Microstory 1249: Aqil Saqqaf

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Until Valda Ramsey’s mother returned to the timeline from the past, and finally gave birth to her child, Aqil Saqqaf was the youngest source mage in Springfield, but it was not originally meant to be like this. Aqil’s father went on an extended business trip shortly after he was conceived. He was gone for four months, and returned to find his wife pregnant. About a month after the Deathfall sent the entire town to Durus, the baby’s due date came and went. Then more time passed, and then more. Aqil ultimately gestated in his mother’s womb for a total of 380 days, which they would never have access to the internet to discover was the longest overdue pregnancy in recorded history. The father didn’t believe it anyway. He was completely convinced that his wife had cheated on his while he was away, even though she claimed that she was always faithful. At first, things were bad. He refused to take care of the boy who was indeed his child, but the survivors were all in this together, so little Aqil was not lacking in love and care. They would get through this as long as things didn’t escalate beyond this. The problem was that things got much, much worse. His father’s anger grew as time went on, and possibly thanks to the influence of the time monsters that plagued this world, he fell off the deep end. He eventually killed his wife for her supposed infidelity, leaving poor Aqil with no parents. Smith tried to take responsibility for him, but Dar’s parents, the Treslers knew that Aqil would grow up maladjusted if they allowed this to happen. They took him in instead, and raised them as Dar’s brother. They quickly realized how intelligent Aqil was. Had school, in the traditional sense, existed on this hell world, he would have skipped at least three grades by the time he graduated from high school. He actually struggled with finding the resources to satiate his thirst for knowledge, and understanding of how things worked. With no way of reaching Earth, there were just some ideas he couldn’t explore beyond reading about them in library books. Still, his limitations didn’t stop him from being the driving force in curating the Mage Protectorate’s laws and policies. He borrowed from preexisting constitutions, and other law documents, but a lot of the way the government on Durus would come to function safely and effectively were from his new ideas. He ignored past procedures he felt were detrimental to a progressive society, and enjoyed the benefit of being born at a time when equality was at least already established as desirable. He never, for instance, had to give white land-owning men exclusive civil rights, and then gradually start including everyone else. These rights existed for all citizens, right from the start, which made moving forward that much easier. People almost even thought being portaled to the rogue planet was a good thing; a way to start fresh. Aqil wouldn’t take it that far, but he did want to make the best of their situation, and the new world was better for him having been part of it.

Microstory 1248: Bhulan Cargill

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Bhulan Cargill was born in 2069 to a world that she didn’t like, but thanks to her, it no longer exists. She spent years there, though, trying to collect all the data she could, to figure out what went wrong. She realized that a number of people in her family were either part of what caused history to turn out as it did, or would be in a position to help fix it, if only they were given a little nudge. Once she was finished gathering this information, she went back in time, and executed her plan. She visited her family, and other key people, throughout time. She helped them out of tough situations, sometimes without them even knowing, and directed the timeline where she wanted it to go. This was her temporal power. Sure, she could jump through time, but lots of other people could too. Her real gift was a keen insight into the way events unfolded, and the necessary skills to account for the plethora of variables. Something called the butterfly effect made it so that, for most people, history alteration is predominantly a one time deal. Once a traveler goes back in time, and starts making changes, everything they knew about the future becomes irrelevant. The more changes they make, they less their knowledge of what happened in the other timeline can help them make further decisions. Bhulan’s power was limited as well, but her ability to predict what kind of unintended consequences her temporal revisions would have far exceeded the average traveler. This allowed her to make multiple jumps; first all the way back to the earliest important moment in time, and work her way forwards. After all this, things were so much different than they were in the alternate reality she came from, that the world was unrecognizable. In fact, her actions had the effect of preventing her from ever even existing. It was unclear to her, or anyone else privy to the truth, whether she wanted to erase herself from history, or not. No matter what she did now, this version of her already existed, so it was probably better that she didn’t have some other self, running around the timeline.

The mission was finally over. Things could obviously be better, but with the butterfly effect in play, the variables would have been impossible to calculate. So now the question was, what was she going to do with her life in this new timeline? Other travelers have experienced this conundrum. They spent so much time focused on their goals that they didn’t consider what would happen when they succeeded. There were several options, a couple of which were not possible. There was no way for her to assimilate her consciousness with that of an alternate, since she was the only Bhulan here. That also meant she couldn’t destroy or exile her alternate, and take her place. Free from these ethical dilemmas, she could have integrated herself into society, and do whatever she would have done if the mission hadn’t been her sole focus, but she didn’t want that. She had interfered in the timeline enough, and she also wasn’t interested in going far enough into the future to avoid undermining her own prior actions. She could just go off and hide out somewhere, perhaps on an undiscovered planet, or so far in the past that she didn’t run into anyone else, though that didn’t sound enticing either, so there was only one last option. Time travelers who kill themselves generally do this so the timeline’s native version of themselves can be the one to live out their lives in peace, which again, wasn’t necessary in Bhulan’s case. Still, every time she thought about it, this was the idea she kept coming back to. She felt it prudent to remove herself from the equation, now that both sides were proverbially balanced out. She definitely succeeded in removing herself from the equation, but what she didn’t intend, was to simply move over to a different equation.

Microstory 1247: Sadie Kovak

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It was kind of a taboo subject, but the truth was that some people just weren’t capable of having special time powers. No one really understood why, and those who might have had the tools to investigate, weren’t living on Durus. It was rare, though, so people didn’t really worry about it much. When Sadie Hartoria was nineteen years old, it was time for the Third Mage Games. Every twenty years, a new batch of contenders battled it out on the competition floor in an attempt to prove themselves worthy of becoming town mages. She had trained for this her whole life. In its forty year history, the highest number of mages were aged sixteen to twenty-two. People were at their competitive and athletic prime during this range of their lives, so parents would actually plan their pregnancies around it. Sadie was destined for greatness, everyone believed. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that she would be one of the winners, and be selected for service. She proved everybody right when she came in first. Sadly, she was born different than normal people. Each one of them tried, just to make sure, but the source mages were unable to bestow powers upon her. Some people’s bodies and minds simply reject the transformation. She could not serve if she didn’t have powers, which she ultimately came to think was a ridiculous rule, because plenty of mage selects ended up with noncombative abilities, so they weren’t any more qualified than she would be as a regular human. She and her parents appealed the decision, but it was pointless. The rules were the rules, and nobody was going to make an exception for her. Fortunately, this was not the only way for her to contribute to society. There was still one other option that would effectively harness her skills and experience. Ecrin Cabral was one of the first mages ever, and enjoyed a special level of autonomy from the other divisions of the Mage Protectorate. She had created a small but important police contingency that would enforce the internal laws of the towns. For the most part, people followed the laws on their own, and the largest threat came from the time monsters, but there were still some issues that good old fashioned police work could handle. Sadie was perfect for it, so this is what she did for her career. But now there was something missing from her life, and it wasn’t her husband, Jörm. She realized she had another dream that she didn’t know if she would ever be able to reach, and had kind of let go before. Sadie wanted a child more than anything. She considered herself lucky to have found a husband who felt the same way, but gradually became more and more disheartened the longer it took for pregnancy to take hold, until there was no hope left. She would come to believe, however, that everything happens for a reason. She and Jörm discovered a child in desperate need of care, and this was when things got interesting.

Microstory 1246: Kayetan Glaston

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Kayetan Glaston wasn’t the best person in the world, but he wasn’t the worst either. His alliances would shift constantly, not according to the highest bidder, or anything, but based on whoever asked him last. He didn’t really have an agenda, or any goals, of his own. He was given the nickname of The Merger, but he didn’t ask people to call him that. Merging was an ambiguous word, which required contextual specificity, and he was only a spatio-temporal merger, so he didn’t feel it properly distinguished him. He had the ability to bring together two different locations, across time and space. If he concentrated hard enough, he could merge more than two, and he was one time able to summon an entire Colosseum full of people from all over spacetime, but it required a special booster, and he was in a coma for over a week because of it. Anyone close enough to one of these merge points would be able to cross from one location to the other as if turning down a new street. He was often called to action by other choosing ones who either weren’t capable of traveling themselves, or had some special reason for wanting to do it his way. He didn’t care who was doing the asking, but if he didn’t feel like responding, then he wouldn’t. He didn’t care about money, or payment of any kind. He could go anywhere and anywhen he wanted, so like many other temporal manipulators, static worldly possessions seemed mostly pointless to him. People like him understood better than anyone just how temporary any given object was, and how foolish it was to covet anything. He was particularly disinterested in gathering things, though. He spent his days wandering around time and space, and when there was nowhere he wanted to go, he was watching TV, or reading a book. Apathetic was probably the most common word used to describe him, though it wasn’t accurate. Neutral would be a better one. He did care what happened to people, but he wasn’t always good at choosing the right side, and that got him into trouble. Still, there was no one instance where he switched from sometimes working with bad people, to working exclusively with those with good intentions. He just slowly phased out the unsavory clients in favor of the more benevolent ones. However, this is time travel we’re talking about, so exactly when he did anything was simply a matter of perspective. If contacted, there was no telling where in his personal timeline Kayetan happened to be, or what he had been through up until that point. At no point in his history, however, was he evil, so there was at least that.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 22, 2260

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To say that Cassidy was upset about being left in the dark about Mateo would be an understatement. She felt particularly betrayed by Leona, with whom she spent hours in the wilderness, working through their tension. The worst part of it was that everyone else on the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez knew that he was alive, as did Thor. Explaining to her that the others, like Ellie and Trinity, also weren’t told the truth wasn’t helpful at all. She wasn’t impressed by Vitalie reminding everyone that she didn’t care, so it didn’t matter that she knew. Étude tried to comfort her daughter, but Cassidy wasn’t having it. She hid herself away in her grave chamber, and didn’t come out until November 22, 2260. Mateo stayed in his own grave too, as Leona was still not yet ready for them to sleep that close to each other on a regular basis.

He didn’t wake up until long after midnight central, so the AOC had already landed on the surface of their new planet, Glisnia. The planet was a super-Earth, orbiting a star called Gliese 832. Surface gravity was far too high for the average biological human to withstand, so they were required to remain inside one of the ever-growing facilities, or be en route to another. Each was equipped with special technology called a transdimensional gravity platform, and while a Higgs-Boson field could generate artificial gravity to support an otherwise zero-g environment, something like this was necessary to lessen the gravitational pull of a celestial body’s core. Leona’s friend, Hokusai Gimura had utilized it on Varkas Reflex, but it was invented by Leona’s other friend, Hogarth Pudeyonavic, who was set to be one of the few humans living here. Though this amazing technology would allow anyone to survive on this world, Glisnia was allocated for artificial entities. It wasn’t particularly well-suited for nonbiological life, but it was good enough, and so far, many of the other colony planets had been set aside for biologicals. Leona believed better star systems would come about later, but in the meantime, plans were being drawn up for a Dyson shell, in order to gather most of Gliese 832’s energy output, and use it to power the inhabitants.

Ever since the Varkas Reflex incident, standard colonization procedures were drastically altered. Back in 2238, Leona discovered that the factory ships that were sent off to build habitat structures on Varkas had malfunctioned. Their communication with Earth had also gone haywire, leaving the world unfit for settlement, and quite dangerous, actually. Worried that this sort of thing might happen again, it was decided that all colony ships would be preceded by something called a Forerunner. It was a small ship designed for two to five people, and capable of near lightspeed travel. These people were meant to arrive in orbit ahead of the colonists, and solve any problems that Earth might not have been notified about. While automation was originally meant to account for all issues on its own, neighborhood leadership now felt it necessary to maintain a human touch to these endeavors. It was Hogarth and her wife, Hilde’s responsibility to do this here, even though no other biological people were scheduled for transport in the near future. As of now, besides a few mission-necessary automated systems, humans were the only people on Glisnia. The colony ships were not set to arrive until next year.

“Where are we going?” Mateo asked. They were riding across the alien desert in a land vehicle. Though the thing was completely enclosed, they were still required to wear vacuum suits for protection, and be able to attach their helmets at a moment’s notice. He found it more comfortable to stand, and hang onto the grips, rather than sit in the seats like everyone else.

“We’re headed for the Nexus replica,” Leona explained.

“Why didn’t we land closer to it?” Mateo asked. “Honest question; I’m not criticizing.”

“There’s nowhere to land. The replica was placed far from landing zones, specifically so no one would likely discover it accidentally. It’s situated on a bit of land that’s large enough for the structure itself, but no larger, and it’s pretty well hidden.” She was able to treat Mateo like a friend now, but it was as of yet unclear whether she would ever be able to interact with him on a romantic level.

Mateo was willing to accept the possibility that their marriage had suffered too much to continue. Perhaps this was it, and even though it would break his heart, he wanted to do what was best for her. “Again, I’m not trying to be difficult, but how did you find it if it was hidden so well?”

Hogarth threw a looped string at him, which he caught. “I call it the Lanyard of Disturbance. I don’t know with certainty that it was originally attached to the Compass of Disturbance, but it certainly appears that way. You can’t control what it finds, and it doesn’t allow you to do anything with whatever you find, but it can point the way to temporal anomalies. It’s like a divining rod for spacetime tears, and in this case, an interstellar teleportation module.”

“Got it,” Mateo said. Surprisingly, he understood every word she said, even the big ones. He was getting smarter, if only a little.

Cassidy almost looked like she was reading his mind, like maybe the smile from his pride was enough to let her know what he was thinking. And she rolled her eyes because of it.

“Hey,” Mateo began to ask a question, but thought better of it.

“What?” Cassidy asked.

“Nothing,” he tried to backpedal. “I’m sorry.”

“Spit it out!” she demanded.

He sighed, knowing he had to say it, but also knowing how much it would piss her off. “Do you want a year?”

“Do I want a what?” she sassed.

“We can take you off our pattern, temporarily, right? You could have a life, for a year; I’m sure these fine people would protect you.”

Cassidy didn’t respond for a moment, but scowled. “You think all I need to get over this is time?”

“Wull...yeah.”

“Well, that’s probably true, but you’re not trying to help me. You’re just trying to skip over all the grief. Let’s say all I need is one year, that means you only have to deal with me for one more day, and suddenly we can be friends again.”

“Okay, I suppose that’s true,” Mateo had to admit.

He looked to Leona for guidance, but she was staying out of it. Her facial expression said a lot about her, however. She was still upset with him for the lapdance, and slightly uncomfortable with Cassidy for giving him the lapdance. She felt bad about lying to Cassidy, and sorry for Mateo for experiencing the most backlash over it. She secretly felt that it was a good idea to have Cassidy go through her stuff during their interim year, but she also understood how offensive this proffer was.

“I’ll still have to go through it,” Cassidy argued, “but you’ll be able to move on quickly. No, no, no. I’m not giving you the satisfaction.”

“That’s why I decided to not ask you,” Mateo contended, “because I realized it was a dumb thing to suggest.”

“You should have just not opened your mouth in the first place,” Cassidy said.

“I know.”

“That should just be your resting state,” she went on, “shutting the fuck up!”

“Okay.”

She stopped talking for a moment, but the anger didn’t stop building. “Goddammit!”

“Cass—” He tried to say.

“No!” Cassidy interrupted. “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through; dying...Jesus! That must be a horrific memory for you. I know I shouldn’t be pissed off, I just can’t help it.”

“I understand,” he insisted.

“No, you don’t. You can’t, because I don’t!” She didn’t want to go too far, so she found her calm before getting back to it. “It all happened so fast. I didn’t have the chance to confront Briar about this. I kept putting it off, because I was grieving first. If I had known you were alive in some..weird, magic mirror...thing, I might have been able to say something. I might have been able to speak my peace. You robbed me of that, because the fact is that even though you’re still here, you’re also dead, and he still killed you. I don’t know how he’s gonna answer for that, but he didn’t answer to me!”

Mateo didn’t know how to respond to this, so he just sat down and wrapped his palms around his face.

Leona stepped up, literally and figuratively. She approached Cassidy, and placed a hand on her shoulder. “It was my decision to keep it a secret. I’m sorry you went through that. It wasn’t something I considered, and that was unfair.” She pivoted, so she could address both her and Mateo. “The three of us are bonded; not in the way we were with Serif, but it’s undeniable. We all have to find a way to get through this, because we all deserve to be happy; even you, Mateo.”

He lifted his face, but avoided eye contact, and sent a telepathic message that what Leona said to him was probably untrue. He felt a gloved hand on his, and thought it was Leona’s, but when he looked, he saw Cassidy, crouched in front of him.

“She’s right; you do. I don’t understand how this works, but we’re gonna put off your death until we have absolutely no other choice. And I’m gonna be here for as long as it makes sense. I won’t promise it’ll be forever.”

Leona crouched down as well. “I can promise that, though.”

“Why am I the one being comforted?”

“We’re all hurting, Mateo.”

Leona gave him a hug, and then gave one to Cassidy. Then she looked between them. “Okay, it’s actually weirder that you’re not hugging. Please, let’s just pretend that this is a normal relationship.”

They sat in silence for another ten or fifteen minutes, at which point Hogarth announced that they had arrived. After repressurizing the airlock, they exited the vehicle, and Mateo noticed that it looked exactly like the one they had just come from.

Leona noticed too. “This is not a likeness. Did you turn around?”

“I did,” Hogarth answered. “No one is up for a funeral today. Let’s all get some rest, and put it off until tomorrow. Does that sound okay?”

“I think that’s a great idea, hon.” Hilde hugged her wife from the side.

“It’s probably for the best,” Leona agreed.

So they postponed the trip to Dardius in favor of a quiet day of reflection and conversation. Mateo, Leona, and Cassidy tried to talk about anything other than the bad and awkward things that had happened between them. They figured the key was to move on from it, and stop dwelling. It appeared to be working, at least for now. Étude and Cassidy also took the chance to get to know each other a little better. There was so much Étude wasn’t before allowed to tell her daughter about where they came from. She might return to Dardius to her own fanfare, and she had to be prepared for that. In the end, it was a very nice day, and possibly vital to the process. Tomorrow was going to be hectic, and none of them really knew how things were going to shake out.

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Source Variant: Class XI (Part XI)

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For two hundred years, off and on, Saga!Two, Vearden!Three, and Saxon work to ensure that the Orothsew see foreigners as potential allies, rather than dangerous threats. They’re aided in this endeavor by a team of vonearthans, who were dispatched to Orolak for this very purpose. None of them knows who conscripted them for the mission; just that they were called to action for a chance to explore a new world hundreds of light years away. They fabricate a story about a third continent—even though the Orothsew have not yet encountered the second—and claim that this is where another species evolved. They arbitrarily call themselves the Clexa, and never appear in human form. An entirely new substrate is created that one of the operatives designed specifically to be a perfect amalgamation of an Orothsew, and a Gondilak. The idea is to prepare for the inevitable meeting of the two real species, and prevent them from ever warring with each other.

The three primaries show up every once in awhile, and make sure the rest of their new team is doing okay, and they always are. They modify their faces regularly so the Orothsew don’t realize they’re just the same few dozen people who never die. The Orothsew don’t get upset that the Clexa aren’t sharing their technology. If fact, they seem to believe in their own form of the Prime Directive from the Star Trek franchise. They want to develop on their own, because without struggle, they believe that the reward isn’t worth anything. Since this is all going so well, the vonearthans make plans to travel to the other side of the world to do the same thing for the Gondilak, but every attempt is sabotaged. They even try to fly over there in shuttles, but are always forced back. The powers that be have some interesting ideas about how this mission should be handled, and it apparently doesn’t involve reaching out to the other continent until some time later. When exactly that will be, no one knows for sure, but we’re likely talking centuries.

After just over four decades of absence, the primaries exit their portal door, and find themselves exactly two hundred years since this latest job began. A cursory glance at mission status reveals that the vonearthans disappeared eleven years ago, and have never returned. It would seem that the powers consider this chapter to be closed, and now it’s up to the only three humans on the planet right now to figure out what they should do next.

“According to your account, and my calculations,” Saxon begins, “this should be our last mission before the Orothsew cross the ocean.”

“Are you sure?” Vearden!Three asks.

“If we’ve returned to our regular two hundred year jump pattern, then yes, I believe we’ll catch up with the time Saga here, and the other version of you, first landed on this world.”

“Hm,” Saga!Two can only think to say.

Saxon continues, “while the Clexa didn’t give the Orothsew our technology, there’s no way to stop them from having ideas. Now they know what seafaring ships should look like, and they have the inkling to go explore.”

“Well, what else can we do?” Vearden!Three asks. “Either we’ve done all we can to prepare them, and today is our vacation, or we’ve not done enough, and we only have one more chance to stop the war.”

“Well, we could make another appearance,” Saxon suggests. Though the responsibility of pretending to be Clexa rested on the special team that showed up, the three of them used their McIver hats to do the same, though with far less diplomatic experience to back them up.

“Nah, I don’t want to do that,” Saga!Two says. “The other Clexa left, and whatever reason the Orothsew came up with to explain that, we shouldn’t confuse them with more interruptions. I think it’s time they start making their own decisions. We probably won’t be there when they meet the Gondilak, so let’s let them be.”

“So, you think we should do nothing?” Vearden!Three questions.

“Maybe your remark about this being our vacation was a joke,” Saga!Two begins, “but it doesn’t sound like a terrible idea to me.”

The other two don’t know what to say. A break is the last thing they would have thought someone like Saga would suggest. They don’t have much time to think about it before an alarm starts going off. Saxon rolls his chair over to the main computer to find out what is going on.

“What is it?” Saga!Two asks.

“Unauthorized entry,” Saxon replies. “Someone is coming through the quantum network, and unlike the vonearthans from before, this isn’t from the stellar neighborhood.”

“Where is it from?” Vearden!Three asks.

Saxon continues to look through the data. “All systems within fifty light years of Earth are considered to be part of the neighborhood. Project Stargate completely avoided all of these. The world that’s incoming is almost forty light years beyond the threshold, and has a Terrestrial Habitability Similarity Index of point-nine-two-one. Oh, shit, I know that number, and the distance.”

“What is it?”

“Shit!” Saxon exclaims again. “We gotta go!” He jumps out of his chair, and takes off towards the quantum surrogacy section.

The other two follow him. “Tell us what’s wrong! Who is coming through?”

“If we get there in time,” Saxon begins, “no one. We cannot let them through. The natives call their planet Worlon, and Earth designated it Loci Non Grata!”

“You mean like Utah?” Vearden!Three jokes.

“Yes, but worse!” They continue to run down the passageways. “I ran off before I could find out why, but Earth does not take that designation lightly.”

They reach the secret section. Saxon removes an energy weapon from yet another secret compartment, and begins to blast away all of the equipment, including the surrogate pods. He destroys everything. Saga!Two and Vearden!Three can’t be of much help right now, so they just watch until he feels he’s done.

“Explain,” Saga!Two orders.

Saxon removes an extra tablet from the shelf, and quickly connects it to the system. “Let me find out.” They wait for him to retrieve the necessary information, then listen to him recite it. “Worlon is Class XI LNG—that’s loci non grata, which is Latin for a place you don’t wanna go. I’ve never heard of Class XI because Class X is only theoretical. If ever needed, it would be reserved for hostile aliens who pose an immediate and nearly unstoppable threat to life in the entire galaxy. If Worlon is worse than that, then...I think that means they threaten the whole universe.”

“You’re confused,” a sinister voice comes from a dark corner.

Vearden!Three grabs the energy weapon that Saxon set on the table, and trains it on the invader. “Explain yourself, or die.”

“Class IX is for galactic threats.” An alien they’ve never seen before that kind of resembles a dragonfly comes out from the shadows. “Class X is for universal threats, though we’re still not sure there is any life beyond The Milky Way, so both nine and ten are theoretical.”

“Then what’s Class XI?” Saga!Two demands to know.

The alien grimaces. “The multiverse. We’re not sure if that exists either, but uh...” He loses his casual attitude, and becomes quite serious, “if it does, we’ll kill them too.”

“Why?” Saga!Two asks. “What’s your motivation?”

“There’s only so much room in heaven,” it says, as if it’s an accepted truth that she should already understand. “We’re not going to share it.”

“You start killing everyone,” Saxon argues, “you won’t have to worry about how much room there is in heaven. You won’t be going there.”

“Not yet, no,” it acts like it agrees. “Neither will you. Since you killed the rest of my strike team, I suppose all I can do now is give you a message.”

Saga!Two tenses up. “What message?”

“We’re coming. It might take us awhile, since we have a lot of pit stops ahead of us, and you destroyed the quantum link, but we’ll get here eventually.”

Vearden!Three pulls the trigger, and sends a powerful enough blast towards the enemy that it flies apart into a million pieces. “Well, I would say that I did that on accident; that I didn’t realize how sensitive the trigger was, but the truth is that my finger was barely strong enough to squeeze it.”

“No.” Saxon carefully takes the gun from him. “You did the right thing. Now I know what our mission here is really all about.”

“Yes.” Saga!Two steps forward, and examines the bits of the Worlon creature. This was never about the war between the Orothsew and Gondilak.  “We’re here to stop them.”

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Microstory 1245: Merton Casey

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Different people in the world of salmon and choosers were born with different abilities. Some could teleport, others could jump through time. Some could only see the future, or skip time. No one with any given time power was the only one of their kind, but some powers were rarer than others. One of the most coveted of these was anti-aging capabilities. Immortality on its own was possible to obtain, but a difficult series of tasks lie ahead for anyone willing to try for it. The next best thing to this was playfully called reyoungification, and one of the few people capable of this was named Merton Casey. He could alter anyone’s appearance back to how they were at any desired time of their lives. He also necessarily rejuvenated and healed them of whatever age-related diseases they might have contracted. He could make people young and healthy, but it came at great cost to him. Once people discovered what he could do, they started lining up for his services, and most were completely willing to accept the nature of the procedure. The awkwardness was only temporary, and to them, the benefits were too amazing to pass up. Merton couldn’t just wave his hands in front of his patients, and make them young again. He had to physically manipulate their bodies, all over. He had to smooth out wrinkles, and wipe away hair, and in some cases, shorten body parts. Doing this for anyone made him feel uncomfortable, but it was especially problematic when it was for a woman, which, let’s be honest, they made up the majority of his clients. So every case made his life that much more difficult to continue. Somehow being at least a little attracted to the patient made the whole thing worse; like he was violating them, even though they consented to this. A few didn’t consent, and then nothing happened. The worst of it came when he met a young woman named Paige Turner. She was fourteen years old when an antagonist aged her up to her twenties. Her reasons for doing this were her own, but the bottom line was that this woman never returned to reverse what she had done. After a year in this state, Paige decided she wanted to go back to being fifteen, and Merton was the only one they found who could help her. Unfortunately, he had never been asked to do anything like this before. His other patients wanted to be made young again, but never that young, and they were never meant to be that age in the first place. Paige was really just a child in an adult body, so touching her at all was even more offensive than normal. Fortunately, he was rescued from this job, by a woman who ran a special place that was designed to be a haven for people who had been negatively impacted by time travelers. She made an exception for Merton, and let him live in Sanctuary as well, despite having abilities of his own. He was protected from would-be clients here, and finally free of his trauma, so that he could heal, and move on.

Microstory 1244: Cyneric Brennan

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For years of realtime, Quivira Boyce traveled into the somewhat recent past to fix what she and her team believed were bad historical outcomes, though not always the famous events. Sometimes she saved people’s lives in a literal sense, by possessing the bodies of those closest to them, and sometimes it was more up to her colleague to set their subjects on more positive paths through a special brand of therapy. This was a hard life, or lives, as one might say. She was always working to make the world a better place, and didn’t really have time for anything else. But that wasn’t exactly why their mission had to come to an end, or why Cyneric Brennan was called to action. Quivira wasn’t old or tired. By her very nature, her body’s age didn’t matter much. But she had spent so much time as other people, she lost track of who she was. She felt she needed to pass the torch, and Cyneric was...well, he was available. His job was different than hers. He couldn’t possess people in the past, nor could he travel through time on his own. He was, however, a skilled operative with no sense of direction in his life. His work became more action-based, focusing on rescuing people the new team felt deserved to survive. Some of these were being helped by other time travelers, like The Savior, or The Kingmaker, but there were plenty of victims who fell through the cracks. Without these heroes, the statistical numbers of deaths and other tragedies in the world would be so much higher, and Cyneric wanted to be a part of that, even if he didn’t quite realize this himself. It took some time for him to warm up to his new responsibilities, but he eventually couldn’t imagine doing anything else.