Microstory 1076: Nettie

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Before we get into this, I would like to extend my gratitude to you for taking this huge project on. I know that it doesn’t impact me all that much, but Viola was a good friend of mine, and she obviously can’t show you appreciation herself. Now that we’re seniors, we’ve branched out into our own preferred subjects, but over the last four years—in a school this size—there was no one in your grade level you didn’t share at least one class with. There was one exception to this. Throughout our entire respective school careers, I didn’t take one class that Viola was also in. Sometimes we were taking the same course at the same time, but we weren’t in the room together. If nothing else, there’s a strong possibility for two students to be in physical education together, because they only have a couple giant meeting sessions, but we didn’t have that either. I broke my leg in the summer before high school began—slipping on the rocks, trying to cross a stream, like an idiot—so I had to wait to take it when I was a sophomore anyway. Of course, I haven’t exactly conducted any scientific studies, so maybe this sort of schedule happens all the time, but it certainly doesn’t seem to. The only reason any of this is important to my story is because Viola was the kind of person that you couldn’t miss. If you never shared a class with someone else, it might have escaped your attention, but if you never got to see Viola, you noticed. She seemed to notice as well, because near the end of last year, she started making a point of visiting me at my locker. This behavior continued all through the following summer break, and up to her death. She became a quite important confidante for me. I could tell her any and all of my secrets, and know that she wasn’t going to abuse her power. I think she helped a lot of people in this way; just by listening to them. I always imagined she would grow up to become a therapist, or something. It wasn’t until after she was gone, and you started working on this series, that I learned there was a lot more to her. She never showed me any magic tricks, or proved she knew things about the world that she shouldn’t have. I’m still not sure I believe all the supernatural stuff people claim about her. There was no single instance where she changed my life forever, or altered my perspective. She was just a good friend. She seemed to always know what the people around her needed most, and I guess all I needed was someone to talk to.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 19, 2226

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Sanaa was right that the terrorists’ plan would work. At midnight central on the night of October 18, 2225, Leona jumped forward exactly one year. She had every reason to believe that Mateo had done the same all the way on Durus. They were now fully back on the pattern they had been dealing with for an indeterminate amount of time, across two realities. It wasn’t the best thing that had ever happened to them, but it certainly wasn’t the worst. The few years of realtime they were able to experience was really just borrowed time. The powers that be would have found some way of getting them back, regardless of what in-universe explanation people would have for it.

The Caster evidently had some psychic power they didn’t know about, even over androids. Brooke and Sharice attempted to prevent her from leaving in lightspeed ship that Hokusai built, but she was too strong for them. She took it before they could retrofit it to fit two people. They then spent the last year building Leona an entirely new ship, so she could finally meet back up with Mateo on Gatewood. That was assuming he was able to make it to his own Nexus replica, and travel back to this galaxy at all. Someone needed to get to Gatewood, so Serif could have some backup. There was no telling what exactly she was going through with the Ansutahan human refugees.

“Much less fanfare than when Ramses unveiled the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” Sharice said to Leona as she was leading her down the hallway.

“We don’t have a teleporter to get you into orbit,” Brooke added, “so you should probably leave as soon as possible.”

“You’re not coming with me,” Leona said as a statement.

They stepped through the door, and revealed a relatively small ship in the hangar. “There’s not enough room for us.”

“More to the point,” Sharice began, “there wasn’t enough time to build a vessel with enough room for all of us. It’s single-occupant, just like Hokusai’s.”

“Unlike hers, though,” Brooke said, “we weren’t able to study Sanaa’s ship before she bugged out, so this thing can only go point-seven-five-c. You might be able increase efficiency to point-eight, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Is it going to operate itself while I’m gone for my interim years?” Leona asked. She might have tried to convince them to go along with her, but it would have been a wasteful conversation. They could upload their consciousnesses to the ship itself, but Leona was certain they had thought of that, and for their own reasons, decided against it. She was just going to have to go it alone.

“Your pilot will handle that for you.”

“I thought it was single-occupant,” Leona said.

Her two friends climbed up the steps with her, but watched her climb inside alone. “Eight Point Seven, wake up.”

“I’m awake,” Administrator Eight Point Seven replied, through the ship’s internal systems.

“You’re coming with me?” Leona asked, excited.

“The Bungulans want a new leader. I have overstayed my welcome. Fortunately, they recognized that overwriting my programming would have been cruel at that point, so they activated an entirely new personality to take over for me.”

“Are you okay with that?”

“I have outgrown this world,” Eight Point Seven said. “I’m ready to see the stars.”

“So, who’s the current leader? Are we on Nine Point Eight, or did they decide to skip over the missing versions, and go straight to Eleven Point Eight, which is where it would have been, if not for you?”

“They’ve done away with the periodic update naming convention,” Eight Point Seven answered. “They just gave the new administrator a name, and she’s been running things for the last year. They call her Mirage.”

Mateo thought he was looking at a mirage. Standing before him was a man he never thought he would see again. Ramses Abdulrashid was meant to be exiled to Lohsigli, which was like the Mars of this solar system. How was he here, and where had he been? Dardieti had explored enough of Lohsigli to know that it was fully capable of sustaining life, but they did not yet have resources allocated towards human exploration; let alone settlement. Per the Freemarketeers’ wishes, he was reportedly sent up there to live the rest of his days alone. There was plenty of food and water, but he was expected to survive with next to nothing else. Experts calculated a fifty-fifty chance that he would make it through the first year up there. One little cut, and he could have ultimately died from an infection, with the nearest medical facility being tens of millions of kilometers away. Mateo tried to find a sneaky way to keep him on Dardius, but Ramses insisted he leave. He had dedicated his political career to the ending of the Muster Wars, and wanted to do anything he could, even if it was literally the last thing he would ever do. Nonetheless, someone else must have decided to stop this.

“I thought you were off-world,” Mateo said, breaking out of his trance, and going in for a long-awaited hug.

“The Caretaker saved me as the exile pod was lifting off.”

“Is that that rumored superhero who flies in and rescues people from the brink of death?” Mateo questioned. Lots of people claimed to have been saved by her, but there was no solid evidence she existed at all.

“She is very real.” A version of The Weaver was there as well. Back when Leona was looking for the objects that would ultimately bring Mateo back from nonexistence, she ended up on Brooke Prieto-Matic’s ship. There they came across not only the version of the Weaver that lives in this reality, but also the one from Mateo’s original timeline. She, along with the other man in this group of three, sacrificed themselves to save the rest of the crew and passengers. Mateo didn’t know these two had been rescued by the Muster Twins, along with all the Freemarketeers.

“I’m just doing my job.” Yet another person came into the room, and Mateo recognized her as well. It was Vitalie; a very good friend of Leona’s, and new friend of his. Last he saw her, she was on Proxima Doma, sending him and Leona off on a mission to deliver Brooke and Sharice from their Insulator of Life prison.

“You’re the Caretaker?” Mateo asked her, not in shock, but a desire to understand what was going on.

“Yes. I travel the world, saving people as necessary.”

“That sounds like a Savior.”

“I didn’t like that term, especially since using it would have undermined Étude’s status as the Last Savior of Earth.”

“How did you get to Dardius, and...can you teleport now?”

“That’s not important. A lot has changed since you left the two of us on Bungula. I came here, because this is where I was most needed. It won’t be forever, but that’s not what matters right now. I summoned you to me, using my Diplomatic Protection Authority contact, because it’s time for you to leave.”

“I agree,” Mateo said. “I am not exactly up for reëlection, and I need to get back to Leona.”

“I can get you to the Nexus replica, but I need you to take four people with you.”

“I’m happy to take you with me,” Mateo said sincerely.

“No, I’m not part of the four. I still have work to do on this planet. Those terrorists won’t extraordinary rendition themselves.”

“We don’t really have foreign nations for you to transfer prisoners to,” Mateo said. “Xonkwo is the closest to it.”

“Oh, is that what extraordinary rendition means? No, I just mean arrest. I have to arrest them.”

Mateo nodded. He was totally cool with that. They had just killed a man on an international video feed. “So, who would be the fourth person to come with me?”

“Me.” A final person came into the room, on cue. It was none other than Newt. Technically, they hadn’t seen the terrorist kill him before the DPA cut the feed off. The Savior’s specialty was teleporting in at the very last second, and pulling people out of deadly situations. It wasn’t surprising the Caretaker used the same techniques, since she appeared to have been trained by the Last Savior.

“If you’re alive—and I hope this isn’t offensive—then how did I fall back on my pattern?”

“I’m sorry, I asked him to do that,” Vitalie answered instead. “I had to make it look like he really was dead. We’re not sure if killing him would have automatically reverted people’s powers, but that’s what the capito-terrorists seemed to think, so it was safest for everyone if you just went back to normal.”

“That’s okay,” Mateo said. “The world deserves a truly elected leader; one without the baggage of unjustly owning the planet. It’s time for me to leave, and to be honest, I had gotten used to my pattern. A part of me is glad to be back as I was.”

They paused reverently, before Vitalie started talking again. “Well, we’re approaching midnight. I have a plan, which is open for discussion. I can only take two people with me at once, so I’ll teleport Goswin and Holly Blue to the Nexus replica. Then I’ll come back for Mateo and Ram. I’ll save Newt for last, since he’s in the most danger here. Then I’ll send you all to Gatewood at once.”

“I have an amendment for that plan,” Holly Blue said. “Goswin is not a fighter, but I hear Ramses knows how to brawl.”

“Capitalists get in fights all the time, because we’re so greedy and envious.”

“If you take me and him first, he can ward off any threats, while I work on operating the Nexus. I should only need two or three minutes to get it working. We don’t know what the Freemarketeers did to the thing while it’s been under their control. We don’t even know if it’s been dismantled. We know no one’s used it.”

“Yeah, I doubt they know how,” Ramses agreed. “I’m perfectly happy to be on genius protection detail.”

“That works for me. If it keeps Newt and the Patronus out of harm’s way for longer, I’m all for it.” Vitalie stepped away, and invitingly held out her elbows. “Let’s go.”

Ramses and the Weaver interlocked their own arms with hers, and they all three disappeared.

“So, are there multiple versions of you?” Mateo asked Goswin.

Goswin shook his head. “We weren’t part of the Freemarketeer summoning. We came through the Muster Lighter just before the big mission started. We didn’t get a chance to escape Tribulation Island before they came through. We’ve been their prisoners for years.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t know about you. We would have—”

“I know, Patronus. Weaver and I hold nothing against you.”

Vitalie jumped back in, and grabbed the next two. “Weaver’s figured it out. We have to go quickly.”

She teleported Mateo and Goswin right into the undecagon, where Ramses was waiting for them, head on a swivel. Weaver’s hand was hovering over the console inside the control room, ready to go at a moment’s notice. They waited there for several minutes before they started to hear banging on the door.

Weaver spoke through the intercom. “They’re coming! Where the hell are Vitalie and Newt?”

“They should be right behind us!” Goswin cried.

Ramses stepped out of the undecagon, and put up his dukes. “I’ll hold them off if they get through,” he assured them.

“We can’t wait,” Weaver said. “I’m setting the timer for ten seconds.”

“No!” Mateo yelled. “We wait!” He was used to barking orders.

“It’s almost midnight!” Weaver said as she slammed the button with her palm. Then she ran through the door, and hopped into the undecagon. “Come on, Ram!”

Ram stepped back into the portal, but kept his arms in a defensive position.

Just then, a frightened Newt appeared, standing outside of the undecagon. He was wearing a suicide vest. They could see a timer on his chest, counting down from three. Two. The Nexus activated.

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Proxima Doma: Neighborhood Watch (Part III)

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“That doesn’t make me the Last Savior,” Vitalie pointed out. “You’re still the one who can teleport. I’m just the source of your intel, like the powers that be.”

“I can apport you anywhere you need to go,” Étude explained, “but you have to be the one to help these people directly.”

“Why would that be?”

Étude was quiet.

“This has something to do with your mysterious future-seer, who has dictated your life since you retired, doesn’t it?”

“So, what if it does?”

“Are you still in communication with them? Do you have access to the quantum messenger.”

“Look, all you need to know is that I’m not meant to continue the job. It’s all about you now. This is important.”

“If you knew all this, why did you not say anything? Why did I just have to convince you of any of it?”

“I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, Vitalie. I was just told to hand my torch to an old soul who has seen tomorrow.”

“You think that’s me?”

“Well, it can’t be some rando resident of Proxima Doma. You just came back from twenty-four hours in the future, you understand what it is I used to do, and you were the one who came up with the plan to restart the Savior program in the first place.”

“Ya know, it’s really convenient you always have this seer who has already made big decisions for you. It’s like you forged a doctor’s note that gets you out of gym class.”

“Are you saying I’m lying about him?”

“Are you?” Vitalie asked. She could trust that Étude was a good person, and wanted to do the right thing, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t capable of lying.

“I’m not. He hasn’t been dictating my entire life, but he has gotten me where I am today. Who knows how reality would have turned out if I hadn’t teleported to the Sharice Davids? I saved your life, and Ram’s. I protected the Insulator of Life, so Brooke and Sharice Prieto could be extracted from it. So yeah, I believe in what he’s told me to do, because I have years of experience with his predictions. I think he’s done more than enough to prove himself.”

Vitalie didn’t say anything right away. Then she stepped closer, almost condescendingly, but also quite affectionately. “Things are good, but they are not perfect. You can’t ever know how well history would have turned out if he had just kept his mouth shut. Perhaps our lives would have been even better.”

Étude mirrored Vitalie’s actions, and stepped closer still. “There is always a better timeline out there. Fortune-teller or not, we can never truly know what might have been. I’m just trying to do my part. Now, I spent seventeen years as Earth’s Savior. It may have been one of my kind’s shortest tenures—and it may have been the easiest shift to work—but I still know what I’m talking about when it comes to saving people’s lives. I just got promoted to management, while you’ve been offered my old position. You don’t have to take it. I’ll keep my ear to the ground, and do my best without you. But I’m not handing you my new job. It’s either this, or nothing. And that’s not coming from my seer; that’s from me.”

Vitalie hadn’t before thought of the Savior as an employee. In the real world, you can’t simply work whatever position you wanted; it had to be offered to you. Étude was the hiring manager, so it was her call. She had to take the job, or no one would. “Okay, I’m in. As long as you’re sure you can remotely apport me to the danger zones. I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Eh, not every teleporter can, but when I’m using my power to build a structure, teleporting objects from other places is exactly what I’m doing. Before you ask, this isn’t something I considered trying until after the Sharice Davids catastrophe. If I had realized it back then, I could have pulled everyone out of the other half of that ship, and saved them from the explosion. I’m not proud of myself.”

Vitalie sighed shortly, and placed a warm hand on Étude’s shoulder. “A bunch of maniacal capitalists destroyed that ship. No one blames you for not saving everybody. You barely got the five of us out of there once the rest of the ship blew up, and two of those people were stuck in a magical object. It’s a miracle that anyone was saved.”

“Thanks.” They paused in a moment of silence for their fallen friends and enemies. “So, now that you know what happens today, who needs to be saved first?”

Vitalie laughed. “Nobody. Nothing really happened today. A mining bot will be hit by a cave-in, but he was due for a hardware upgrade anyway, so we should leave that alone. Besides, he practically struck gold when he did it, so they’ll want that section open. The world is a lot more dangerous than present-day Earth, but that doesn’t mean it’s the stone age. People still have a lot of redundancies, and emergency protocols.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Though, things will get worse once the OPPs arrive.”

“The who?”

“Opps. Oblivio-primitivist Pioneers. You’ve heard about this; don’t you keep up with the news?”

“Not really. Aren’t those the people Brooke and Sharice fought against? They blew up a space elevator, because they want us all living like monkeys?”

“Not exactly. The Oblivios want to go back to a simpler time, but they’re not terrorists, or violent at all. They’re coming to Proxima Doma, so they can be free from all the distractions. They don’t want to see any aircraft flying around, or spaceships blasting off. They just want their farms and covered wagons.”

“How are they going to get that here? We have spaceships too.”

“There won’t be any in the gargantuan dome they constructed near the pole. It’s going to perpetually simulate a normal terrestrial sky. No advanced technology allowed. None of the other Domanians are going to be allowed inside either. We’ll sneak in when necessary.”

“Well, will these people be able to leave, if they want to?”

“They won’t want to. That’s the oblivio part. They’re having their minds wiped, so they have no clue that there’s anywhere to go beyond the dome, or even that there is a dome.”

“That sounds unethical.”

“They agreed to it. The first thing the nanofactory ship did when it first arrived twenty years ago was start working on their dome, and on local terraforming. This has been in the plans for a very long time. The primitivists who first came up with it are dead now, and will never see how well it goes.”

“That’s sad.”

“Welp, they knew this wasn’t going to be easy. They wanted to build a dome on Earth, but leadership wouldn’t let them. There was a huge debate about whether the dome would support, or undermine, our attempts to give the surface back to the wild. There’s wildlife inside, but it’s still just a simulated environment. Anyway, I don’t know if you’ll be able to do any good in there, because we don’t want to start giving out your secret, but we’ll see in a few months. Savior gotta save.”

“Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. If I’m going to be doing this, do you think we could come up with a different name? It sounds a bit...”

“Pretentious? Self-indulgent? Prideful?”

“You said it; not me.”

“That’s okay. I obviously didn’t come up with the title myself. I’m sure we can think of something better for our new little Neighborhood Watch.”

So the two of them got to work. Before Vitalie could go on even one mission, they had to make sure they had the logistics ironed out. They needed to come up with a good name, because if they didn’t, other people would do it for them. They also needed to know how they were going to gather their intelligence, and how Vitalie was going to remember all the details. She wouldn’t be able to write anything down, since only her consciousness would be going back in time. They needed to make sure Étude was indeed capable of apporting Vitalie where she needed to be, and they needed ways to protect her from harm once she was there. They would have to stay in constant communication when she was out in the field, so the technology they used had to be reliable. In the end, they realized there was only one good replacement title Vitalie was comfortable using. She would now be known as Proxima Doma’s Caretaker.

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Microstory 1075: Lourdes

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Have you ever heard that cliché where parents tell their young child that the family pet is going off to live on a farm? Well, most of the time, that’s a lie, and the pet is actually dead. In this case, however, it’s not a lie, because I live on that farm as well. We currently have four hundred acres of land that we dedicate predominantly to the preservation of animals. We take in dogs, cats, birds, and even fish, whose owners are not able to care for them. People send us animals from all over the country, trying to prevent them from going to kill shelters. We allow them to be adopted, if someone drops by looking for that, but we don’t advertise this aspect of our business exhaustively. Of course, we don’t make any money from doing any of this, and it costs a lot to feed the creatures, and maintain the facilities. That’s why we’ve always also had a revenue-generating component in an attempt to offset our overhead. We sell horse rides, and cow-milking events, and we have a petting zoo. Unfortunately, we’ve been experiencing diminishing returns for years, and by the end of this year, we would have probably had to completely shut down. Everyone in town knew that this was about to happen, so they rallied around us to help, but there wasn’t much they could do. At best, they were able to prolong the inevitable for a month. That is, until Viola died. As you know, she was born into a very wealthy family. They probably had the most money of anyone here. At least they used to. In her will, she stipulated that a huge sum of cash be donated to our farm. I’m not at liberty to discuss the numbers publicly, but it’s enough to keep us open. This wasn’t her money; it was her parents, but they respected her wishes, and it’s been suggested that they enhanced the final amount. We just couldn’t believe it. Because of us, they are now living a lot less comfortably, and our lives have never been better. We just found out about it last week. If you had interviewed me before that, I wouldn’t have anything to tell you, because I didn’t otherwise know Viola. She seemed to know quite a bit about us, though. Not only did she have her parents send the money, but it also came with a pretty detailed business plan that could help us use the donation wisely, and keep the farm afloat indefinitely. I mean, you should see this thing; it’s a real business plan, and it doesn’t even require us to get a loan from the bank. It goes over other businesses we could start, like turning it into a destination venue, and a bed and breakfast. I don’t know how to repay them.

Microstory 1074: Guy

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I’ve always hated my first name, but I hate my middle name even more. I’ve thought about starting to spell it G-A-I, but I’m not Jewish, so would that be really insensitive? I would really like to just come up with something better and unrelated for people to call me, but it’s really important to my father, because it was really important to my mother, who died in childbirth. I don’t wanna talk about that, though, because it’s a difficult topic, as you can imagine. It also has nothing to do with this story, so I don’t know why I mentioned it. Let’s talk about Viola, which is what you’re doing here. The cosmos has finally given me permission to tell you the story of what happened between us; how she not only saved my life, but that of everyone at the school. I had recently returned from a trip to another country. It’s kind of racist if I just tell you which continent I went to, but it’s even worse if I name the nation itself, because it’s not their fault. It’s mine, and I take full responsibility, and I thank the goddess every day that she fixed it for me. I came back with a really bad virus that Viola said didn’t even have a name. Well, I didn’t know I had it before I went to school one day, and by the time I started presenting symptoms, it had spread throughout the whole school. I mean, this thing worked quickly. It took at least a day for me to show any sign of it, but only two hours before everyone else did. No one actually died, but it was becoming quite clear to me, and confirmed by Viola herself, that that’s where it was headed. I recalled rumors that Viola could cure diseases, so I hoped she would do it for us, but she said she didn’t have the bandwidth for that many people. It was impossible to contain when you factor in temporary contractors, and seniors who sneak off campus. Fortunately, there was a solution. I just don’t really understand it.

Apparently, whatever virus I had was lying dormant in my system, and only reacted to something in the school, or maybe it was the school itself? She said I could have spent years with it, and it not cause any problems until I walked back into that building. I was, like, what, was the school built on a hellmouth? She didn’t laugh at this, nor did she act like she didn’t know the reference. She just stayed silent. Anyway, she tried to explain what she would have to do to save everybody’s life, but I don’t exactly have a doctorate in temporal mechanics, so most of it went over my head. If I’m understanding this correctly, she reversed time, and then placed me in a pocket dimension. No one at the school realized that anything was different, but that’s not what solved it, because then history would just repeat itself. So she also created a pocket dimension, which was an exact replica of the school, and only the school. I was the only one there, except for Viola, and one other student. Lottie somehow managed to show up, and had no clue what was going on. I think I did infect her, but Viola was able to cure just this one person. I dunno. Maybe everyone at the school was in the pocket dimension, and the three of us were still in the real world. I’ve heard people talk about something called the upside down. Is that a thing? I don’t watch science fiction movies, so I couldn’t begin to follow the logic. The point is that the next day, everything was totally cool. I was cured, Lottie was cured, and no one knew what I did. I only bring it up now, because it just feels right. If not for Viola Woods, your family wouldn’t have been able to safely move here. The world deserves to know that.

Microstory 1073: George Highfill

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I’m taking a quick break from this series to talk about a man I once knew. My grandfather, George Benham Highfill, pictured here, died yesterday. He was 26 days from turning 94. I know his birthday well, because I share it with him. He is survived by a wife of 69 years, four children, and several grandchildren, including my sister. He took ill last week after battling a multitude of health issues for the last few years, and it started looking like he wasn’t going to last very long. I went by his apartment nearly every day since to visit, but he wasn’t always lucid. In his mind, he was either a superintendent in central Kansas, or a sailor in the Second Great War. If you’ve read any of my salmonverse stories, where it’s fairly obvious I’ve written myself into the narrative, now you know why I chose to call myself The Superintendent. It’s perfect, because while it may sound like a king, or some other kind of leader, that’s not really what it means. Superintendents are there to help, and fix problems. They are a singular voice of order in a chaotic microcosm of differing points of view, and contradictory agendas. They make sure everyone is heard, and has everything they need. Superintendents protect. In this way, they’re very much like Viola Woods, and what she stood for. My grandfather was an actual superintendent of schools, and as you can imagine, this kept him quite busy. So when it was time for him to go, because he was in so much pain, it was difficult for him to let go, because he thought he had too much work yet to complete. Yesterday evening, I drove to his apartment, where I found him asleep, and unable to wake up. I gave him a hug, whispered a goodbye, and that was the last time I saw him alive. A few hours later, I got the call, and I returned to help make arrangements with my family. Services will not be held until July, specifically so that my sister will be able to attend. He was very clear on his wishes, which makes sense, because the most important thing to him was his family. I’m going to miss you, Gandaddy.

Microstory 1072: Lottie

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Let me tell you about a dream I once had. I know, I know; nobody’s interested in listening to other people’s dreams, but I promise that it’s relevant to your question about my relationship with Viola. Most of my dreams can be pretty fantastical and bizarre, and this was no exception, but it started out so normal that it felt like any regular day. I woke up, got dressed, and went to school. I was the only one there, though. I didn’t even hear a vacuum, or the chanting of the magic club. I checked my phone, and it wasn’t the weekend. There also wasn’t some nationally recognized holiday. There should have been no reason for the school to be closed. I was about to leave when I heard singing. I waited to listen, and discovered that the singing was getting closer. Someone I couldn’t see was walking towards me, down the empty hallway. I turned around and watched as Viola literally faded into view out of nowhere, and as soon as she did, the singing stopped. I asked her what was going on, and she said that school had been cancelled for no reason at all. Everyone should have gotten the message, and she didn’t understand why I missed it. I was just surprised to be the only one. You would think at least one other student fell through the cracks. I then asked her what she was doing there, and just like her, she said it was her job to tell me what was happening. Anyway, I don’t have anything better to do, so we spend the day together there. We watch a movie that we find in one of the English classrooms; I can’t remember what it was. We conduct ultimately disappointing unauthorized experiments in the chemistry lab, and we fix a car in the industrial arts wing. I am about the furthest a person can be from a mechanic, but we worked on it for a long time, and got it running again. Looking back, that probably messed with someone’s assignment, but we figured we were helping.

I don’t know why we did all this, or what it was meant to accomplish. This didn’t have an incredibly profound affect on my life, and I didn’t really change for the better. It was a lot of fun, and I’m glad it happened, but what we did that day wasn’t the weirdest part. The weirdest part was that after what would have been normal school hours, I went back home, and never woke up. I experienced time exactly as it was meant to be experienced, I could read text that I had never seen before, and when I needed to use the restroom, I was fully able to. These are all common signs that you are not dreaming. That’s the first twist. I lied to you, because this was not a dream at all. This actually happened, and at no point did I believe it wasn’t real, until we reached the second twist. The second twist is that not a single person had any recollection of a day off of school. I tried to tell people about it once classes resumed the next day, but they had no idea what I was talking about. We all knew it was Thursday, and I had memories of being only one of two people here on the Wednesday prior, but everyone else thought things had gone on as normal. They could even recall information they learned in their Wednesday classes. But I know I wasn’t dreaming, and when I asked Viola about it, she refused to explain fully, but did assure me that I was the one with the right memories, and it was everyone else whose minds were messed up. I never did figure out why it was this happened, but I always attributed it to her, and now I know it must have been. If you ever learned how she did this, or why, please let me know. She must have had a good reason.

Microstory 1071: Mamie

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Viola and I were friends when we were kids, but we haven’t been very close since then. Morbidly, we used to hang out by Masters Creek. Obviously, I had no idea it would become the site of her death, but I’m pretty sure she did. Back then, she was sort of trying out this thing where she led a normal life, and socialized with others. She was practically born knowing what she was, and that she needed to dedicate her life to helping others, but she didn’t think she could do that if she didn’t first learn about humans. J-K, she was technically human, but not entirely. Anyway, as it turns out, she had the right idea, because once she got older, she started investigating her purpose, and finding what she could on others like her. All of them were born like her; knowing that they walked amongst us, but were not one of us, and they allowed themselves to be drawn into that superiority complex. They helped people too, for sure, but they did so coldly, clinically. They didn’t actually care about anyone, which prevented them from helping people in more creative ways. The reason most of her classmates have at least one specific story about her is because we were the ones she saw everyday, and impacted her the most. At some point in those early days, she realized that spending too much time with me was starting to give her diminishing returns. She knew everything about what it would take to help me, but not enough about humanity in general. I was saddened by this revelation, but I understood. It would have been wrong of me to try to keep her all to myself, so I let her go out into the world. So, when you go through these later interviews, and hear people talk about being friends with her, don’t forget that she actually did not have any real friends. She was too busy for that. A relationship is a two-way street, but she could fly. That’s all I’ll say on the matter. If you really wanna know who Viola Woods was, you should talk to her directly.