Microstory 1132: Feingold

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Liam Fine’s family was living in Chicago, Illinois when he was born. They moved to the Kansas City area when he was six years old, to get a fresh start. As part of this new beginning, Liam’s parents enrolled him in karate, which he took a great liking to. Years later, the City Frenzy became a thing, and Liam decided he wanted in on the action, even though he had never been much of a runner. He wasn’t quite old enough yet, but that was okay, because organizers were still working out the kinks. It’s widely accepted that its third year—which was Liam and Serkan’s first—was when the event really took off. Liam realized early on that there was going to be a lot of publicity for it, and what happened then could define his identity for years to come. He started asking for people to call him Feingold, and that’s the name he used to register for the race. It’s not that Liam didn’t like his birth name, but it was too common. He wanted to stand out as a competitor, and people who go by one name get noticed. He still wanted to honor his Jewish heritage, and not just come up with something random. The historical records are a little fuzzy, but there was evidence to suggest that his family’s name used to be Feingold, so it just seemed to fit perfectly. The race, for him didn’t go well, but that wasn’t much of a surprise. He liked to compete against others more than he liked winning. The thrill of testing his own limits is what kept him going. He continued to try his best year after year, because quitting just wasn’t in his DNA. In his second year, he met a fellow racer who would soon become his best friend. Tick Tock was involved with judo, so they already had discipline and martial arts in common. Neither of them ever won Frenzy, but they were instrumental in transforming the organization into something grander. With their guidance, the Frenzy became more than just this one annual event. A martial arts version of it was created, and soon, other variations came about. Though this might be Feingold’s public legacy, it is only a small part of everything that he would ultimately for the world. And it all started when he found out Tick Tock chose his own name for a very specific reason.

Microstory 1131: The Emissary

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Because of where they exist, the powers that be cannot communicate with the people they’re in control of directly. It’s unclear how they wield any power at all, but they do have limitations. They can move certain people anywhere they want in the timestream, even to other planets, and they can alter reality to account for any pushback or errors. They can’t make a salmon physically do anything, but there are ways of encouraging desired behaviors. Not everyone is salmon, however, and in order to accomplish their goals, there are times when they need to send a message. Enter The Emissary, stage left. He was born with the  mononym, Isaurus, but hasn’t used it for centuries. He isn’t the only person with psychic abilities, but his is one of the—if not the very—strongest. He is capable of receiving messages from other universes, which is necessary for the powers to stay in contact with him. He’s not able to send messages back to them, nor to anyone else. He would come to consider his limitations a blessing, for if he was capable of pushing thoughts into anyone’s head in the entire bulkverse, he might have become an unstoppable god. As he was not himself salmon, The Emissary could not be controlled. He agreed to be the intermediary between the powers that be, and the other choosing ones because he has nothing better to do. He knew enough about the universe to procure immortality water, so it wasn’t like he was worried about dying, or anything. He’ll occasionally travel to different universes to relay messages of great importance, unrelated to his usual work with the powers, but he’ll generally stay at home. He jumps back and forth throughout the timestream, on an as needed basis. He sometimes enjoys the local sights, but has very little in the way of a personal life. As impactful as his actions can be in other people’s stories, on his own, he’s a rather unremarkable person, which is exactly how he likes it.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: October 30, 2237

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As soon as Mateo and Cassidy fell back into the timestream, several of Goswin’s guards tightened up their circle around them. They were still awake, because she wanted to see what it felt like to jump forward in time when she knew it was going to happen.

“We have to get you to safety,” Goswin said with authority.

“What’s wrong?” Cassidy asked. She had to sit down. The fatigue from the jump seemed to be affecting her more than it normally did for Mateo, Leona, and Serif.

“Someone is coming, and we have no idea who it is,” Goswin answered.

“They’ve landed,” claimed a voice on the radio.

Mateo tried to follow Goswin through the wall of guards.

“No, you’re going with Cassidy.”

“She’s the one in danger,” Mateo said. “I’m fine. I need to see what’s happening. What evidence do you have this has anything to do with her?”

“It’s arrived on your day,” Goswin reminded him. “We don’t think that’s a coincidence. You could be in danger too. You’ve done a lot to make enemies.”

“The powers that be protect me,” Mateo said. “Let’s stop wasting time.”

They left the AOC, and headed for the dock where an apparently unscheduled interstellar vessel had arrived. “Why did you let them in if you don’t know who it is?”

“I don’t know,” Goswin said, shaking his head. “Kestral is in charge of that.”

“She couldn’t stop it.” Ishida was suddenly behind them. “We’ve been tracking their approach for days, but they won’t respond to our attempts to contact them. We think it’s unmanned. The ship is quite sophisticated too; it broke through our defenses with no problem. It hasn’t fired weapons, or anything, but it wants on this cylinder for a reason.”

The three of them, along with a group of guards, separated into pairs, and slinked through the passageways of the mysterious ship, which would open its doors invitingly every time. There was only one door that would not open, which obviously meant it was the most important. “What’s the Tun Room?” Mateo questioned.

“Stasis pods,” Ishida explained. “A tun is the form an animal called a water bear takes when it needs to hibernate outside of its safe habitat. It dries itself out, and essentially dies, until water is reintroduced, and it comes back to life. That’s not how stasis works for us, so it’s just a cutesy nickname.”

“So, there are people in there?”

“I doubt it’s locked because it’s as empty as everywhere else.”

“And this isn’t people from Proxima Doma?” he asked. “I heard some colonists asked to move out here.”

She shook her head. “They won’t be arriving for another several years. Besides, this thing clearly came from the direction of Sol.

Goswin and the guards came up to them. “The rest of the ship is clear, sir. If you’ll hand me the teleporter, I’ll check it out.”

“No, I’ll be going,” Ishida said.

“It’s too dangerous, sir. We have no clue what’s on the other side of this door.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Wait,” Mateo stopped her just before she calibrated her teleporter to just send her a meter through a door. “No one should ever be alone. Fighting a hundred demons with a friend is not the same thing as fighting fifty by yourself, even though that’s how the math works out. The teleporter can handle the mass of two people, so I’ll go with.”

“Very well,” she said, adjusting the controls to account for him.

It looked exactly like a stasis room. There were two dozen pods, but only two of them were filled. A man was crawling out of one, struggling to maintain balance. “Report.”

“You’re on Cylinder One of the Gatewood Collective. Your ship automatically bypassed our defense systems, and docked itself with us. It’s not responding to our query.”

“Yeah,” the man said, steadying himself against the wall. “The ship has no personality. It doesn’t respond to anyone but me and Saxon.”

The other man started crawling out of his own pod.

“What are you doing here?” Ishida demanded to know.

“Stargate,” the second man said. He was stumbling around more than the first one, like a drunkard at the beginning of morning.

“You’re here for Project Stargate?”

“No,” he replied. And it was then that Mateo realized he recognized him, though from a different timeline.

“Julius? Julius Parker?”

“Parker, yes,” the man said. “Not Julius, though. Saxon. This is...where are you?”

“I’m over here, on your left side,” the first man told him. “Thor Thompson,” he introduced himself.

“Your name was Julius,” Mateo said to Saxon.

He finally just gave up, and sat up against the pod wall, eyes fully closed. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before. I think it was on my parents’ list of baby names, but they went with Saxon.”

“Oh, I guess that sort of thing happens,” Mateo noted.

“You said Stargate,” Ishida reminded him, “and then you said no.”

“Yeah—no! Seed. Not gate; Operation Starseed.”

Ishida pursed her lips, and looked to Thor, who confirmed as much with his facial expression.

“Who sent you?”

“The powers that be,” he answered.

“Shit.”

“Of Sol,” Saxon added. “The powers that be of Sol. Like...the leadership? Sorry, I forget you people use that term for a very specific group.”

“Wait?” You’ve heard of the powers that be?” Mateo asked. “You know time travelers in this timeline.”

He nodded and burped. “Yep,” he hiccuped. “Yeah.”

“Have you ever heard of Cassidy Long?”

Saxon shook his head and yawned. “Nah, man. I don’t know him. Why?”

Mateo spoke into his radio, “stand down. Cassidy’s safe. The arrival is totally unrelated.”

“So, it is indeed a coincidence?” Goswin asked from the other side of the door.

“Yes.”

“Thanks, Matty,” Cassidy replied from her hiding spot.

“When are you coming out?” Goswin asked.

“We’ll explain soon,” Ishida said. “Please prepare a welcome package for our new guests.”

“I wonder if anyone is going to tell me what this Starseed thing is.” Mateo said, not so subtly.

Ishida started to explain what Gatewood was about, and what they were working on. “Project Stargate is designed to send millions of ships all around the galaxy. Each capsule would hold a hundred plates. Inside a plate is an extremely complex system of historical data, sensors, nanites, and other instruments. After completing a general survey of the solar system it was sent to, the plate finds the best place to land, and utilizes the materials found there to start building things. Interplanetary vessels to cover the rest of the system, equipped with more detailed survey probes; interstellar ships to reach the system’s neighbors; and more. It’s that more part that we’re concerned with here. The void telescopes will give us a better idea of what we’re going to find, but depending on the conditions of the planets this project encounters, a few things might happen.

“The planet could already be hospitable to life, in which case maybe the plate does nothing else, except build us a way to reach it, and explore. The planet could already be harboring intelligent life, and there’s this huge list of protocols about what to do. Are they friendly? How advanced are they? Are they a threat to us? More importantly, are we a threat to them? Maybe the planet is uninhabitable, and has no potential, so we just leave it be. Or it can be terraformed, and we’ll come visit later. Either way, if the planet has no intelligent life, but could support it, Operation Starseed would change that dynamic. It would grow...people, and those people would live there. Again, there’s a huge variety of options here. We could give them knowledge of where they come from, or not. We could protect them their whole lives, or leave them alone after the first generation matures. We could engineer them to be perfect, or make them just like normal biological humans. No matter what we do, though, we can’t just conjure life. It has to start somewhere, and it starts with a dedicated section of the seed plate. This section would contain genetic samples from real people on Earth, and it would use them to start life on the new worlds.”

“You’re telling me this ship is filled with genetic...samples?” an unsurprisingly uncomfortable Mateo asked.

Saxon was finally feeling well enough to open his eyes, and stand back up. “That’s right. A hundred million people volunteered to be progenitors; a hundred million people, in secret. Each one believes their sample is being taken to one specific planet that humanity has studied. Few people fully grasp the magnitude of this undertaking.”

This sounded unethical, but Mateo elected to say nothing. If these two men were here, they were either passionate about the project, or just doing a job for people who were. Regardless, trying to convince them otherwise would be a waste of breath. He did have a philosophical question, and he couldn’t help but pose it to them. “So, humans had this idea to spread to the stars. We decided to create life artificially, and that life may not have any clue we exist?”

“Indeed,” Thor agreed.

“How do you know that hasn’t already happened?”

“Well, who would have done that?” Saxon asked. “I guess it’s possible someone found a place like Gatewood, and has already deployed—”

“No, I’m not talking about us,” Mateo interrupted. “I’m talking about ancient progenitors. What if we—meaning people of Earth—were created by people who actually originated from somewhere else.”

Thor scoffed. “We would know. I mean, we know where humans come from. Our evolution dates back billions of years.”

Mateo shrugged. “Okay, so what? What if our ancestors did this...billions of years ago.”

“That’s a long time to wait,” Ishida argued. “What would be the point?”

“Well, what’s the point of us doing it?”

“There’s an answer to that question,” Thor said. “Most people who reject this very concept don’t like it.”

“Lay it on me.”

He hesitated for a moment. “Because we can.”

Mateo smiled with superiority. “Yeah, I thought so. Look, I’m all for equality. If you know me, you know that about me. But I think the world would be better off if we acknowledged the fact that getting rid of capitalism had some consequences. People say that necessity is the mother of invention, which is probably true, but if it’s the case, then I would argue money is the father. Until recently, we didn’t do anything if there wasn’t money in it. Sure, this mindset held us back, but it also protected us. Now that we have AI and automation, anything is possible, but the problem is that not everything possible should be made manifest. Getting rid of the money gave us this freedom to reach for the stars...literally. But freedom can be the enemy of safety, and the stars don’t belong to us. Perhaps they belong to no one, but this whole project; these dual projects, perfectly exemplify the audacity and arrogance of man. Why should other worlds have people on them? Evolution didn’t ask for it. These other worlds aren’t designed for anything except what they have, or are destined to have one day.”

“That sort of thing happens all the time, Mateo,” Ishida volleyed. “Our home solar system is full of visitors from other worlds. Durus, which quite nearly collided with Earth last century? It got there so fast because of time powers, but it was going to happen in thousands of years anyway, and it originated from a star many light years away, millions of years ago. You’re right, maybe an extremely advanced race of proto-humans are what seeded life on Earth aeons ago. Or a naturally occurring comet is what did it. Perhaps life only evolved on a single planet in the entire galaxy, and when it exploded one day, fragments containing traces of its inhabitants flew off into interstellar space. These possibilities change nothing. It’s not going to stop me from building the transgalactic quantum communication network, and it’s not going to stop these two from contributing in their own way.”

“That’s true. I know I can’t convince you to not do this. I haven’t even convinced myself that you shouldn’t. I just think you should understand the ramifications, or rather you should understand that you couldn’t possibly predict the ramifications. I don’t know much about science, but if there’s one thing that Leona taught me, it’s that results can be unpredictable. You may think you’ve accounted for everything, but you can’t be sure of that. Now. I thought Cassidy was safe here, but this ship just straight up docked without permission. It turned out okay, but what if it doesn’t next time? I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, but there’s nothing keeping us here now. We’ll be leaving tomorrow-slash-next year.”

“Where will you go?” Ishida asked.

“I need to get back to Leona. We’re going to Varkas Reflex.”

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Proxima Doma: Easement (Part XIV)

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Étude and Vitalie were sitting in two indigo chairs, in a darkly lit room, politely waiting for a response. The former was now fully committed to going out in search of her daughter, and Vitalie was willing to help. They would not be able to do it alone, though. Neither of them had access to an interstellar ship, so they were trying to get help from the Domanian government. Colony ships were still transporting people from Earth to its nearest stellar neighbors, but at present, no vessels were designated to travel between any of these neighbors. No one was going from Proxima Doma to Gatewood, and since these trips were planned months—if not years—in advance, this was going to take a lot of convincing. There was simply no time to waste.

“Well...?” Étude asked when the Transportation Administrator returned.

“You spoke with Foreign Policy about this already?”

“Yes,” Étude confirmed. “She was unsuccessful.”

“Unsuccessful how?” it asked. The Transportation Admin, Xaovi Rue rejected the concept of gender, and preferred the pronoun it.

“She said she was able to make contact with Gatewood, but they said they wouldn’t be able to help us find my daughter.”

“Well, there’s your answer,” Xaovi decided. “Why would I let you go there when there’s nothing to find anyway?”

“No, you didn’t hear her voice.”

“Whose voice? The Foreign Policy Admin, or the contact at Gatewood?”

“Gatewood,” Vitalie said. “They sounded shady.”

It seemed confused by this. “I was to understand Administrator Fillipa used the quantum messenger in private, without you being present. How could you know what the Gatewood contact sounded like?”

Étude and Vitalie looked at each other. Vitalie cleared her throat, but didn’t say anything.

Xaovi nodded continuously. “I’m not going to help you if you’re not honest with me. You might be surprised by this, but we’re pretty smart on this planet. We may have started out sort of rustic, but our technology is on par with Earthan standards now. We have ways of monitoring public occurrences, and artificial intelligence that is capable of recognizing patterns. The fact is there are things that happened that can’t be explained using current models of human social behavior. A religious individual might call these such events miracles.”

“We’re not sure what you’re—”

It shook its head. “Save the rationalization. We know a...superhero once protected this world. We even know that people like this once did something similar on Earth. Don’t worry, it’s all a tight circle. Any AI with this information either erased their knowledge of it, or retains orders to keep their speakers still about it.” As an idiom, still speakers was the inorganic equivalent to keeping one’s mouth shut. Speakers emit sounds through vibrations.

“They were called Saviors,” Vitalie relented.

“They?”

“My predecessors, who inspired me,” she clarified. “I was The Caretaker here, until I felt like you no longer needed me.” She chose to leave Étude’s name out of it in this regard, because that was a conversational path that would do no one any good to walk.

“So, you can be in two places at once?”

“Let’s just say that I move fast.”

It nodded again. “Quite. I don’t suppose you move fast enough to get to Gatewood on your own.”

“No,” Étude answered.

Xaovi sighed. “I don’t know if I can authorize the easement of an entire interstellar ship for two people who don’t even know if they’ll find what they’re looking for when they get there. What if it turns out your daughter is somewhere else. Do you keep the ship?”

“We would borrow Gatewood property if we need to go somewhere else in addition,” Étude promised. “And you don’t have to give it to just us. Announce a new program; the first ever state-sponsored interstellar trip between two exoplanets. I’m sure plenty adventurous people would sign up. Some people born on Doma are even old enough now to make that decision themselves.”

“You think a hundred and forty-five people will sign up for that?”

“Is that what you require?” Vitalie asked it.

It thought it over for a moment. “That’s standard capacity, and there’s even room for more. I don’t think requiring a full complement is asking too much. This is going to take resources, and it has to be worth it.”

“One-twenty,” Vitalie said.

It chuckled once. “This isn’t a negotiation.”

“One-twenty-one.”

“Fine. You wanna play it that way? I say a hundred forty-seven total; you say a hundred and twenty-one. So I’ll counter with...a hundred and forty-seven.”

“Twenty-two.”

Étude placed her hand on Vitalie’s thigh, which would have been perfectly normal just days ago, but since fifty-six years had gone by for Vitalie, and they were no longer true friends, it wasn’t received extremely well. “Vita, stop.”

“Look,” Xaovi began, “I’m not asking you to run out and grab signatures. My team and I will coordinate surveys and signups, using standard operating procedure guidelines. We’ll even fasttrack the process, but I need to know you’re not going to do anything stupid if it turns out there’s less interest than you hoped.”

“What kind of stupid thing would we do?” Vitalie questioned.

“If you’re as fast as it sounds like you are, you could steal a ship.”

“That’s a good idea,” she quipped. “Thanks for giving it to me.”

“Vitalie, please.” She got this close to placing her hand on Vitalie’s thigh again. It just seemed so normal.

“A hundred and forty-five,” Xaovi repeated, more seriously. “A hundred and forty-five people who are one hundred percent committed to trying out a new colony, and I will authorize departure. But keep in mind, Gatewood has to accept you. I’m not sending you off without their permission; that would be absurd. It sounds like they’re not to keen on visitors, so you should be prepared to be turned down by them. That’s entirely beyond my scope of influence, so you can’t blame me if it happens. I can try to find you the passengers.”

“Yeah, I bet you will.” Vitalie scoffed.

“Make no mistake,” Xaovi went on, still serious. “I am not working against you. I feel no personal connection to the ships presently in our orbit, or on our docks. I am perfectly happy to let one go, but only if that’s what the people want. Resources for a hundred and forty-seven people should be allocated for a hundred and forty-seven people.”

God, they were getting tired of hearing that number.

“I don’t care where those people are, as long as those resources aren’t being wasted. I will do everything in my power to get you signatures, and if we still used money, you could put it on that promise.” It shifted in its seat, and leaned forward. “But if you get a hundred and forty-four potentials, the deal’s off. All the way, or nothing at all. We can revisit the idea a year from now, and the year after that, until we find enough, but I require no less than enough to fill those pods.”

That wasn’t a terribly unreasonable deal. She needed to find her daughter, but the evidence she was in Gatewood was thin anyway. The person who answered the call sounded like she was lying. Why didn’t she just say outright she had never heard of Cassidy?

“How about—?” Vitalie began to ask.

“That’s fair,” Étude admitted. “We will accept whatever the outcome may be. One full migrant ship, or nothing.”

To their surprise, there was enough to interest in emigration to fill two ships over standard capacity. Convincing Gatewood to accept them took a little more doing, though. Apparently, it was being used exclusively for pretty secretive scientific experimentation, and also for military purposes. No civilians lived there at the moment. In the end, they agreed, but the former Proxima Domanians would be limited to their own centrifugal cylinder. Evidently, there was no planet around the star, so these giant man-made structures were the only places people could survive. They probably could have garnered enough interest from the Domanians for three ships if not for the fact that there was no planet.

Étude and Vitalie wondered what was going on. Was there some alien threat that the greater vonearthan population was not aware of, and Gatewood was being used to prepare for an interstellar war? Or had the Gatewooders discovered time travel, and were protecting it from everyone else, just like they were meant to. It would explain their unsettling reaction to hearing Cassidy’s name. Exactly how many people were living there, and would there be any way of finding Étude’s daughter? These were questions that would not be answered for years to come. The ships they were taking were only at the speed standards that they were when they first arrived. Some had, or were being, upgraded, while new ones were being built. As an unscheduled departure, however, the emigrants were only being given the outdated technology. Étude didn’t love that, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. As Barnard’s Star was about six and a half light years from Proxima Centauri, it would take them over ten years. For these people with their extended lifespans, that was no big deal. The two of them were immortal, so the only reason the duration was a problem was because Étude was anxious to finally meet her daughter. Again, though, this was about as good as it would get, so she took the win.

They said their goodbyes to Tertius, who was, of course, staying behind to protect the Oblivios. They were still living peacefully in their dome, completely, well...oblivious to everything that was happening in the real world. Étude and Vitalie boarded the ship with all the other passengers, and left Proxima Doma, probably for good.

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Microstory 1130: Natasha Orlova

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Varlam Orlov came to the United States from the Russian Empire with his family in 1916, when he was sixteen years old. They arrived with as little as many immigrants have, but they were hard workers, and they wanted a better life. Theirs was a roller coaster of a history. They made money, they lost it, they made it back, they struggled with their neighbors. They were persecuted during the Red Scare, and persecuted again during the other Red Scare. But they kept trying, and they never broke any serious laws. This isn’t a story about a legendary Russian organized crime family. This isn’t about a nuclear family of sleeper agents. This is about a woman named Natasha Orlova, whose father completely altered people’s perception of their family, and he didn’t even have to. Varlam’s grandson, Maxim was born in 1951. He was obsessed with mob movies and books, particularly the ones depicting the Russian mafia. He was fascinated by their antics, and their tactics, and wanted to grow up to be just like that. Unfortunately for him, organized crime began decades ago, and you don’t just suddenly decide to be a crime boss. He knew he wouldn’t get anywhere just by sitting around, so he started committing petty crimes, learning from his mistakes, and escalating little by little, until he was finally arrested. This is precisely what he wanted. No one would teach him how to run a business out of the kindness of their hearts. He figured that prison was the only place he would be able to find someone to take him under their wing, and that they did. He got himself into a gang, who nurtured his desires to take on the world, thinking he would join their family on the outside, once his sentence was complete. Of course, he didn’t do this, because now he had the tools to strike out on his own.

He had listened to what the other inmates had said about people in their ranks, and the ones who maybe had a little less loyalty than others. He used this knowledge of the social structure to recruit people into his own organization, and before anyone realized what was happening, he was well insulated from any permanently damaging retaliation. Suddenly there was a new family in Kansas City that no one knew what to do about, and over the course of the next few decades, he carefully and methodically edged out all of the competition. He never intended to have any children, because the life would always be too dangerous for them, but Natasha came as an accident when he was pretty old. He wanted to keep her out of it, but he also wanted to keep her close, and those two contradictory sentiments just did not work well together. Others in his organization were pressuring him to teach her what he knew, and groom her to replace him one day, in some capacity, but he never cared about that. He wanted to run a business; not leave a legacy. She resisted as well, but in the end, it was safer for her to be within the confines of his protection, so no enemy could come after her without serious consequences. He placed her in his construction company, which was probably the farthest she could be from the illegitimate side of his business, while still being inside the bubble. She found herself drawn to the demolitions division, which was primarily designated for imploding buildings to make way for modern replacements. Even though it was the most dangerous, it was a positive venture, and helped shape the way the city, and its surrounding areas, would look like in the future. When the family finally fell, she was the only one left standing.

Microstory 1129: Susan Glines

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On the ninth day of October in 1983, a baby was discovered in Bryant Pond, Maine, right by the actual pond, wrapped in a newspaper that would not come out for another three days. The man who found her would normally have gone straight to the authorities about this concern, but upon noticing the date of the paper, felt like he couldn’t. This child was abandoned by someone from the future, presumably, and he thought it was safer to just keep her a secret. She would have frozen to death if not for him, and he didn’t know if he could trust anyone else. He named her Susan, after a town resident who would be featured in the future news for having been the last switchboard operator for a hand-crank phone in the world. He even moved halfway across the country, and changed his own last name to match hers. He raised her as his own, but it was not the easiest task. She was never properly diagnosed with anything, since her father was always afraid to draw attention to their family, but she had clear communication issues. She was very quiet most of the time, and when she did try to speak, she had both a speech impediment, and trouble getting her point across. Again, he didn’t think it prudent to seek professional help, so he went to the library, and did everything he could to learn how to teach her himself. He ended up doing such a great job that she went on to graduate from the University of Missouri-Kansas City with a degree in Communication Studies. It was around this time that Susan started seeing things she should not have been seeing. It started off small; she could sense events happening around her without looking directly at them. By the end of the week, however, she had a general idea of what was going on in the whole city. Within the year, she could see the whole world, and before another year was up, she could see all of time and space. She wasn’t literally watching people move through their lives, though if she concentrated hard enough, she could do just that. Normally, however, it was more like time itself was a spatial dimension, which she was able to walk around and study. She was not the only person who could do something like this, but it did inspire her to put her college degree to creative use. She noticed there were people from different points in time who were trying to communicate with each other, but no cell phone company was capable of connecting them. She started connecting them herself. At first, she did this via relayed messages, but her means soon became more sophisticated. Certain peoples were given access to physical aids, so that when someone wanted to talk to that person, they would have a more tangible means of alerting Susan to this need. Seeing the river of time was demanding and taxing on Susan’s mind and body, so these alerting devices were vital in allowing her to relax, and only use her ability when necessary. She eventually came to be known as The Switcher, and officed herself with The Courier, who happened to also live in the Kansas City area. Together, they made sure that time travelers never lost track of each other, even across time and space.

Microstory 1128: Mala Savidge

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In the olden days, people were always looking for new ways to charge and pay for things. You have your standard I give you money, you give me product model. You can buy on credit, and pay later, or in installments. You can get a little somethin’ somethin’ for free, but then spend on fleetingly satisfying microtransactions once you’re addicted. You can purchase a regular subscription. You can pay with labor, be it with an employee discount, from a credited survey, or by suffering through advertisements. But through all of this—sometimes even unbeknownst to the people doing it—a complete replacement was being devised. No, this isn’t a negative income tax, or universal basic income. This isn’t the corporate automation tax, or even charitable rehoming programs. This is a world where the commodities are self-improvement, self-fulfillment, brand recognition, and reputation. You’re only trying to get better, get happy, get famous, or get respected. Things are just things. How you feel is all that matters. Well, as it turns out, people have a lot of strong feels about money, and personal possessions. For the most part, society embraced this new way of life when it was introduced, because it was done so gradually, and thoughtfully. There will always be those, nevertheless, who just want to do things differently. Had these hardcore capitalists been born in the late 18th century, they might have become hardcore socialists. They were just radical contrarians, who didn’t like how the world was simply because it’s what they were born into, or because their parents glamorized the way things once were in the good ol’ days. Whatever the reasons, their ideas were virtually meaningless. No matter how hard they tried, these Freemarketeers could not survive in an interplanetary civilization, and maintain their principles. They decided the only way they could be who they wanted was to leave the system, and found a new one. This didn’t quite work out when the ship that was so graciously transporting them to their new planet was sabotaged by their own Freemarketeer leader, and destroyed. They ended up in a different galaxy, on a world that wasn’t quite as advanced as Earth at the time, but still no longer capitalistic. They started a war with the native Dardieti, powered by a machine that uncontrollably replicated each and every one of them every single day. Freemarketeer Mala Savidge never wanted any of this. She was even considering the possibility that she was less of a true capitalist, and more of a rebel, who would never be happy with the status quo. Her willingness to question her own identity is what led her to being chosen as the Freemarketeer Ambassador to Dardius. It was she who negotiated the cease-fire, the peace treaty, and the ultimate integration of the Freemarketeers. She would later assume a leadership role in this new world.

Microstory 1127: Jörm Kovac

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While much of Durune history is notable for its unending supply of inequality and death, there was a peaceful period that lasted for sixty years. The time monsters still existed, but they were mostly limited to the lifeless sections of the world. The human towns were protected by a group of people known as the mages. It was considered to be one of the highest honors, but Jörm Kovac was never interested in it. Some people looked down upon him for this, but most realized that only certain candidates were chosen anyway, and it wasn’t the most unreasonable position to just pull oneself out of the running. His main concern was water. The only place where it rained was a relatively small section of the planet that its new inhabitants referred to as Watershed. Here, it never stopped raining. It wasn’t supported by a water cycle, like on most planets, however. It took its rain from some other place—most likely Earth—and any excess seeped into the ever-forming water table. The ground directly underneath Watershed, and the surrounding areas, was hopelessly muddy, and unsuited for development. Disparate towns were constructed in areas nearby, but there were other geological impediments that made Watershed difficult to access. Therefore, irrigation was key. In the olden days, water was carted manually by people who were essentially slaves to the Smithtatorship, but when the source mages formed the Protectorate, they commissioned the construction of a vast network of pipes and sewageways. They were trying to recreate the kind of world that much of Earth was living in, which was where Durus’ first inhabitants were from. It was Jörm’s job to maintain this water network, making sure heavy metals and toxic chemicals weren’t leaching into the system, and that the pipes were holding pressure standards. He loved his job, and his wife, Sadie, but the only thing missing in his life was a child. She felt the same way, but they were both unable to have children. Unlike Earth, there was no foster care system on Durus. There were more hopeful parents than there were unhomed children, which meant there was a waitlist for adoption. It wasn’t a particularly long list, as the majority of people who wanted kids, had them, but there were also not a lot of kids in need. One day, a seer came to them. This seer was not the best of his kind. He could sense the future more than he could actually see it, so he generally didn’t know what was truly going to happen. He did get the feeling that something important was waiting for the Kovacs in the middle of an area of land that was not arable, but also not dead, called the thickets. This was an extremely large area, but the seer had a pretty good idea where the two of them were meant to go, and they were only searching for a few hours. Finally, they discovered exactly what they were looking for all along; a baby, who required care. They chose to tell no one. This was a gift in their eyes, but if anyone knew their child was the Durune version of Moses or Superman, there’s no telling how they would react. It’s better to ask for forgiveness later, than permission now. What they didn’t realize at the time was that their daughter was not abandoned by her birth parents, but left specifically for the Kovac to find, and she would grow up to one day serve an important role in the war against the monsters.