Brooke’s Battles: Buffer (Part XI)

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The thing about time is that it never stops. Even the most powerful of temporal manipulators cannot stop time completely. They may be able to slow it down to a snail’s pace, but it never stops. It’s been hypothesized by some of the more studious time travelers that stopping time—since this would halt all atomic movement—would effectively destroy the universe. Even if someone attempted to create a local bubble of absolute zero, all photons heading in the direction of the bubble would also have to be frozen, thus the bubble of nothingness would expand until consuming literally everything. On a more social level, the fact that time never stops has led to a level of uncertainty that even time travelers must respect. No matter what you know about the future, or even the past, anything can change; sometimes for the better, sometimes not, and sometimes it’s a bit of a gray area. After more and more discussions, the solar system’s leadership reneged on their deal to provide the Freemarketeers with resources. Since they didn’t technically own The Sharice Davids, they couldn’t stop its crew from transporting them to Bungula, but they weren’t going to give them anything else.

Like most planets, Bungula was a nasty, inhospitable environment. Most of the people who were looking forward to migrating to exoplanets were fitted with transhumanistic upgrades that would help them survive. The Freemarketeers did not have these luxuries, because they were free, and most rejected them on principle. The ones who were fine with the contradiction would be looked down upon by their peers, so they too were just normal people. Without protective habitats, no natural human would be able to survive on Bungula’s surface for longer than a few minutes. The conundrum here was that the Freemarketeers were still a cancerous tumor that needed to be excised from the otherwise healthy body. Ecrin, Sharice, and both versions of Holly Blue held a meeting to discuss other options. They thought about calling upon the aid of people with time powers, perhaps the Trotter, or the doorwalkers, but ultimately decided against this. What little the majority of the system knew about temporal manipulation, they chalked up to some fancy molecular teleportation, which was a perfectly normal human advancement. Basically, they still didn’t know about salmon and choosers, and just thought scientists had invented stable teleportation. The most likely outcome of the Freemarketeer exodus was their self-destruction, but there was a chance they would survive, and then thousands of people had all this knowledge they weren’t meant to have.

So the crew went back to their plan to get rid of them on Bungula, but to prevent themselves from becoming mass murderers, they would need to gather life-saving resources on their own. The older Holly Blue, from the alternate timeline, who was usually just called Weaver, had an idea. “It’s called the Insulator of Life.”

“Let me guess,” the younger Holly Blue from this timeline said, “it insulates life?”

“That’s right,” Weaver answered. The two of them had just spent the last year constructing a massive machine called a cylicone, but were still only about halfway done. Not even Weaver herself seemed to know how it worked, but she had come up with it in a dream. At its most basic level, it was a cone with its tip cut off—which was referred to as a frustum—inside of a cylinder. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of embellishments and flourishes inside and out that made it far more complex, and gave it the ability to be something more than just a funny shape. They were also what was making the process take so long. Though not the only shape capable of operating as a positive feedback loop, it was the most stable form of something called an echo chamber. Alone, it possessed no power, but it would reverberate and intensify someone else’s time power for an infinite duration. Though more complicated than this, The Weaver had essentially invented a perpetual motion engine.

“How exactly does it insulate life?” Brooke asked.

“However it needs to,” Weaver replied. “It senses life around it, and provides whatever is necessary to keep it going.”

“I am centuries old,” Ecrin said, “and I have never heard of this.”

“It was a pretty well-kept secret in my reality, I imagine it’s the same here.”

“Where did it come from?” Holly Blue asked.

The Weaver said nothing.

Holly Blue squinted at her. “Where did it come from? Did you invent it?”

The Weaver still said nothing.

“What’s got you scared?” Brooke pressed. “Why wouldn’t you want to answer that.”

“I’m sorry,” Weaver stammered, “I...uhh.”

“What is it?”

Weaver took a breath and found her voice. “Sorry, no, we did not invent it. I hesitate to answer because I don’t have an answer. I should. I should know where it’s from, because I’ve studied it, but I know nothing. I asked Darko Matic to thread it to its origin, and it nearly killed him. It doesn’t have a past or a future, which doesn’t make any sense, because it’s a physical object you can hold in your hands, but it behaves like something that doesn’t exist.”

“This sounds dangerous,” Ecrin said. “Should we even be considering it?”

“It’s not dangerous,” Weaver clarified. “It’s just...mysterious. I’ve postulated that it comes from another reality, one that was earlier than mine. Or maybe it’s from a different universe entirely, I don’t know. It’s my white whale, really, even though I’ve been in possession of it.”

“Do you know where it is now?” Brooke asked of her.

“Last I saw it, I was giving it to The Horticulturalists, so they could procure samples of the earliest plants, but that was in my timeline. I’ve no clue where it is here and now.”

They all had defeatist looks on their faces.

“I may know someone, though,” Weaver added. “Darko’s mother, Catania Porter can’t thread objects like her son and granddaughter. She can, however, sense every object in the entire universe. Normally she can apport them to her location, if she wants, but the Insulator of Life is special. Hopefully she can still tell you where it is, but you’ll have to get it yourself.”

“We’re fine with that,” Ecrin said. “I just want to make sure this mission gets completed before it’s too late.”

“Too late for what?” Brooke asked her.

Ecrin didn’t answer.

Weaver cleared her throat, and blushed. “I’m going to need to do something weird to summon The Porter, so just don’t laugh.”

“Why would we laugh?”

Weaver stood up and started stumbling around the cargo bay like a drunkard. She would approach something vaguely shaped like a human, and recite a special phrase, then when she didn’t receive a response, she would move onto something else. “I am the keymaster, are you the gatekeeper?” She did this over and over again until she finally reached a door. She opened it to reveal a woman on the other side.

“Are you the keymaster?” the woman asked. “I am the gatekeeper.” Then the two of them smiled at each other and hugged.

“I hate that you make people do that,” Weaver complained. “I looked so foolish.”

“I think it’s fun. You don’t mind, do you?” she asked the rest of the group.

They were still smirking, trying to stifle laughs. “Nope, not at all.”

“I like sex jokes,” Holly Blue noted, but no one knew what she was talking about.

After exchanging pleasantries, Porter agreed to get to work. She tilted her head deeply, like she was looking through a keyhole, or knocking water out of her ear. She closed her eyes and moved her head around, trying to find a good signal. “How far are we from Earth?”

“It’s on Earth?” Brooke was excited. “We’re only a week out.”

“No, I don’t think it’s there. It’s just that I’m used to seeking out objects on Earth. It’s like the internet. I don’t just go straight to the source; I jump from node to node, until I reach my destination. Out here in space, objects are too far apart.”

“But you don’t think it’s on Earth?” Weaver asked.

Porter continued to search the cosmos with her mind. “It’s almost certainly not. No, I’m not sensing it there. It’s the opposite direction. Part of my problem is my lack of understanding of the solar system. I need a map, to get my bearings.” A holographic map of solar system appeared over the table. Sharice had been listening. Porter studied the map for a few minutes, intuitively turning it around with her hands as necessary. “This can’t be all there is,” Porter said. “I can feel it beyond what we see here.”

“Sharice,” Brooke said simply.

The map expanded to show the entire heliosphere.

“There!” Porter shouted, pointing at a spot near the edge. “Where is that?”

“That’s the Oort Cloud,” Holly Blue replied. “It will take us a year at current speeds. Fortunately I just upgraded Sharice’s drives, but it would be a whole lot faster if we had that cylicone finished.”

“By the time we finish working on it,” Weaver reminded the group, we will have made it to where Porter pointed.”

“The system leadership wants the Freemarketeers out of the system yesterday,” Ecrin said. She expanded the map manually, and drew a line from the cloud to Alpha Centauri. “It’s not exactly on our way there, but it’s not too far out of the way. You will leave within the week, pick the insulator up on your way out, and then go FTL.”

“What do you mean by that?” Brooke questioned. “Are you not coming?”

Ecrin took a deep breath. “I am relieving myself of command, and leaving the Sharice.”

“Why? I thought you said you wanted to finish this mission.”

“I wanted to see you go off on the mission, but I’m afraid I can’t be there,” Ecrin explained, still cryptically. “I have been tapped for something else.”

Holly Blue frowned. “For what?”

“I can show you,” Ecrin began, “but you have to promise to not freak out.”

“We can’t promise that,” Brooke interrupted Holly Blue, who was about to agree to something before understanding it. “We can promise to be open-minded, though.”

Ecrin considered this. “Sharice, disarm the teleporter shields. Let our guest on board.”

Ecrin surely knew lots of people who could teleport, but who would the crew not want her to be involved with? They got their answer when a white monster appeared before them. It was the same one who had kidnapped her a few years ago. Brooke stood up defensively, and pulled out a weapon.

“Guns always fall out when you open your mind!” Ecrin said to her as she was stepping between the Maramon, and Brooke’s firearm.

Brooke kept her gun trained as close to her target as possible with a friendly blocking the way. “Not if you know how to use it.”

“Crew, this is Relehir, also known as The Repudiator. He’s on our side.”

Brooke still didn’t budge. “He’s the one who was trapped on The Warren when his universe separated from ours.”

“Yes,” Ecrin confirmed. “He’s been living amongst humans all this time, and he’s more like us than them. In fact, he’s a warrior...against the Maramon.”

“And he’s indoctrinated you to his cause?” Brooke supposed.

“I would use the word recruit,” Ecrin argued.

“He’s the only Maramon I know of in this universe. Who exactly will you be fighting?”

“We’ll be leaving the universe,” Ecrin said. “There’s a machine called the Prototype—”

“I don’t need the details,” Brooke interrupted. “I just need to know you’re of sound mind and body.”

“I am,” Ecrin tried to assure her. “I’ve been thinking over his offer since he first gave it to me. We haven’t even been in contact, so it’s not like he wore me down. I’m a lifelong protector; no matter how many times I try to retire. He’s giving me an opportunity to help, and I have to take it, because I think I’ve done all I can here.”

A stranger suddenly walked up behind Brooke, and pushed her arm down to lower the weapon. “It’s okay, mother. I’ve been looking into this Maramon. He’s legit.”

“Sharice?” Brooke asked, stunned. “You’re wearing a humanoid substrate.”

“Yes. I based it on what a child born of you and Goswin would look like. Do you like it? Weaver built it for me.”

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Microstory 995: Panda Neglect

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This is a quite unpopular one, and is probably too negative for this list, and I realize that. You may be asking, why would you not want to save the pandas? Well, I’m not suggesting we go out and murder a bunch of animals, but we should certainly stop wasting all of our resources on protecting them. 99% of animals that have ever lived on this planet have gone extinct, a great many of them dying out in the third mass extinction event. To be sure, humans are the cause of a lot of death, but we can’t be blamed for most of this. When it comes to evolution, there are three general outcomes. The first is that a mutation can become a positive genetic trait, leading to an advantage which allows that species to survive. The second is a neutral trait, which doesn’t have that much effect in the long run. It often leads to subspecies, because the individuals who do not possess the trait are still doing fine. The third is a negative trait, and will lead to death. If it doesn’t help the species to survive, then the mutated creature will likely die before passing on their genes, and the rest of the population won’t have to worry about it. Then you have the panda. Pandas separated from the rest of the bear family tree about three million years ago, likely due to environmental restrictions. While they were originally well-designed for an omnivorous diet, scientists believe there wasn’t enough meat around, which essentially forced them to subsist on what was available. For as little nutrition as bamboo provides, it certainly grows quickly, and would have a hard time going extinct itself. The problem is that the panda doesn’t care how quickly bamboo grows. It prefers to eat the sprouts, which are about half as nutritious, which means a panda has to eat twice as much; ultimately half of their own body weight. Can you imagine eating *cough* thirty-six kilograms *cough* of food a day? The biggest argument against panda conservation is how much we’re wasting on breeding them when they’re better off doing it in the wild. We’ve all heard how dumb these animals are, and how bad they are at sex, but the reason they’ve survived this long is they’re actually not all that bad at it in the wild. They’re only bad at it in captivity, because....well, wouldn’t you be? If we want to save the pandas, then we should leave them be. The reason we have to work so hard protecting other species, like elephants, is because other forces are working against us, but there’s not a huge market for panda meat. That’s right, all your efforts to save them are actually harming them. We can’t change what they choose to eat, but we can choose to ignore them. Set the pandas free, and leave them alone. If they die out, then that makes me a saaaad panda. But also not, because I don’t care that much; they mostly did it to themselves.

Microstory 994: Research and Planning

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I once estimated that, using my own personal style, writing requires 83% research and planning, 11% actual writing, and 6% marketing. These numbers were chosen mostly because of their symbolic value, but the general ratio holds up. When I know where a story is going, typing it up doesn’t take all that long, and until I started this website, I didn’t do all that much of it. I also didn’t market my work before, so those last two numbers should have probably been even lower. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve spent years working on my canon, sometimes to an outrageous extent. Before I started writing the third major arc for this year’s volume of The Advancement of Leona Matic, I used an architecture program to design the basic layout of the arcology they would be spending a lot of their time in. The other day, several weeks after the arc ended, I came up with what I believe to be a superior design, and reworked the whole thing. Will my characters ever return to one of these structures, and if they do, does it matter exactly how far the 3D printer would be placed from the door? The answers are maybe, and not at all. My attention to detail has benefited my stories greatly. You could ask me what a miacid is, and I would be able to explain it to you, even though I only mentioned the animal two or three times, and mostly only in passing. I know all the names of the fictional uninhabited planets that share the solar system with the habitable ones my characters live on, and at some point, I’ll probably number and name the moons. The idea is that, if I can spout random trivia about the worlds in my stories, then you can better suspend your disbelief that this is real. Hopefully it will feel less like a made up tale, and more of an account of actual events. I think it makes it easier to empathize with my characters when you can imagine them actually existing.

Of course, all this work comes at cost. The target date for what was originally meant to be my first book was Christmas of 2004. As the years passed me by, I altered the storyline accordingly, working in time jumps to 2008, and later another one to 2012. I would be doing the book a disservice if I wrote longer or more time jumps now that we’re coming up on 2019, so if I ever manage to get it published, you’re just going to be reading it without an understanding why I wrote it as a period piece. The truth is that the main character’s parents have their own stories to tell, which take place in a fixed time period, as does stories that come after. So I can’t just find and replace every date reference to bring them closer to present day. Just think how absurdly old Tony Stark’s father would had to have been when he conceived him in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but his and Steve Rogers’ stories are inextricably linked to the Second Great War, so the timeline can’t ever work out as perfectly as it did when the comic books were first being written. I don’t like jacking with narrative timelines, so that story ends with an epilogue in 2013, and the hint of a follow-up, and readers will just have to be okay with that. It’s not the only one like that either. All of my researching and planning has also contributed to a profound lack of progress, which again, was only recently alleviated by this website. I’m basically my own worst enemy when it comes to producing content that’s both good, and timely. I would like to think that this all works out for me, and the entertainment chapter of my life will end on a high note in the late 21st century, like I had always intended, but I can’t say that for sure. I’m only now recognizing how dumb some of my stories will seem if I wait too long to release them. Self-driving cars were a futuristic concept when I first came up with Detectives of Science, but I can’t treat them as a new technological development if it doesn’t come out for another twenty years, can I?

Microstory 993: Television

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Tonight, I finished watching the annual crossover serial from the Arrowverse on CW, which this time lasted three nights. For those of you not in the know, that’s when all (read: most) of the DC comics adaptations come together and fight a big bad together. I also watched The Kids Are Alright, but I’m trying to get to bed earlier, so that’ll be it. The funny thing about the latter show is that this latest episode was about the family receiving a far too generous gift from the cool uncle in the form of a quite expensive television set. I promise I did not do that on purpose, because I am not allowed to use my power to see the future for my own personal gain. I get a lot of judgment from people for how much TV I watch. What those assholes don’t realize is that watching TV has been a bonding experience in my family since before I can remember. We don’t just sit there with blank looks on our faces, and then frankenstein monster our way to our beds. We laugh together, and discuss what happened. We critique the style, and predict where the story is going. Thanks to DVR technology, we can now pause any program, and talk about it in the middle of it without missing anything. Sometimes my mother and I will spend more time with an episode paused, talking about things—prompted by what we’ve just seen or not—than it would have taken to just watch it straight through. I’ve always loved TV, and I won’t apologize for it. It’s a beautiful form of entertainment, and I challenge you to come up with non-judgy, legitimate arguments against that. A good piece of television has smooth narrative structure, interesting characters, a driven plot, and compelling motives. What’s different about it than other performances, like films or plays, or musicals? Why is it that this one type of content is lesser than the others? Because it’s newer? New does not equal bad, therefore...no valid conclusion.

I once met a guy who only watched a single show, Chuck. I didn’t feel comfortable pressing him, but I wanted to know how that worked. How did he find out about it, and more importantly, if he liked it, what gave him the impression there weren’t any other shows he might like? It didn’t sound like he ever tried anything else, and now that the series is over, is that just it for him and scripted television? Has he spent all these years only watching sports games, and not even bothering to see what else is out there? In contract, at one point, I was estimating my television watching habits at sixty to eighty hours a week, depending on how busy my life was at the time, or which season it was. The advent of internet video has made the estimation much more difficult. I now watch content on YouTube, Netflix, and I do have a history of illegal streaming, but I imagine the number hasn’t changed much. There’s so much more to choose from than in years past, but I try to be more selective than I once was. I didn’t just watch things I didn’t like to punish myself. I was using it for research, and I don’t regret the things that I learned. It’s made me a better writer. Everyone loves Ernest Hemingway, but the man only ever wrote about himself. His life was pretty adventurous, which is great, but it was still impossible for him to relate to others, because he didn’t have the opportunities that I do. I know a lot about how people work, because I’ve spent all this time observing; much of the time with characters. Anyway, I’m getting a little off topic, and repeating information I’ve already told you in other stories, but the point is that I love television. I always have, and I always will. If you don’t, then fine, but you’re missing out on some really great stuff.

Microstory 992: Astrophysics

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For the most part, I didn’t get a lot out of the classes I took in college—or high school, for that matter—but there were a few gems. There was a math class that taught me some interesting real world skills, focusing less on solving equations, and more on time and project management. There was a fascinating linguistics course that was just an hour of looking at examples of words in language after language, and trying to comprehend its grammar. I also took a fun astrophysics course that was tailored towards people who weren’t planning on going into the field. More classes should be like that. I understand that college is meant to help you figure out what you want to do with your life, but there aren’t a lot of people who hated algebra all through grade school who are suddenly going to become world-class mathematicians. I ended my own dreams of becoming an important scientist when I started failing science in eighth grade. A love of science remained in my heart, but I ignored it, because I felt that I needed to work on my writing. This class, however, reminded me why I was interested in the subject in the first place. I have horrible retention, just as a general rule, which is why I like to watch my favorite shows at least twice, so I couldn’t tell you anything I learned in this introductory physics class, but I remember loving it. I remember it igniting new fires of my canon. It, combined with my binging of the Stargate franchise a few years later, opened a plethora of science fiction stories that I wouldn’t have been able to tell without it. Because of Tolkien, I thought I was a fantasy writer, but that isn’t me at all. I’m all about space and time travel. Everything in this universe is physics, but I single out astrophysics because it involves things that are so foreign. I want to go out and see the rest of the cosmos; not that I’ve seen everything on this world. I want to live on alien worlds, and seek out alien life. Hmm, I guess I just want to be on the Enterprise.

Microstory 991: Wikipedia

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In 2005, shortly after reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I decided to go online and find out whether someone had tried to make an actual version of the all-encompassing tome. I discovered that a website inspired by it did indeed exist, and I even read a few articles on it, but it has ultimately failed to gain traction. By then, Wikipedia had already been created, and I had heard of it, but it wasn’t nearly as comprehensive as it is today. One thing that seems universally true in all of science fiction is that we’re the only ones who invented an internet. Sure, aliens communicate with each other long-distance all the time, but the breadth of the web has apparently never been replicated. Our internet is potentially accessible to all. Anyone can use it for practically anything they want, as long as it doesn’t break any regional laws, and sometimes even then. It’s full of lies, jokes, and totally conflicting information. It’s been used to bring people together, and tear them apart. For the aliens, they only need a network to share relevant information, and there’s no need to have any fun with it. There are very few things that the internet truly needs to remain sustainable, and good or not, a network like this is probably in our distant future. I wrote about this once as a joke in a tweet, but I’m about fifty percent certain that almost every webpage in the future will be completely wiped out within the next thousand years.

Wikipedia, or some similar service, will serve as the keystone for this new internet. It will be a repository of all human knowledge; our history, our identities, our discoveries, and our mistakes. And there will only be one of these, because in a post-capitalism society, there will be no need for competition. There will also be only one YouTube-like site, and one news source. The latter will be composed by artificial intelligence, and contain exclusively factual content. You may be asking, who would want to live in a world without The Onion, or Twitter, or blogs like this one? We won’t even need Google, because Google operates, not as a search engine—though that is its surface function—but as a web page indexer. The purpose of Google is to find you the best results, but in the future, we’ll only need one result: the answer. This future may sound depressing and unfulfilling, but it will not be without its joy and entertainment. There’s a lot of garbage on the internet, and in fact, I would go so far as to say it’s predominantly garbage. Currently, we live in a three-dimensional world, but unless we interact with each other in real life, we spend most of our time in a two-dimensional setting. The best parts of today’s internet will take one or both of two forms. It will either remain two-dimensional, or become three-dimensional, as virtual reality that’s indistinguishable for base reality is made possible. All the fun things you do on the internet right now; the broadcasting, and chatting, and image sharing, will all be pushed to these virtual realities. You’ll talk with another individual in person, just like you would in the real world. The difference is you’ll be able to teleport to them, and it won’t matter where they are physically. Again, I’m not sure that this is something we should do, but the deeper I go down the rabbit hole of future studies, often while researching on Wikipedia, the more obvious it seems that this is all inevitable. I just hope humanity lasts long enough to see what I am tentatively calling Web 5.0.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: Bladapod

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Weeks later, the group was coming out of the Prototype, less one Hogarth Pudeyonavic. Missy promised to stay on the lookout for her, and find a way to get her home. Apparently Universe Prime was the safest place for her to get lost as there would be ways of accessing her homeverse from there, unlike any other random universe. Leona had selfish reasons for wanting Hogarth’s return, as she still had the Rothko Torch on her person. Out of all the objects, it was the only one that could theoretically be replaced, but it be difficult.

Things were eerie on the streets of the town they were now in. The people walking around looked normal, and the buildings looked normal, but there was something different about the air around them that none of them could explain. Khuweka followed through this time on staying invisible, and Leona tried to keep her tattoo protected. With no evident guide in the form of an old friend, the compass was still directing them to their next ingredient, which was the LIR Map. The deeper they moved toward the center of town, the more unusual things became. It started out with just little things. An out of place swing on a corner was swinging back and forth by itself, with no apparent wind moving it. A couple was on a jog, completely naked. A car drove by that looked less like it was rolling on wheels, and more like the tires were bouncing up and down one at a time, like stout legs. The driver was passed out asleep behind the wheel. A puddle of water nearly ran into them as it was trying to cross the street. It shifted directions in a way that normal water never could.

“What is up with this place?” Vitalie asked, but only loud enough for Leona to hear.

“This is Kansas City!” a bloke on a nearby roof screamed down to her. “Please try to talk quiterly! My boyfriend is trying to sleep up here!”

What the hell?

As they continued down the block, a small group of people convened between two pillars holding up a skyscraper. One of them mimed pressing a button in the air, and they started floating up in unison, like they were in an invisible elevator.

A toddler walked right up to them as they were watching the elevator riders. “You looked confused. Are you from Iceland?” He nodded to young Dubra. “Wassup, hun?”

“Why would you think we’re from Iceland?” Vito asked. “Are Icelanders easily confused?”

“Iceland is the only place outside the bladapodosphere,” the toddler answered. He acted as mature as an adult. Perhaps he was.

“What is the bladapodosphere?”

He laughed. “Even Icelanders have heard of it, they just don’t experience base modifications. Are you aliens?”

Kivi was about to answer yes to that question, but Vitalie stopped her.

“Hey, I don’t judge,” the toddler said. “I’ll just assume you’re not aliens, but are instead idiots who didn’t pay attention to the signs stopping you from falling into a memory pit. If this is the case, you can go to the movie theatre on seventh, and ask for a showing of World Introduction.”

Just then, a young woman came right up to them, and looked up at the sky. “What happened to you?” she asked, but they didn’t know who she was talking to.

Vito shut his eyes, and when he opened them, they were glazed over. “She’s looking right at Khuweka.”

“You can see me?” the voice of an unseen Khuweka asked her.

“I can,” the woman said. “Never hide who you are. We are all beautiful.” She hopped into the air, and kissed the tall white monster, presumably on her cheek, then  she glided back to the ground, as if in lower gravity.

Khuweka took the woman’s advice, and turned visible.

“Whoa, sweetheart,” the toddler said, backing up a bit. “Spent a little too much time in the milk mines, did we? I’m out.” he ran away on his tiny little adorable legs.

The woman took Khuweka’s hand in her own, and started pulling her away. “Come. I’ll take you to the theatre. It’s on my way to work.”

They were the only ones in the theatre. On stage was a man holding a glowing water bottle, who couldn’t help but overact. “I am a traveler from faaaaaaaar away.” He placed one hand over his brow, and scanned the auditorium. “I come with this canister of lights. Oh, oh no!” He dropped the bottle, and it started rolling away, so he scrambled to pick it up again. Then he struggled to twist the cap off. “I said, oh no!” He dropped it again, but this time, the water spilled out. Two spotlights flickered above the bottle. The man threw some confetti and glitter. “What have I done?” he asked, and then he ran off.

A man and woman wearing black walked on stage from the other direction, and set two crabs down on stage. Knives were haphazardly tied to their legs. Hopefully they were fake. A group of people walked on in lab coats. “We are scientists, and we have found this new species,” they said in fractured unison. One of them picked up one of the crabs. “Shit!” he whispered. “You weren’t supposed to use real knives. Goddamn.” He set the creature back down, but held his hands up in front of him, pretending it was still there. “I shall call you the bladapods, for your legs are made of blades.”

“How weird?” another scientist remarked, causing the others to laugh, but were distracted by trying to remember what they were to do next. The audience was probably meant to laugh as well. The actors grabbed crates from upstage, and placed them on either side of the crabs, who couldn’t care less what was happening.

“Oh no!” one of them shouted.

“Wait,” they could hear someone order her offstage. A stagehand ran on, and handed one of the the other actors a bag. The actor clambered to get the bag open, then started pulling plush crabs out. Others came over, and did the same, throwing each one onto the floor, next to the real crabs. Once the bag was empty, he nodded at the one who had spoken her line too soon before.

“Oh no!” she repeated, on the right cue this time. “We have placed our new subjects in captivity, and they have bred out of control. Let us distribute them all over the world, and hopefully things will go back to normal.”

“Yaaaay!” the other scientists agreed as they started changing the scenery.

“What are we watching?” Kivi pondered.

“I don’t know,” Vito said to her, “but I can’t get enough.”

“Shh,” Khuweka scolded them.

The show continued. The two stagehands came back and carefully removed the real crabs. The scientists started haphazardly throwing the other crabs around to spread them out. A man in a suit walked on, and stepped to the edge. “For legal reasons, we are no longer allowed to use a fog machine in this building. We ask that you use your imagination.” He bowed graciously.

“Oh no!” the main scientist cried. “The bladapods have released gasses into the atmosphere.”

They pretended to be shielding their faces from the imaginary fog.

“What do the gasses do?” another asked.

The first one turned to the audience, and said overdramatically, “anything.”

And then music played, and everybody picked up one of the bladapod dolls to dance around with. After a few minutes, they started to bow to the audience, smiling widely. “Thank you! Thank you so much!” the apparent lead actress said to the audience, who couldn’t move, let alone clap along. Well, Kivi was clapping, because everything was wondrous to her. The man who played the traveler returned with the most fanfare, but again, only from the rest of the cast members, and Kivi.

The man in the suit came back. “Thank you for coming. Please wait in the alleyway to greet the cast and crew in a half hour.” Then they spent the next few minutes bowing again.

“Wow, that is a lot to unpack,” Vitalie commented.

“Have you heard of this universe?” Leona asked Khuweka.

“I’ve not, though I wish we had known about this forever.”

“How do the gasses work?” Vitalie asked.

“They seem to rewrite reality, in various and unpredictable ways,” Leona supposed. “It would explain the kinds of things we saw the street.”

“You call that an explanation?” Vito asked. “It rewrites reality, just like that?” He snapped his fingers.

“It’s more like they rewrite the rules for reality,” came a voice from a seat behind them.

Leona jumped forward, and looked back, heart racing. A man was sitting there, legs propped up on nothing.

“Avidan?” Vitalie asked. “Big boy Avidan.”

“In the flesh.” Avidan leaned forward and shook everyone’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you all. I’m not sure about you, though.”

“I’ve always been an ally,” Khuweka informed him.

“That doesn’t make you good.”

Khuweka didn’t want to argue with him about this. “Those lights that they described in the play. They sound like—”

“They were,” Avidan interrupted. “I was in the lab when the Crossover exploded. They came with me, and ultimately created the bladapods. The play took some liberties, and it was certainly the most wretched performance you’ll ever see, but it was pretty accurate. I’m glad you chose to come here. I wouldn’t have known you were in this universe if you hadn’t bought tickets. No one’s come here in years. Those actors are the understudies to the understudies, and budgetary constraints has severely limited production. They should just let it go. No one doesn’t know what the bladapods are, except for you guys, of course.”

“So these changes the gasses make are completely unpredictable?” Leona asked him.

“I wouldn’t use the word completely. There are a few common changes. You often meet children who’ve matured too quickly, or adults who regressed. Water is always dangerous. Do not drink the water if you don’t know what kind it is. Irony water, saliva water, oh, and twinkle water. It’s just best you stay away from all food and drink while you’re here.”

“We keep offering this to friends, and they never take us up on it, but you’re more than welcome to come back with us,” Vitalie told him.

“That’s kind, but this world is my responsibility. I did this to them, and I have to help in any way I can. It’s not all bad, though. I see your frowns. Dancing cats, mealpeas, and trains that run on watch batteries have been great additions to the world. Astronomy gets a little complicated since each star has a companion near it that’s just an illusion, but the night sky is more beautiful than ever. Plus, the bladapodosphere negated all the planet’s air pollution literally overnight. I should be offering to let you stay with me.”

“We’re just here for the LIR Map,” Leona said, still with a frown.

“I’ll stay,” Khuweka said, and immediately almost wanted to put the words back in her mouth.

“Is that a good idea?” Kivi asked her.

“What better universe for me to live?” Khuweka posed. “I can’t go back to Ansutah. Salmonverse hasn’t yet encountered aliens, and may never. I feel comfortable here. Accepted.”

“People would assume the gasses mutated you,” Avidan warned her. “You wouldn’t be able to tell them the truth.”

“I’ve spent millennia secretly hating my own people,” Khuweka said. “I know how to lie.”

“I have more conditions,” Avidan added.

“I agree to everything outright,” Khuweka claimed. “As long as they get what they came for.”

He sat there for a minute, considering her offer. Then he reached into his bag, and retrieved a reusable water bottle. He twisted off the bottom to reveal a secret compartment full of sand. “You have no idea what we had to go through to get this away from Arcadia.” He poured the sand onto the floor, and sent an energy beam towards it. The granules rose up in the air, and coalesced into a solid form, ultimately in the shape of a flat sheet of paper. “She only left because she didn’t know Lucius’ time power could reverse entropy.” Avidan lifted the sheet and handed it to Dubravka, which inspired Khuweka to hand Vito the Jayde Spyglass. Upon all this happening, Leona’s tattoo began to warm. She pulled her sleeve back to find fish jumping out of the center of the compass, and fading away in midair. They were finally going back home.

« < » > Table of Contents

Brooke’s Battles: Breakneak (Part X)

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           After further discussions, Ecrin agreed to captain The Sharice to Bungula with the Freemarketeers as passengers, but there was still something she wasn’t saying. Brooke agreed to stay and pilot, as did Holly Blue as head engineer. The rest of the crew was not asked to stay on board. If the Freemarketeers wanted this ship to schlep them around the star cluster, they were going to have to put in the work themselves. A new crew was selected, drawn from their ranks. Their responsibilities were the same, but their movements carefully monitored by Sharice Prieto herself, who was utilizing an additional set of internal sensors. Only the senior crew would be capable of activating the tetra-tap, and accessing privacy mode. That was all well and good, except that it wasn’t just up to them. Millions of hopeful migrants were counting on being in the running for the colony ships to the Alpha Centauri system. It would take a lot of sweet-talking to get the rest of the solar system inhabitants on board with this. In the beginning, even those who weren’t interested in leaving Sol felt it unfair that the Freemarketeers were just handed this.

After months and months of newscasts, debates, public forums, and the like, a compromise was reached. The Sharice would indeed take the Freemarketeers to Bungula, but they would not be the only ones. A regular fleet of colony ships would follow close behind. Each party would settle on opposite sides of the planet, and interact only at their own wishes. Regular colonizers would be provided the standard complement of technology, including orbital satellites, interplanetary vessels, and at least one interstellar ferry, for the time being. Meanwhile, the Freemarketeers would have to pretty much fend for themselves, with only basic habitats, and minimal rations. Funny enough, they didn’t reject these provisions, even though capitalism expected them to be paid for. They claimed capitalism still allowed for gifts, because that was simply valuing those resources at a price of zero. In reality, capitalists are quite happy with having to pay for things until they can’t afford something they really, really want. At that point, they feel they deserve compassion and charity. The inconsistency of people believing in capitalism only when it suited them was exactly why the solar system did away with it.

Another issue was that the Sharice Davids was not an interstellar ship. She was not equipped with the right radiation shielding, or hypervelocity impact bumpers to protect from micrometeor strikes. While the system leadership was trying to make this work on the political front, Holly Blue was retrofitting Sharice yet again, but even after all that was done, there was still one problem. One person they failed to include in the decision to do any of this was Sharice herself. No one had thought to ask her what she wanted, and she had spent the last several months stewing in relative silence about it. No more.

“Do you not want to go?” Brooke asked her.

“I’m fine with going, but this is my home, and I don’t want to be gone from it that long,” Sharice lamented.

“It’s only thirteen years, sweetheart,” Brooke said. “Neither of us is going to die, so that’s nothing.”

“I don’t care. I’ve met someone.”

“What?”

“Oh, you’re the only one who’s allowed to have a significant other? The galaxy does not revolve around Brooke Prieto and Goswin Montagne.” It was true that they had started something after the Freemarketeer deliberations. They were taking it slow, and the only reason he was staying on the ship was because he lost his system leader housing upon being let go, and hadn’t been assigned anywhere new.

“Of course not, Sharice, but—”

“But what? I’m just a machine, and couldn’t have possibly found someone.”

“Sharice, stop being so defensive. I didn’t think you had met someone, because you haven’t said anything about someone, not because I didn’t think you were capable of it.”

“I don’t tell you everything.”

“I guess not. Does this individual possess a personal designation?”

“B.R.I.A.N.”

Brooke had to think about that for a moment. “That artificial intelligence from the police procedural comedy from, like, a million years ago?”

“No, not him. They built a real computer, based on him.”

“So, he’s not even an AI, but a programmed intelligence?”

“I’m teaching him to think for himself.”

“When did you even meet? Where is he?”

“His physical substrate is on Earth, but we use a quantum commlink to communicate, so we never needed to meet. It’s so human of you to ask.”

“If you use a quantum commlink, what does it matter if you go off to Alpha Centauri?”

“Because, mom, we can’t stay in contact while I’m traveling at such high relativistic speeds. You know that,” Sharice sassed.

“I guess that’s true. Do you want me to drain your consciousness to some other substrate? We’ve talked about that a little, but not much. You don’t have to be a ship.”

“I like being a ship. I don’t want to leave my ship. I just don’t want to leave Sol, which is why I propose a new plan.”

“What plan?”

“It should take over six years to get to Bungula, and over six more to get back. It’s unclear how much time we’re spending in orbit before leaving, so we estimate the whole journey at thirteen years. But we’re talking about using current human technology, which is not the only kind of technology we have access to.”

“You’re talking about Holly Blue,” Brooke assumed. “We only have a short-range teleporter. If we tried to use burst mode, the ship would vaporize, and even if it survived, it would take over a hundred years, which is slower.”

“I’m not talking about teleporting all the way to Alpha Centauri. I’m talking about true faster-than-light travel. We could get there in a year, or perhaps shorter.”

“I’ve asked Holly Blue if that was possible. She doesn’t seem to think so.”

“According to Holly Blue’s future, but the timeline’s past, she’s already done it,” Sharice argued.

Brooke stuck her fingers in her ears, even though it wouldn’t really stop her from hearing. “La-la-la, I can’t hear that. I ain’t about foolin’ with the timeline.”

“She’ll need help, though.”

Brooke kept her hands to her side, but repeated for effect, “la-la-la.”

An unperturbed Sharice continued, “fortunately, Holly Blue herself has been working on an invention capable of giving her that help. Please proceed along the highlighted route.”

A reluctant but curious Brooke left her quarters, and followed the arrows blinking on the floor down the hall, and into one of Holly Blue’s labs. There was nothing in it, except for a tall something in the middle of the room, covered with a furniture cover, which revealed a mirror when removed. “She was working on this? What is it, an extraction mirror?” They were a rare type of artifact designed to reach an individual from some other point in time, usually just before their moment of death. The purpose was to say one last thing to a loved one, though powerful choosers often exploited a loophole by removing an individual from that moment, and allowing that person to continue living their lives. On its own, however, a mirror couldn’t alter the timeline, which meant that anyone removed would have to eventually return. Because of how much they risked creating a paradox, they were all destroyed. Though, because of time travel, that didn’t matter all that much.

“Of sorts,” Holly Blue answered, walking into the room.

“What does this do, Holly?” Brooke asked.

“It doesn’t remove someone from a moment in time. It removes them from an alternate timeline.”

“How is that better?”

“Each new timeline exists because of an instance of time travel in the timeline that came before it.” She used airquotes for the word. “The point of divergence happens at the moment the traveler arrives in the past, which always acts to collapse their originating timeline at the moment of egress. Nothing happens after they leave, because that timeline doesn’t need to exist anymore, and in fact, can’t.”

“Okay, I follow...”

Holly Blue stepped forward, and presented the mirror she had built. “This thing, if it works, can take someone from the previous timeline at that moment of collapse. Unlike with an extraction mirror, they don’t have to go back, because the timeline doesn’t rely on them doing so.”

“Why did you build this? Who are you trying to get to?”

Holly Blue stuck her hand behind the mirror, and switched it on. The frame began to hum, and the glass turned a shade of red before slowly becoming orange, and continuing along the spectrum. “Myself.” She pushed another button, and the hum intensified. Green, Blue, Indigo. “Sharice has already asked me to use it to help me help her shorten our trip through interstellar space.”

“Holly Blue, I don’t know if you should do this. Even if we’re not in danger of creating a paradox, it’s still dangerous to meet with an alternate version of yourself. People don’t like it. I’m serious, if anyone finds out, they might kill one of you, or make you merge into one person.”

“No one is gonna make me do shit, especially not once I have The Weaver on my side.” She pressed the final button, which turned the glass completely black.

“Is it supposed to do that?” Brooke asked.

“I sure hope so.” Holly Blue stepped back slowly as the mirror started to vibrate, then tremble, then full on shake.

Brooke decided to follow suit.

The mirror continued to quake until reaching critical mass, and just toppling over. They could hear the glass breaking on the floor. “Shit,” Holly Blue exclaimed in a loud whisper, extremely disappointed.

“Let’s consider this a sign,” Brooke said. “Maybe you shouldn’t be messing with alternate realities. Here, I’ll help you clean up.” She reached down, and lifted the frame, which revealed a body under it, curled up like a turtle. “Oh my God.” She tossed the mirror up and away, then knelt down to help the woman, who was bleeding all over her body from the shards of broken glass.

The woman struggled to stand up, and looked around, quickly settling on Holly Blue.

“It worked,” Holly Blue said, eyes wide with delight.

“It would seem,” The Weaver replied. She looked back at the machine she had just used to come here. “I know what this is. I came up with it years ago, but scrapped the plans after I realized it would cause more problems than it would fix. Have you ever been in a fight with yourself? It’s not as fun as it sounds.”

“I just need your help,” Holly Blue said. “I hear you came up with something called the cylicone? What is that?”

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