Furor: The Required Skills For It (Part IV)

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Before Ace could leave with Slipstream, he needed to regroup with his family, and obtain Serkan’s knowledge and memories of what was going to happen in the next coming weeks. Once he had that, Serkan and Paige went back to their lives for the time being, while Ace went on a background mission about their new enemy. Slipstream wasn’t able to keep the files from The Archivist, but she was able to remember quite a bit about him. Rothko Ladhiffe was born on the second of February, 1984. He was born after the cutoff date, but he showed such promise as a young child that they let him into kindergarten early. He would go on to skip fifth grade, and be one to two years younger than most of his peers.

In the summer of 2000, just before the beginning of the school year, the incoming senior class got together for a lock-in at the high school. It was an unauthorized event, but a decades-long tradition that adults allowed to continue, as long as no one got hurt. Rothko was living on the edge of a breaking point. For the last ten years, the city of Springfield, Kansas was gradually disappearing. Entire blocks would spontaneously disappear, leaving all survivors completely oblivious to its former existence. Rothko’s family was suddenly living on the edge of town, where they were once somewhere in the middle of it. Rothko, however, happened to have strayed beyond the borders on the night of that block’s disappearance. Several of his friends in the senior class had done the same. Together, they worked to get back home, and after awhile, they succeeded. Rothko, however, would not return for another twenty-one years.

He became stranded on a rogue planet that would come to be called Durus, with a boy named Escher, and a girl named Savitri. They had fallen into their own portals on two separate occasions before, and were the only survivors until much later, when the last of the now-small town of Springfield was swallowed up. No one—not even the Archivist himself—seems to know what happened to Savitri, and there were some plot holes when it came to Escher’s fate, but Rothko was eventually saved. He was sent back to Earth via a machine of Hogarth Pudeyonavic’s design. It would be another few years before she was able to rebuild that machine, and return to Earth herself, where she fought Jesimula Utkin by Paige’s side.

It was a culture shock for Rothko, who was now basically alone on a second world he knew nothing about. Smartphones, cars that could drive themselves, and the corporate automation tax were just too much for him to bear. Beaver Haven Penitentiary keeps criminal records in a location far removed from the Archivist, who was responsible for everything but. Slipstream was unable to garner information about what Rothko did that led him to a prison cell, but it wasn’t likely something good. The prison was specially designed to handle people with time powers. These weren’t the worst of the worst, or the ones with the potential to do most damage. They were just the ones who risked exposing the underworld to the Earth at large. This can be as simple as teleporting a loudmouth human—with a lot of followers on social media, and a permanent body cam—out of a deadly fire, to predicting global events that are destined to come true on national television. An individual who spent the majority of their life in a hellworld, fighting literal monsters, probably wasn’t capable of making considerate and careful decisions. Rothko Ladhiffe was placed in custody at some point in 2022, and managed to escape just last week. He was the only one in this reality to ever do so. It was unclear what he was so upset about when it came to the City Frenzy, but it was becoming clear that whatever was going to cause the commotion Serkan recalled from the near-future, he had something to do with it.

“What’s his power then?” Ace asked.

“He can manipulate local reality,” Slipstream answered unelaboratively. They were headed towards The Forger’s den. They weren’t going there to see him, but a man named The Courier, who operated in the same building, and was the only person they knew who traveled regularly to the prison. They needed answers, and that was the best place to get them.

“What exactly does local mean?”

“Well, he has to be able to see something in order to change it. He can’t just create a world where all trees are blue, or buildings hang from the clouds.”

“That’s a nice little limitation. I can’t imagine dealing with someone who could do those things.”

“Oh, that person exists too. She’s one of the other Springfield Nine.”

“Is she evil?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why is Kolby not coming with us to this place?”

“He’s doing this thing with his alternate self. I was asked to not ask too many questions about it.”

“Oh, okay.”

A man opened the door when they knocked on it. “Do you have a thousand dollars?” he immediately asked of them.

“What? We’re just here to speak with the Courier.”

“The last guy who came in without an appointment gave me a thousand dollars.”

“We don’t have that kind of money,” Slipstream said.

“Yeah, we do,” Ace said. He took a credit card out of his wallet. “The Forger has an ATM, doesn’t he?”

“You can give me the cash on your way out,” the freelance security guard said. He stepped to the side, and presented the dark rounded hallway to them. “Forger on the left, Courier on the right,” he called to them. “Don’t forget the money!”

They opened the door on the right to find another man sorting mail into slots, while a woman was sitting in the corner, in one of those giant covered chairs that hip startups have in their exposed-brick headquarters, which allow employees to take naps.

Ace tried to get into the Courier’s periphery. “Excuse me?”

“Speak softly,” he responded. Only then could they see that he had severe burns on part of his face. “She’s sleeping.”

“I didn’t know there were two of you,” Slipstream noted.

“Susan and I work in different departments. She’s The Switcher.”

“What does she switch?”

The Courier snuck past the sleeping pod, and into another room. It was full of stuff. They saw jenga blocks, and dark cloak hanging on a hook with a knife, and a penny sitting on a table that looked like it was there very much on purpose. “When you’re dealing with time travelers, you can’t exactly call each other on cell phones.” He picked up a device from the table. “Though, this is a Doctor Hammer pager.”

“Don’t touch that,” Susan mumbled from the other room.

“Sorry, love,” he said back. “Anyway, some choosers have special ways of contacting each other, usually with something that is symbolically relevant to their specialty. Sometimes you have to dig deep to find the connection. He was about to lift the penny, but thought better of it. For instance, there’s a woman with the ability to project her consciousness across space. If you want her to come, you find an ordinary penny, and recite be the penny to it. If you watched a certain science fiction adaptation on a certain science fiction network, you’ll know why that makes sense, but not if you didn’t.”

Slipstream nodded. “I watched it.”

“Susan is sleeping because she has one of the strongest powers ever. She can see the river of time itself, and she uses it to manage communications for all of us. If you’re trying to reach across time, she’s the one who decides precisely when your contact gets your message. Sometimes she maintains an order, and sometimes she lets people meet back up with each other in the wrong order. We are no one to question her reasoning.”

“Would she be able to contact someone at Beaver Haven for us?” Ace asked him. “Or could you?”

“It’s a prison,” the Courier said, “which means they’re not generally allowed packages. I can propel regular mail through time without actually traveling to it, so I’ve never had a reason to go there myself. You’ll have to wait until Susan wakes up. If she has a contact there, and wants to help, she will.”

“I’m up,” Susan said, somehow both reluctantly and ardently.

“We’re sorry to wake you,” Slipstream said to her as she was coming into the room.

“It’s okay,” Susan said. “As Ennis was saying, it’s exhausting work, so I need to sleep about fourteen hours a day.”

“We absolutely must build that extension,” Ennis lamented, “so you have an entire sleeping room to yourself.”

“We would need an extra dimension for that,” Susan said, “because the other tenants in this building aren’t scheduled to leave for another nine years and four months.”

Ace thought about their predicament. “You help us get to Beaver Haven, and I’ll get those tenants out ahead of schedule.”

“You don’t understand. The timeline says—”

“No, I get it, but the future can be changed, right? If anyone can do that, it’s me.”

Slipstream backed him up with her facial expression.

“That would be lovely. Let’s assume you’re bound to succeed in that endeavor, why do you want to get to the prison in the first place?”

“We would like to interview someone there who knew a man named Rothko Ladhiffe.”

The name seemed to make both Susan and Ennis really uncomfortable.”

“He and the rest of the Springfield Nine are out of pretty much everyone’s jurisdiction,” Ennis explained. “The fact that Beaver Haven arrested him in the first place speaks volumes about their desperation to stop him, and his escape is probably their greatest shame.”

“So, what are you saying?” Slipstream pressed.

“They’re not going to want to talk to you,” Susan said. “They’re going to pretend it never happened. If word gets out that their facility is not inescapable, they’ll start having a lot more people on their hands who want to test the limits of time traveler exposure.”

“We can reason with them,” Ace said confidently. “Because we can get him back.”

Susan sighed deeply. “Well, you were instrumental in bringing in Keanu ‘Ōpūnui, and she was vital to bringing in Jesimula Utkin, so I guess you are indeed our best shot.”

“Wait, if they’re also Springfield Nine, how did the prison justify locking them up too?” Ace asked. “I didn’t realized they had gone there.”

“No, me neither,” Slipstream said.

Susan smirked. “You’re loopholes. Choosing ones are not allowed to go after outliers, like the Nine.” She faced Slipstream. “But you’re human.” She faced Ace. “And you’re a salmon, your husband is a chosen one, and your daughter is spawn. We also aren’t allowed to go after any of you, but it’s totally fine if you go after each other.”

“You’re saying that we’re the only ones who can do this?” Ace gathered.

“Essentially. I mean, you’re not the only ones, but you’re some of the few living in this time period who have the required skills for it.”

“And they’re not going to get in trouble for involving me?” Slipstream questioned. “They exposed time travel to a human.”

“No, Jesimula exposed time travel to a human. Paige and the others just garnered your help with stopping her. They’re perfectly innocent, and even if they weren’t, Beaver Haven doesn’t arrest everyone who gives up their secret. It has to put us all at risk, and you’re not a liability because you’re a badass mercenary who knows how to keep a secret.”

“So, you’ll help us?” Ace wanted to confirm.

Susan smiled again as she was walking over to a corner. Ennis helped her move some boxes out of the way, revealing a barred window without the actual window. She lifted a metal mug from the sill, and started swiping it back and forth along the bars, making a huge racket. “Guards!” she shouted.

A security guard stepped in from a door on the other side of the room. “Yes, Madam Glines?”

Susan gestured towards Ace and Slipstream. “These two will be asking some questions at your institution. Give them anything they desire. Anything,” she reiterated.

“Yes, sir,” he said with the utmost respect for her.

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Microstory 1030: Herman

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You can call me H.R. Mann. It’s my pseudonym, but I like when people call me that in real life. I write mostly horror stories, but I’ve been known to dabble in some fantasy, kind of like the reverse of George R.R. Martin. I hate other people reading my stuff. In my eyes, my work is never really done. I wrote an entire book five years ago, but I keep just looking back at it, and changing things. A lot of my stories are connected, so I’m kind of working on them all at the same time, and I worry that if I try to publish something, it will prevent me from making a creative decision that would contradict some irreversible decision. It was Viola who suggested I try to write a standalone novel. It would take place in its own universe, and be completely separate from all my other stories. Then I could try to publish that, and maybe get my name out there. Well, I spent the entirety of our junior year working on it, and gave it to her to look over. I had no expectations of her, but I did expect that she would read it over, and give me a few notes. I didn’t think she would pull out the red pen, and edit the whole thing for me. I don’t mean she just proofread it. She edited for content, suggesting thematic and semantic changes that made the overall book far better. There were some parallels, and narrative symmetries that she saw that I would have never thought of on my own. I implemented nearly all of her suggestions, which helped make me think of a few extra, but I wasn’t able to give her the next draft before she died. Not that it would have been her responsibility to look over it yet again. I’m really just saying this to illustrate how important a person she was to everyone in our class, the school, and the world. She would do just about anything for just about anyone. She was an angel. We’ll miss you, Viola Woods.

Microstory 1029: Eugene

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I don’t know that there’s much I can tell you Alfred didn’t already say. I would have joined magic club without Viola’s coaxing. I’m just sort of always in my own little world, so I didn’t notice that he had started it when we were freshmen. To be completely honest, I was not particularly into magic before that, but I have an adventurous spirit, and I like to try new things. Those new things are mostly limited to dining at interesting restaurants that are thirty minutes away in Adamantingham. That’s the largest city in Mineral County, in case you don’t know from being the new kid. Not that you’re a kid, sorry. Anyway. I grew up pretty sheltered in this small town where nothing ever happens. This is kind of the worst place for me, since I was never exposed to all the crazy things happening in larger cities, which is what I crave. I’m getting out as soon as I can, and not because I hate Blast City as it is, but it’s just not enough alone. I need the Eiffel Tower, and the Egyptian Pyramids, and the ocean. I’ve been alive for eighteen years, and have never seen the ocean, or even a single mountain. For the time being, I’ve been okay, though. There are some hidden gems around here, and Viola was an expert at finding them. We literally never spoke over the course of our high school careers. She just kept leaving notes in my locker, with suggestions for adventures. The last thing she did for me before she died was sending me on a scavenger hunt all over Blast City. I never got a chance to thank her for that. I sent her a text message a few days after her death, just as a symbolic gesture, and to kind of unburden myself of the minor guilt. I didn’t realize the police would be monitoring her phone, so they came and questioned me about it. I guess that was actually the last adventure she sent me on.

Microstory 1028: Alfred

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Nobody calls me by my name around here, but different people will have different nicknames. Al, Alfie, Allie, Fred, Freddie, and Batman are some of the more common variations. I don’t really like any of them. My parents named me Alfred, full stop, and that’s what I prefer. Viola was the only one who respected that, which was this small but courteous thing she probably didn’t think twice about, but now it seems significant, because of her death. I’m a pretty big nerd, but I’m not that much into comics, which is why I’m not all that fond of that last nickname I mentioned. It doesn’t even make sense. Alfred wasn’t the superhero, he was the butler, and didn’t have his own codename. Or maybe he did, but that’s not something I would know. What makes me a nerd is that I’m into magic. I feel like back in the day, liking magic wasn’t a nerdy thing. It seemed more accessible back then. Maybe people were easier to trick, because humanity as a whole was less educated? I don’t know. Now it’s just so universally hated that I don’t understand how professional magicians even exist, and are able to sell tickets to their shows. In junior high, I was the president of the magic club, and I wanted to continue that when I got here, but there was no such club at the time. I guess it’s more acceptable to be into it when you’re younger. And so, of course, I decided to start the club myself, thinking that if I built it, they would come. You have to have at least five people sign up for any new club, and prove that they’re coming to regular meetings, in order for the school to sign off on it. I bet you can see where this story is going. Not a single person showed up. I held introductory meetings every single day after school for nearly a week, until one person finally came. Viola. She was not into magic, but she felt bad that no one came, so she just made an appearance to boost my numbers. Like I said, that still wasn’t enough, so she also somehow convinced three other people to come over the course of the next few days; the last one just by the deadline. So she managed to find, not just random people she could coerce into making me feel better, but also ones who could actually learn to like magic. She even kept coming to meetings with us the rest of the year, never missing, and occasionally participating. The following year, two freshmen wanted to join right away, which allowed Viola to quit, and our numbers have increased ever since. I’m proud to say that Blast City Senior High’s Magic Club boasts one of the highest memberships of the school. We have to meet in the cafeteria now to have enough space for everyone. Viola did this for me—for us—and I will always be grateful for that.

Microstory 1027: Howard

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Have you ever noticed that we write addresses backwards? If I want to send a letter to my friend at 123 Main Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, I make it harder for the mail service to deliver by writing it out like that. We should start with the general, and become more specific from there. The first person at the post office only cares about which country it’s going to. They see Spain, they throw it in the Spain bin. They see Canada, they throw it in the Canada bin. Once it gets to Canada, the next person only cares about which Province it goes to, so put that on the next line. Next person after that only cares about the city, and the next which post office, which means it’s only the last one who cares about which specific building, or unit, it’s meant for. I had this dream that we would completely revamp our delivery system, to make it make more sense. Now, I don’t really know how it works. Maybe I was always wrong, and no worker has any problem hunting for the line that matters most to them. Or maybe the entire address is relevant to everyone who sees it. I just thought there was a better way, but Viola helped me get over it. It’s an insane idea to change something that’s been so ingrained in our way of life for centuries, but she never treated me poorly for it. She gently explained to me that the problem with the way we write addresses has less to do with the order, and more to do with the spacing. The system would work just as well top to bottom, if only we separated the geographical regions more clearly. Anyway, this was really just one carefully explained example of these ideas I have in my head that normal people don’t think about. I obsess over small inconveniences and inefficiencies that most people gloss right over. There are better ways we could be doing things, but in the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t matter much. Viola taught me that, but didn’t let on she was doing it. She taught me that life is not so much pointless as it is too complicated. A lot of good has come from humanity’s advances over the last few centuries, but some have made things worse. Why do we have health insurance? It’s an unnecessary step towards healthcare. We came up with these ways of treating maladies and other medical conditions, and then we muddied it up with a bunch of erroneous programs that do nothing but cause mess. I was getting so bogged down with trying to make this life more efficient, that my life itself was inefficient. Viola helped me shed what she called the extra from my life. Minimalism is key. That’s not to say I’m going to go live in a tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere, and drink milk straight from the udder. But I’m also not going to play by all of society’s rules. My life is going to be simple, and fulfilling, and I owe that to Viola’s ageless wisdom.

Microstory 1026: Willis

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Yo, my name is Willis, I talk a mile a minute, and I got a lot to do, so let’s make this quick. I’m on my way to the pharmacy, ‘cuz my father, he is sick. I didn’t really know the girl; we were never tight, but I saw her by the pond one day; she was in a fight. She was talkin’ all crazy, to herself, no one was there. I looked for something in her ear, but it was totally bare. I think she thought a ghost was by her side; or something invisible. Whatever it was, it had lied, and she felt that was impermissible. It was something about religion—myself, I don’t have faith. For Viola, it seemed like hers was the same case. Someone close to her was in a cult, or maybe something like it. She needed help to save her friend. As for the cult, she thought she’d fight it. She caught me peeping on her convo, and stopped right in her tracks. She didn’t seem upset with me, but told me I needed to relax. She did not deny she had had a religious argument, but didn’t want me thinking that she was just intolerant. I assured her that her business was her own, and I’m only telling you right now, since she’s gone off to the unknown. Well, we shook each other’s hand, and parted ways, but I could tell she was still worried. I later found her...stands [sic], by the locker bays, and now she was real hurried. I tried to ask after her friend, but she brushed off any issue. I thought that she would start crying, so I checked my bag for any tissue. By the time I looked back up, she was nowhere to be found. I tried to keep looking for her, but she got lost in the the high school crowd. I went on vacation the next day, so that was the last time I saw her face. By the time I returned, Viola was gone, and out of this lively race.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 9, 2216

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Mateo and Leona learned from Serif that it had been centuries since the universe of Ansutah was created by the fourth pocket dimension on the interstellar ship, The Warren. For her, however, it had only been a few years. It was after The Crossover was invented, utilized to explore the bulkverse, and ultimately destroyed. It was before, however, the time that Leona went to Ansutah with all those people looking to get rid of their time powers. Since that had not yet happened from Serif’s viewpoint, there was no way for her to stay with them permanently. At some point, she would have to return to the monster world, and continue her own life with her daughter. There was just no way to save her. She knew this, but she was determined to save all the other humans there, by whatever means necessary. Apparently, they were the descendants of those who sought to be free from their powers, and had been transported back to the early days of the universe.

Unfortunately, the brilliant Leona quickly did the math on their plans to evacuate the billions of people in Ansutah. It would take a couple decades to get them all out through the little ceiling entrance magically attached to grave chamber four on The Ocasio-Cortez. And that was assuming those people literally ran up the rickety wooden ladder, and out of the vessel constantly, so they could funnel hundreds in a minute, which was probably also impossible. It would take many decades at the most realistic projections, and even then, there was nowhere for them to go. Bungula was not presently hospitable to life, and wouldn’t be for the next few centuries, assuming its colonizers decide to terraform the planet at all. The domes were not designed to fit quite that many people.

“What made you think this was going to work?” Leona asked. She was feeling overwhelmed by the situation, and was unable to just be happy to see Serif again.

“The scientist built the bridge, and apparently didn’t consider the logistics of the endeavor,” Serif defended. “I didn’t ask for this, but we have to find a way to escape. Ever since the Crossover was destroyed, and its remnants scattered throughout the bulkverse, the Maramon have grown more and more restless. As the human population grew, an entire continent was needed to be set aside for them. Religious superstitions have kept the Maramon from exploring the area, but like any sufficiently advanced civilization, those superstitions are waning. They want to see what’s over here, and if they discover an entire planet’s worth of humans have been hoarding resources, they’re not going to be happy. This will start a war.

“Why did he build a bridge, instead of another machine?” Leona questioned. “That could completely eliminate the time sensitivity. Every time the Crossover leaves a universe, it can spend as much time as it wants away, and always return one second after it left.”

“I understand that,” Serif said. “Sadly, he still felt he needed to ultimately honor his promise to his colleagues. He killed himself as soon as the bridge was finished. He didn’t even test it out first. There might be a way to move the exit somewhere else, but I would have no clue how to do that. Time itself wants the refugees to come through here. Something thinks this is our best option.”

“Time is not a conscious individual,” Leona argued. “The bridge exited out here, because this is where we are. It was seeking to bring you back to us.”

“If time isn’t conscious, how could it be seeking anything?”

“You know what I mean, like magnets. The three of us are entangled on a quantum level.”

Serif wasn’t buying it entirely, but it didn’t matter. Leona was right. There was no way to get everyone to safety using their only current option. The bridge was all but useless to them, and that wasn’t going to change, even when they landed on Bungula next year. They needed a creative solution.

Mateo, Leona, and Serif returned to the timeline a year later, and found the Ansutah situation to be no different than before. To keep Ramses safe, they decided they needed to lock the opening to grave chamber four. There was a lot of diversity in a group of eleven billion, which meant there would be plenty of irrational people who might try to escape through the bridge, even one that led to a ship designed for six to twelve people.

The upside was that there were two new members of their group. Ramses was able to extract Brooke and Sharice Prieto from the Insulator of Life, and upload their consciousnesses to new android substrates. And bonus, one of them seemed to have an idea of what to do with the Ansutahan humans.

“What about Gatewood?” Sharice suggested.

“What is Gatewood?” Mateo asked her.

“Orbiting Barnard’s Star, Gatewood is a collection of planetesimals, dwarf planets, asteroids, and comets about six and a half light years from here. Since there aren’t any planets, it wasn’t a good candidate for colonization. Still, people had dreams of reaching nearly all of the closest stars, and so a project was started in order to capitalize on the plethora of materials that can be found there. They would live in centrifugal cylinders instead.”

“What is that?” Mateo asked, feeling as much the idiot as ever. Serif didn’t seem to recognize the term either, though.

Sharice went on, “they’re basically giant space stations that rotate so fast, they simulate gravity on the inner surface. You might have seen the movie Interstellar. The people at the end lived in one.”

“Oh.”

“Well, the project was scrapped, but there was some sort of communication breakdown. All evidence suggests the automated factories in the system continued to build these cylinders on their own, waiting for colony ships that will never come.”

“Is there enough room for eleven billion people?” Leona asked.

“Theoretically. The basic designs are based on 21st century personal space requirements. People need less room now, and there’s no reason you couldn’t expand later, as needed.”

“What about Project Stargate?” Brooke asked.

“And what is that?” Mateo asked yet again.

“Like Sharice said,” Brooke began, “Gatewood is full of stuff. Most of it didn’t coalesce into larger celestial bodies, but this stuff is very useful for building things. It’s called Gatewood, because it’s also the home of the largest vonearthan endeavor in the entire history of our species.”

“It’s a rumor,” Sharice argued.

“I think I can guess, based on the name,” Leona said, “but just so I’m sure, what is this rumor?”

Sharice decided to answer. “The vonearthans are presently concerned with the colonization of the stellar neighborhood. We have settlements—or planned settlements—on Proxima Doma, here on Bungula, Varkas Reflex, Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, and Glisnia, with a few other places in the early exploratory stages. Project Stargate would expand those plans by hundreds of billions. Every single star in the whole galaxy would be reached, over the course of the next tens of thousands of years. It’s an absurd idea, and it’s not real. It couldn’t be.”

“But if it is real, then Gatewood would be the perfect staging ground for it,” Brooke reminded her.

“It would be, if it were real, but it’s not.”

“Would they be building the galaxy vessels right now? If it were real, that is,” Leona added.

Sharice shook her head. “Maybe, maybe not. The people who came up with it projected a 2250 departure date, only because they wanted to travel as close to the speed of light as possible, and that’s when futurists think we’ll get there. They hadn’t figured out how long it would take to construct the damn thing. The smallest independent unit was called a seed plate. It’s about a meter wide, and three centimeters thick, and would have been responsible for installing quantum messengers, and other structures, in seven to twenty-eight solar systems. Look, Gatewood is perfect for the refugees. The cylinders are waiting for them there, no one else wants them, and there aren’t any goddamn Stargate automators swallowing up resources.”

“Well, we have to come up with some solution in the next few years,” Serif noted. “My people are on the brink of war with the Maramon. Our universe is not big enough for all of us. Something’s gotta give. I’m willing to risk Gatewood, if Bungula is not a viable option.”

“Even if you got everyone there,” Brooke complained, “it will still take forever to evacuate them. The bridge is still attached to this wee little bunk thing in the floor.”

“Grave chamber,” Ramses corrected.

“Morbid.”

“That’s an easy solution too,” Sharice said. “We just need the Muster Beacon.”

“The lighter that I used to bring Mateo back from nonexistence?” Leona questioned. She had gotten it from another universe, and though it was a powerful temporal object, there was no way it was strong enough to take on eleven billion people.”

Sharice smirked. “Every invention you’ve ever come across has had a more advanced counterpart, right? The Jayde Spyglass is an easier-to-use version of the Cosmic Sextant. The Escher Card is the sequel to the Escher Knob. Even the Crossover started out as a tiny Prototype. The Muster Lighter too has another version. The Beacon is much larger, and has a much greater capacity.”

“How much greater are we talking?” Leona asked.

“A handful of rounds could pull everyone from the other universe, into Gatewood. It’ll take longer to transfer it from cylinder to cylinder than it will to summon everyone from Ansutah.”

“Just what the hell are we talking about?” Serif was feeling left out.

“Special fire,” Leona said to her. “It somehow apports massive numbers of people, from wherever they are, to a single location. It’s like a bug zapper for people, that doesn’t kill the people.”

“And we have this object?” Serif tried to clarify.

“That’s another thing,” Brooke said. “If it does indeed exist, which we don’t know for sure, we don’t know where it is.”

“The Weaver told me where it was,” Sharice said, but she didn’t act particularly excited about it.

“Oh, yeah? Where?”

Sharice pretended to clear her throat. “Dardius.”

“That’s millions of light years away,” Brooke shouted. “If we could travel those distances, we could just take the refugees to Dardius itself.”

“There’s not enough room there either,” Sharice fought back.

“Still in another galaxy, young lady.”

“You promised not to call me that anymore.”

“There’s a way to get to Dardius,” Ramses jumped in.

“Is that right?” Leona asked him in disbelief.

Ramses took a deep breath. Then he looked between Mateo, and one of the other bunks. “There’s a reason Étude wanted the ship to be designed like this, and why she wanted us to call these grave chambers.”

“Why?” Serif had no clue.

Ramses looked back to Mateo. “Accent on the grave part.”

Mateo didn’t know what he was driving at either.

Ramses rolled his eyes. Then he reached down and slid back one of the doors in the floor. “Before...it was a closed grave,” he condescended. “Now...it’s an open grave.”

Oh. But would that work?

No.

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Furor: A Difference Between Action and Inaction (Part III)

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Five minutes to midnight, Ace ran up to find Serkan in his hospital room. He lifted him out his bed, and let him hang off his shoulders. He watched his watch intently, as the seconds ticked by. Kolby Morse, a.k.a. the future K-Boy was expected within the minute, but if he was even one moment late, then that was his loss. Ace’s primary concern was the father of his child, and he couldn’t let anything stand in the way of that. As soon as the clock struck 0:01, he activated the dimension-hopping jacket. This time felt different. There was a more violent tug as they transported back to the real world. He found himself face down on the floor of his own home. Serkan was there too, as was Kolby. At first, he was pissed off. Kolby must have screwed it up for them. The jacket was never designed to take more than two people at once. But then Paige’s babysitter, Mireille started helping him up, as Paige did the same for Serkan. Apparently it had worked, and Kolby’s transportation of them all the way back here had had something to do with it.

“Father Serkan,” Paige exclaimed. “You’re finally back!”

“Yes, dear,” Serkan said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “It is so good to see you again. You too, Ace.”

“It must have been so lonely,” Paige guessed.

“It’s only been a month for him,” Ace explained. “Time moves differently in there.”

“Oh, so you’ve not been gone that long, have you?” Paige asked. “It’s been almost a month on this side.”

Serkan was having a lot of trouble staying standing. Mireille was doing everything she could to keep him upright. “He needs medicine,” Ace pointed out.

“I can go,” Serkan said. “You have a list, or prescriptions?”

“Yes, the nurse gave me this packet,” Ace said, pulling it out of his back pocket.

Kolby took it from him, and ran off.

Paige and Mireille were shocked, but not that shocked. “So...he’s fast.”

“I’ll explain later. We have to get your father up to bed.”

“Yeah, I need to nap too,” Paige agreed. “We can catch up in a few hours.”

Ace didn’t realize how little sleep he had gotten recently, so the three of them didn’t wake until well into the next day. They had a long conversation over breakfast, comparing war stories. They had gone through so much apart, and needed to reconnect. Quiche was good at supporting bonding experiences. Serkan evidently lost both of his legs from the explosion, but they were basically regrown using the miracle of science. That kind of technology was not quite up to par with federally regulated standards, but the hospital in the fake version of Kansas City didn’t have to worry about government agents breaking down their doors. Only time would tell if the limbs would cause Serkan problems. He could have them for years, and only then begin to experience rejection symptoms.

Paige had had her own fill of adventure since Ace left. Several new people fell into her life, and started wreaking havoc on it, in some cases on purpose. A woman named Jesimula Utkin commissioned her and a small group of other women, including Slipstream, to stop a version of herself from the past from destroying the world. Of course, since she had done something that could destroy the world in the first place, she wasn’t an entirely good person. She fulfilled her promise, but also forced Paige into becoming a carrier for a disease that did end up taking one life, which was a horror Paige would have to recall over the course of her entire life. Throughout the ordeal, she learned that she had the power to travel through time using photographic images. This was implied to have been caused by her having been holding a camera when her now-fathers accidentally brought her into the future the first time. Paige was still getting used to her new reality, and the other two would need time for that as well. They would have a year until things started to get crazy again.

July of 2026 was quickly approaching, which meant that Serkan was soon to catch up with his own timeline. The three of them weren’t sure what they were meant to do with that. When he first fell back in time, it appeared to be somewhat of an accident. Or if someone had done it according to a master plan, that plan was lost of its game pieces. They had spent this year getting to know each other again. Paige was going to school regularly, Serkan was working, and Ace was gambling. They hadn’t completely avoided the topic of time travel, but it also hadn’t consumed their lives. Now it was about to fold back in on them, whether they wanted it to, or not. There were a few decisions they would need to make.

“So, if there’s one thing I learned last April,” Paige began, “it’s that the timeline can be changed. Perhaps you are unaware of any alterations you made when you came back here, but you might have made them. Everything you describe about the weather, and everything else that’s meant to happen during the Frenzy race this year may have all been negated by your prior actions.”

“Or we made it worse,” Ace said.

“Or we are what ultimately causes it,” Serkan added.

“How?”

“Well, our first indication that something was wrong was the unpredictable weather events, as Paige just mentioned, right?” Serkan put forth.

“Right.”

Serkan continued, “then in 2024, we saw first hand how...out of hand weather can get when we’re dealing with people with powers. Keanu ‘Ōpūnui created a winter hellscape in the summer, which is why we started investigating his organization in the first place. We didn’t exactly put him in jail, which means he could still have plans for this city. We may have inspired him to those plans by working against him two years ago.”

“It could even be more complicated than that,” Paige said. She was sixteen years old at this point, and behaving a lot more like an adult than before. “The weather man does his thing by borrowing the conditions of other times and places. No one has answered what happens to those other times and places. Maybe he’s not using his powers at all this summer, but at some other time, and he’s borrowing it from July of 2026, which impacts the now. We have to find him again to know for sure.”

“No, we can’t do that,” Ace argued. “Serkan just said it, our actions could be causing the future events. Interfering with Keanu could be what causes our later problems.”

“What do you suggest we do?” Paige asked him. “Nothing?”

“Maybe.”

“If we’re living in a time loop, it doesn’t matter what we do, or what we don’t. Everything we try will be the quote-unquote right choice, because it all comes down to fate.”

“That’s true,” Serkan said, “but I still think that I came back for a reason. It may not be my reason, and it may not be a good one, but there is a difference between action, and inaction. The weather is the least of our worries during the race. Something was happening downtown while I was running around with Crispin. I never found out what.”

“Okay,” Paige said, but stopped to think. “We don’t know everything that happens in the future, but we know some things. What we need to do is consolidate all of that information. Amongst the three of us, there must be no secrets. Serkan, you’re going to have to draw us a map of the race. Not literally, I mean...we need every detail possible. From the color of the underwear that Future!Ace lets you borrow, to the model of the car you and Krakken steal to chase after that guy who stole the rabbit dog. Having all that information in one place might give us clues about what else happens that you don’t know about.”

Serkan was nodding. “Are we sure that’s a good idea? Maybe I should have told you nothing about it. What was that thing about boots your new friend told you?”

Paige understood. “Bootstrap paradox, yes. Knowing the future calls into question the source of originality. If Future!You tells you how to build a time machine, then after you build it, you go back in time and tell Past!You how to do it, who exactly first came up with the design for a time machine? That’s the thing about paradoxes, though, they’re impossible. If one is about to occur, it simply won’t. The universe won’t be destroyed, the forest won’t turn red, it just won’t work. And isn’t that all that really matters, the consequences? We could be facing our greatest threat since the other Kansas City. Whoever is responsible for the mayhem may already know the future too, because we know these people have friends. We need to arm ourselves with as much knowledge as possible.”

Serkan sighed and nodded again. “Okay, I’ll type up everything I know, and send it to both of you.”

The doorbell rang.

“You get on that,” Paige said, acting like their leader. “I’ll answer the door.”

“I’ll answer it,” Ace challenged. “Don’t you have summer reading to get back to?”

“Finished all of them,” Paige claimed. “I also went back in time and spoke personally with the authors.”

In most households, that would have been a clear joke, but this was something Paige could have actually done. “Just to be clear...” Ace started to ask.

“I’m kidding,” she said. “J.D. Salinger refused to see some random sixteen year old girl.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Serkan said as he was leaving.

Ace walked over and opened the door to find Slipstream on the other side. “Slip, what are you doing here?”

“I need your help.”

“Help with what?”

“Once you meet someone with time powers, you can’t really escape that world. You know what I’m talking about.”

This was worrying. He stepped onto the porch, and closed the door behind him. “I do, but...what are you trying to say?”

“I became obsessed with it. I started looking into Jesimula Utkin, the one who terrorized me and your daughter. She did tell you about that, yeah?”

“She did, yes.”

“When you can change the timeline, like Jesi and her friends can, it’s hard for people to really know who you are. That little cabal has taken great pains to keep themselves hidden. Fortunately, I know people too now. Kolby and I—”

“Wait, you’re working with Kolby?”

“Didn’t you send him to us?”

“I might have accidentally let it slip that he has a place in this world, and that I know something about his future.”

“Well yeah, we’ve been working together, away from the other tracers. They all still think he can’t speak. We met someone called The Archivist. He has the records for every person who can manipulate time, across ever alternate reality. He wasn’t really allowed to give us any information, but he’s a confused drunk, so we were able to convince him.”

“Where are you going with this, Slippy?”

“I have a list; a list of Jesi, and Keanu, and all of their friends. They all come from the same town. This town no longer exists, because it was ripped out of time.”

“I know,” Ace said. Kallias Bran was a friend of theirs, who explained to them everything about the city that never was. “Springfield, Kansas.”

“These people aren’t supposed to have powers. They weren’t born with them like you guys.”

“Okay...”

“They all got them from the same source. They’re called the Springfield Nine, and one of the most powerful of them just broke out of this prison called Beaver Haven?”

“Yeah, Keanu mentioned that place. Who broke out?”

“His name is Rothko Ladhiffe, and he’s apparently taken issue with the City Frenzy event. I need that intuition of yours.”

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