The Advancement of Leona Matic: October 4, 2211

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The Prototype powered down. The lights flipped off, and new ones came on, almost like the house lights at a theatre. All of the instruments and monitors were blank, suggesting that this was the end of their journey. They did apparently only need one more item on the list. Leona lifted her arm to check her tattoo, but it was completely gone. The regular Compass of Disturbance was sitting on the floor by her feet. Hopefully the Cosmic Sextant was nearby, because they probably wouldn’t find it otherwise. Vito walked over with confidence and opened the door. Hogarth and Leona followed him through. Vitalie took up the rear. A man was staring at them with wonder, in what looked like a cargo hold for a spaceship.

“Can I, uhh, help you?”

“We’re looking for the cosmic sextant,” Hogarth told him honestly.

“What is this thing?”

“The Prototype.”

“Oh.” He was in too much awe to fully process a machine suddenly just appearing out of nowhere. He tapped his comms badge. “Cargomaster Hargesen to Captain Prieto. Come in, Captain.” Prieto? As in, Brooke? Was this The Sharice?

“Go ahead,” an unfamiliar voice responded.

“There’s a, uhh...ship here. I guess that’s what it is. It just appeared in the cargo bay. They’re looking for a tent.”

“A tent?” the voice questioned.

“Yeah, for sex, apparently.”

“A sex tent?” the voice asked him after a pause.

“Yeah, look if you could just come down here, that would be great. I’m not equipped to handle this.”

“Why not, you don’t have genitals?” Okay, that one was definitely Brooke’s voice.

“Sorry about that,” the other voice said. “I’m on my way.”

A woman appeared in the form of a hologram. At the same time, Étude teleported in, holding Brooke Prieto, and a Maramon. “Brooke, is this your family?”

Brooke went over and gave Leona a great big hug. “She is, at least.” She nodded to Hogarth. “It’s nice to see you again, after all this time.”

“Likewise,” Hogarth replied.

“I recognize you two from The Warren,” Brooke said, looking at Vitalie and Vito.

“Brooke Prieto, this is Vitalie and Vito. Vitalie and Vito, this is Brooke, and our friend, Étude. Is this the famous Sharice Davids?”

“Please,” the hologram said. “Sharice Davids is my namesake, and my ship. I go by Prieto.” She and Leona pretended to shake hands.

“In another reality,” Hogarth interrupted the pleasantries, “you took our sextant before we could arrive, and it ruined our mission.” She immediately regretted saying that. “Sorry, I just went through a lot creating this timeline. From extending that game of Go, to hacking into your liveware. I’m exhausted.” This was all news to Leona.

“That was you?” Brooke asked her. “You hacked my brain.”

“I’m sorry, I had to.”

“That’s okay,” Brooke said. “I understand why you did it. I can take you to the sextant.”

Ecrin walked into the room and greeted the newcomers as well. “Is this it?” she asked the Maramon after she was finished.

“Yep,” he answered. “The Prototype.” Was Ecrin and this guy part of the team that fought against the Maramon all over the bulkverse? Did they work with Smith and Vito? Or rather were they going to?

“She’s all yours,” Leona said. “It doesn’t seem to be responding to me anymore.”

“I’ll give you the tour,” Vito said in delight.

“Go on, Relehir,” Ecrin said. “I’ll catch up.”

Vito and the Maramon went into the Prototype, while the cargomaster was asked to go about his business in one of the airlocks. Ecrin tapped her badge. “Holly Blue, Weaver. Please come down to the cargo hold.”

“Holly Blue and The Weaver?” Leona questioned. “You know, I always suspected that—”

“They’re one and the same?” Ecrin guessed. “It’s been confirmed.

Two different versions of the one person showed up, and the greetings had to start again. Evidently, this Weaver was the one from the alternate timeline where Leona and Mateo met all the way back in 2016. That was before the latter went back in time, killed Hitler, and erased himself from history via the butterfly effect. They weren’t fully vocal about how they had gotten her to this timeline, or why.

“I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for everything you’ve done. Over the years, I’ve—”

She was interrupted by a portal that randomly opened a few meters from them. Leona could see a younger version of herself on the other side. Little Paige was there too, as was Ida Reyer, Slipstream, Hilde, and another Hogarth.

Young!Hogarth hopped to it, and headed for the portal. “Bye, Felicia!” she jokingly said to the other Hogarth.

Future!Hogarth scrunched up her face with just as much fake disdain. “You said my line! Bye, Vicki!”

“See you in the red for—” Young!Hogarth tried to say.

“The moment has passed, it’s over.” The portal closed, leaving them with this older version of Hogarth, who was missing an ear. She jerked her head up at Leona, like a thug greeting another thug. “Yo, you got something for me?” she asked, also like a thug.

“What would I have?”

“Looks like a watch.”

Leona looked down at her watch. “This thing?”

“Nah, man. That just tells time. I’m talkin’ about the Paradox Ticker.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“You mean from the lockbox?” Vitalie asked. “There’s a watch in there.”

“That’s the one,” Future!Hogarth nodded.

Vitalie ran back into the Prototype, then came out holding one of the special temporal objects they found with the hoarder, who also had the home stone and Escher Knob. “This?”

Future!Hogarth was ecstatic. “Perfect!” She turned the crown carefully, then held it up to her temple, and pressed the button down. Seemingly painfully, her ear reconstituted itself completely. She breathed a sigh of relief. “Glad to be done with that chapter. You have my book too?”

Leona reached into her bag, and retrieved the Book of Hogarth.

“Great.” Future!Hogarth took the book graciously, opened it up, tore out a page, and handed it to Leona. “Here are the instructions for assembly. Remember, there’s a back side.”

The instructions were short, but to the point on how to put all the ingredients together to get Mateo back. Leona flipped it over. “There’s nothing on the back.”

Future!Hogarth tossed the Paradox Ticker in her bag, but carefully laid the book inside. “There will be. Now. It’s been real.” She threw her bag over her shoulder, and gave them all a salute. “Tell that demon in there to go fork himself. Don’t worry, he’s not evil, but we have personal beef.” She took a few steps back, shut her eyes tightly, and sent herself into a temporal displacement explosion on purpose.

“Wow, that was weird,” Sharice noted after a long silence.

“What was I saying?” Ecrin asked.

“Goodbye,” Sharice answered bluntly.

“Yes, that’s it.” She composed herself after that crazy timey-wimey stuff. “It has been an honor serving with you all. I wish good luck to you in your endeavors. Leona, I hope you get your husband back. Vitalie, I wish we had more time to catch up. Sharice, you will one day learn to play Go without cheating. Holly Blue, remember that you are responsible for what you invent. Weaver, remember how influential you are to your alternate and younger self. Brooke, I love you. You and your daughter take care of my ship. No explosions, please. And finally, Étude.” She deliberately faced the former Last Savior of Earth, and stared at her intently. “There are no words.”

Étude rolled her eyes.

Ready now, Ecrin fought back tears, and walked into the Prototype. With no warning, the door closed behind her, powered up its engines, and disappeared.

Vitalie squinted and frowned at the space the machine once occupied. “I left all my shit in there.”

They heard a loud clap behind them. Sharice had her hands clasped together, and looked different than before. She was no longer a hologram, but a physical individual standing before them. “With Ecrin gone, I am officially the only captain of this ship. Now that we have what we need, as do the Vespiarians, we will be departing in a half hour. Anyone wishing to remain here should disembark now.”

“Yeah, uhh...” the cargomaster struggled to fit back through the airlock hatch, which wasn’t open all the way. He tripped, and fell to his hands. “Oh, shit.” He got himself back up. “Yeah, sorry, yeah. I’ve decided to stay. Magic doorways to Earth, disappearing ships; if that’s the kind of stuff the communists have access to, I want no part of Bungula.”

“We don’t call ourselves communists,” Holly Blue explained to him.

“Right, sorry,” he apologized. “Who is going to Earth?”

“No one,” Brooke said to him. “The Sharice is going to Bungula. The Vespiarians are staying here on Vespiary.”

“Are we sure about that?” Leona was looking more carefully at the instructions that Hogarth passed off to her. “If there’s a way to get me back to Earth, that would be wonderful. I didn’t think it mattered, but it says here I have to assemble these in The Constant.”

“We can take them back.” A woman was walking towards them. “We’ve discussed things with our Plutonian team, and have decided to go back home. This experiment is over. Besides, I was told someone really was interested in this sextant.” She held it up in her hands.

“Yes, that’s what I came here for. Oh my God, I have everything I need.” Leona went over to take a look at the last object.

Brooke frowned at the woman. “Farhana, did we contaminate the experiment?”

“Technically, I suppose you did, but that’s not why we’re leaving. We’ve received word on new rogue planet detection technology. We’re starting a new project in true interstellar space.”

“Would you be able to leave in a year?” Leona asked them. “For reasons I can’t quite explain, I have to leave either today, or a year from now.”

“We’re leaving an automated contingency to gather data on the Oort cloud,” Farhana replied. “Which means we don’t have to strike the base. My team can be ready to go within the hour.”

Leona was grateful for the circumstances. “That would be amazing.”

“I would like to go as well,” Holly Blue said. “I have family I would like to see again on Earth.”

“You do?” Weaver asked her. Something was apparently different about their respective personal timelines.

“Yes,” Holly Blue confirmed simply.

“Where is this ship going?” Vitalie asked.

“Bungula,” Brooke answered.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, one of the closest stars to ours.”

Vitalie looked at Leona sadly.

“It’s okay if you want to go, love,” Leona said sincerely. “I’m thankful for everything you’ve done, but like I keep saying, you owe me nothing.”

“I think I’m just ready for the next chapter of my life,” Vitalie added.

Leona smiled and nodded. “I agree.”

Sharice clapped her hands loudly again. “Great. Sounds like everyone has their assignments. You have ten minutes to get your affairs in order before we start the preflight checklist.”

Ten minutes was not nearly long enough, especially since both Holly Blue and the cargomaster needed time to clear out their rooms, and move over to the other ship. Sharice ended up extending the deadline by twenty minutes for them. The Vosa was smaller than The Sharice, but was now just as fast, excluding any temporal manipulation add-ons. The trip back to Earth would take them the better part of a year, which meant Leona would only be on it for the rest of the day. When she returned to the timeline, it should already be on Earth, or be very close to it. For some reason, though, it wasn’t.

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Brooke’s Battles: Begone (Part XII)

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About 85,000 astronomical units from Earth, there lies a planetesimal with a diameter around 40 kilometers. While the majority of the solar system was conquered by the beginning of the 23rd century, much of the Oort cloud still remained uncharted. Dominated by relatively small celestial bodies, at unfathomable numbers, it just wasn’t priority for exploration, nor would it likely ever be. Though the era of darkburster technology was presumably over, that didn’t mean there weren’t ships that secretly escaped the clutches of the heliosphere long before. An estimated dozen or so significantly populated vessels probably managed to begin traveling interstellar space before detection technology designed to sense them was put in place. It would take them longer to get to any destination than a sanctioned mission leaving today, or years from now, when near lightspeed levels are reached, so it’s unclear what their goal is, but they are almost certainly out there, somewhere.

As the crew of The Sharice Davids learned, one such of these ships was manned by a small group of pioneer researchers. They didn’t leave to spite the rest of the solar system. They didn’t want to change humanity, or regress it, or destroy it. They didn’t even really want to isolate themselves. They left in order to study the long-term effects of extra-solar living. A primary drive of human beings, and many transhumanistic offshoots of humans, is to spread out. Hundreds of thousands of years from now, possibly every habitable planet in the galaxy will be inhabited, with potential plans to reach other galaxies. One thing every aspiration like this has is the assumption that each mission will head for a star system. Stars are life-giving entities. Even some crazy starfish alien capable of surviving in the vacuum of space would still likely be found near a star. So, these scientists questioned, what would it be like to live in the cold empty. They went out on their darkburster about two decades ago, and settled on the first orbital they could find outside of the heliosphere. They named it Vespiary.

“The Insulator was a lifesaver,” said the leader of Vespiary, Farhana Sultana. “We would all be dead without it.”

“Where did it come from?” Ecrin asked. She and Relehir were still on the ship, because evidently the machine they were planning to use to leave the universe would be arriving somewhere around here. It was a funny coincidence that had yet to come to fruition.

“A man appeared with it, literally out of nowhere,” Farhana explained. “Our habitat was undergoing a cataclysm. Half our people managed to escape to the ship—which would have done them little good, as we hadn’t installed a microponics lab, and don’t have enough fuel to reach civilization—but half were still stuck over here. When I say he appeared, I mean he wasn’t there, and a second later, he was. He left the same way, through no apparent means.”

“He gave you the insulator?” Brooke asked.

“He acted like it was his mission, called himself The Kingmaker, which is weird.”

Brooke and Ecrin gave each other a look. They knew exactly who he was. Mario Matic was a time traveling salmon, whose apparent job it was to protect socially vital individuals throughout time. It was surprising how many important people there were in history who unwittingly came this close to dying. The majority of them were saved by Mario. If he was sent all the way to Vespiary with a special temporal object capable of sustaining life, someone here was destined to do great things. That person could be Farhana, or it could be the janitor.

“How long have you been using it?” Goswin jumped in. He was there, because he appreciated a good adventure, didn’t have anything better to do, and was still in a relationship with Brooke.

“For three years,” Farhana answered. “How fortuitous you come today, for we have recently determined that we are finally capable of taking back control over life support. With these more robust redundancies, we should be able to do without the insulator.”

“We don’t want to take it from you if you think you’ll need it in the future,” Goswin said. He wasn’t technically authorized to make such a statement, but his sentiments matched with the senior crew, including The Weaver and Holly Blue, who were running final diagnostics on the FTL cylicone.

“Now hold on,” President Treacy stopped them. “If the Vespiary is willing to give it up, I’m sure we can negotiate a fair deal. They have it, we want it.” He was there, because they kind of had to let him be there. He represented the interests of the Freemarketeers, and like it or not, they were the Sharice’s passengers, and some of its crew.

“We all understand how capitalism works, jackass,” Ecrin said. The fact that the real crew had to put up with them didn’t mean they had to like it, or be nice.

“No need for payment,” Farhana assured them. “We only ask to borrow your communications array, to send a message to our Plutonian contact.”

“Is your communications system not working?”

“We do not have the resources to fix it,” Farhana said. “We’ve been radio silent since everything else broke.”

“You don’t need to borrow our array,” Ecrin said. “We’ll give you a quantum messenger that you can use any time. We’ll also refuel you, so you can return to civilization at your will.”

“Now hold on,” Treacy argued, “we need the fuel to get to Bugula, and  we need that quantum messenger to make deals with other systems.”

“Calm down,” Ecrin ordered. “We have two QMs, and oh yeah, a perpetual motion drive. We don’t need fuel.”

“How much for the perpetual engine?” Treacy posed.

“Shut up!” Ecrin, Brooke, and Goswin shouted in unison.

“We would be grateful for your aid in this matter,” Farhana moved on. “To be clear, though, this is not an exchange. We expect nothing. The Insulator is yours.”

“Understood,” Brooke replied.

“Do you also want the other thing?” Farhana asked.

“What other thing?”

“The sextant.”

Brooke put a puzzled look on her face. “We have far more sophisticated navigational tools. We’ve no need for a sextant.”

“I just thought it might be yours, since it showed up shortly after the Kingmaker departed,” Farhana said. She tapped her radio. “Weber, bring the sextant in here. No one on my team knows where it came from. One day, it was just sitting on top of the mass spectrometer, like someone had placed it there so they would have two free hands, then forgot about it.”

A moment later, one of Farhana’s people came in holding an honest-to-God sextant. Brooke analyzed it with her eyes, and could determine only that it was made out of gold. “Does it do something a normal sextant doesn’t?”

“We’re not sure.” She turned it over in her hands. “When we try to work it, we can feel a kind of pull towards the stars, but other than that...we just don’t know.”

Brooke was about to take the mysterious object, so Holly Blue or Weaver could study it, but a voice in her head told her not to. At first she thought it was just her intuition, but then she realized it was more substantial than that. When androids and transhumanistic upgrades were first being developed, there was an ethical concern about reprogramming. If humans were merged with technology, they could theoretically be hacked, and made to do things against their will. In order to preemptively combat this possibility, researchers came up with a way to map the unadulterated brain. A quantified neural baseline helped to recognize invading code; kind of like how a white blood cell can tell the difference between healthy bacteria, and a foreign pathogen. This thought of Brooke’s that she should leave the sextant be was not her own. Someone else had written the idea into her liveware, but who, and why? It could have happened at any time since Brooke first upgraded, and now. She may never know.

Brooke went back to their ship, and recruited Holly Blue to help connect with The Vosa, since Weaver could finish the finishing touches on the cylicone by herself. The head Freemarketeer engineer was still standing just outside the door, desperate to get but one glance at the technological marvel. He actually seemed like a pretty good guy, but he still couldn’t be trusted with this information. To get his mind off of it, Brooke asked for his assistance with the siphoning as well. They also decided to upgrade the Vosa’s main drives for present-day speed standards.

Along with the fuel, Brooke decided to provide Vespiary with some other resources; emergency food rations, medical supplies, a few replacement parts, and a chamber printer, which was so-called because it could print a three-dimensional structure the size of a small room. Treacy, and the rest of his cohorts continued to complain about all this charity, but there was nothing they could do about it. They didn’t see the irony either, instead believing their leaving the system was their payment for all the Sharice was giving them. If they were just better people, though, they wouldn’t need any of this.

They remained at Vespiary for one night, just so that Weaver was sure everything was ready to go. There was no real rush anyway. Come morning, Brooke woke up from hibernation mode, and asked Sharice where she was. Sharice was still wearing her android body, but maintained a constant link with the ship proper. Unlike on the old television series, Andromeda, which served as the inspiration for this dynamic, Sharice remained as a singular consciousness, capable of slipping back and forth between substrates, like neighboring rooms in a hallway. At the moment, she was apparently in the recreation room. When Brooke walked in, she found that the Maramon, Relehir was with her, as was Étude. The latter came on board after the last minute. The Sharice had already taken off from Luna Station when Étude teleported in. As per usual, she didn’t say a word, but Ecrin got the impression she was there upon the suggestion of someone who could see the future.

They were nearing the completion of their four-dimensional variant of three-player quantum Go. This version of the game takes into account, not only quantum entanglement, and the three spatial dimensions, but also a temporal dimension. Players are free to move their pieces forwards and backwards in time, according to a complex matrix of rules and logical algorithms that are practically impossible to predict. Players must agree upon a window of gameplay to prevent prehistorical hijacking, in this case, the three of them decided the game should last throughout the entire year it would take to get to Vespiary. As the most complicated game ever invented, it was first conceived by an unknown pair from a long-since collapsed alternate timeline, reportedly sometime in the 26th century. And so the truth comes out that Weaver only pretended to not be quite done with the cylicone, just to let these people finish their game. She had apparently grown fond of Étude, who would have lost if the game had ended early. Now, she was only one move away from winning, that was, unless Relehir pulled a miracle out of his ass.

“We’re about to leave,” Brooke said impatiently. “If you’re staying here, it’s time you get off the ship.”

“We’re almost done, mom,” Sharice said.

“No, it’s okay,” Relehir promised. “If I need to go, I will.”

“You can’t quit just because you’re in the winning position,” Sharice whined.

“Oh? I’m winning?” Relehir playacted. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Make your final move, then it’s my turn.”

Relehir had a smug look as he placed his last piece. “Yuomi hack. Boom, go!” He did pull out a miracle. No matter what Étude did, she wouldn’t be able to win. It would be over, except that it was Sharice with the secret weapon.”

“It’s time, mother,” Sharice petitioned her.

“Gladly,” Brooke said. “As long as it gets us off the ice.”

She stepped forward, and removed a game piece from her ear. Then she reached up to the top of the holographic board, and placed the extra piece in a particular spot. Half of Relehir’s pieces disappeared, along with several of Étude’s.

“Holy crap!” Relehir cried. He stopped and studied the board, which was wildly different than it was just seconds ago. “Ashisuto maneuver. But how did you—” he stopped to study more. “March twenty-one, you jumped forward a month, and came out lighter. I was wondering what you had done with the second piece that you left with.”

Étude signed the word for legal, in the form of a question.

“Yes, it was a legal move,” Relehir said, outstretching his hand to shake Brooke’s “And a brilliant one, at that. Congratulations, Sharice.” He looked over at the clock on the wall. “Just in time, my ride’s arrived.”

“Hargesen to Captain Prieto,” the Freemarketeer cargomaster called on comms.

“Go ahead,” Sharice said into her comms.

“You better come down here. A, uhh...ship, I guess, just appeared out of nowhere.  They say they’re looking for a tent, reportedly for sex.”

“A sex tent? I’m on my way,” Sharice replied.

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Microstory 1000: Alma

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The death of high school senior, Viola Woods has a dying town with a bloated population reeling like something out of an edgy fifth network comic book adaptation that’s not about superheroes. As an unbiased new student, I feel it is my duty to get to the bottom of this mystery, and there was no better place to start than by interviewing every single one of her classmates. From the gay jock harboring a dark secret, to the random acquaintance who has no apparent connection to any of this, everyone is a suspect. Out of everybody in the whole town, only the authorities are confident that the true killer was unmasked, and put to justice. Blast City might have been founded by a gold mining company, but the history of its residents is anything but glittering. This is not the first unsolved major crime committed within its borders, like something out of an anachronistic prequel to an iconic serial killer thriller with incestuous undertones. Over the next four and a half months, I will be releasing abridged interview transcripts with each of Viola’s classmates. Some reveal other secrets, while others offer no more than red herrings. I shall come to no conclusion, instead leaving that up to you to decide for yourself. Did they get the right guy; or girl, as it were? Or is the real murderer still out there somewhere?

Microstory 999: The Unknown...

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As a budding amateur futurologist, it’s my job to understand what’s going to happen in the future. For many people in the field, they’re responsible for predicting market trends before they even happen, or understanding when the current trends will end. They know how technology is advancing, and how that will impact their employer’s business. Or maybe they’re a journalist who has to know what stories to tell, and when, in order to remain topical. Political pundits have to recognize the consequences or our leader’s decisions. I am not quite like these people. I look more at the big picture so I can tell reasonably believable stories. Just watch the Back to the Future franchise, where they grossly overestimated how advanced we would be in the future. Now of course that’s okay, no one is imprisoning Robert Zemeckis because he didn’t employ a futurologist, who might have warned him we won’t have flying cars in 2015. Part of it is that I want my stories to be as prescient as possible, but I also just really like reading predictions, and making some myself. At the same time, what’s really fascinating about the future, and many things in the present, is the mysterious unknown. The majority of the sea is unexplored, as is almost all of outer space. We still don’t know if the quantum universe is ruled by subatomic particles, or just vibrating strings. And how exactly the hell does the brain even do literally anything it does? How little we know about life, the universe, and everything is a frightening thought. Count yourself lucky if you don’t suffer from OCD, because I regularly find myself questioning my very existence, and feeling a profoundly deep fear for the possibility that I may die, and what comes after is—not even darkness—but completely nothing. Yet there is comfort in our ignorance; the same kind religious people get by believing in some higher power that’s responsible for all the good and bad. There’s a relief in the hope that things can get better, because there’s no real proof that it won’t. How difficult would it be to persist if we knew with certainty that King Dumpster would be on his throne of lies for six more years, instead of only two? The Unknown can be bad, which is why we fear the darkness, and why many people are bigoted and intolerant. If you don’t know what it is, it could be dangerous. People get hurt all the time because they stick their noses where they don’t belong. Think noodling, but in a grander capacity. One of my favorite proverbs comes from one of my least favorite countries, and was famously repeated by one of my least favorite presidents, Ronald Reagan. Doveryai, no proveryai is Russian for trust, but verify. Exercise caution, but don’t be afraid to explore, and try new things. Things could end poorly, like they did for Viola Woods in my next series, but it could also be the greatest thing ever.

Microstory 998: Turnover

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This is a really morbid one, which is why I put it near the end, in case I came up with something more positive. Believe it or not, that actually did happen with another topic. The previous installment was a last-minute replacement for something I ended up deciding I didn’t think you would like, and even then, I altered the subject matter while in the middle of writing it. For as much as I talk about how curing death can help the world, I’m not going to pretend it alone can solve all our problems, or that there isn’t potential for it to cause more. We can all surmise that immortality, without accompanied by other advancements, can lead to terrible consequences. If we don’t solve this world’s distribution problems, and move out to other worlds, we won’t be able to provide for the dramatic increase in population. Already we’re seeing the cost of better global health. Try driving from one side of town to the other without passing at least three separate postretirement facilities, of varying calibre, for varying needs. But there’s another reason death has been of benefit to us. In some of my stories, I have a race of “aliens” called Maramon. Their creator was a naive child who wasn’t interested in his creations ever dying, so he subconsciously made them immortal. What he couldn’t have realized was that meant the worst of the worst individuals were free to keep going through the centuries, unchecked. Can you imagine how awful life would be if Caligula, Jeffrey Dahmer, or Adolf Hitler were still alive? How much hope could we have if we knew that Donald Trump and Jared Fogle would always be around? We would never get through this. Turnover lets us rid ourselves of our history’s sickening mistakes, and gives rise to new ideas. Progress doesn’t happen just because a new generation wants things to change, but also because they’re eventually free from the burden of the old fogies who are incapable of that change. As wicked as it sounds, death is sometimes the only way. Maybe I’m wrong, and all those kids at the tiki torch rally who are young enough to become immortal in the future can eventually learn to become better people. Maybe if humans never died, we would all be totally fine, and living in the paradise our still-living ancestors built for us. But I doubt it.

Microstory 997: Flexibility

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When I was a child, I had certain routines that I would perform in order to get things done. I would have  a routine for getting up in the morning, and getting ready for school. I would have a routine for learning in school, one for coming home, and one for getting ready for bed. As I grew up, my routines changed, because they had to. I had different classes, with teachers who had different expectations, and I had a different schedule. I didn’t much think about how much my life was changing over the years, because it happened gradually. My family moved around a lot, and even when we were in the same house, the school district kept rezoning, so I was still moving all over the place. Thank God for all of that, because I would be an absolute mess without this training. One thing that autistic people like me often struggle with is change. We don’t like someone introducing a complication in our routines, because we haven’t had proper time to prepare for them. They must be tested, for efficiency and comfort. You can’t just spring something new on us and expect things to go smoothly. Routines are designed to be effortless, so they can alleviate stress, and allow us to focus on what’s important. If you force us to rethink something, that stress goes back up, because now we’re focusing energy on something we thought was fine as is. I’m not saying other people don’t have stress, but we have more, because the smallest thing can feel incredibly overwhelming. Though I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, I’m ultimately glad I wasn’t diagnosed until I was an adult, because if my family had fully understood what I was going through, they would have worked hard at protecting me. They would have walked on eggshells, and tailored my environment, and that is not what I really needed, even if I would have thought so back then. It was difficult for them, dealing with me, having to figure out how to communicate with me so that I wouldn’t freak out about something they perceived to be trivial. It was difficult for me too, as it took years to learn things most people puzzle out on their own, and flexibility was never my strong suit. It was simple to me; when you say we’re leaving for church at 9:30, then I will be ready at 9:30; not 9:25. As hard as it was for us, though, I think it made us stronger people. At least, I know that’s what it did for me.

One of my biggest challenges was acknowledging the fact that no one ever says what they mean. Ever. It’s always attached to a lie, or an embellishment, or an ambiguity, or imprecision. Sometimes it’s on purpose, and sometimes it’s accidental, but nothing in this world is at face value, except for playing cards. I think I’ve brought this up, but I’m still coming across articles about very successful people who are trying to reveal the secret to their success. Do this before bed, and sleep this long, and sing your to-do list underwater, and write yourself a million dollar check, then burn it in effigy. Setting aside the fact that no secret trick can work for everybody, or even that many other people, the problem with the premise is that it’s all about meticulousness. You have to measure out your life perfectly, and do it in the same way across some arbitrary temporal pattern. So many people tell me I should write in the same place, at the same time, under the same conditions, every single day, like I’m on birth control, or something. That’s the exact opposite of what you should do. The real trick is flexibility. The freedom to accept where you are, and what you have at the moment, is so much less stressful than requiring your environment to be just so. I still have loads of stress, but I would have so much more if I didn’t train myself quite deliberately to tolerate and appreciate the inconveniences; both big and small. People spend a lot of money on making their lives easier, which is fine, to an extent. Likewise, to an extent, it’s a lot cheaper to simply adapt yourself to the complexity. When it stops bothering you that the barista keeps giving you two sugars, instead of one, you can move on with your life, and just drink a sweeter coffee in the morning. I am not the poster child for flexibility, but I am a huge proponent of it, because I know the problems that rigidity causes, better than most. Change is good. Complications are good. The biggest favor you can do for yourself is to take every problem as an opportunity to learn rather than trying to find a workaround that really just adds more work anyway.

Microstory 996: Secular Volunteerism

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First of all, I’m not saying that religious volunteerism doesn’t do any good in the world, or that it doesn’t get results, but it’s not the way we should be doing it. There are thousands of charitable organizations in the world, and the list of ones with no religious affiliation can fit on a single, easy-to-read, webpage. I seriously have that list up right now, and even though there are some great outfits on it, it’s pathetically small. Why is secular charity better than the religious kind? Well, it’s all about intention and motivation. The reason anyone volunteers for the Salvation Army, for instance, is because they want to get to heaven. The bible teaches them that if they’re good people, God will bring them into the fold, so they can serve in the kingdom for eternity. I used this quote in my Stepwisdom series, but it’s just too good, so I have to say it again. The credited writer for eighth episode of the 2012 show Alcatraz is Robert Hull, so it is he who I credit for coming up with the line, “spirituality is for those seeking understanding. Religion is for those seeking reward.” What the bible doesn’t really get into—and I use this book as an example, because I’m more familiar with it—is altruism. It is not altruistic to help someone with the expectation that you’ll gain cosmic points for it. Just because you’re not expecting the people you’re helping to be the ones to return the favor, doesn’t mean you’re not doing it for the wrong reasons. It doesn’t matter who’s meant to reward you, you’re still doing it for the purpose of that reward. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make you a good person. To be clear, religion isn’t the only cause of egoistic charity. Those thousand dollar plates still ultimately cost hundreds of dollars, because of all the lavish decorations, in the expensive venue. You should donate money because you believe in a given cause, and want to support its efforts, and that should be enough for you. If you just want to be treated to a lovely dinner of elf food, while you schmooze with rich folk, then you’re probably also rich enough to just go out and do that. You don’t have to pretend you actually care about homeless people, or the whales, or whatever the event purports to be bolstering. In fact, I hate to break it to you, but no one believes you anyway. Always assume you’re being more transparent than you think. So I do understand that religion isn’t the only problem our society has when it comes to volunteerism and charity, but it is the most obvious and prominent. It’s great that you want to contribute, and it’s hard to argue against you, even if you’re just doing it for the recognition. I certainly can’t tell you that we would be better off if you didn’t do anything. I just want you to question, and be cognizant of, your true reasons.

The Advancement of Leona Matic: May 19, 2161

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The group said their goodbyes to Khuweka, and also to Avidan, who only Vitalie really knew. Then they went back to The Prototype, and plotted a course for their home universe. It took them about another year to travel the distance across the bulkverse. Leona stepped out and looked at the magical watch Mario Matic had given her. It was showing that present day was May 19, 2161.

Vitalie was just stepping out as well when she heard Leona announce where they were. She scrambled back inside, colliding with Kallias in her attempt.

He hugged her, and ushered her behind him before getting into a defensive position. “What? What is it?”

Leona looked around too, but didn’t see anything. They were just standing on the outskirts of some arcology somewhere. Nothing else was around.

“I’m not going out there,” Vitalie said. “May 19, 2161. I know that date. This is the day that hundreds of innocent people are forcibly pulled up to Durus as it gets this close to crashing into Earth.”

“She’s right,” Leona realized. “I skipped over it because of my pattern, but this is the Deathspring.”

“What’s going on up there?” Vito questioned. He teleported out of the machine, and landed next to Leona. “You said something about death.”

“The Deathspring,” Leona explained. “It’s what caused a second influx of unwilling people to move to Durus.”

“Oh yeah, I remember. What time is it, though? It doesn’t happen until 10:01 PM UTC.”

Kivi came to the entrance. “We’re in Kansas City.”

Leona looked back at her watch. “If Vito’s right about when the Deathspring occurs—”

“Which I am.”

Leona continued, “...then we only have a few hours to find the Escher Knob, and get the hell out of this time period.”

“I am not leaving this thing,” Vitalie said firmly. “I don’t know if it’ll protect me, but I know what happened to my fathers will happen to me if I get stuck out there.”

“That’s okay,” Leona assured her. “Someone has to stay and look after Dubravka. In fact, no one has to go but me.”

“I’m going with you,” Dubra argued.

“No, you’re not.”

“You’re my mother, and you’re meant to take care of me.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing. Vitalie is right, this is the safest place in the world right now.”

“I’m older than I look, by two years!” Dubra cried.

“You most certainly are,” but I made your mom a promise, and I’m keeping it. We have exposed you to far too much danger already, and that stops now.”

“You can’t hold me here!” Dubra kept yelling.

“I can,” Vito said to her, then turned to Leona. “Vitalie and I will keep her safe.”

“Thank you,” Leona said to him. She pulled her sleeve back to consult her Compass of Disturbance tattoo. “I’m heading this direction.”

“I’ll go with you,” Kallias said.

“I would love the company.” She knelt down and addressed little Dubra. “I need you to stay here and be good. Do what Uncle Vito and Aunt Vitalie tell you.”

Dubra was still upset, but couldn’t fight anymore. “Fine.”

“Where did Kivi go?” Kallias asked.

“Who?”

“Kivi,” Kallias repeated.

“She’s not here. She’s never been here. How do you even know Kivi? Wait, was Kivi just here?”

“Uhh, yeah. She’s been with you this whole time.” Kallias was confused.

Leona looked around. “Kivi? Kivi! Keep shakin’ that bush!” She waited for a moment in the silence. “Hm, she’s gone now.” She looked back down at her tattoo, and started following it forwards.

“That’s it?” Kallias questioned. “She randomly disappears, and you just shrug it off? That’s cold.”

“Nobody shrugged,” Leona replied. “Disappearing is her thing. She spends more of her time gone than she does in existence. Nobody freaks out anymore when I disappear for an entire year. She’ll be back later.”

“When?”

Now Leona shrugged. “No way of knowing.”

They walked for about a kilometer before it started feeling like this was going to take too long, so they stashed their bags under a bush, and went into a light jog, picking up the pace over time. The tattoo wasn’t telling them how far it was, but it never navigated the Prototype too far away, teleportation possibilities included. As a cop, Kallias was well in shape for this, but Leona had more motivation, so she fought through the pain. They would need to call Vito for help soon, though, since the Deathspring was nearly upon them.

Finally they came across the only structure in the whole wilderness. It was fairly small, so Leona was able to walk the perimeter, which confirmed for her that this was their destination. Once she had come back around, Kallias knocked on the door. A man poked his head out and scowled at them. “You will not have them!” Then he violently slammed the door shut behind him.

“Rude,” Leona said.

“Hold my purse,” Kallias said jokingly. He took the HG Goggles out of his back pocket, and held them against his face, which was disgusting, since they had just spent years embedded in the face of a rotting corpse. He leaned down, and stared at the door handle for a few minutes, then he leaned back, and kicked the door in with his foot.

“How did you know the goggles could do that?” Leona asked him.

“When you want something to do something, you just have to try it. If it hadn’t worked, I still would have kicked in the door; it just would have hurt more.”

“Who are you?” the man inside the building spat. “What do you want from me?” He was clutching a lockbox tightly to his chest. “These are mine!”

“We only want one thing,” Leona told him.

He hissed. The man actually hissed, like some kind of mall worker.

Kallias added, “it’s about yea big, goes on a door. Opens any door.”

He hissed louder. “Don’t come any closer!”

Leona tried to step forwards, but the man held up his hand, and she was suddenly back outside of the building, looking at herself stepping forwards, and disappearing. She also saw Kallias fall back to his cop instincts, and immediately shoot at the man. But he was sent back out of the building as well, where he promptly fell to his back, and clutched his shoulder. Blood was leaking out between his fingers. Leona dove down to him. “You shot him!” she screamed back at the man.

“He shot himself!” the man hissed.

“You teleported him, and the bullet, so it’s your fault!” Leona volleyed.

“Semantics.” He opened the box as he stepped closer to the exit. “If you want me to shoot you, I will. It’s programmed to banish you outside of a several kilometer radius.”

“Is that a teleporter gun?” Leona asked him.

“You can’t have it! This is going to protect me from the Deathspring!”

“Unlikely,” Kallias said as he was struggling to get to his feet. “I’m fine,” he said to Leona. “If those are temporal objects, they are putting you in more danger. They’re going to be drawn to Durus. We have to get them out of here before that happens. You can come with us.”

Tremors started shaking the building. “It’s happening!” He scrambled to get the teleporter gun back into his box, while pulling out a rock. “Luckily, I have the Stone of Gravity.”

“I’ve never heard of that,” Leona said.

“Well, now you have.” He pointed to her body. “You can tell Durus all about it.”

She looked down at herself. She was waving and swirling, like the air above a flame. She looked back at the man, who was doing the same thing. It would seem the Stone of Gravity wasn’t working.

“What?” the man shouted. “No! He lied to me! He lied!” He started flying up towards a massive bulge in the sky, as did Leona.

She was several meters above the Earth when Kallias jumped, and caught up to her. “Save yourself!” she ordered him.

“Shut up!” Blood was still dropping out of his shoulder wound, but Kallias ignored it and took his gun back out of its holster. He straddled Leona by the stomach to free both his hands, so he could aim right above them. He fired the gun.

Leona looked up to see the lockbox fall right down to them. She lifted her own arms, and caught it. Then she rested it on her chest so she could get it open and take out the teleporter gun. She quickly programmed it to take them back down to the surface, and shot Kallias point blank.

“Mom!” Leona could hear Dubravka’s young voice scream to her.

Leona found her bearings, and looked over to the Prototype, which was only a dozen meters away. “No! Don’t!”

Dubra was already running out of the prototype, Vitalie at her tail. They were both pulled into the air. Kallias sprang into action, grabbing the teleporter gun from Leona’s hands, and aiming it towards the girls. It was clear that his wound was making it harder than normal. He fired the gun, and hit Vitalie. She appeared back at the ground. He tried to shoot Dubra as well, but nothing come out.

“It needs to charge!” Leona yelled, but it didn’t matter. It would take at least a few minutes to charge, and could take hours, depending on how efficient this particular model was.

Vito ran out out of the Prototype. “I’ll get her!” but he couldn’t do it either. Something fell right on top of his head, and started tearing at his face. It was the same kind of monster that attacked Leona and Serif when they returned to the timeline months from now. Kallias, who was now barely standing up, walked forward and empty his gun into the creature, which was more than enough to kill it. The monster was strong enough to cause quite a bit of damage to Vito. Though he was able to heal himself using the Serif-nanites that swam throughout his body, by the time he had recovered enough to try and get Dubra back, it was too late. Durus and Earth’s near-miss was over, and the former was on its way out of the solar system forever.

The group sat on the ground against the Prototype in a stupor. “I don’t know why we tried so hard to save her,” Leona said. “This was all predestined. If she didn’t go to Durus now, she couldn’t be one of the passengers on The Warren years from now, which means she couldn’t save my life. So much happened because of today. We couldn’t change it, and if we had, what would our world look like? What would theirs?”

Vito crawled over and breathed on Kallias’ shoulder to heal it. “That doesn’t mean you could have just smiled and let her go. The real question is, what would the world look like if we never tried to fight against impossible odds to protect our children?”

Hogarth suddenly appeared from one of her explosions, crashing hard into the wall of the Prototype, and falling to the ground next to Vitalie. She caught her breath, and took the Rothko Torch out of her bag. “You better keep this instead.” She tossed it over to Leona, then something in the lockbox caught her eye. “Oo, you have a home stone.”

“What?” Kallias asked. He lifted the rock from the hissing man’s box. “This thing? The guy said it was a Stone of Gravity.”

“What the hell is a Stone of Gravity? No, supposedly that will take you back to when and where you were before you started traveling through time, like a one-time reset button, except it doesn’t undo everything you changed. So, that’s not the right analogy. I do think it reverses aging, though...” She started getting lost in her own thoughts.

“You should take it,” Leona said to him.

Kallias checked for everyone else’s approval with glances.

“Don’t look at me,” Vitalie said. “I just barely escaped going back to where I was born. I belong here.”

The others smiled at him kindly. He set the box down on the ground, and placed the goggles inside. “Here’s the Escher Knob, and the HG Goggles, and some other things that should be interesting.”

They said their goodbyes to yet another compatriot, then watched him squeeze the stone, and go back home.

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