Microstory 1168: Valda Ramsey

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Hilde Unger was the furthest along in her pregnancy when the town of Springfield, Kansas was forced through the Deathfall portal, and landed on what would come to be known as Durus. Shortly after arriving, she realized the monsters that were attacking the townsfolk were leaving her completely alone. It was as if something was protecting her. A cursory glance made it likely that all sufficiently pregnant women were safe from the monsters. At first, Springfield concluded that these monsters somehow had ethical limits, or at least an instinct to preserve young life. Perhaps they were like the practical fisherman, who throws back the small fish, so he can catch it later once it’s grown. They would come to understand that the children born within the next several months after the event were special. They possessed time powers that provided the town with a means of fighting back. But Hilde was not around for these developments. Following the very first monster attack, she and her new friend, Hogarth separated themselves from the group. Hogarth was the one responsible for shielding Springfield from the portal that, without her intervention, destroyed nearly everything that fell into it. Her job was not over, for she still needed to find a way to send everyone back home. After a brief, but harrowing journey, they found themselves in the company of a man named Paul Harken (a.k.a. Hark), who had survived the trip long ago, and was already living on Durus. He attempted to transport them back to the town, so Hogarth could complete her new machine, but something went wrong, and they ended up about five years in the future. A new society had formed since they were gone, and it was not a good one. It was led by a tyrannical psychopath nicknamed Smith. He saw how special the newborn children were, and manipulated their parents to make sure he was part of their lives. Valda Ramsey, having not yet been born, was able to skip all his manipulations. Though she was now the youngest, she was vital in deprogramming her peers. The more they aged, the clearer it became that they were destined to be the leaders of tomorrow, whether they were qualified for the responsibility, or not. Valda needed to ensure that they would be qualified, and would make ethical decisions. She became a leader of leaders, who kept constant watch over the other source mages, in case they got any bright ideas about returning to the kind of world they were living in during the Smithtatorship. Unfortunately, her legacy would not be a positive one. She would many years later break one of her own people’s cardinal rules. Though her actions would come to be crucial to the survival of the human population on Durus, history would only remember the negative, and she would be blamed for the sacrifices that came with it.

Microstory 1167: The Overseer

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Magnolia Quintana belonged to a special class of salmon called shapers, which existed to help create a desirable future on a more long-term basis. They weren’t generally dispatched to save someone from a burning building, or change someone’s mind about an unfortunate choice. Theirs was a slow process; so slow that they often weren’t aware of how they were changing the future. In this way, they were most like humans, except that they experienced nonlinear time. Even amongst these, Magnolia was special. Most were pulled from their lives, and moved to wherever it was the powers that be wanted them to be. Magnolia was provided with a list of missions, full of details, and had the privilege to decide which she acted upon first, and how she handled each one. This list was in constant flux, as much of her work altered the needs of her later work. She sometimes even negated her own actions at one point in time, because it was related to work she later completed in an earlier point in time. People started calling her The Overseer, which was a designation she eventually just had to get used to. Her nickname made her sound like a dictator, when really her job was more about coordination and cooperation. These skills she possessed naturally, which was why she was chosen, instead of any random salmon capable of surviving time travel. Salmon generally work alone, or maybe in teams of one, two, or three. There are a few moments in history, however, when large numbers of them are required to come together, which is where The Overseer comes in. Magnolia was given more information about what needed to be done than most other salmon. Sometimes she was given a list of people she needed to recruit, while other times, the powers that be would merely transport the necessary personnel to the right place. She also acted as a go-between for the choosing ones. Though the choosers technically did not have any obligation to help, the powers were generally pretty good about knowing who they could trust, and who would just ruin it. After a few missions, the powers that be realized that her ability to travel through time was not good enough on its own. She needed to understand who around her possessed the skills she needed to get the job done, so they imbued her with a second power. She could reach across time and space to find someone with a given power, and could find absolutely anyone in the world who existed in her present day. Not all of Magnolia’s missions were military in nature, but they were all huge endeavors that would go unappreciated by the greater human population, yet have profound impacts on all of time.

Microstory 1166: The Officiant

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The Hundemarke is a special temporal object capable of creating a fixed moment in time. While active, it will prevent any time travel that could interfere with the events as they occur around it. Humans, in their incessant drive for violence, generally use this device to kill someone completely dead, so they can never return in some other reality. They fail to see its other applications, such as the protection of life. In the year 1829, a seer predicted the birth of a woman who would come to be known as The Officiant, and went by no other name. She had the strange ability to detect love; more specifically, love between soulmates. Now, for the most part, emotion is not a characteristic of time or space. It’s important, and it’s definitely real, but it bears no impact on the way things work on the quantum level. The Officiant’s proverbial sixth sense did not appear to be a time power, except that she could sense this love across time, and draw herself towards it at will. It was something different; something special, and perhaps even unique in any universe. The seer realized how vital the Officiant could be, and he didn’t want to see anything interfere with that. She wasn’t at more risk of being erased from history than anyone else, but if that were to happen, it would have worse consequences than it would for someone else. He sought out, and ultimately found, the Hundemarke, and used it to hold the Officiant’s birth and early life in place. She needed to live long enough to understand her own power, and mature enough to use it wisely. Once that development was complete, she was free to live her life as she pleased, though of course, he knew what she would do with her gift.

She became ordained as an administer of marriage. She did not do this through some religion, some human legal body, or any recognizable institution. She did not even have it done to her by some other individual. She simply declared to time itself that she was the Officiant, and had the authority to canonize a marital union. While time is not a conscious entity, it does enjoy more control over reality than anything else, including light and gravity. No one could dispute her power; not that anyone would want to. The danger the seer worried about didn’t have anything to do with some nefarious time traveler who purposely went back in time to try and erase the Officiant before she was born. The danger was in the butterfly effect; in minor or unrelated changes preceding her birth that could alter the course of events enough to as to incidentally change the outcome. The worst of the worst temporal manipulators had no problem with her. She never went up against them, or really even expressed distaste for them. She wasn’t exactly unbiased, but she was not concerned with their activity either. Her job was to oversee all marriages between people like her, and it was the only responsibility she had. It’s unclear how old she was before she died, but she did die. Anyone wishing to enter into a marriage would have to seek her out within her own personal timeline. They don’t always realize that they’re doing it. She sometimes just shows up, and doesn’t explain that she’s not just your average minister, or boat captain. Fortunately for her and her need to breaks, marriages involving time manipulators aren’t extremely common. It’s not that it doesn’t happen at all, but since so many of them spend so much of their time on the go, their chances of meeting someone, and settling down, are just that much lower than for a normal person. Still, she kept herself busy, and the work never felt tedious.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 6, 2244

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Before Leona disappeared from the timestream, they went back down to Hokusai’s lab, and read newcomer Pribadium Delgado into yet another situation. It was quite a bit to expect someone to take in all at once, but if she was feeling overwhelmed by it, she sure wasn’t showing it. Fortunately, she wasn’t all that familiar with Leona, so even before they explained to her that the other Leona was from the future, her brain just assumed they were twins. Leona had met a lot of smart people as she sped through the timeline. Hokusai, Hogarth, Holly Blue were just a few of the latest. Brooke and Sharice weren’t exactly humans, so interacting with them was kind of like talking to a computer. Even taking them into account, Pribadium, as an organic, might have been the most intelligent person she had ever met. She had hyperthymesia, and an eidetic memory. She was hyperobservant, critically thoughtful, and had excellent pattern recognition skills. If you rolled the smartest people from fiction, like Mycroft Holmes, Shawn Spencer, and Brian Finch into a ball, Pribadium would be smarter than whatever abomination oozed out of that ball.

She immediately understood the concept of dimensional gravity, which was a good thing, because they now needed her to figure out how to turn the reframe engine into a true time machine. The roller coaster facility could wait. Time was of the essence here, and even with their minds combined, there was not enough. Midnight central hit, and sent both Leonas to 2244. When they returned, the full-fledged anti-gravity generators were completely finished, and already supporting the Varkana resort. They were still beautifying the facilities, and working through the regulatory hurdles, so they would not open until 2247. Plus, visitors did not even want to start the long journey across the interstellar void until they were sure there was something to see when they got here.

“Did you see that?”

“See what?” Present!Leona asked. They had just this very moment returned to the timestream.

Future!Leona didn’t know what she was talking about either.

“I’m talking to Eight Point Seven,” Pribadium clarified.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Eight Point Seven said.

“Recalibrate your visual sensors, or rather your memories of them. Focus on temporal progression on the magnitude of milliseconds.”

Eight Point Seven tilted her head inquisitively, but seemed to be complying with the suggestion. “Holy shit.”

“So, I was right?” Pribadium asked for confirmation. “I could sense it, but I’m mostly human, so my perception is still limited.”

“Four milliseconds,” Eight Point Seven confirmed.

“What happened?” Present!Leona questioned. “Did she disappear before I did?”

“After,” Pribadium answered. She started pacing around the room. “That’s interesting. “Tell me, what time was it when you fell back in time?”

Future!Leona looked sideways at her alternate self.

“I know, you’re worried about creating a paradox. We’ll wipe her memory. Just tell me a number.”

“Fourteen-oh-nine, central standard.”

“What time was it when she arrived?”

“Twelve-twenty-seven,” Eight Point Seven replied.

“Hmm...” Pribadium went back into her own head. “That’s a much bigger discrepancy, yet you didn’t follow it.” She directed her attention to Future!Leona. “If that had any impact on your time jump, you would have done it an hour and forty-two minutes before her. So that’s not what happened. You gained some time in your life, which is interesting. Though, that could all be reversed when we figure out how to send you back.” She began to pace again. “So why did you not jump at the exact same time?”

Everyone else just waited patiently.

“Who’s Mateo?” Pribadium asked.

“My husband,” both Leonas answered simultaneously. They had already been over this, and Pribadium doesn’t forget things, so she was just asking to get her audience on the same logic path.

“He’s offworld right now,” Pribadium asked rhetorically. “Do you have any footage of one of their supposed simultaneous time jumps?”

“No,” Present!Leona said. “No such footage exists.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Eight Point Seven corrected.

“What?”

Eight Point Seven almost looks ashamed. “When my predecessors were trying to figure out who you were, they requested information from Proxima Doma, which apparently did create such a recording. Eight Point Three evidently asked them to delete it, and I’m the only other one with a copy, but I can’t be a hundred percent certain that they complied.”

The Leonas frowned. Hopefully that wouldn’t come back to bite them in the ass.

“Let’s call it luck,” Pribadium suggested. “Can we see it?”

Eight Point Seven simulated a deep breath, then activated a hologram. “Apparently, the Proxima Domanians heard Mateo’s outburst when he was...upset about some terrible news.” She was talking about when Leona had to tell him that their unborn children miscarried, and Mateo trashed the room they were in. “They sent a microdrone to investigate, and it ended up filming this.” She pushed the proverbial play button, so they could watch Mateo and Leona lying in bed, then disappearing at the same time.

“Analysis,” Pribadium prompted.

“Exact same time,” Eight Point Seven said. “I calibrated for nanoseconds. They left the timestream at the exact same time. We have to assume they always do so. What would cause two parallel versions of Leona to be slightly out of sync?”

“Does this matter?” Loa had been pretty quiet until now. She could not help them in any way, but she was a friend. Sanaa was testing the roller coaster at the moment, but was almost certainly spying on them remotely, which made it weird that she hadn’t jumped into the conversation yet.

I’m trying to respect your boundaries, Sanaa said psychically.

No one else was reacting to it, so this was a private telepathic conversation.

I can’t talk to Eight Point Seven, because she isn’t human. I don’t care about Loa’s thoughts. I don’t understand half the things Hokusai thinks about, and Pribadium’s brain is moving too fast for me to even tease one single thought. I can’t hear the other Leona either.

“What?” Leona accidentally asked out loud. “What do you mean, you can’t hear Future!Leona?”

I dunno, Sanaa answered. She’s inaccessible. Some people are like that. With Pribadium, it’s like watching a car race on fast forward, but there are those who can block me completely. Some even aren’t doing it on purpose; they’ve just built walls around their minds that I can’t penetrate. I tend to not even try, because I assume I don’t want to see what’s on the other side.

I didn’t know about any of this, Leona said, in her mind only. There’s no reason for Future!Me to be able to block your telepathy. I just...I wouldn’t do that. Unless...unless she’s keeping something from us, and knows you’re the only one with the power to detect it.

“What is it, Leona?” Hokusai asked, concerned. “What are you and Sanaa talking about?” She had gotten pretty good at knowing when they were in the middle of a conversation.

Present!Leona didn’t have time to answer Hokusai’s question. She was trying to work through it in her head. Something was wrong here.

I know what you’re thinking, Sanaa said. It’s not out of the realm of possibility.

Present!Leona narrowed her eyes, and stared into those of her supposed alternate self. She didn’t recognize the person staring back at her. Very erroneous. If her assumption was wrong, then no big deal; Future!Leona would be fine. But if she was right... “Who the fuck are you?”

“Leona,” Eight Point Seven scolded.

“No,” so-called Future!Leona said dismissively. “She’s right.” She jazzed her hands in front of her face, until pulling them apart, and revealing a different person. It was Arcadia Preston.

This made Pribadium step back. “Oh my God!”

The enemy held out her hand. “Hi. It’s nice to meet you. I’m Arcadia.”

“Don’t shake her hand,” Eight Point Seven warned Pribadium.

“Circuit Breaker,” Arcadia called Eight Point Seven. “You wound me.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” the only real Leona demanded to know. “Where are you in the timeline?”

“Exactly a hundred years ago,” Arcadia answered. “Well...a hundred years and about three months.”

Leona closed her eyes. She didn’t even have to do the math. “My wedding.”

“That’s right,” Arcadia said, her intense anger growing with each passing second. “It was a lovely service. You were there...twice!”

“What in the hell are you talking about?” Leona questioned.

“Oh, don’t act like you don’t know. You latched onto Sanaa’s invitation. Apparently, you finally become friends in this future, so when her letter comes in, you just..hold on tight! That was not for you, Dudley Dursley!”

“That never happened,” Leona argued.

Sanaa walked through the door, having finally come here in person. “She’s right. I haven’t gotten any invitation.”

Arcadia looked between Leona and Sanaa a couple times, then grimaced with embarrassment. “You’re not lying, are you?”

“No!”

She grimaced again. “I guess I got my dates wrong. Wull...it doesn’t matter. You’re gonna, and I didn’t authorize it.”

Leona widened her eyes, shocked at the insolence. “I don’t care! If I want to go back in time, and revisit my own wedding as an audience member, that’s exactly what I’m going to do! You’re a time traveler, and a pretty smart cookie; I think you always knew that your hold on me and my friends wasn’t going to last forever. The forty-plus years you were jacking with my reality might have been the most important of your life, but for me, it was Tuesday.”

“Fine,” Arcadia said. “I guess I’ll see you later.”

“Wait,” Leona stopped her from disappearing. “I’m going to see you again, whenever Sanaa’s invitation comes in. You, on the other hand, have seen the last of me. This is it, baby. If I ever see you again, wearing anybody’s face, I’m going to kill you.” She stepped forward, and got all up in Arcadia’s grill. “And if you think I can’t find a way to do it, just ask Ulinthra.”

“Who’s Ulinthra?” Arcadia asked sincerely.

“Exactly,” Leona whispered in a threatening tone.

“Very well,” Arcadia said, trying desperately to hide her legit fear. “We’ll call this; you..dealing with me—having your busy schedule interrupted—your punishment. So, I won’t punish you further. I have to make another stop anyway.”

“Don’t you do it,” Leona warned. “Don’t you dare.”

Arcadia cupped her hand over her mouth, and mimicked the sound of bad phone reception. Krsch-krsch—you’re breaking up—krsch!” And with that, she disappeared.

“Goddammit,” Leona lamented, shaking her head.

“Where did she go?” Pribadium asked.

Leona sighed. “She’s going to wherever Mateo is, so she can punish him instead. And I am helpless to stop it.”

“She’s probably going to punish him after you see him again at your wedding,” Loa suggested. “So you can warn him.”

“What makes you think he’ll be there too?” Pribadium asked.

“That’s how she operates,” Leona explained. “She doesn’t punish people for things they haven’t done yet. They have to understand why it is she’s upset with them. I’m going to see Mateo again, and probably soon. I can’t imagine she was off on her calculations by more than a few years.”

“I’ll go check the mail,” Sanaa joked, “and get myself a nice dress.”

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Bungula: Baby Sitters (Part VII)

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When the Sumbawa survivors arrived on Bungula, they knew something was wrong. The volcano in the center of their island looked pretty angry, but suddenly it was gone. All of their dwellings were gone too, and they weren’t standing in the exact same places they were before. No, they were from the year 1815, not 1815 BCE, so even though they had no clue what happened, they knew that they had been transported. Brooke and Sharice studied up on the Islamic religion, so they could better understand what the refugees were going through. A few appeared to believe this to be Janna, or The Garden, which was the Islamic analog to Heaven. Others weren’t so sure, because again, they were from the nineteenth century. They knew what volcanoes were, and had no reason to believe it was part of the end of days. Plus, this sure didn’t seem like paradise. It was great and all, but they still had to work and eat. They all attributed their salvation to Allah, however, which was a good thing. Their religious beliefs remained virtually unchanged, despite the inexplicable paradigm shift. They adjusted to their new lives better than anyone could have expected. Brooke and Sharice stayed close, but not too close. They watched the Tambora from afar, secretly placing listening devices in homes and common areas. They weren’t trying to gain state secrets, or even invade their privacy. They needed to learn the language, which was reportedly wiped out by the eruption They had no plans to interact with the people, but it was good to know, in case something came up.

Right now, they’re in the middle of an intense ethical debate about how to proceed.

“That’s murder,” Sharice points out.

“That is not true,” Brooke argues. “There’s a big distinction.”

“Tell me what it is.”

“One involves killing, and the other is just...not letting more life begin. Let me reiterate the more part. I’m not suggesting we get rid of the life that’s already here, but maybe we should consider preventing it from going beyond the current numbers.”

“Now you’re just talking semantics. You can’t sterilize ten thousand people.”

“It wouldn’t be ten thousand,” Brooke notes. “Some are already past their prime anyway.”

“Oh my God, you think that was my point?”

“No.” Brooke simulates a sigh. “I’m just trying to fix things before they become a problem.”

“Exactly what problem do you think will arise from this?”

“There are but a few thousand other people on this world. Or at least, there will be, once we migrate all the colonists back down on the other side of the planet. The Tambora will want to venture from their little island, and they’ll wonder where the hell everyone else is. They made a show about this, called The Society, and as you can imagine, it did not go well.”

“I don’t have to imagine. Those people weren’t on an actual island. The road literally stopped at the city limits, and was replaced by the woods. So right now, the Tambora don’t know they’re alone.”

“Exactly my point,” Brooke says.

“My point is that they’re not really trying to solve a mystery. They were pretty isolated already, so this isn’t such a huge difference. I know you’re concerned that the population is never going to stop growing, and eventually people will want to leave. Maybe they’ll eventually invent airplanes, and see that Singapore isn’t where it’s supposed to be, and neither is Perth. That may happen, but you still haven’t explained why you think that would be such a problem. They already know they’ve been moved. We’re not sure they have good frame of reference for the idea of an exoplanet, but I don’t think they think they’re on Earth.”

“I think they think they’re on Earth. I don’t know where you’re getting that. Are you talking about heaven? The belief that this is the Garden is gradually fading away.”

“I think we’re not giving them enough credit.”

“If it doesn’t matter, then what are we even doing here? Why did we bother building a whole new settlement in the Southern hemisphere if we don’t care whether the Tambora can see the drop ships?”

“I’m not talking about destroying their world view with spaceships, mother. I’m talking about letting them develop on their own. That’s the prime directive. Now, before you say anything, yes, we’ve already interfered with them. Well, technically Mirage was the one who interfered, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter what we do next. Just let them live. Let their population grow to whatever numbers it shall, and let them build seafaring boats, if they want. Our job is over.”

“So we do nothing? We just cut ties, and fly off into the black?”

Sharice shrugs. “Maybe. It’s like Mirage said. They’re living on borrowed time. They were meant to die. History thinks they died. We shouldn’t kill them, and we shouldn’t coddle them. Let’s just see what they do.”

“So, this is a sociology experiment?” Brooke was really pushing it.

“I think you know that’s not what I meant. But know this too; I won’t let you sterilize a single human, you understand me? I wasn’t supposed to be alive either, and I heard a lot of conversations about limiting my capabilities; basically by giving me the machine equivalent to a lobotomy. I won’t tolerate such ambitions.”

“I didn’t know that,” Brooke says honestly.

“Yeah, ‘cause you weren’t there.”

“I thought you had forgiven me for that. I didn’t know you existed, let alone that I had anything to do with the birth of your consciousness.”

“I know,” Sharice comforts. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

“I get your point,” Brooke decides. “We can’t do anything to them, any more than we can do things for them. This is their world now. Or at least, their corner of it.” She grows quiet.

“I think I know what this is about,” Sharice puts forth.

“Oh, yeah? And what would that be?”

“You’re bored.”

“What?”

“You’ve always been on some kind of mission. Even when you were stewing alone under the ice on Europa, you were on a mission to save humanity from you. You don’t like just sitting around for no reason. Ever since you were a kid, your life has been go-go-go, and now it’s like that’s over.”

“I don’t feel that way.” But Brooke couldn’t be so sure. “Do I?”

“It’s all right, mom. We can find you a new purpose, and when you’re done with that one, we’ll get another. We’ll keep going until they finish building the Milky Way, and then maybe we’ll jump to the next galaxy.”

Brooke laughs. “That will be millions of years.”

“Or thousands.” It’s Mirage. Last they saw her, she was organizing the drop ships.

“Well, yeah, if we were to go faster than the speed of light, we could essentially teleport to Andromeda, but I’m not capable of that. I don’t even think my umbilical cord necklace has enough power to sustain me through such a distance journey.”

“You might be able to do it without your necklace,” Mirage suggests vaguely. “You ever heard of a reframe engine?”

“No, what’s that?” Sharice asks.

“It exploits time dilation when approaching the speed of light. If you were to go that fast, Brooke, you could travel several light years, and it would only feel like a few days, right?”

“Well, yeah,” Brooke acknowledged. “But that’s just how time and speed work. That’s not really temporal manipulation. Even regular humans experience that.”

“Exactly my point,” Mirage says.

“But it would still take millions of years to get to Andromeda. It would just feel shorter. Everyone back home would be millions of years older, or millions of years dead.”

“That’s the exploitation part of the reframe engine,” Mirage explains, “and I believe it’s a loophole to your condition. It takes the span of time you spend in the ship, which is moving slower than the outside, and forces that span of time to exist on the outside. So you would still be going ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine-nine percent the speed of light, but it feels like a few thousand years have passed for you, and it makes everyone outside the ship feel the same way. It’s this whole thing.”

Brooke considers the possibility. “Basically a warp drive.”

“Yeah, kinda,” Mirage agrees. “It’s much slower, though. People on Star Trek could make an emergency landing on a survivable planet in the time it takes their damaged shuttlecraft to blow up. In the real world, it would be more like hours, or longer, unless you were already within the star system.”

“So, you invented this...reframe engine?” Sharice questions.

Mirage chortles. “No, not me. I knew it was gonna happen, though. I’ve been in contact with the good people on Varkas Reflex lately, and the inventor is this close to having it figured out. I just spent a great deal of time on the phone with her; had to drop your name, but she’s agreed to let us have the specifications once she’s finished a full working model. She says it won’t be long now. Maybe a year.”

“So, we know her?” Brooke asks. “Who is it?”

“Hokusai Gimura. She’s with Leona. I mean, Leona wasn’t there, since it’s not her time of the year, but Miss Gimura agreed to relay a message, if you were wanting to say hello, or whatever.”

Both Brooke and Sharice would love to say something to Leona, if not directly. That wasn’t what they were thinking about, though. They were really just wondering what they would do with the power of a reframe engine.

Mirage goes on, “I sense hesitation. We’ve already discussed how we should leave Bungula anyway. It belongs to the colonists and refugees now, and if you’re worried about the greater vonearthan population getting us to replicate our terraformation methods, our best option is to pretty much always be on the move.”

“She’s right,” Sharice notes. “We’re already getting calls about doing this on other exoplanets. In fact, we can’t really even wait for this reframe engine to be finished. A team of diplomats is set to arrive in less than a month.”

“I didn’t know they were already on their way,” Brooke laments. “Where can we go in the meantime? We’ll need a quantum messenger.”

“I had that covered a long time ago,” Mirage says with a smile. “I sent a nanofactory to a secret location, in case something like this happened, and I needed to escape.”

“Where?”

“Toliman,” she answers. “The humans have no interest in it. We can hide out there for as long as we need.”

Brooke frowns.

“We should go,” Sharice says to her. “They’ll be fine. Our baby sitting days are over.”

“Okay,” Brooke decides. “Let’s go to Alpha Centauri B.”

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Microstory 1165: Garen Ashlock

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When Garen Ashlock was in fifth grade, he got into an argument with his schoolteacher. She claimed that George Washington had wooden teeth; a factoid that Garen’s history professor mother had already explained to him was false. He wasn’t a bad student, but when he was right about something, he always needed to make sure everyone around him knew it, and this was one of those times. The fight was really heating up when Garen not so politely suggested she go back to the eighteenth century, and have a look for herself. He was surprised to see her disappear in that moment, but he knew she wasn’t dead, or anything, because he could still feel her. He maintained a transtemporal psychic connection to her while she was in the past, and as easily as he sent her there, he was able to pull her back to present day. Now, most people who have time powers aren’t at too much risk of exposing themselves before they even have a chance to grasp the basics of what they can do, but it has been known to happen. Garen’s actions changed everything about the world forever. Of course, a screaming match between an adult teacher, and an eleven-year-old child, was newsworthy. Several of the other students were filming at the time. The videos went viral, and soon, pretty much everyone knew about the disappearing woman, and enough believed it wasn’t fake. Beaver Haven Prison was designed to contain choosing ones who deliberately failed to keep the truth about time powers a secret, but what Garen did was definitely not on purpose, and the guards are not heartless people. Instead, they sent one of their agents back in time, to the day it happened, and erased the memories of the entire class, except for Garen. The agent also hacked the other kids’ phones, and erased the footage, so it was like none of it happened. Except it did, and it had to. The agent could have gone back even further, and prevented Garen’s power from manifesting in that moment, perhaps by telling him what he was beforehand, but that is not a healthy way to discover such a thing about one’s self. It was best for the reality of those events to stay intact, and only certain people’s memories of them be altered. This was Garen’s moment to learn who he was, and no one had the right to take that away from him completely, because it would inform his future decisions.

Garen moved on with his life, practicing what he could do with the agent’s daughter, who was around his age. He figured out that he himself could not travel through time, but could only send other people. He had to maintain a constant tether to them, so he could bring them back later, or they might be lost in time, and there appeared to be some limit as to how many people he could send to how many different points in time. For the most part, travel through time takes part along multiple realities. As soon as you go back, you create a new timeline, and the one you came from collapses entirely, but Garen’s power was different. Reality still shifted, according to whatever changes his clients were, but since he was connected to them, he retained memories from both, providing him with an interesting perspective that was shared by few others. He did not see it that way, however. To him, this was incredibly boring, because even though he had a sense of what his clients were doing, he wasn’t truly experiencing it himself. He became obsessed with building a crazy life for himself in the present, and the craziest life he could think of involved breaking the law. It wasn’t so much that Garen didn’t have the stomach for a life of crime. He was just a rather incompetent criminal. He wasn’t as bad of a person as he would have others believe, or himself. What he needed was a leader, of really any kind. He found a new family in a group of people looking to do some good in the world, specifically in history. Quivira Boyce could possess other people’s bodies, but could not do so through time. Combining hers with Garen’s ability, however, allowed her to return to the past, and put right what once went wrong. Finally, Garen had a purpose, and that was exciting enough for him.

Microstory 1164: Tyler Bradley

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Tyler Bradley was not always a good person, and he knew this, but he didn’t care. That was his whole problem. He didn’t care much about anything; not really even his family. In reality, he loved his first son, but that son was taken from him, in every way. Escher was exploring the house next door when he became lost in an endless maze of basements, and other rooms. The house held many secrets, and had some sort of control over reality itself. At first, Tyler could remember his son, and desperately searched for him, but eventually, those memories disappeared, and he was left with a damaged soul. He lost interest in his wife, Cheryl, but they stuck together for more than fifteen years, because they were too apathetic to divorce. When his daughter was born, he didn’t care for her as much as he should have, and this was enough to force his wife’s hand. She finally divorced him, took full legal custody of Hogarth, and moved to Topeka. He was a broken man, and it seemed that nothing could be done about it, but then a friend made a suggestion. Kallias Bran was the detective assigned to search for Escher all those years ago. He managed to retain his own memories, and knew that the best thing for Tyler was for him to move. Springfield was doing nothing for him but weighing him down, and since Tyler knew intellectually that he should want to know his daughter, being geographically closer to her was best for everybody. This had an immediate positive effect on him. His mood improved, his motivation returned, and he started getting his life together. Things weren’t repaired overnight, but Cheryl eventually agreed to increase the time he had with his daughter from once a month to once a week. By then, Hogarth was old enough to understand her father, and to appreciate that he really was trying to be a better person. She continued to side with her mother whenever there was a disagreement, but she wasn’t completely against him. Tyler’s relationships with his family were strengthened with each passing year, and though he and Cheryl never got back together, they would later come to describe themselves as friends. Their lives were okay for awhile, until Hogarth disappeared much the same way Escher did the better part of three decades prior, but this time, they could remember their child.

Microstory 1163: Lauren Gardner

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Lauren Gardner was an aimless person who had nothing but potential, according to what her parents always said. She did not feel the same way. She moved out of the house when she was sixteen, but kept attending school. She was pretty popular, so she never didn’t have a place to crash. This behavior continued past graduation, and her friends kept helping her, because it had just become part of routine. She didn’t pay them rent, but she helped out with the chores, and overall, she was a good roommate. She also didn’t stay at any one place for too long, so they usually didn’t feel that she was overstaying her welcome. Her best friend even liked to have her over for the week of his birthday each year. She needed others to pay for her food, and maybe a little alcohol every once in a while, but she wasn’t the most irresponsible, or high maintenance. She was getting by pretty well, and she wasn’t alienating too many people along the way, but that isn’t to say it never happened. The older they all got, the less they tolerated her, and she started seeing the writing on the wall. Even her best friend was kind of trying to move on with his life, and she knew she would not be able to keep this up forever. A part of her came to believe it was possible that time itself sensed this about her life, and made dramatic changes to it against her will. She woke up with a start one morning, and found herself sitting up in bed right next to a woman who looked exactly like her. Literally a couple seconds later, the copy disappeared, as did her friend’s bed guest bed, plummeting her to the floor. Frightened and confused, she stepped out of the room in nothing but her Nirvana t-shirt, and crept down the hallway. A stranger was there with her young daughter. They all screamed, and Lauren ran out of the apartment. By the time she got all the way down the stairs, they too disappeared, along with the rest of the apartment complex, sending her once again falling, but this time, from more than a story in the air.

She didn’t have any broken bones, but she was bleeding, and in quite a bit of pain. She managed to stand up, and walk a few blocks into town. Things looked a little different, but not terribly so. People weren’t dressed the way they should have been, and some of the shops she knew should be there were gone, replaced by something else entirely. She kept walking, and eventually came across a newsstand. Of course, the paper read Wednesday, September 9, 1987. She didn’t know why, and she sure as hell didn’t know how, but she had somehow slipped exactly seven years into the past. As she continued to walk, dodging funny looks from people seeing a girl with no bottoms early in the morning—who they would surely believe was taking the walk of shame—she started working things out in her head. When she woke up in a bed with herself, that was the past, but not this past. No, that must have been some other day. Her friend hadn’t started renting that place until 1992, which was why it all disappeared when she went back even further. The apartment building itself didn’t even exist until late 1989–early 1990, which is why it too disappeared from under her feet. She spent another few hours here until it happened again, and she was suddenly in what she quickly discovered was 1979. She continued to jump backwards in time, progressively further back, and for progressively longer periods. She eventually met Samson and Theodore, but like her, they would not always use the same name. Lauren was upset at first, but then she realized she had always been looking for a purpose in life, and maybe this could be it. It wasn’t like she had any loved ones back in her own time period. The right attitude could make it all worth it. She had new friends now, and together, they had important missions to complete. They came to understand that they were helping make the world a better place, and that was really all they needed.