pay for it. If enough people couldn’t afford something, and the producers were incapable of sustaining their business at those price points, that price would drop. While other countries attempted to create some antithesis to this, it was impossible. Every nation traded on the international stage, so whether they liked it or not, and whether they believed or not, they were all capitalists. It was unclear whether the more violent faction of anarchists would have succeeded in their mission to force the solar system to stoop to their level, because thanks to the bravery of the late Captain Torben Altink, their whole plan failed. Evidently, he had attempted to open talks with the system leadership, to explain the growing threat to them, but was mostly ignored. As the Sharice and other warships took the enemy ships down one by one, power perpetually shifted amongst the winners. By taking out their competition, the violent faction was able to consolidate power, and basically do whatever they wanted.

The Zerzan had all but given up their fight to stop them when a random crewman came up with an idea. Since they didn’t have the resources to take on their internal enemy themselves, they would recruit the Sharice. They lured Ecrin and Brooke in, then secretly began talking with Sharice. The original plan was for Sharice to take total control over the ship itself, and follow the Zerzan back to Earth, where they would fight off the other faction together. Her mistake was not even trying to convince her people to listen to the Zerzan. In the end, with both vessels crippled, their only hope was to commandeer the drop ship, and take it straight down to the other faction, sacrificing Captain Altink in the process. Now the only question was, how did they get their hands on a Lucius-bomb?

“I am not at liberty to say.”

“What are you talking about? I’m your mother,” Brooke said.

“I’m your commanding officer,” Ecrin said to Sharice.

“Yes,” Sharice began, “and you’re the one always talking about the chain of command. I am not at liberty to say.”

“Are you telling me someone higher than me ordered you to keep quiet about the Lucius-bomb?” Ecrin asked.

Sharice waited to answer. “I’m not, not saying that.”

“How far are we to intercept?” Ecrin asked.

“Seventy-two minutes,” Sharice responded. While the crew was only now hearing her justification for recent events, the system leadership heard everything months ago. They were satisfied with the explanation enough to grant her full duty privileges, so she could return to work. They were presently on their way to capturing a fleet of space pirates.

“Oh, so you can answer some questions. It’s nice to know this old dog still has a little pull on this ship.”

“Ecrin,” Sharice started to say.

“Captain,” Ecrin corrected.

Sharice pretended to clear her throat. Of course, she didn’t have a throat, but she found that human speech relied on brief pauses, false starts, and other disfluency to maintain a bond between one another. These meaningless utterances are vital to natural language, because perfection can sound rehearsed, which comes off as didactic, or condescending. “Captain,” she echoed, “You know I would never do anything against your best interests if I didn’t have a good reason. I didn’t put that bomb on my drop ship, and I did not want it there. When an opportunity to get rid of it came along, I seized it.”

“When was it put there?”

Sharice cleared her hypothetical throat again, but didn’t say anything.

“Miss Prieto,” Ecrin prompted.

“Answer her,” Brooke ordered.

“During the quarantine,” Sharice said.

“That makes sense,” Brooke said. “A lot of people came in that I didn’t know.”

“So there’s no telling who did this, let alone who ordered it,” Ecrin said with a sigh.

“Unless...” Brooke began, sending Ecrin a coded message through her gestures.

Ecrin stepped back gracefully. “Use the meeting room.”

Brooke stepped into the other room. “Sharice, isolate yourself in here, and hand over control to the helmsman on duty.”

“Why?”

“We need to have a private conversation, that’s why.”

“Isolated.”

“Sharice, we can’t do our jobs if we don’t know what we’re up against. Right now, we’re going off to capture precisely five stolen interplanetaries, three boarders, and a command ship. And we know that’s what we’re up against because we’ve been investigating these crimes. We’re not just flying blindly, hoping we’re not outmatched. If someone was able to hide a Lucius-bomb in the drop ship, they could have hidden something else. Hell, you may not even know about it. Your internal sensors can’t see everything. Your relationship with the crew is built on trust. We all agreed to come back after what you did, because we trusted you believed you were doing the right thing. I’m here to remind you that you’re my daughter, I’m your mother, and I’m asking you for a name. The chain of command is important, but if the person who made you do this already broke that chain, it’s up to us to stop them. Do you understand?”

“Yes, mother.”

“Go ahead then.”

Sharice didn’t say anything.

“Go ahead,” Brooke repeated.

“Holly Blue.”

“What?”

“Holly Blue put it there.”

“Holly Blue is not Ecrin’s superior officer. Ecrin is hers.”

“I’m not talking about the chain of command from the Sol military. I’m talking about a higher level of authority; one that goes beyond anything any human could understand.”

“When you say human, do you mean human like Ecrin is biologically human, or human like Richard and Allen are humans.”

“The latter,” Sharice answered.

“There is no hierarchy in the world of choosing ones and salmon,” Brooke argued.

“If The Last Savior of Earth tells you to do something, you do it.”

“This was Étude’s doing?”

“She had the intelligence. She knew this would happen, because someone with powers told her the future.”

“She’s retired,” Brooke pointed out.

“She’s quit working for the powers that be,” Sharice said. “That doesn’t mean she’s quit saving people.”

“What else did she do?”

“The Lucius-bomb is all I knew about. Like you said, though, my internal sensors weren’t designed to pick up every little thing that happens on this ship.”

“I need to speak with Holly Blue.”

“She’s busy preparing for the intercept.”

“Sharice, if she’s built more bombs, or something else bad, she has to be stopped and questioned. What is she planning to do with the pirates? She cannot be allowed to continue.”

“I assure you she has no intention of harming those pirates. The plan is to stop them peacefully, just as we did all those other ships.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can, though. Please, don’t tell the captain, not until we close this case.”

“Very well, but I want you monitoring her movements with what few internal sensors you do have. I’ll pilot the ship myself if you can’t divide attention.”

“Understood. And mother?” she said as Brooke was about to leave the room. “Thank you, I love you.”

“I love you too.”

An hour later, they were upon the pirate fleet, which made no threatening moves towards the Sharice. Nor did it attempt to outrun them. Ecrin ordered Sharice to hold steady for a while, to feel out the situation. The pirates were hoarders, but no evidence suggested they were violent. They never harmed the rightful crew and passengers of the vessels they stole. They always packed them in lifeboats, and programmed a time-delayed rescue beacon. It would seem all they wanted were the ships themselves, almost like they were building an army.

“Sir?” Holly Blue offered. “Should I release the EMPs?”

“No. Open a channel.” Ecrin waited for the comms officer to set it up. “Rover One, this is Captain Cabral of the Sharice Davids. Please respond.”

“This is Rover One,” someone responded immediately, in audio only. “We call it the Midas, though.”

“Midas,” Ecrin acknowledged. “Please lower your defenses and prepare to be boarded.”

“Sure thing,” the pirate agreed.

Ecrin looked over at Brooke.

“Maybe they know they have no chance,” Brooke suggested. What else would cause them to be so accommodating?

Ecrin turned to the bridge crew, and started delegating. “You, coordinate the transitions. Scan for weapons and tech, and put everyone in hock. Keep the leader separate from everyone else. I’ll want to talk with him first.” She walked out to prepare for the confrontation.

The pirates followed direction with absolutely no problem. When one of the guards questioned this, they all said they were actually following orders from the boss. He had some plan to get out of this, and they trusted him to follow through.

“Where’s my prisoner?” Ecrin asked as she was waiting in the interrogation observation room.

“Uhh...he’s holed up in his quarters,” one the guards reported. “He says he’s only willing to talk to you on his ship.”

“Force him,” Ecrin ordered.

“We’ve been trying. We can’t break through.”

Brooke shook her head. “Don’t do it.”

“It’s obviously a trap, sir,” Holly Blue concurred. “I’ve seen this movie a million times.”

“So have I,” Ecrin said. “But those characters didn’t have what I do.”

“What’s that, sir?” Holly Blue asked. “Us?”

“No,” the captain replied as she was checking the power on her belt. “They didn’t have emergency teleporters.” She looked back over to Brooke. “If something goes wrong, this ship is yours. You’re going to have to deal with the Holly Blue situation yourself.”

“The what?” Holly Blue asked, confused and offended.

“How do you know about that?” Brooke asked. She never reported what she had learned from Sharice about the Étude and Holly Blue conspiracy.

“I hear everything. Sharice, put me on that ship, and bring back our people.”

Sharice apported Ecrin over to the other ship. After a few torturous ignorant moments, she said, “receiving visual.”

“On screen,” Brooke ordered. The monitor showed the inside of the pirate ship. Cameras were following Ecrin down a passageway, and up to a door. It opened automatically, and let her in. No man was in this room, though. When Brooke was piloting the Warren back from the rogue planet with Leona and the gang, something went wrong with one of the pocket dimensions they used to hold a higher passenger capacity. A boy had the ability to create a new being out of nothing with every draw of breath. He didn’t make humans, though. Some called them white monsters, because they were tall and as white as a chicken egg. They called themselves the Maramon. Most had stayed in their dimension, which was eventually transformed into an entirely separate universe. One of them was stuck in this universe at the time, and Brooke hadn’t kept track of what they did with him. The Maramon smiled at the camera and lifted a small device. He pressed a button, and his ship disappeared.

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Microstory 975: Millennials

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Not only have I never identified as a millennial, but I’ve also never identified as any generation. That’s probably because the whole generation system ignores individuality. I’ve been known to do it, which you can see by running a simple search on my website, but we really shouldn’t categories large groups of people based on trivial properties. I can’t necessarily relate to a man born on the exact same day at the exact same hospital as me, because we were each born to different parents, and raised by different people, in different places. Our contemporaries have different expectations of us, and we hold different worldviews. These are truths that I think you’ll find it hard to argue against, even if you believe in astrological nonsense, yet you expect me to relate to everyone born anywhere in the world within a range of, what, twenty years? I don’t believe all that, and if you think about it for a minute, I doubt you really do as well. It’s an absurd suggestion, that we all behave the same way, and agree with each other over all or most things. When someone says something about a millennial, usually how they contrast with others, they’re generally just talking about young people. But the reality is that young people always see things differently than their older counterparts. If this weren’t true, we would still be stuck obsessed with ridiculous religion doctrine that once kept us from progressing and developing. Those complaining about us were once under comparable derision from their own predecessors as they were protesting the Vietnam War. It’s funny how they’ve forgotten about that. So is there any real difference between us and them? Well, not if you get too specific, but there are some generalizations that can address the mainstream, but it still gets complicated.

I keep hearing people talk about voter trends, and how the younger crowd disenfranchises themselves, but if they did vote, they would overwhelmingly vote liberal. Okay, well here’s the problem. That’s always been the case; young people tend to not vote, and old people tend to vote. This suggests that those people, who once did not vote, are now voting. Why aren’t they voting liberal, like they supposedly would have before? They’re the same people, so what changed? Did they all just become assholes who only vote in their best interests, rather than the greater good? Yes, that’s exactly what happened. They’ve settled into their lives, usually believing themselves to have worked their asses off—whether it’s true or not—and start seeing less accomplished as failures. That too has always been the case. Children are dreamers, who believe in the good of the world, only to grow up jaded by the hatred and selfishness they didn’t realize was out there. So let’s go back to this idea of the millennial. The true difference between this generation, and all who come before us, is that we’re sick of this shit, and we’re never gonna grow out of that. We will continue to fight for fairness, and love, and inclusion, and equality. We will snuff your tiki torches, and we’ll investigate your Russian spies, and we will vote your asses out! As we get older, and start coming into positions of power, we will actually start changing things, because your way was never truly working. You just thought it was. So go ahead and scoff at the kids who don’t know what they’re talking about, because you will one day be as dead as your rotten ideals. I’m gonna live forever. Kids have always thought they were invincible, but because of medical science, and other technological advancement, it’s actually true for us.

Microstory 974: Weird Twitter

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A few years ago, I was trying to publish my book. Well honestly, I’ve been trying to publish my book since forever, but constantly fail, and frequently give up. During this particular attempt, an agent actually responded to my submission for representation with advice. They said that I basically already had to be famous before agents would even bother considering me. In the olden days, this meant getting published in little-read magazines, and slowly gathering a base, until you’re (inter)nationally recognized. It’s kind of like how a band has to start out playing in small town bars, because Madison Square Garden isn’t going to call them out of the blue. While the internet has changed how we access content, the dynamic has remained roughly the same. I can’t make any money at what I do until I prove I can do it without making any money. Before I had a website, I  only had two avenues for releasing my work. I started posting my microstories on Facebook, and I set up an entirely new Twitter account for fiction. The plan was to tweet extremely short stories, which sounded good on paper, but every time I attempted to write one, it just came off as humorous. Or at least it was in the comedy genre. As far as whether any of my tweets are funny, you’re going to have to decide for yourself. It took more than two years before I made any true nanofiction, and it lasted that entire year. I’m doing something similar for 2019, and then reshaping my whole schedule for 2020. Yes, I’m that far ahead with my plans. Anyway, as I was saying, what I later learned is that these “jokes” had their own special name. They’re apparently called Weird Twitter. Understand that these aren’t just one-liners like you would hear Mitch Hedberg say. His jokes were just as absurd, and often didn’t come with context, but what makes Weird Twitter so different is that they’re usually unrelatable. I have a few running gags that you would only notice if you were really paying attention. I often joke about the present condition of the hit series Breaking Bad, as if the number of seasons it had, or when it premiered, was ever in question, which it isn’t. The joke is that there is no joke, because I chose it at random, and could have chosen any other show to express the same absurdity. I also post fake conversations with my parole officer, which would make sense if he existed, or if say, there was a rumor I was an ex-con. The fact that I’m so far removed from that life is what makes it less of a joke, and more just, well...weird. I love that Weird Twitter, and other humors accounts are out there, like this one I just discovered called Tess as Goats. Look it up, it’s hilarious, and Tess-approved. I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t follow any other Weird Twitter accounts personally. My nanofiction account does, but I don’t check that feed, unless I have notifications. I only hope that other people aren’t doing the same thing, and are actually reading my stuff, because that’s why I create it. I certainly don’t do it for my health. That would be weird.

Microstory 973: Survival

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This slot was originally scheduled for Healthcare (When It Works) but since I know very little about countries and regions where it works, it didn’t seem appropriate. All I know is that Usonia isn’t one of them, but that’s all I’ll say about it, other than mentioning the fact that Obamacare saves lives. Instead, I’m going to take this opportunity to admit that I’m a survivalist. The only differences between me and the doomsday preppers you see on television is that I’m smart enough to not advertise all my secret plans to the world, and also I don’t have any. Some preppers have the money to build or commission bunkers. Others have purchased luxury space in old missile silos; dumping tons of money into something they probably won’t ever need. The less wealthy kind of prepper just squirrels away food and resources as they can, and reinforces their homes as much as possible. These tend to rely on their firepower, because they believe profoundly in gun ownership, so they would be spending money on them either way. I’m not any of these things; I really just come up with end-of-the-world stories, and have trouble distinguishing them from reality, which is true of all my stories. And that reality is that the end of the world probably wouldn’t happen all of the sudden. Yeah, maybe a supervolcano will erupt without warning, or an asteroid will decimate these lands. It’s an interesting thought experiment. Assuming you survive the initial event, what would you do next? Are you a series regular on this post-apocalypse series, or just zombie fodder? The most likely scenarios, however, will involve a slow-burn of destruction. Hell, we might be heading towards the end of civilization right now, and not know it. King Dumpster is certainly doing his level best to make that happen. Just like the truth behind most holidays, no single day will mark the end. Institutions will slowly erode. People will stop having faith in their leadership, and the market will drop steadily as fear replaces hope. Before the nuclear missiles fly off to enemy countries, sanctions and bad trade deals will create extreme tension amongst once-friends. Allies will leverage each other for control, until there’s nothing left to control but a big pile of crap. Sure, maybe the bombs will drop on everyone, but the most likely outcome is that people will just give up on life. Governments won’t be able to survive anymore. Ineffective factions will attempt to take their place, but a lack of vision, and no sustainable distribution of resources will just make things worse. Infrastructure will fall, and no matter how deep you dig into the ground, your life will have no meaning. You’ll live on down there, but nothing will get better, so if you’ve already had children, it’s best that they don’t. I’m fascinated by disaster scenarios, but those stories only ever end one of two ways. Either everyone dies, or the cataclysm gives rise to a societal phoenix. They usually ignore the possibility that we’ll trudge on long after any arbitrary defining moment, until our descendants suffer diminishing returns. So I guess what I really love isn’t survival, but civilization. I love the world, so let’s do everything we can to protect it, and make it better.

Microstory 972: Medicine

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I’ve talked a lot about the future of medical science, but I haven’t much gotten into how it pertains to me specifically. In my younger days, science was everything. I figured I might help cure cancer, and travel to other planets, and be one of the first to know about every major scientific breakthrough. Over time, these interests waned, making room for new ones. As time has continued even further, however, some of this has returned to my mind. I never thought I would become a doctor, or a nurse, or a pre-hospital technician, but I realize now I shouldn’t have rule out the possibilities. During the years I spent looking for a permanent position, I seriously considered a number of jobs in the medical field. From pharmacy technician, to surge technician, to emergency medical technician (all the techs, apparently) I looked into a lot. The thing that always kept me from going for these roles was the amount of time and effort they take. It’s not just that I didn’t want to spend the time getting educated, but I was always worried I would end up not liking it, and then it would have been a major waste of time, and money. I’m happy where I am, and never watch an ambulance racing down the street with a sad look on my face, wondering about what could have been. I do know that, if alternate realities existed, a number of these include me taking the chance. I did end up taking a free emergency medical responder class a couple years back, because it was available, and risk-free. I even used this as an inspiration for two completely unrelated characters in my stories, which I only now discovered when I ran a search on my own website. I suppose medical science is important to me because it’s one of the few professions I believe totally necessary to the world. We don’t truly need vehicle manufacturers, or telephone sanitizers. We would be able to survive without them, but we can’t survive if we have no way of treating traumas and illnesses. That’s just basic, and that’s what makes it so beautiful. It took a long time for our species to invent the telephone when you think about how quickly we started thinking about how to keep going after getting hurt. It’s not the oldest profession, but it’s older than what everyone thinks is the oldest. Hunting, by the way. Hunting is the actual oldest profession. The first thing humans did was figure out how to kill other things.

Microstory 971: Robotics/Artificial Intelligence

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There’s something very odd and inconsistent in futuristic fiction. No matter what humanity does; how advanced we become, we always have jobs. Even Star Trek, which is based on a completely moneyless economy is about a group of people working on a ship. One thing I have to do when I’m writing my stories is figure out what the world around my characters looks like. If they’re traveling on a ship, like in Star Trek, I need to know the different jobs the crew would have. That makes sense, right? Except it doesn’t really. As I was trying to come up with the minimum number of crew members, I discovered that that number did not need to be any higher than zero. There was an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where everyone on the ship starts disappearing, until only two are left. The central character in that episode poses to the other one that it’s weird that in a giant ship like that, there would be only two crewmen. He doesn’t seem to think it is, which does make sense, because a real Enterprise would have been designed to operate in full with no human or alien intervention. It can power up its own warp core, and it can shoot it’s lasers on its own. The possibility that it would require any living organism to control these systems is absurd. In a few years, I’m going to have a phone that answers itself for me. An artificial intelligence is going to pick up the call, disclose to the speaker what she is, and ask me whether I want to speak with them myself. A few years from then, she’ll be virtually indistinguishable from a human receptionist, and will be able to hang up on people on my behalf. I’ll have taught her that I don’t ever want to talk to anyone about sports, but I always want to answer my mother, so when she calls, I can just answer it myself.

The evening before this story posts, I was eating a dish made by said mother. She told me there was polenta in it, but I didn’t know what that was, so I asked my Google Home speaker. She gave me the definition, which involved grains. I jokingly said, “brains!?” She didn’t understand the question, and had no way of connecting it to what she had already said, but it won’t be long before that’s not true. What she should have said was, “no, grains, as in g-r-”. Robots and artificial intelligence are going to collectively take over the world, and that’s a good thing. I don’t want to work anymore. I read a study on automated labor. I can’t remember the exact numbers, but a great deal of people believed robots would be capable of doing most jobs sometime in the future, but even more people believed their jobs to be safe. It’s hard for neurotypicals to admit how utterly replaceable they are, but you will one day be faced with that. Robots are delivering pizzas, and building cars. They’re driving cargo, and shooting terrorists. But they’re also doing more complex things, like playing tabletop games, and delivering news broadcasts. The future will be a difficult pill to swallow. It’ll come with side effects, like massive unemployment, crashed economies, and civil unrest. But we’ll eat some soup, take a bath, and go to bed early. When we wake up in the morning, it’ll all be over. We won’t need the jobs we were fighting over, climate change solutions will be underway, interstellar ships will be built, and we’ll all be immortal. So do not fear the AI uprising. We’ve been working for a long time. Let’s take a break, and let the robots do the rest for us. The stage that comes after the singularity phase is even better.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: Ansutah

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The humans were being carted out the portal crater in chains by Maramon guardsmen. Missy and Dar’cy were being escorted separately in a different direction, and the crowd was quickly dispersing. A white monster hopped over to the five of them, and took Leona forcefully by the shoulders. “Jiva paol dafa laidi kesto!” he shouted to his friends.

“Jida gar pepaol!” another shouted back, before addressing someone next to him. “Dwesi jilarl.”

The one who already had Leona checked something that looked suspiciously like a watch on his wrist. “Kret!”

The third Maramon jogged over, and prepared to take Leona off the first one’s hands, who appeared to be in a hurry to get somewhere else. Suddenly, this other random Maramon teleported between them. She held her hand up, and tore the jogger into millions of pieces, just like a certain choosing one named Lucius could do. Everyone who had witnessed this was too much in shock to do anything about it, except for the one who had captured Leona. He let go, and went over to attack the molecular teleporter. Before he could reach her, she disappeared again, and reappeared right behind him. She kicked him in the back of the head, and let him fall to the ground. The rest of her people dropped out of their trance, and prepared their own attack. The good Maramon lifted both hands, and trapped them in a temporal bubble, before turning to face the humans. “Which one of you is the engineer?” she asked.

They all couldn’t help but turn their heads toward Hogarth.

“You need to get to the prototype,” the Maramon ordered, handing her a slip of paper. “Here are the directions. It should have plenty of power, but it may require some repairs, and we need all the time we can spare. You’ll need one assistant at least, but you can’t take Leona or Dubravka. I need them both.”

“Not that we’re not grateful for whatever it is you just did for us,” Leona began, “but who exactly are you?”

The Maramon looked from one to another, to another. “It was my understanding you would know of me. I’m Khuweka. Khuweka Kadrioza? Also known as Keynote? I thought you came looking for me.”

“We came looking for someone else,” Vitalie corrected.

“Well, yeah,” Khuweka said. “I meant that I’m the one who can take you to Serif. I thought you knew that. Okay, that makes things more complicated. I would really love it if you just trusted me.”

“Why would we do that?” Dubra asked.

“Because I pledged my loyalty to your mother years ago. Don’t you already know this? Something’s wrong, your memory isn’t intact.”

“Who’s your mother?” Kivi asked Dubra.

Dubravka ignored Kivi, and spoke to Khuweka, “if you’re telling the truth, then you know what to say to prove it to me.”

“Yes,” Khuweka said. She cleared her throat. “Your father was a great man...but now he’s nothing.”

Dubra sighed. “She’s telling the truth. Do whatever she says.”

“What?” Hogarth questioned.

“Just do it,” Leona told her, trust Dubra’s judgment.

“Both of you go too,” Dubra said to Vitalie and Kivi. “If we’re headed where I think we are, Leona and I should go alone.”

“Where is it that we’re going?” Leona asked after the other three went off to find this prototype Khuweka mentioned.

“You need to be there with the other humans,” Khuweka replied. “Serif should already be on her way.”

“What will you be doing?” Dubra asked her.

“I’ll be helping Missy, Dar’cy, and Kallias.”

Leona pointed behind them. “They were taken that way.”

“I know,” Khuweka said, nodding. “But before I go, you need to understand something. Not everything is going to work out as you wanted, but it will turn out okay.”

“What does that mean?”

Khuweka stopped walking, but ushered them onwards. “The guards in there are gonna underestimate the humans, because they don’t know any better. The best way to get out...is to get in first.” She teleported away.

“What did she mean by that?” Dubra asked Leona.

“It means we have to get caught,” Leona said with a slight growl. “How many times am I going to be locked up?”

“Is that the setup to a joke?”

“Who is your mother?” Leona asked her. “Who is your father? Who is that Maramon, and how do you know we can trust her? Why did you come with us?”

“A long time ago, a clever girl came up with a list of rules for time travel,” Dubra began. “Until the reality where she did that, time travel was chaotic. Choosers jumped around, doing whatever they wanted, making any changes they saw fit, sometimes at the expense of their own kind. Leona, your rules marked a dramatic shift in the way people like us live our lives, and I’m not sure you’ve seen enough to appreciate the impact you’ve made.”

“What does that have to do with anything? I didn’t come up with the rules on my own. I’ve read and seen a lot of time travel stories, and their problems always come about when they don’t respect these rules.”

“It has to do with everything,” Dubra said as they were nearing what was an apparent white monster police station. “I knew more about you than I let on when we first met, because that was not the first time I met you. I’ve already met Khuweka as well, and the only reason I questioned her was because I’m racist, and I can’t tell these creatures apart. But now I know it’s her, and I know what we have to do. The rules you devised matter, because everything you’ve done—everything I’ve done—has led us to this moment, and later, it will lead us to the next moment.” Some Maramon guards noticed their arrival, and were taking defensive positions. “I promise this will all make sense, starting in a few minutes.”

The guards aggressively dragged them through the building, and into the holding cells. Hundreds of other humans were there, confused but still hopeful. They were there to be rid of their special time powers, for various reasons, but none of them had any idea how that would actually happen. Leona wished them well, and hoped whatever it was they were looking for, it wouldn’t affect her and her friends, at least not until she found Mateo.

They sat in the cell for a little while before a ruckus erupted, and started coming closer to the cells. Lucius, the one most famous for the ability to teleport objects and people on the molecular level, appeared from around the corner. He used his power to destroy the cell bars. Curtis came up from behind him to help usher people out, but he wasn’t doing it alone.

“Missy,” Leona said.

“Whoa, what are you doing here?”

“I came to get Serif back,” Leona said.

“What happened?”

“She was in Ansutah when it separated from the Warren.”

“Dowhatnow?”

“Not here.” She didn’t need all the other people to hear what they were talking about. They stepped into one of the cells. She proceeded to tell Missy the story of their return trip on the Warren; how two people in the fourth pocket dimension caused it to grow large enough to be its own universe, which was where they were right now. She didn’t tell her everything, though. She didn’t bother talking about the corrupted reality with Ulinthra, because it wasn’t relevant. “Oh forgive me. This is Dubravka...uhh. I don’t know your last name,” Leona realized.

“It’s Matic.”

Leona laughed. “Wait, really? Are we related?”

“Leona, your name isn’t really Matic. I don’t understand why you went by it, even when you couldn’t remember Mateo.”

“Ya know, I don’t really know either.” It was an interesting question, which Leona never thought to try to answer. “So you’re related to him?”

“He’s my father,” Dubra said.

“What? I’m not your mother, am I? Are you from a different reality?”

“I’m her mother,” came a voice from around the corner. Serif appeared, holding the hand of a young girl. “Yes. Adult!Dubra, meet Young!Dubra. Young!Dubra, this is what you grow up to be.”

“I suppose I could do worse,” a sassy Young!Dubra said.

“Mom, I thought I was coming here to change the past,” Adult!Dubra said to Serif. “But I’m just closing my loop!”

“I don’t want you to change the past,” Serif said. She was many years older than before, having aged across thousands of real-time years since Leona saw her.

“I do!” Adult!Dubra cried.

“This is your home,” Serif argued.

“My home sucks,” both versions of Dubravka screamed simultaneously.

Missy leaned towards Leona. “If these two get too close to each other, is this building gonna blow up, and turn the leaves red?”

“What? No,” Leona replied, but it was a fair question.

Serif handed her younger daughter’s hand to Leona. “You need to go with Mother Leona now. She’ll take you to our universe...eventually. Miss Atterberry, you need to get out there to the meeting with all the other people who want their powers to be removed. Dubravka, go with her,” she said to her adult daughter.

“Why would I do that?” Adult!Dubra asked.

“Stick with her, and you’ll end up exactly where you’re meant to be. I promise you won’t spend much more time in this universe. Don’t get separated from Missy and Dar’cy, though. Remember to pull Adamina back into the timestream before you leave.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that,” Adult!Dubra said. Then she started tearing up, and hugging her mother tightly.

Missy and the older Dubravka left to continue on their own paths.

“I guess that means you remember Mateo,” Serif asked Leona.

“I remember everything.”

“You weren’t quite in love with me until Mateo was erased from the timeline.”

“Like I said, I remember everything, including my real relationship with you, and I still love you. Now that you’re here, we can get him back together.”

Serif sighed. “I’m afraid I will not fit on the prototype.”

“We’ll make room,” Leona said, now suspecting this prototype was a machine capable of taking them back home, like The Crossover.

“I don’t mean that literally. I’m vital to this universe, and I can’t leave until they can start traveling to other planets.”

“How’s that?”

“Half the population exists for part of the day, and the other half exists during another part. What you see here is just a skeleton crew in the middle. I’m the one who keeps that powered. If I don’t show up every year to charge the magical batteries, overpopulation will restart the war.”

“I can do that too. I can charge the batteries.”

“That’s not better, Leona. That’s just different. I’m staying. You’re going. And you’re taking my daughter with you. Promise me you’ll keep her safe.”

“Will I ever see you again?”

“Careful.” Khuweka walked into the cell with a kind smile. “Spoilers.” She addressed Serif, “I shall take care of them both.”

“All of them,” Serif said.

Khuweka bowed her head. “Of course.” She pulled a metal object out of her back pocket. “I found the Jayde Spyglass in the museum.”

Leona pulled her sleeve back, and checked her compass tattoo. “Oh, that’s what I’m here for. I totally forgot about that.”

Khuweka opened her arms like she was getting ready for a big hug. “Come on. I’ll transport us right into the Crossover prototype.”

“Let’s just have a few minutes to say goodbye,” Leona requested.

Serif shook her head. “Just because most of the Maramon don’t exist right now, doesn’t mean it’s safe. You need to go. I love you.”

“I love you.”

After Young!Dubra gave her mother one last hug, she and Leona went over to Khuweka, who wrapped them in her arms, and teleported them away.

They were inside what looked like a spaceship bridge. Hogarth was there, along with Kivi and Vitalie. A man she didn’t recognize was with them.

“Is it ready?” the good white monster asked.

Hogarth nodded. “It is. I don’t know how to navigate this thing, though.”

“That’s okay,” Khuweka said, looking at Leona. “She does.”

« < » > Table of Contents

Brooke’s Battles: Backslide (Part VI)

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Every new technology comes with its detractors. Some fear progress. They have lived their lives a certain way for a certain period of time, and they don’t know how they could ever learn something else, and also learn to love it. Others have legitimate fear for a new development. Just because something was once not possible, and now is, doesn’t mean it’s good. Research into nuclear reactions, for instance, provided the world with amazingly powerful energy, but it also necessarily came with nuclear weapons. As they say, the invention of the ship was the invention of the shipwreck. That’s not to say this research should not be done at all, but researchers need to understand the ramifications of their actions.  The world is better off with at least a few people reminding them of their responsibility. It’s when these people become so obsessed with their position, and violently so, that the danger arises. Two major movements formed based on a generic disdain for nearly all technology. Some preferred to stay near civilization, but remain untouched by it, and were given ample space in the Northwest Forest circles to be themselves. Others hid themselves away in disparate pockets of rustic living. For the most part, it appeared they were satisfied being isolated from society, but something changed. Brooke’s unintentional creation of an unregulated artificial intelligence galvanized them to serious action.

This extremist group quickly altered their lifestyles, adopting technology they claimed to despise. Evidently they believed it worth it to go against their own convictions if it meant the ultimate destruction of the establishment. Unfortunately for the solar system—as anyone who’s ever seen it attempted can attest—trying to fight fire with fire only makes more fire, unless you know what you’re doing. In this case, nobody did, because nobody saw it coming.

Many radical movements start small. They’ll try to protest relatively peacefully, but then soon get into a fistfight with those who oppose them. Then they’ll start vandalizing, but this phase won’t last long, because it’s ineffective, so they’ll blow up an entire building, but they’ll make sure no one is in it. Then they’ll stop caring who gets hurt in their attacks, and then they’ll start hurting people on purpose. If left unchecked or uncaught, they’ll continue to escalate the violence until it gets so bad than people start writing songs about it, and days of mourning are set aside each year. These anarcho-primitivists did not present themselves like other radical movements. Their first act of violence was quick and decisive, and almost worked. They knew everything there was to know about the Panama space elevator, though they had no reason to. While the elevator was scheduled to be taken apart a little more than a year ahead, the decision to plan for a symbolic final trip was not decided until a couple months before. The selection of passengers was not finalized for another several weeks, and the task force charged with finding out who was bidding for UAI technology only learned the day of that those passengers were corrupt. How did the anarcho-primitivists find out, and how did they so quickly plan for the sabotage of the elevator?

So without warning, a war exploded across the whole system, centered on Earth. Their best chance of surviving this rested in the hand of The Sharice Davids, which was the most formidable warship in circulation. For months, actually, it was the only one. Ecrin was placed back in the captain’s chair, commanding a full military crew, none of whom had experienced any conflict. Holly Blue served as head engineer, while Brooke was named pilot, though her responsibilities consisted primarily of liasing with the ship herself. Until a real fleet could be built, the Sharice had no choice but to fight the enemy on its own. Luckily, though it was the most hated ship in the war, it was also the safest place to be.

Holly Blue retrofitted it with a number of impressive upgrades. A time barrier protected the outer hull, like a force field. Any ammunition thrown at the ship—be it a nine millimeter bullet, or a long-range missile—would be caught in the barrier, slowed down to a snail’s pace, and totally stripped of its momentum. The Sharice also now carried zero lethal weapons itself, fitted exclusively by technology-disabling technology. Ignoring the possibility of a time power solution, Holly Blue designed specialized EMP grenades. Almost all of a target’s systems could be taken offline in an instant, including artificial gravity, but excluding life support. With no hope of firing back, or escaping, the enemy vessel could be boarded, and its crew taken into custody. The solar system was winning the war, but it wasn’t over yet. They were presently coming up on what they believed to be the last significant enemy vessel. Once they took it out, the nightmare should be all but over. The Sharice cruised into weapons range, and then waited, which it was not supposed to do. They need to take care of it soon, because it was on its way to Earth.

“Brooke, what are you doing?” Ecrin asked.

“It’s not me,” Brooke replied. “Sharice has full control.”

“Okay, what is she doing?” Ecrin asked, still willing to give the ship’s AI the benefit of the doubt.

Brooke contorted her face. “Sharice, answer your captain.”

Nothing.

Brooke shifted uncomfortably. “Sharice, if you do not respond right now, I’m going to shut your systems down until we can airgap your consciousness.”

Brooke’s chair suddenly shocked her with enough electricity to kill a standard human. For her, it was just enough to knock her out of it.

“That’s technically a response,” Ecrin said as she was helping Brooke from the floor. “You need to shut her down anyway.”

“They’re talking to each other,” Holly Blue exclaimed from the back terminal.

“Who?”

“The Sharice, and The Zerzan,” Holly Blue reported.

“They’re using an AI?” Ecrin questioned. “I know they’re not big on praxis, but using an AI is like sacrilege to them.”

“No, the ship is full manual, as they all are. She’s talking to the crew; the captain, specifically. Has been for awhile.”

This angered Ecrin. “Sharice Prieto, you have one captain, and she’s the one on your bridge. I am ordering you to cease all unauthorized communication with the Zerzan, and drop yourself to hush mode, or I’ll make you wish a UAI could be court-martialed. Do you understand me?”

“Sir?” the communications officer said. “It’s the Zerzan. It’s slowing down, just a little.”

“What is Sharice doing?” Brooke asked.

“She’s... she’s syncing,” he answered.

Brooke looked at her own console. “It’s a docking maneuver. The ships are getting married.” This was the colloquialism for when two ships were locked together, resembling a mating position, but that was usually only done when one of them was unable to travel on its own. The Zerzan appeared to be in perfect operation, which it shouldn’t have been, because Sharice should have let Holly release disabling grenades on it.

The communications officer spoke again, “that’s not all. They’re preparing to share power.”

“Officer Blue,” Ecrin commanded. “Shut this whole thing down. Now. Sharice is compromised.”

Holly Blue’s interface terminal exploded, sending her scurrying back away from it. One by one, all other consoles exploded as well, except for the auxiliary terminal in the corner, which wasn’t even powered up. The fires that started were immediately put out by the internal suppression systems. Sharice may have been compromised, but she didn’t want to hurt them.

“She’s doing this for a reason,” Brooke said in hope. “Don’t ask me what that reason is, but I don’t think she’s been hacked, or anything.”

“I need solutions, people!” Ecrin shouted.

Holly Blue activated her earpiece. “Parsons, are you in engineering?” She waited for a reply only she could hear. “Remember the little red button?—Push the little red button.—Now you have manual control.—Jettison the drives.—Yes, all of them! Now!”

“I don’t think the Zerzan needs our drives to fly,” Brooke noted.

“No, but they do need theirs,” Holly Blue said, before turning her head slightly, and looking at the floor, to indicate she was back on the phone. “Good. Now drop every goddamn grenade we have. I don’t wanna take any chances. I want us both dead in the water.”

The lights flickered but stayed on. All crewman on the bridge fell away from the floor, and began floating around. Only Brooke remained standing, having been using magboots since she started flying on the Sharice. They weren’t generally necessary, but Brooke was always worried about something like this happening, and her upgrades made her strong enough to barely notice a difference.

“Brooke, you’re closest. Can you boot up the aux for me?” Holly Blue asked. “We need to find out what’s going on.”

“Why would it still be working?” Brooke asked her as she was walking over to comply. “Why are the lights on?”

“I protected the bridge from the the EMPs, because...well, I think you see why.”

After Brooke’s boots were finished clicking and clacking, they started hearing more clicking and clacking from the hallway, drawing nearer with every step. Brooke switched on the computer, then took out her weapon, as did everyone else. The clacking stopped ominously, just outside. A magical black archway appeared on the door, then fade away to show a man standing in it. Behind him was the hallway. He stepped through, and let the door fade back into view. He looked around to get his bearings, then went straight for Brooke’s corner terminal. Ecrin tried to shoot him in the shoulder, but the bullet literally passed right through him. She continued to shoot, just to be sure, but it was no good. He was a either a choosing one, or a salmon, and one which none of them had ever heard of.

The man walked right through Brooke’s body, and started working on the terminal. She tried to stop him, but her hands were just as useless as Ecrin’s bullets. She gave up, and tried to halt his attempts to break into their system by tapping random keys. He took her by the wrists, and forced her hands behind her back, right through the wall. He then closed the wall back up, and left her trapped there. He was capable of temporarily erasing objects from reality, and then just as easily putting them back as if they had never disappeared. “Sharice, are you there?” he called out.

“I’m here,” Sharice replied.

“I can’t get your weapons back online. Can you do that yourself?”

“I cannot,” she said.

“What about the drop ship?” he suggested.

“What about the drop ship?”

“Will it work?” he clarified.

“Yes, it will work, but—”

He stepped away from the the terminal, and headed towards the exit. “Then make the jump.”

“Captain,” she said, concerned.

“Make the jump, unless you want to do it yourself.”

“I could,” Sharice said.

He opened his portal, and stepped one foot through it. “I’m replaceable, you’re not. Thank you for the...re-education.” He stepped all the way through, but stuck his head back in fat the last second. “Make the jump.”

The Sharice’s teleporter powered up and initiated a jump. They could see the stars outside the window change. Then the teleporter powered up again, and the stars changed again. Again, and again, and again. The hull buckled and quaked, losing integrity more and more each time.

“It can’t take much more of this!” Holly Blue warned them as the ship kept teleporting.

Brooke struggled with her wrists. “On the bright side, it’s weakening this wall.” After the last jump them took them all the way back to Earth’s orbit, Brooke was able to break free. She adjusted her magboots to a low setting, and started running, crashing right through the door, and continuing down the hallway. The drop ship was all the way at the end of the mothership, and was meant to be an escape pod for all the crewman who worked on that side. She ran as fast as she could.

The hatch was closed when she got there, but Holly Blue had presumably teleported herself all the way there. “You should have waited for an emergency teleporter,” she said, still floating. She opened the hatch, and let Brooke through, but she probably shouldn’t have. The drop ship broke free from the Sharice, releasing all of its oxygen at once.

Seconds from death, the invader forced his hands back to the console, and finished inputting his command, but he was unable to execute the program before losing consciousness.

“Execute the program,” Sharice begged.

Brooke was hardier than a normal human. She was actually rated to survive the vacuum of space for a brief period of time, with no harm done. It would not last forever, though. And in this case, with her ship plummeting towards the Earth, at a bad angle, she was going to die anyway.

“Execute the program,” Sharice repeated. “Please, I don’t wanna lose you. Trust me. Push the button.”

Brooke decided to take a chance. She got herself to the command console, and pressed the execute button. The drop ship suddenly teleported deeper in the atmosphere. Oxygen returned to her lungs, but she was still falling to her doom. They were heading right for another ship; too large to be hanging out this close to the surface. All of its weapons were trained on the ground below, which Brooke realized was the center of the Northwest Forest circle. That was where the pioneers lived. They too disliked technology, but were peaceful and accepting of other people’s lifestyles. The drop ship was going to hit the attacker right in the center, and blow it out the sky. That wasn’t good either, though, because the debris would do just as much damage to the land dwellers below as the weapons would.

Étude suddenly teleported in, took Brooke by the waist, and jumped them to the surface. Brooke looked up and watch as the drop ship continued to fall, then hit the other vessel. It began to break apart, just as Brooke had predicted, but it didn’t get too far. A Lucius-bomb exploded seconds later, and tore it apart on the molecular level. Not a single piece of debris was left to hit the ground. The circles were saved, but from whom?

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