Microstory 1122: Saxon Parker

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While a select few run around with special temporal powers, the rest of the world develops pretty much unimpeded. Even though faster-than-light travel is clearly possible, the people who possess such capabilities have kept themselves secret. They don’t do this to hoard their power, but because exposing oneself means exposing others, and no one has the right to do that. If they were to come together, and create some kind of council, they might be able to agree upon a time period to reveal themselves to the world, but this has never taken shape. At the turn of the 23rd century, some time-based technology is finally made public, but its use is heavily regulated, application limited, and true nature disguised as advanced quantum research that was already heading in this direction anyway. In the meantime, without being able to reach the nearest planet in a matter of minutes, humanity continued on its upward trajectory of expansion. We traveled to Luna, and Mars, and the moons of the gas giants. We sought out new worlds around neighboring stars, and made plans to explore the farthest reaches of the galaxy. One man who was part of this was named Saxon Parker. Before Thor Thompson could travel with his family to create a permanent presence on Mars, pioneers like Saxon needed to do this first with Earth’s moon. Luna became an important staging ground for Mars missions beginning in 2024, when a permanent outpost was established. This outpost was designed to manufacture vital materials, and process fuel, so that any ship wishing to reach Mars would be able to get far enough. In another reality, and with a different name, Saxon chose a career of military service in the air force, but in the new timeline, he remained a civilian. His education was expedited, and he became an astronaut by the time he turned eighteen. In February of 2026, he went on his first trip to the moon, and he never returned to Earth again, except for a relatively brief mission that the public cannot know about. He helped construct and expand the lunar base, so by the time the first Martian passenger mission took off, they were ready to provide assistance. In the fall of 2028, with Mars at a decent opposition to Earth, Saxon joined one of the crews that were bound for the red planet. He remained here for some time, using his expert knowledge to build even grander habitats, for an even larger settlement. After another few years, he began to move out to other worlds in the solar system, making sure researchers and colonists had everything they needed to survive so far from Earth. Then, when he was 223 years old, he boarded his first interstellar ship, to a nearby system called Gatewood. And from there, the entire Milky Way was at his fingertips.

Microstory 1121: Gérard Fortier

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Gérard Fortier never thought he would one day be working for a covert operations organization, but he also never thought he would join the military. His was a mundane and smooth childhood. He had decent parents, lived in a safe neighborhood, and received a good education. There was nothing in his life he could point to today and claim that it was the moment that led him to signing up for the French armée de terre. He could have gone to university, had he wanted, but he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, so service seemed like the most logical next step. After the end of his five-year contract as an engagé volontaire, he was intending to return home to look for work when he was approached by someone from the DGSE. He wasn’t technically a recruiter, but had heard about Fortier’s excellent record, and thought he would be a perfect fit for the agency. Again, he mostly agreed because he didn’t have any better offers. Two years in, he was approached again, this time by a member of the service canadien du renseignement de sécurité, known in English as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS. This was a major joint task force, composed of multiple competing intelligence agencies, for the purpose of exemplifying the spirit of allied cooperation. Branches were located in several key locations around the world, not only in participating nations, which included Canada, Portugal, Australia, United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as France. This was the perfect place for Gérard to work, for while he loved his country deeply, he always considered the whole world to be his home. He felt that, when allied organizations treated each other as competitors, it was the people who suffered. They wanted him to head up their main French office, but Fortier was disinterested in a leadership position. At the moment, the only other open positions were out-of-country, which he was fine with. He hadn’t grown up wanting to see the world, but it certainly wasn’t an opportunity he would pass up. He ended up flying overseas, and being stationed right in the middle of the U.S., in Kansas. It is here that he met the tight-knit team he would be working with, and would come to think of as his family. His partner was Yadira Cardoso, who came up through the Serviço de Informações Estratégicas de Defesa. It didn’t take him long to realize that she was not like the other agents. She possessed an uncanny ability to anticipate an opponent’s moves, making her a virtually unstoppable fighting machine. They were later transitioned into a three-person partnership, with a man named Camden Voss. Unlike Yadira’s, his abilities could not be explained away. He could jump through time, and there was no denying it. Gérard started to suspect that this entire task force organization was created by, or for, people with supernatural powers, but was surprised to learn it was not. They were recruited for their talents, but the organization itself was designed to foster the six-nation alliance that founded it. Powers were just a bonus, and Gérard’s skills and past experiences were just as valuable to his superiors as anything else.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 28, 2235

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Mateo had to take medication to get to sleep that night. This wasn’t the first time he was being sent into a mission without any clue what he was doing, but it felt different. Mirage’s warning about where to be, and when to be there, wasn’t just giving him ample time to prepare, but also to become anxious about it. When he woke up the next morning, he decided to embellish his kit of essentials with some more specialized equipment. He used the Gatewood’s industrial synthesizer to fabricate graphene bulletproof clothing, nonlethal debilitating weapons, augmented vision glasses, and several other tools. He also got his hands on a Gatewood communications device, so he could contact help in the event he needed it. Goswin was the only person he told where he was going. Goswin strongly implied that he would have a security force on standby, should Mateo need it. When the time came, he took a shuttle to cylinder two, the automatic train to row 56, arcology 24, and the elevator to floor 83. Then he walked towards unit A-11 of spoke six. But then he found he wasn’t alone.

“Did you follow me here?” Mateo asked, looking around feverishly, worried about any threat.

“I was told to,” Cassidy replied.

“Who told you that?”

“Mirage.”

“She told you to accompany me on my mission? That seems unlikely.”

“No, she told me to stay close, that you were my only shot of surviving here.”

“I can’t protect you, Cassidy. I’m just a guy.”

“You’re not just a guy. People have said you’re a Vin Diesel-level action hero.”

“I’m an above average driver. That’s about as close as I get to Vin Diesel-level anything.”

“Well, Mirage said...” She didn’t have much intention to finish her sentence.

Mateo’s watch beeped. He turned his head quickly to eye the door he was meant to go through. It remained closed. He turned back to Cassidy. “Go back to the AOC.”

“There won’t be a shuttle for another hour.”

“Son of a bitch. Then just go! Anywhere else.”

They heard a sound down the hallway. The door was opening, and a man was stepping through. “Ah-ha!” he exclaimed. “You’ve brought her right to me. Now I won’t have to track her down.”

“Shit.” The man obviously didn’t have good intentions. “Run!” he ordered Cassidy.

She ran off.

“What did I just say?” the man questioned as he was walking towards Mateo.

Mateo dropped his bag, and made sure his Batmanesque utility belt was secure. “My brother taught me a thing or two about fighting, so come at me, bro!” That sounded neither like Mateo, nor Darko, but it felt like the right thing to say at the time. He decided to not give this stranger the chance to attack first. He ran straight for him, and they started grappling. The fight between them looked cool in his head, but probably appeared petty and graceless from the outside.

The elevator doors right next to them opened up. It was Cassidy. She immediately ran out, and knocked the man against the wall. Then she grabbed his shirt by the shoulders, and swung him into the elevator himself, where he fell to the floor.

“Holy crap!” Mateo cried. “How did you do that?”

“The bouncers at the first club where I worked were ineffective. I had to learn how to take care of myself. Mirage, emergency evac, protocol seven; authorization code Castaway-Vociferous-Laundry-nine-nine-seven.”

The man in the elevator couldn’t get all the way up, but he could take a teleporter gun out of its holster. He pointed it at Cassidy just before the doors closed, so Mateo had to jump in front of it.

He suddenly found himself in the elevator with him. It was falling much faster than they normally moved. The two of them started grappling again, but stopped once they realized how long they had been falling. They should have reached the bottom by now.

“Mirage, status report!”

Mirage’s voice came on the speakers, but it was just a canned response. This wasn’t the actual Mirage, who was a self-aware artificial intelligence with agency. “We are currently on a course for orbit around Barnard’s Star b-twelve.”

“What is that?” the man asked.

“It’s the largest coalesced celestial body in this system, after the planet’s destruction. Cassidy must have sent you out here to take you off the board. Why are you trying to kill her?”

“I’m not trying to kill her. Sure, she may have to die, but the goal is not to kill her. We need her.”

“You need her for what.”

“When I say we, I mean all of us, including you. The white monsters are a threat to the very survival of this universe, and her blood is the key to stopping them.”

“Wait, back up. Start at the beginning. Who are you?”

“Who I am, specifically, is unimportant, but until rescue arrives, I suppose it can’t hurt to explain why I’m here; more to the point, why she’s here.”

“I’m listening.” Mateo had activated his beacon, but was expecting Cassidy to reach out to the others for help.

“Cassidy Long was born on Dardius not too long ago.”

“She was? How?”

“Do you wanna hear this, or just ask questions?”

“Okay, go ahead.”

The man restarted his story, “Cassidy Long was born to Étude Einarsson, and Newt Clemens on Dardius. The planet was designed as a sanctuary, mostly for humans, but she was not safe there, so her father sent them away. They went through the Nexus replica, and ended up on Earth in 1997. What he didn’t realize is that we would never hurt a child. Time travel can make things really urgent and hectic, but if you use it right, it can grant patience. So we waited until she was old enough to be recruited for a mission. She was all set to take a trip with her friends to Springfield, Kansas. Her mother didn’t want her anywhere near that town, but Cassidy was rebellious, and wanted to go anyway. Sadly, though, Étude died, and Cassidy didn’t want to go anymore. Fine, she missed the Deathfall, but we still had another shot. If we could get her to the Deathspring in 2161, we would be all right. Of course, that didn’t go well either. We had her protected in a cabin, ready for her to run into a woman with the ability to skip forward in time.”

“You mean Dubravka?”

“Yes.”

“That’s my daughter.”

“Yeah, we knew that. Annoyingly, the Maverick intervened, and we lost again.”

“What are you talking about? Not that I wanted you to do this, but why didn’t you just find some other time traveler to take her?”

“We didn’t want her to be able to travel back and forth. We needed her on Durus, so she could later end up in Ansutah.”

“Why? Why go through all this trouble?”

“She can absorb people’s powers. If we could figure out how she works, we can replicate that, and build an army to defeat the Maramon.”

“A supersoldier program? This is all about a cliché B-movie premise?”

“These things are nearly impossible to kill, Mateo. We need an edge.”

“Yet she would die from this.”

“The procedure could kill her, yes; a noble sacrifice.”

“Nothing is noble about this. You kidnapped her from her hotel room—”

“We didn’t do that,” the man contended.

“Then who did?”

“We have no idea. Our best guess is she met a client she didn’t know had time powers. She absorbed them, and jumped all the way here. It’s taken us forever just to figure out where she was, and even longer to figure out how to get here.”

“You keep saying us, and we. Who else is here?”

The man didn’t respond.

“Who else is here?” Mateo demanded.

He still kept his mouth shut.

Goddammit. He took out his comms. “Goswin. Goswin! Do you have eyes on Cassidy. Where is she?”

“We couldn’t find her,” Goswin replied. “There’s...there’s blood, though. And broken glass.”

“How much blood?”

“Not too much. We think she’s still alive. I have my best people on it. I would have updated you, but you activated the radio silence beacon.”

“I don’t care what the attacker hears now. I’ll be the last face he sees before I throw him into the hock permanently.”

“I also have people on their way to you, but you should know, someone else is approaching in an evac pod. They’re way ahead of us.”

Just then, as if on cue, the metal from the elevator pod clanked and vibrated. The doors opened, revealing Cassidy yet again on the other side. She was in her own elevator pod, holding a bandage on her hand. “Could you help me close this up?” she asked.

“You’re alive!” Mateo hopped over, and hugged her tightly, then pulled back, because this was still awkward, and because she needed help.

“Enjoy the ride,” she said to the man. “Mirage, close the doors, and separate.”

After the pods separated from each other, Cassidy directed theirs to head back for Cylinder Two. The other would be reached by Goswin’s security team before too long, and the man would be dealt with accordingly.

“What happened to you?” Mateo asked her.

“There was another guy. He held me down, and took some of my blood.”

“I think he wanted all of it,” Mateo explained.

“He got one vial, but I broke the other in my escape. ”

“I’m so sorry this happened to you.”

“It’s not the first time.”

“So I’ve heard. Why didn’t you tell me about the cabin?”

“Mateo, I’m not a prostitute, but I have gotten offers that I just couldn’t refuse, so to speak. I wasn’t having sex, but it was sometimes a lot more private than the champaign room of the club. The hotel gig was for a client who just wanted to wake up next to someone in the morning, and kiss me goodbye when he went to work. The cabin, on the other hand, happened when I was young and stupid. I trusted the wrong person, and I paid for it.”

“That wasn’t your fault, Cassidy. They were trying to kill you.”

“He was insistent that he wasn’t.”

“A justification. They were trying to steal your powers. Chooser blood transfusions can copy powers, but they don’t last. You need a hell of a lot of it to make it last. If you had told me, or someone, we would have handled your arrival differently. We would have known to protect you.”

“I didn’t know it had anything to do with this. That was, like, two years before I came to Gatewood, and nothing happened since then.”

Mateo sat cross-legged on the floor. “They didn’t bring you here. I don’t know who did, so there’s at least one other party we have to worry about.”

“We don’t have to worry about that. Mirage is the one who brought me here.”

“Why? To protect you?”

“She didn’t explain everything, but yes. I think she thought these blood thieves wouldn’t be able to follow me.”

“She was wrong.”

“Yes.”

“But it wasn’t just her,” Mateo went on. “She can’t do anything herself. She has to recruit others. Who was your client? The hotel guy?”

“Just a PhD student. I’ve known him since middle school. He doesn’t have powers; he would have told me. He talked to me about everything. I know more about hospital administration than I ever wanted to. I was basically his wife...except we weren’t actually married. We were only in the hotel to renovate his home.”

“Cassidy.”

“What?”

“He was a PhD student, and you were twenty-two at the time. You’ve known him since middle school, but he wasn’t in middle school.”

“Yeah, there was a bit of an age difference. Don’t judge me.”

“I’m not judging you.”

“Wasn’t Leona fourteen when you met?”

“Fifteen,” Mateo corrected. “Days from turning sixteen. We didn’t sleep together until we were the same age, though.”

“Jai and I never did it at all!” she reminded him.

“Okay, fair enough.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

Then Mateo had a weird idea. “Just to, uhh...make sure. Could you go ahead and tell me what your client’s last name was?”

“Why does that matter?”

“It’s just...um, coincidences are hard to find in our world. I would feel a lot better if I heard his last name, and could be sure I didn’t know him. I mean, it wouldn’t be bad if it was, but...I just need to know.”

“Quelen,” she answered.

He let out a snort-laugh. “Jai Quelen.”

“Yes, he’s heard all the jokes.”

“When I knew him, I never made any jokes.”

Now she laughed. “No, you’re serious.”

“He’s good people. Married to my sister.” When he saw that she was confused, he clarified, “in another timeline.”

“Why didn’t they marry in this timeline?”

“She doesn’t exist anymore.”

Cassidy frowned, not knowing how else to react.

“It’s okay. I used to not exist; it’s not that bad.”

“Why wasn’t he on your list?” she asked. “When we met, you gave me a list of people you know.”

“You were right, he’s human. I don’t have a list of humans I know. Maybe I should.”

They spent the rest of the elevator pod ride writing up a list of humans they knew, and cross-checking them with each other. They had no other known mutual acquaintances. Of course, that didn’t mean she was safe. They needed a new plan.

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Proxima Doma: Reconstruction (Part XII)

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Vitalie wanted to help Étude, but she had no recollection of feeling perturbed about her own memory issues. At the moment, as in every moment, she could only remember the last fifty-six years of her life. For a person who was only in their early sixties, that would likely be traumatizing. Without amnesia, a person should be able to retain memories of when they were nine years old, and several years younger. Walking around with a total blank from that time period meant Étude could sense that there was something missing from her life. She should have been able to recall her mother comforting her when she was scared of the dark. She should have been able to remember her birth father sending her off to live on The Warren, so she would be safe from the dawning of the Maramon white monsters. Vitalie was different, though. She knew she was much older than that, which meant she had spent a long time without those kinds of memories, and now, it just felt normal. She also couldn’t remember Étude herself, so this whole situation was a little uncomfortable. Still, she tried. “What is the first thing you remember?”

“I remember Brooke teaching me how to fly the ship. I mean, she wasn’t really teaching me. Like, I couldn’t do it now. But she was showing me the basics.”

Vitalie nodded.

Tertius only frowned.

Étude went on, “it’s weird. Intellectually, I know that picking your earliest memory isn’t this easy. You don’t always know whether something happened before, or after, some other event you remember. Before full memories, you’re gonna have fragments, and two-dimensional freeze frames. Sometimes, you could also be conflating a fictional story you watched or read with your own life, so it never actually happened. Memory is usually complicated and unreliable, but I remember Brooke’s pilot lessons, and I know for a fact that that is the first thing. At the same time...” she trailed off.

Vitalie was still nodding. “At the same time, you can feel it slipping away.”

“Right,” Étude confirmed. “Because time is still moving. That memory is quickly being overtaken by the next thing that happened after it. I mean, I don’t even know if...”

Vitalie sighed. “It’s best not to focus too much on your earliest memory. It’s always ephemeral, and it’s really unsettling to feel it constantly being replaced by the very next event.”

“It feels like I’m riding on a train. Up ahead is only blackness, as the tracks form themselves little by little. Then behind me, it’s also black. It’s further away, but I can see the tracks gradually disappearing. I try to hold on—”

“Don’t try to hold on,” Vitalie interrupted. “You can’t, and it will just hurt more. Try to live in the present. We’re talking about episodic memories here. You’re not going to forget what a paperclip is, or how to drive a car.”

“I never learned how to drive a car,” Étude argued, but realized that that’s not the point Vitalie was trying to make.

Vitalie sported a small smile. “Whenever you pick up a new skill, you’ll always have it. Well, not necessarily. I’ve been told I used to be a doctor, but I guess I spent a long enough time pretty isolated, without any patients, and now it’s gone, because I didn’t flex my brain muscles. That’s true of anyone with anything, though. What I’m trying to say is, don’t worry so much about the daily events that you’ve gone through. Concentrate on what you have at this very moment, and do what you can to solve any problems based on what your gut tells you you know how to do.”

“That’s the thing, though,” Étude said. “I can’t just ignore those events. While everything before I was nine is disappearing, everything more recently is becoming clearer.”

Vitalie didn’t know what she was talking about. “It is?”

“Yeah, it’s like I’m slowly developing hyperthymesia. Anything within the fifty-six year timeframe is far easier to recall than it ever was before.”

Vitalie stared at her. “Either that’s a feature that will eventually go away, or you’re different than me. None of my diary videos say anything about it, but we shouldn’t be surprised if it turns out Tertius’ saliva is affecting you differently, since you drank it first.”

Tertius flinched at this; being the cause of all of it.

Vitalie noticed this. “I’m absolving you of any wrongdoing, Mister Valerius. I’ve been around for four and a half billion years, yet my brain is the same size it always was. I have a limited number of neurons, with a limited number of neural connections. Maybe humans just weren’t meant to live as long as I have, because we certainly weren’t designed to. I probably would have lost my memories anyway, but it would have been unpredictable, and it could have had other negative effects.”

“Well,” Tertius began, “you’re the only one who’s lived this long, so there’s no way to know.”

“I’m not the only one,” Vitalie contended. “I don’t remember them now, but my diaries have mentioned other immortals, who were much older than I was when I first ended up in that universe.”

He widened his eyes. “Really?”

“Yeah, I don’t know what happened to them. They seemed to be doing okay, but I think it was taking a toll on them. I’m fine with who I am. I enjoy a perpetual clean slate, like a bad credit score after seven years.”

Tertius breathed in deeply. “Well, we still haven’t tried something.”

“Can you even restore memories?” Vitalie asked.

“I never have before,” Tertius said, “but I’ve also never tried. Ya know, I don’t think I’ve met anyone with amnesia before. If I can’t do anything, though, we can try to contact The Warrior.”

“Who’s that?”

“He can give you memories from an alternate timeline. He might not be able to restore you and Étude exactly as you should be, but he could come damn close. Basically, you might remember wearing a red shirt one day twenty-four years ago, but in this timeline, it was blue. That would be the only difference; not a big deal.”

“I don’t want him to do that to me,” Vitalie said.

“You don’t?” Étude asked her.

“No, like I said, it’s been billions of years. He probably couldn’t access anything that happened to me in the other universe, and I’m so far removed from my life in this universe, that he would be giving me the memories of a stranger. I know you two wanted me to come back, and just restart my life, but this isn’t my life anymore. I don’t know who it is you knew, but I’m someone else. I don’t need to know her, and I definitely need to be her. I really am fine. I hope your respect that.”

They stood in silence for a reverent moment. “Miss Einarsson?” Tertius offered.

“I would like you to try, and if you can’t, I would like to see if we can reach the Warrior. I’m not sure if it’s possible, though. As far as I know, he doesn’t have a temporal calling card.”

“I don’t think he does,” Tertius agreed, “but I know someone who does have one, who could make an introduction.”

“Temporal calling card?” Vitalie asked simply.

“All these people with time powers,” Étude began to explain. “Since we don’t all experience linear time, someone figured out how to communicate across time, but only with a select few. You have one, actually.” Étude pulled out one of the pennies she kept on her person at all times. “I set this on the table and deliberately utter, be the penny, and it summons you to me. You’re not a time traveler—or, at least, you weren’t—so I think you would have to be in the present moment.”

“I’m always in the present moment,” Vitalie joked. “Anyway, I’ll get out of your hair, so you can try to get your memories back.”

“No, can’t you stay?” Étude instinctively took Vitalie by the arm with affection.

Vitalie was less tentative about this than she was when she first returned. “I can do that,” she answered gracefully.

Tertius took two cushions from their chairs, dropped them to the floor, and sat down on one of them. He patted the other, indicating that Étude should do the same, facing him. He began breathing exercises, and asked her to match. “Relax,” he instructed.

Étude kept breathing, until they were perfectly in sync. Without him telling her, she started clearing her mind, and focusing on one thing: the tower they were in. It was an echo chamber, which could amplify anyone’s time power. If he wasn’t normally capable of restoring people’s memories, the tower might have been the only thing that could make it happen now. She could feel an energy pass back and forth between her and him. Her head felt cool, and maybe soft? It was kind of hard to describe. She just felt open, and available to accept knowledge in a way she didn’t know was possible. She felt a pair of hands cup her temples, then she started receiving a flood of memories. But they weren’t of her childhood; they were of her daughter’s. She could remember going to Earth to retrieve the Cosmic Sextant. Something went wrong with the ship on the way back, and she was flung all the way to Dardius. She met Newt Clemens, and many other people. She had a child, and had to escape with her back to Earth 1997. She raised her for years, taking breaks only to find Tertius his immortality water. She was essentially killed, so her body could be cryonically frozen, and restored later. She came out, made her way back to Proxima Doma, lived in peace for a time, then went back up to this very tower, where she died.

Étude opened her eyes.

“Did it work?” Vitalie asked. “Was that supposed to happen?”

Tertius opened his eyes too. He looked above Étude’s head, and she realized it was not his hands that were touching her. He scrambled back like a frightened rodent under the sudden kitchen light. “Oh my God.”

Étude slowly turned as the hands removed themselves from her head.

It was Nerakali Preston, which was the woman who initially had the power to blend memories from alternate realities. Years ago, the Warrior killed her, and stole this power for himself. Though, when one is dealing with time travelers, one can’t ever expect to never see someone they know to already be dead. “You’re welcome,” she said, almost clinically, but not coldly.

“What did you do?” Tertius asked. He was still profoundly scared of her.

Nerakali scoffed. “I did what you asked of me. Or rather, what you would have been going to ask me in the future.”

“Are you okay?” Tertius asked. “Did she really do it?”

“Yes,” Étude answered him. “Well, not exactly. I have to find my daughter. I have to find Cassidy.”

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Microstory 1120: Amanda Moss

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If there was one thing Amanda Moss would change about this world, it would be its borders. She grew up in a staunchly conservative household. Her parents were extremely in favor of building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. They considered themselves to be King Dumpster’s biggest fans, and nearly lost it when he was ousted from his position in 2020, having accomplished nothing positive in his entire political career. When you’re raised by extremists, you can either become helplessly indoctrinated to those same values, or you can use that as fuel to be more reasonable. Amanda chose the second at first, but then she started getting angrier and angrier with how things were going, and wanted to make a difference. She turned out to be extremist as well, though she would fall on the other side of the spectrum. There was nothing in this world worse than inequality, according to her. It was the cause of everyone’s problems. Health issues, environmental concerns, poverty; these were all ultimately sourced from the same thing. If everyone had everything they needed, and the system was designed to encourage this dynamic, no one would suffer. More importantly, no one would choose to be the cause of suffering. Amanda didn’t like seeing people in pain, and she believed everyone had the right to live wherever they wanted. She was always going to go above and beyond to help others, even if that meant breaking a few laws along the way...or a few dozen. Instead of building a wall, she decided to build bridges. She earned her license, and took up a job as a private pilot. She didn’t cater to the richest, instead advertising her services towards low-income people who were seeking to reconnect with loved ones who lived far away. If, for instance, a man could only find work in Georgia, but later learned of his mother’s illness all the way in Montana, Amanda would transport him home at an incredibly low rate. She lived a simple life, and spent the majority of her time up in the air. As she watched the world around her crumble, however, she determined that she wasn’t doing enough. There were refugees from the other side of arbitrary national barriers who needed to find safety. So she became a human smuggler, though she preferred the term specialized relocator. She moved people from all over Central and South America, into the United States, and Canada. She was smart and careful. As far as she knew, there wasn’t even a whisper in law enforcement that she existed. She never felt like anyone was onto her, or investigating her deeds. She was getting away with it. But then she chose two clients on a whim who were desperate for her help, but had no clue that she happened to be in the exact right business. They didn’t mean to expose her. In fact, the man they were running from wouldn’t have wanted her to be exposed either. As bad of a person as he was, his politics aligned with hers pretty well. Unfortunately, once he started on his path to retaliation, no one could stop it; not even him. So, in a turn of the tables, Amanda was rescued herself, and relocated to Sanctuary on Dardius, where she continued to live in peace. She later accepted the role of Transportation Administrator for the whole planet, using her skills to rescue thousands of others from their dangerous lives on Earth.

Microstory 1119: Norberto Pastore

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Norberto Arcangelo Pastore was always eager to please, always underappreciated, and always willing to do the jobs that no one else wanted. He just kept trying, but he was uncoordinated, and socially awkward. Every day came with the same or similar challenges, but he simply could not figure them out. He was at a disadvantage from the start, though, because his parents were so much worse. They were masters at cultural appropriation, which is why he possessed three Italian names, without having so much as one drop of Italian blood in his body. Upon their marriage, they actually both changed their surname, to reflect some misguided belief that their lives would be better if others thought of them as foreign. Don’t try to understand it. They adopted vaguely transatlantic accents, and made up stories about their heritage. Why they did this is anyone’s guess, but they were clearly mentally unstable; a fact which presented itself in a number of ways as Norberto was growing up. They never mistreated, or abused, him. They were always around, and liked to help, but they were incompetent, and it almost would have been better if he had raised himself. They contradicted and disregarded his school assignments. He desperately tried to receive high marks, but was unable to with all of his parents’ meddling. In the end, he had to realize that he was better off alone, and cut ties with them when he finally graduated from high school at the age of 20. He didn’t go to college, and suffered through many low-paying jobs of menial labor, all the while looking for at least one new parental figure. He felt like he found it when he started working for a woman named Volpsidia Raske. She was developing a cutting edge biotechnology company, using her psychic powers to engineer creatures that would be capable of her gifts. He became staunchly loyal, and possibly unhealthily attached to her. She did not accept his attempts to make her his surrogate mother—only partially because he wasn’t much younger than her—but she also didn’t explicitly reject them. She appreciated having someone around who would always do whatever she wanted, and he conflated that with true love, because his fragile mind couldn’t survive without it. He finally found someone who knew what she was doing, and that was enough.

The true test of his dedication came when he was sent on a deep undercover mission, for which he was barely qualified. A probationary member of one of the New Gangs of Kansas City named Krakken reportedly discovered one of Volpsidia’s lab experiments out in the wild. She had not been made aware that the animal had even escaped, so she had to fire a team of five scientists for their inadequacy. By the time Norberto managed to get close enough to meet this Krakken, it appeared that he had long ago forfeited the animal, though he did not say where. So Norberto was forced to join his gang as well, and prove himself with street graffiti. As luck would have it, he was not the worst artist in the world, and was able to fake his way into the tagger gang without much question. He was never going to be in charge, but hopefully he would at least get close enough to Krakken to find out where he had left the animal. After all, they were the two newest members, so they had that much in common. Unfortunately, Norberto—known to the other taggers as Noobo—continued to struggle with his social skills, and spent far too much time with them than he should have. He only managed to find the animal when someone from the tracer gang happened to show up at their headquarters with it, looking for some assistance. Norberto uncharacteristically shrewdly stole the creature, and evaded capture for a fairly long time. The tracer was able to steal it back, but it was probably for the best. A rival company to Volpsidia’s was interested in the creation as well, and Norberto might not have been able to keep it from their grasp, whereas the tracer had years of training to help him protect it. The animal would wind up in the hands of the FBI, but under control of a mysterious and secret religious cult. Now was the time for him to come out of his shell, and redeem himself for all of his mistakes. He had to team up with the enemy to get the animal back, and Norberto would be given the chance to become an unlikely hero.

Microstory 1118: Richard Parker

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Richard Parker was not just a tiger. He was a man, with a brother named Saxon, and an eventual husband named Allen. While his brother would go on to become an astronaut, pioneering missions to Luna, Mars, and beyond, Richard chose to remain grounded. He met Allen on a camping trip in Colorado. At first, everything seemed normal. They were just two dudes who liked the outdoors, and ended up with tent lots next to each other. But the more they talked, the more they realized they had in common. Not only were they both on a lifelong mission to camp in every single state, but as if by magic, they had both already done this for the same four states. They lived on opposite sides of the country, though that didn’t matter. They went back to their separate lives, but kept in contact, and coordinated their vacation times, so they would always end up in the same place. After about a year of this, Allen found himself in between restaurant jobs, and decided it was time to move closer to his boyfriend. Richard was in construction, and could live just about anywhere, so they settled on Kansas City. A year later, they were living together, and still going on monthly trips, and a year after that, they were getting married. This all may sound nice and happy, but they had plenty of obstacles up ahead, because starting their lives together was just the beginning of their story. The beautiful early days of their marriage quickly descended into struggle and danger. It’s important to note that these were not the only versions of them. Similar events had transpired in an alternate timeline, but they had also met a woman named Ulinthra, who they ended up marrying as their third. She was a salmon, who lived each day twice, and used her gift to save as many lives as she could find in the newspaper. She did this with a partner named Reaver, but it would turn out they were both murderous psychopaths, who also used their gifts to hurt people, free of consequences. This timeline collapsed, giving way to a new one, in which Reaver attempted to prevent Richard and Allen from getting caught up in the death and drama by simply keeping them apart. But this was terrible as well, because they would end up alone, and separately working for Reaver anyway. It wasn’t until the next timeline after this that things started going well for the two of them, but that didn’t mean it was going to last forever. They soon found themselves once again in the world of time travelers, battling a powerful woman with psychic abilities. It would seem time did not want them to lead normal lives, and the history they don’t even remember would come back to haunt them when they were recruited to help stop Ulinthra yet again, this time many decades in the future. Then things got real crazy.

Microstory 1117: Opal Jolourvedin

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By absorbing all the powers of every mage in the world to finally end the war with the monsters, historical figure, Jayde Kovac ushered in a new era. Fortunately, while some monsters did survive that final attack, most were destroyed anyway. Unfortunately, the Mage Protectorate was destroyed as well. Most of the former mages survived, but they no longer possessed powers, which sent the planet into chaos. They would come to find out that these temporal abilities were not lost forever, though it would be a long time before they returned at full strength. For a while, all they had were people they referred to as mage remnants. Their powers were weak and unreliable; mere echoes of what their ancestors could once do. Opal Jolourvedin was not one of these people. She was a full mage, and in fact, quite a powerful one. The problem is that she didn’t realize this about herself. She knew that she could fix the present moment, like a magical undo button, but she never did figure out how much of reality she could alter. The universe is an uncertain place. Every decision you make springs a new reality, as does every decision anyone else makes, including the lowly cockroach. Opal had the ability to spontaneously draw forth the outcome of a decision that was never made, but could have been made, theoretically. Let’s say that a man is climbing a ladder, but is in too much of a hurry to get to the top. He rashly skips a rung, which causes him to slip, fall, break his neck, and die. With a snap of her fingers, Opal can elicit a timeline where he decides not to skip a rung, does not slip, does not fall, does not break his neck, and does not die. She doesn’t go back in time and warn him of his mistake. She doesn’t send her consciousness to his body, and force him to take a different path. She simply determines the best outcome of any situation, finds that outcome in an endless field of what are called microrealities, and then makes it so. For the most part, she is the only one aware that any change to the timeline has been made. According to everyone else, this is just what happened, and it was always going to have happened. She can, however, preserve certain people’s memories of the other timeline, just to give them a little perspective. After all, if they are not cognizant of what mistake they might have made, they may end up making a similar one later on, and she won’t necessarily be around to fix it for them. Again, she was never in a position to truly understand the magnitude of her power, but she would bear a son with the same gifts. He eventually made his way to Earth, and became...The Repairman.