The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 28, 2266

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Mateo still needed some time to recover from whatever it was that brought him back here. The jump to the future didn’t help things. Leona was frustrated, because he didn’t appear to have any serious injuries, and there really wasn’t anything she could do. She offered him some pain medication, but he refused, because he knew he would get over it on his own, and he didn’t like putting anything in his body that he didn’t have to.

Finally, Leona stepped out of nurse mode, and stepped into protective wife mode. “How did he get here? Why is he in pain?”

“I couldn’t tell ya,” Nerakali claimed.

“No, you said something about a time travel gun,” Leona argued.

“It’s fine, Leelee, I’m fine,” Mateo tried to comfort her.

“No, she’s gonna answer me.”

Nerakali sighed. “No, I’m not.”

Leona got all up in her grill. “And why exactly is that?”

“Rule number twelve,” she answered simply.

Don't learn too much about your future. It was kind of an amendment to Leona’s ninth rule of time travel, which was to gather as much information on the future, and your future, as possible. Well, maybe more like a clarification; a reiteration of the possible part.

“Look,” Nerakali said, “you’re gonna have to trust me on this. I cannot say anything more.”

“Let it go, Lee,” Mateo said.

“You don’t call me that,” Leona spat. “Stop acting like you call me that.”

He stood up and gave her a hug. “Okay, Del.”

“Ugh,” she growled, like someone whose dollar the vending machine keeps rejecting. She did let it go, though, and turned back to Nerakali. “Why are we here? What are we doing? You wanted us to find your mother, but I don’t see anyone else.”

“Her whonow?” Mateo asked, confused.

“We came to this place to get your husband,” Nerakali explained. “That’s as relevant to the mission as it is, and as relevant as it ever needed to be.”

“Well, then, where are we gonna start?”

“We start,” Mateo said coolly, like he had any clue what was going on, “by catching me up to what the bloody ‘ell is happening, and why she’s involved.”

Nerakali flipped a lid off the top of her ring, and revealed a holographic image of a woman Mateo thought he recognized.

“It’s Arcadia.”

“Everyone thinks that,” Nerakali said, shaking her head. “It’s actually our mother, Savannah. She’s the one what killed you.”

Mateo squinted, and looked again. “Okay, so she does look a lot like Arcadia, though I can spot some differences when I know to look for them. Still, she doesn’t look anything like Briar.”

“Briar was just the weapon,” she said, closing the hologram, and shrugging her shoulders.

“Evidently, she gave him the hundemarke so your death couldn’t be undone with time travel,” Leona added. She also gave it to Newt’s killers, and also Jabez Carpenter back in 2019.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Just one of many people my mother manipulated.”

“So she’s been doing this all over time and space?” Mateo asked.

“Yes. We are here to stop her.”

“Well,” Mateo began, “I’m happy to do anything I can to help, but this might be out of our wheelhouse. I’ve jumped back in time before—why, I was just in, like, a million years ago—but those are always flukes. I doubt the powers that be would let us keep doing that, so unless she stays in this time period, and during our days in the timestream, I’m afraid there’s little we can do.”

“Aren’t we just waiting for a moment when she shows up?” Leona assumed.

“Sort of,” Nerakali replied. She pulled up her ring hologram again, but swiped to a different image. It was a document of some kind; probably a spreadsheet, but holograms weren’t the best form factor for what was meant to be legible data. She seemed to just be showing them for illustrative purposes. “I know when the hundemarke was used. I have a list of every fixed moment in time that was made to be that way with the hundemarke. Most of them are deaths, but a few are presumably just moments that particular people don’t want to be altered. Not all of them have anything to do with Savannah. She seems to be deeply committed to wiping certain people from the timestream permanently, but other people have used it for their own ends.

“I believe I’ve narrowed the list down to just the ones she was involved with.” She swiped again to reveal another document. “But these just tell me the moments the hundemarke was used. What some people might not realize is that, just because you’re wearing it, doesn’t mean it’s going to be doing its thing. In fact, you don’t technically need to be wearing it all, but people usually do, because there’s a psycho-emotional connection. Still, some of the people she manipulated had no idea what they were wearing, yet they still activated its power. Why? Well, most of the time, it’s because even if they don’t know what they have, they are committed to the moment they’re in. Whatever it is, they want it to happen to a much higher degree than for other things they do. They may be wearing it when they go get their car washed, but since the wash isn’t particularly important to them, the hundemarke remains nothing more than an indestructible antique piece of jewelry.”

“We understand,” Mateo said. “It doesn’t work unless you really want it to, even if you don’t realize it has magical powers.”

“Right, but not all the time,” Nerakali said. “I mean, Jabez certainly had no intention of killing...” She trailed off, like she had been personally traumatized by whatever event she was referring to. “The point is that Savannah has seemingly exercised a level of remote control over the damn thing. She can activate it even when she’s not the one wearing it, and may not even be within its blast radius at the time. I don’t know how she does that, but what it means is that she’s even more powerful than we realized. If she can do that, we can’t just go to these fixed moments, and pick her out of the crowd. We have to trace the hundemarke’s path back from that moment, to the moment they received it from her. That’s the only way we’ll find her.”

“Why are you doing this?” Leona asked. “If she’s your mother, then...”

My siblings and my relationship with her has always been a complicated one. I don’t want to blame everything on her, because that’s not taking responsibility for my own actions, but she’s not totally blameless for how we turned out either. Zeferino inherited her obsession with becoming a master of reality. Arcadia inherited her desire for fairness, justice, and balance (read: punishment).”

“What about you? Or are you more like your father?”

“I am, actually. He taught me loyalty, honesty, and sticking to your word. I would be a really great person if not for Savannah, because I inherited her sadism. I like to hurt people. I like to hear their screams when I blend their brains, and I like that they have to live with the guilt from remembering doing things that they never actually did. Then I met you two.”

“Us?” Leona asked. “What about us?”

“You are good people. You’re a good couple, and even though I do know what happened to your kids here, I also happen to know how great of parents you were in another timeline. I admire you, and I’m jealous of you, and I wish that you had been my parents instead. You helped me remember why I was put on that plane of existence. I was created to help the world, by allowing people to let go of past traumas as if they had never happened, because to them, they hadn’t. I have a plan to find Savannah, and I don’t technically need you for it. It’s not even the most efficient plan, because like you said, you’re not generally allowed to jump back and forth through time. I’ve asked you to help, because I know you’ll make good choices. I need to make sure this happens, and I need you to be here, because you’re the reason I want to make sure it happens. The old me would have let it go. She was a bad mother, and I don’t ever want to see her again. But she’s doing bad things, and you’ve turned me into the kind of person who wants to stop her.”

Neither of them knew how to respond to what Nerakali said. It was a pretty moving speech, and it seemed pretty sincere.

“Obviously, you can back out. I’m not gonna force you, or hold something over you. This isn’t going to be safe. Mateo, you and I are kinda in the same boat now, except it’s worse for you. Every time I’m put in a life or death situation, I revert back to my actual moment of death, and take one more step towards it. I don’t think you have any steps, though. I think you probably have one chance, and then you’ll just die. It won’t be any safer for you either, Leona. I don’t have a comprehensive list of every single time the hundemarke was used, so for all we know, you could secretly be destined to become one of its victims.”

Leona smiled sadly, and wrapped her arms around Nerakali. “Of course we’ll help you. I regret everything that’s happened between us. Well, the bad things that happened. It hasn’t all been bad. You blended my brain without my permission, because of that whole sticking to your word thing. That wasn’t right, but I can’t argue with the results. I’m glad I remember Mateo, and I’m glad that you existed to give me that.” They ended the hug, and enjoyed a moment of silence together.

“I would hug you too,” Mateo said, “but that feels inappropriate.”

“Come here,” Nerakali said to him. So they hugged as well, and it wasn’t inappropriate, or awkward, or uncomfortable.

“So,” Leona said, after the moment was over. “What’s the plan? How are we going to find your mother, and how are we going to stop her?”

“Honest hour?” Nerakali asked rhetorically. “I thought it might take a couple years-slash-days to convince you. The mission doesn’t start today. It doesn’t even start next year. Our first clue can be found on November 30, 2268.”

“Okay,” Mateo said, “we’ll wait.”

“Until then!” Nerakali spun around until she lost her balance, and then just turned so she was facing the direction she wanted. She lifted a blue fob and pointed it towards the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She held down the button, and waved it towards the ship, which caused it to disappear, line by line. The more she waved, the more the ship was erased.

The other two watched her do this, confident that she wasn’t somehow destroying their ship. It didn’t look like it was being torn apart, but that Nerakali was using photo editing software to make it look like it wasn’t there. After she was done, the ship was gone, leaving only an empty corner of the underground hangar.

“I don’t think you want Savannah Preston to have the ability to travel over seven hundred light years in a year. It’s best we keep it secret. Besides, we need to jump all over the globe, but not beyond its atmosphere, and the AOC isn’t designed for that.”

“What is?” Leona asked, excited to see another vehicle of some kind.

“Are you ready?” Nerakali sported an evil smile, but, like, in a good way.

“Yes,” Leona said, happy that they were friends now.

“Here we go!” Nerakali teased. She reached behind her back, and quickly returned with futuristic handcuffs, but with the two halves separated from each other. Before they could stop her, she had them installed around their wrists. She then reached behind her back again, and retrieved a third cuff, which she placed on her own wrist.

Leona tried to get hers off. “What is this?”

“They’re Cassidy Cuffs. They bind our powers together,” Nerakali said. “Well, my powers, and your pattern. Whenever you jump forward in time, I jump with you. Whenever I teleport, you teleport with me. You could also blend someone’s brain, if it strikes your fancy.”

“Why did you do this?”

“I don’t want to get separated. You don’t want to separate from each other either, right? That’s rule number thirteen. This protects you from that.”

“We did not consent to this,” Leona complained.

Nerakali took out two slips of paper from her pocket, and handed one to each of them. “These are your respective cuff codes. You are free to leave at will. Please don’t. You’re not prisoners any more than I am, but while I think this is for the best, it’s up to you.” She started tapping on the console on her own cuff. “I’m putting a thirty second delay on this, and teleporting myself to what’s left of Machu Picchu. Either you unlock your cuffs in that time, and walk away, or you leave them on, and follow me through. You choose.”

She disappeared. Thirty seconds later, so did they.

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Dardius: Newt Clemens (Part II)

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In a universe called Ansutah, a young woman and a young man met each other, and fell in love. Their names were Savitri and Avidan, and before too long, they conceived a child. Avidan had the ability to diagnose people’s general health through fairly simple examination, so it was he who actually alerted her to her pregnant status. He said she was pregnewt, however, and this way of saying it stuck around so long that they ended up using it for their child’s name. Sadly, Newt Clemens came into the world stillborn. His first, final, and only act was to remove the time powers for every single person on the whole planet. This was only in one reality, however. There was another timeline, where Newt was born perfectly healthy. His life would not continue to be so perfect, however. The primary species in this universe were the Maramon; white monsters who had complicated feelings about the humans. Many Maramon felt extremely threatened by Newt’s existence, and were always worried he would strip them of their immortality. So he had to escape.

He found himself on a vessel called The Transit. It was larger than The Prototype, and smaller than The Crossover, but was equally capable of traveling to other universes. He, a man named Nereus, and dozens of other humans fled Ansutah, and ended up in back in their own universe. The others were now fine, but Newt was not out of the woods yet. His ability was as dangerous as it was powerful, and there were people in this world who were just like the white monsters, and did not like that he could take away their abilities. His only hope was to be rescued by Dardius, where he could live in Sanctuary forever; safe and content—still separated from his family—but at least alive, and that was all his parents wanted. But even living here, things couldn’t be so easy for him.

While Dardius was a great place to live, and people were generally happy here, it was certainly no paradise, and Newt remained in danger. He was afforded protection by the world government, and the majority of the population had no ill intentions towards him, but as a public figure, there were those who wanted him for their respective agendas. A war broke out when the Dardieti attempted to rescue a ship full of capitalists from destruction. They were not happy with being forced to move from one non-capitalistic society to another. They wanted to stop being moved around, and they wanted control of their own world. After years of fighting and stalemates, a peace was finally reached, but that didn’t mean each individual was happy with the outcome. A faction of terrorists rose up and attempted to kill Newt because of how important he was to the leader of Dardius, Patronus Matic. They failed in this endeavor, and their operation was significantly diminished, but they weren’t destroyed. They returned, angrier now, and more determined than ever to complete their mission. They found Newt, fitted him with a suicide vest, and sent him off to kill the Patronus. The Patronus survived, along with most of his friends, but Newt was not so lucky.

Just as the bomb vest was about to explode, everything around Newt froze in place. He could see his friends being spirited away by a teleportation machine. “Hello?” he called to the void, but there was no answer. He cautiously stepped out from his own body, but did not turn around to look back at it. He knew exactly what was happening. This was the work of an extraction mirror. It was capable of accessing any time and place in the past, but there were many other ways to travel through time anyway, so its most common use was to slow time to a snail’s pace, and retrieve someone from the brink of death. The catch was that if you needed to slow time to accomplish this, it probably meant that whatever had caused this person’s death could not be undone. He looked down at his own neck. His new and temporary body was free from the suicide vest, but there was one thing on it that remained. It was called the hundemarke, and it prevented temporal alterations within the vicinity. His death was unavoidable. He was now free to move about time and space at will, but in the end, he would have to return to this moment, and finally let himself die.

Newt didn’t have an infinite amount of time, though. He quickly found the entrance to the extraction mirror, and stepped through the threshold. The barrier between now and then closed back up. He was standing in an unfamiliar place; a darkened hallway. It was clean, but stoney, like a billionaire’s secret mountainside winter getaway. A blinking arrow appeared on the floor beneath his feet, pointing down the hall. When he stepped forward, the arrow flipped off, only to be replaced with another arrow a meter away. This continued as he walked on, letting them direct him to whatever his destination was going to be. “Hello?” he repeated every once in awhile. The arrows led him to a room. It was just as stoney as it was everywhere else. Nothing was inside of it except for a chamber of some kind, and a note hanging from a string in front of it.

“This will take you home,” Newt read the note aloud. He looked up to the aether around him. “What exactly does that mean?” He waited for a response. It was possible no one else was here anymore, or that they had been watching him this whole time. “They say that home is where the heart is,” he went on, “but maybe that’s not what you mean. Maybe this returns me to Earth, where my mother was born. Or maybe it goes to Durus where my mother was trapped, and where my father was born. Or does it go to Ansutah, where the two of them conceived me? Will it take me to 2226, which is where I was before I died? Tribulation Island? Sutvindr?”

He heard a click, and a sigh. “Just step into the time chamber, please.”

“No,” Newt argued.

“Why not?” she asked.

“I don’t know who you are, or what you want with me,” he tried to explain.

“You think I’m trying to hurt you?”

“Maybe.”

“If I thought you wouldn’t get inside of this thing unless I forced you, I would have just forced you. If I were going to kill you, I would have just left you in your death moment. There is no reason to extract you unless I want you to live.”

“You may just want to exploit my powers.”

The voice didn’t respond for a moment. “Okay, well, I can’t argue with that logic. That’s not what I’m doing, though.”

“Prove it.”

Another sigh.

A hidden door cracked open on the right side of the room. A woman came through it, and walked forward. “My name is Ellie Underhill. Perhaps you’ve heard of me.”

He shook his head. “Are you in a band, or something?”

“I don’t mean I’m famous, though...I kind of am. I’m a choosing one, so it was possible you’ve heard my name before.”

“Wait.” Newt thought about it a moment. “Are you DJ Mount Alias?”

“The very one.”

“My father loved your show.”

Ellie pointed towards the way he had come. “I have other people to extract, and they all need to use this time chamber. Well, except for one, but the next one definitely does.” She looked at her watch. “He’s going to be coming through in two minutes. He’s very badly hurt, and Doctor Sarka is going to need this time chamber to get here to treat him, since the powers that be won’t be dispatching him themselves. I kind of need you to get the hell out of here.”

He jerked his head at the note. “It says home. Explain what that means.”

“It’s what you said,” Ellie explained. “It’ll take you to where your heart is.”

“My heart is with Étude and Cassidy.”

She sported a wide-eyed knowing look, but didn’t say anything.

“Am I going to see Étude and Cassidy?”

“I know of one good way to find out.”

“Thank you.” Newt nodded. “As long as you’re telling the truth about trying to help me, thank you.”

She nodded back, but then stopped short. “Wait, is that the hundemarke?”

Newt looked down, even though he obviously already knew the answer to that. “I don’t know how those capitalist terrorists got their hands on it, but that’s how they killed me.”

“No, I know that. I just...I didn’t think it would come with you. Like, I thought it would stay with your real body.”

Newt shrugged.

She eyed it.

“Do you want it?”

“No, but I know someone who needs it. We’ve been looking for it. Except...” She trailed off as she got lost in her own thoughts. “Why have we been looking for it if it’s already been found?”

He watched her, and waited for her to either answer her own question, or remember that he was still standing in front of her.

“No, I can’t take it. You have to.” She looked down at the floor as she spoke. “You have to give it to Horace, so he can get it to Bhulan.”

“What are you talking about? Who is Bhulan? Which version of Horace am I meant to meet?”

“This solves everything.” Now Ellie was getting excited. “You keep it, but give it to Horace Reaver, who you’ll see after you step into that time chamber. If all goes according to plan, this entire future will be erased.”

“If it’s erased, then you won’t extract me before my death, but if you don’t extract me before my death, then I can’t go back in time, and give Horace the hundemarke.”

She searched for answers on the ground again. “It’s a loophole. We can’t extract you permanently, because of the hundemarke, but we can extract the hundemarke itself, because it couldn’t have been destroyed in the explosion anyway.” She looked back up at him. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to you when you do this, so I guess it’s your choice. Can you make that sacrifice? Because I can’t make it for you.” And with that, she walked back through her secret door, and sealed it up behind her.

He let out a sigh of his own, and gazed at the time chamber. The hundemarke was one of the most powerful objects in histories. It could undo time travel complete. It could make a permanent world, with one timeline, and no second chances, or it could save humanity. But it was only ever used to kill, And it was for that reason that it needed to be destroyed. Newt knew a lot about Horace Reaver. He lived a lot of completely different lives, and he wasn’t always a good person, but he was one of the best in this reality. If he needed the hundemarke, it was surely to destroy it. That could only be good for the love of his life, and his daughter.

Newt Clemens, stepped into the time chamber, let it activate on its own, and disappeared through it. He appeared in the main restaurant of the original Dardius Sanctuary. Everyone he loved was there, including his wife, and his little girl; all grown up now. He hadn’t seen her since she was a baby, but he knew this was her, because it had to be. Mateo and Leona were there as well, along with Saga Einarsson, Vearden Haywood, Vitalie Crawville, Ramses Abdulrashid, Amanda Moss, and a few people he didn’t recognize. Horace Reaver was there too.

“Newt?” Étude asked, shocked and glad

“Dad?” Cassidy asked.

“I love you,” Newt said with a smile. “A lot of people say they would die for their children, but I get to prove it.” He began to remove the hundemarke from his neck. “This is a fixed moment in time...so I will always have been here.” He reached out towards Horace. “But I cannot stay.”

“Oh my God,” Horace said, staring at the dog tag.

“Take it,” Newt insisted.

“What is this?” Cassidy asked. “Dad? What are you doing? What do you mean, you can’t stay?”

“I love you,” he said again, because it was all that truly mattered.

Horace reached for the hundemarke and pulled it from Newt’s hand. And then Newt disappeared, like he was never really there.

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Microstory 1275: The Camel and the Party

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And so the animals gathered for a lively party in the valley. The hummingbirds and the elk sang the music, while the elephant handled trumpets, and the woodpecker kept the beat. The lynx was there, and so was the antelope. The sea otter family swam up while the flamingo flew down. The chimpanzee swung in to much fanfare, and the camel walked up slowly. The lion showed up late, thinking he was cool, but the others just thought it was rude. Still, he was the most ferocious of them all, and though he and the animals had called a temporary truce, no one wanted to set him off. It wasn’t worth the risk. One by one, the animals came before him and showed them their dances. The otters shook their shoulders, and rolled their stomachs. The lion was impressed, for he could not do that himself. The antelope hopped gracefully back and forth, and though the lion could hop as well, it was almost as if the antelope’s hooves never touched the ground, so the lion was also impressed with her. The lynx spun around, and performed flips, which the lion was too large to do himself. The flamingo soared through the air, which of course, was impossible for the lion. The chimpanzee was the most impressive, however. He could shimmy like the otters, and leap like the antelope, and flip like the lynx, and when he swung on the trees, it was almost like he was flying like the flamingo. Then it came time for the camel. He was slow and bulky, and quite frankly, graceless. He tried each of the others’ moves, but always failed, and tried to cover it up by switching to something else. By all accounts, the camel was a terrible dancer, but he was having fun. The lion scoffed and mocked him, and the other animals followed suit, for they still did not want to anger the lion. But the camel never stopped. He kept trying, and he kept having fun, and eventually the animals began to dance again, but this time together. Even the lion tapped his foot and bobbed his head. The party was a hit.

This story was inspired by, and revised from, an Aesop Fable called The Monkey and the Camel.

Microstory 1274: The Jackdaw and the Sociopath

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One day, a sociopath was sitting in a field—enjoying his time away from other people, and their pesky emotions—when he witnessed a magnificent eagle drop down from the sky, and snatch a lamb from the ground. He might have been impressed by this, but he was incapable of experiencing most feelings, so he just shrugged it off. He then witnessed a jackdaw fly down as well, but there were no more lambs on the ground, and it was far too small anyway. Still, it evidently wanted to prove itself as strong as the eagle, so it attempted to lift the ram. The ram didn’t even notice. Sadly for the jackdaw, not only did it have no chance of accomplishing this, but its little feet actually got caught on the ram’s wool, so it couldn’t fly away. The sociopath walked over, and considered freeing the poor bird, but since he didn’t care about its life, he merely clipped its wings so he could return home and show his kids the funny little bird. The sociopath’s wife had always suspected her husband of having violent tendencies, but now she knew he had a problem. She called the police on the sociopath for his disturbing behavior, thinking surely his actions were illegal. Well, they weren’t. They were horrifying, and terrible—mutilating a living organism—but there was no law against it. So the police were unable to do anything to help the wife. Anger was the one emotion the sociopath had no trouble understanding, and in a fit of rage, he killed his wife. The moral of the story is don’t marry sociopaths; they can’t be trusted.

This story was inspired by, and revised from, an Aesop Fable called The Eagle and the Jackdaw.

Microstory 1273: The Monkey and the Coyote

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A monkey and a coyote were walking over the prairie. You may think it’s funny that such different animals might know each other, let alone be friends, but the two of them met when they were very young. They grew up on a wildlife preservation campus, along with many other animals that had been rescued by good-natured humans. Unfortunately, after the fall of civilization, the animals were set free, and had to fend for themselves. But as unlikely as it was, the monkey and the coyote stuck together. They squabbled a lot, for sure, but they always had each other’s backs. At the moment, they were arguing with each other about who was smarter, and more cunning. “I can climb the trees,” said the monkey. “And I can swing on their branches.”

“I can run fast,” retorted the coyote. “I can hide in holes.”

Just then, they heard the horn of a hunting pack. The humans had broken up into factions, and since there were no more food distribution procedures, they had to go back to the old ways of finding food in the wild. “Oh, no!” the monkey cried. “There’s nowhere to hide! They will surely catch us!”

“We can hide in those trees,” the coyote said.

The horn sounded again, but it was much louder this time. “I’ll never make it in time!” the monkey complained.

“Yes, you will,” the coyote promised him. “Hop on my back.” And so the coyote raced across the prairie with his friend, and made it all the way to the treeline, but he could not stop. The hunting pack had caught their scent, and were traveling with fierce dogs who had not been raised by good-natured humans.

“We have to climb a tree!” the monkey suggested.

“That’s impossible for me!” the coyote argued. “Why, if I could climb a tree, so could the dogs!”

“I have an idea,” the monkey said. He leapt from the coyote’s back, and grabbed onto a branch. Then he hung his tail down, and let the coyote hold onto it with his teeth. It was hard, but they both made it up the tree in time; together, and safe.

This story was inspired by, and revised from, an Aesop Fable called The Cat and the Fox.

Microstory 1272: The Donkey and the Dog

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One evening, after supper, a farmer went out to bid his animals goodnight. The cows mooed graciously. The chickens clucked in delight. The pigs oinked with glee. But they all knew that they were not his favorites. The farmer could only allow himself to grow attached to the animals he would not one day slaughter, like the horses, the sheep, and the goats. But even they could not compare to the farmer’s love for his dog, and his donkey. The dog would hop around, and try to get the farmer to play, but the farmer was old and weary. The best he could do was sit on the milking stool, and let the dog rest in his lap. The donkey wanted to be part of this as well. He hopped around playfully, but could not match the dog’s agility. He tried to mimic the dog’s adorable barks and bays, but his voice only came out in screeches, irritating the other animals in the barn. But the donkey did not give up. He gently nudged the dog off of the farmer’s lap, and attempted to take her place. “No,” said the farmer. “You are too big for my lap. You would surely crush my legs, and break my knees.” So the sad donkey slinked off to stand alone in the corner. The farmer stood up from the stool, and followed his donkey over there. He gently petted the donkey. “I am too old to ride upon your back, and you are too big to sit upon my lap. But that does not mean I do not love you. The dog ran up and affectionately bit the donkey on his leg. “I love you both equally.”

This story was inspired by, and revised from, an Aesop Fable called The Ass and the Lapdog.

Microstory 1271: The Independent Woman and Her Milk

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After the cows were milked, and the market was soon to open, the farmer sent his young daughter into town to sell their milk. As she walked, she fantasized about what she and her family could do with the money they would get. After today, they should have saved up enough to buy a new cow, which will increase their yield, and make them even more money. With that, they could buy chickens, and fix the fence, and do all sorts of things to make their farm better and better. If they could make enough, she might even be able to afford the books she’ll need to go to school. As her mind was wandering, thinking about the amazing job she might get from having become educated, the pail slipped from her hand, and fell to the ground. All of the milk was wasted. When she returned home to confess to her parents what she had done, her father was saddened. He was not upset about the milk, but he realized how difficult this life must have been for his children. The next day, he sold the farmland, and all of its assets. He moved his family to a small apartment in the city, only a few blocks from the nearest school. His children received a great education, and even went on to college. The daughter chose to study agriculture, and ultimately became the founder of a vertical farming company, revolutionizing the way farmers tended to their crops. She eventually forgot about that fateful day when she foolishly spilled the milk. Her head was too full of interesting thoughts about how to make the world a better place.

This story was inspired by, and revised from, an Aesop Fable called The Milkmaid and Her Pail.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 27, 2265

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“I recognize this,” Mateo said as he was standing beside the spaceship that Pribadium built for them. “You made this?” He gently glided his hand over the hull.

“Yes, so we could get back to the future,” she replied.

“Why did you make it so small? This only fits two people.”

Pribadium contorted her face. “What? What are you talking about? It’s a tight fit, because passengers are meant to remain in their stasis pods for the entire journey. It has room for four people, which is just as many as we need.”

Arcadia teleported in next to him, but didn’t say anything at first.

“You lied,” he noted. “You said that there was only one stasis pod. You made me and Juan go all over time and space, looking for Youth water, so that Leona would be able to survive. Alone. For four thousand years.”

Arcadia held up her hands, almost like she was being defensive, even though she was far more powerful than anyone else here. “Okay, technically, I’ve not yet lied to Past!You.”

He stepped forward, almost threateningly, even though she was far more powerful than anyone else here. “You made her go alone. Or you will make her; it doesn’t matter, because that’s already happened to me. You tortured her for thousands of years.”

“I’ll have a good reason,” Arcadia claimed.

He crossed his arms. “This oughta be good.”

“Who says I’m gonna tell you the reason?”

He just cleared his throat.

After a few beats, Arcadia did begin to explain, “you remember before you reset the timeline by killing Hitler? You had a run-in with Kayetan. He got his friend, Tauno to trap you in a pocket dimension for thousands of years. You could only hold a thought for ten seconds, but you had to stay there all that time, just constantly reliving the same moment over and over again.”

“Yes,” Mateo said. “I remember that. I mean, it didn’t actually happen to me, but The Cleanser had my brain blended, so I do have access to those memories. A future version of Leona had to take care of me for five years because of the trauma. Is this about her?”

“No,” Arcadia said. “That version of Leona is gone in this new timeline. This is about the version of Leona who’s currently waiting for you to come back from our date.”

Mateo sighed. That was an uncomfortable challenge.

Arcadia continued, “I could have easily saved Brooke. I could have delivered her mother back to Earth before she gave birth, so there would be no issue. But I saw an opportunity to help you two.”

“This was to help us?” Mateo questioned. “In what way?”

“Mateo, you’re four thousand years old,” she said. “And you were dating someone who was in her thirties. That was weird, so I’m going to fix that. I’m going to make her four thousand years old too.”

“Jesus Christ, Arcadia. That is not okay. And it’s total nonsense, because you’re, what, half my age? Yet you wanted a relationship with me.”

“This isn’t about us. What you went through is necessary. What Leona has to go through is necessary. Paige Turner, and her friends, need her back in 2025. This is how I get her there. You can’t change that; I won’t allow it.” She looked back over to Pribadium’s ship. “So, I’m gonna commandeer this vessel, and I’m gonna put Leona and baby Brooke on it once Past!Mateo and Ponce de León procure the necessary water. In the meantime, Vitalie and Pribadium need to return to Tribulation Island so they can take care of Brooke while her mother doesn’t exist.”

“What are you talking about?” Mateo asked. “Angelita isn’t removed from the timestream until 2127.”

Arcadia looked confused. “No, she isn’t. No, I’ve been taking people out of time the day after you leave the timestream; not the day before you come back to find them missing. They’re gone a whole year before you find out about it.”

“Oh,” Mateo said. “I guess I didn’t know that.”

“I don’t know how to take care of a baby,” Vitalie argued.

“Neither do I,” Pribadium said.

“You’ll figure it out.” She removed a pill packet from her back pocket, and tried to hand it to the ladies. “This will induce lactation. There are two pills, so either both of you can nurse Brooke, or not. I’m not giving you any formula, though, so one of you has to volunteer, or just let the baby die.”

Mateo felt that he couldn’t argue. It wasn’t right that she was forcing them to nurse someone else’s baby, but anything he said might sound like mansplaining. They could fight it themselves, if they wanted to, but he just needed to keep his mouth shut.

Pribadium reached out, and took the pills. Then she turned to Vitalie. “You’re immortal. According to what Leona said of her, Brooke is incapable of experiencing non-linear time. I’m afraid that your milk could...complicate matters. I’m the only one who can do this.”

“Her mother could do it,” Cassidy pointed out.

“Who are you again?” Arcadia asked rhetorically.

Pribadium removed one of the pills, and popped it in her mouth. “I’ll save the second one in case something goes wrong.”

“Okay, cool,” Arcadia said. “You do this for a year, at which point I’ll get Leona to take over for you, and then I’ll let you cross the merge border.”

“We have to get back to the mainland of Dardius in 2263,” Mateo said.

“You can be a hundred and thirty years off,” Arcadia rounded down. “I can’t do everything for you.”

“Yeah,” Mateo said, “you can.”

Before she left, Arcadia gave Pribadium some parenting books, to help her figure out what the hell she was going to do with a baby. She also allowed them some amenities, like reusable diapers, a solar-powered washer to clean them, and a solar-powered food synthesizer for the group, so they wouldn’t only have boar and bananas to eat. They would have to handle their own shelter, though, and neither Mateo nor Cassidy would be around long enough to help. Perhaps they would just live in the spaceship.

As Vitalie was skimming through the books so she could help, and Pribadium was running a pre-flight check, Mateo noticed Cassidy acting a little cagey, and then scurrying off into the woods. Curious, he started following her. They were all adults here, so if she just needed to relieve herself, she wouldn’t need to be all sneaky about it. If she was going off to search for a hidden immunity idol, he needed to know about it. She stopped before too long, and just stood there with her back to him, like a creepy ghost child from a Japanese horror film.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I suppose I can be honest with you,” she said, turning back around. She was holding the magical solution Pribadium came up with that was meant to turn her into a blind spot, so no one could use time powers to find her.

“Are you going to take that?”

“Quite the opposite,” she said, removing the cap. “I’m here to get rid of it. I don’t know what it is, but dealing with this Arcadia chick has made me not afraid anymore. I don’t want to be sheltered, and I don’t want to be a secret.” She turned the needle, and released the solution inside it, so that it fell into a puddle of water on the ground. “Whatever happens, happens. I’m sure it’ll all turn out okay.”

“Oh my God,” Mateo said. He was staring at the puddle.

“Did I just do that?” Cassidy asked. She leaned over, and watched. The solution was having a weird effect on the water. It didn’t mix together in an expected way. It was turning most of the water completely black, while leaving little dots of light. “What is that?”

“Holy crap. This is the star puddle.” He looked around to get his bearings, but if he was right, and this was the same place he went to with Xearea, the landscape would look a lot different in millions of years anyway. “It’s part of the immortality waters. They call it Time, and it apparently makes it so that your immortality was always part of you. This way, no one can go back in time and prevent you from one day drinking the waters, and becoming immortal.” He couldn’t help but smile. “Pribadium invented it, and you created it.”

“So, we’re not supposed to try to fix it?” she asked.

“No, definitely not.”

Just then, they heard a rustling in the bushes. A figure appeared from behind them. It was Mateo himself. Yes, another one. Future!Mateo pointed down at the star puddle. “I’m going to need some of that.”

Present!Mateo stepped back, and presented the water to him. “Have at it.”

As Future!Mateo was kneeling down to siphon some Time, Present!Mateo took Cassidy by the arm, and escorted her back towards the others.

“Are we not going to talk about that?” she asked.

“No,” he replied. “Rule number four.”

“Hey, Mateo!” Future!Mateo called out to him.

“We shouldn’t exchange words,” Present!Mateo warned him.

“It’s cool,” Future!Mateo contended. “I think I’ve got this.” He reached into his bag, and pulled out a shotgun. “Go see your wife.” Before either of them could react, he fired the gun, and hit the younger version of himself right in the chest.

Present!Mateo could feel himself disappearing, and being spirited away to some other point in spacetime.

Earth. It wasn’t the only planet known to harbor life anymore, but it was still the best one. Leona hadn’t been back here for nearly two months now. That was over fifty years ago, though. A lot had changed about the solar system since then. Religion was all but dead now. What few people still identified as religious mostly did so for cultural reasons, and probably didn’t truly believe anymore. Science had pretty much taken over, allowing technology and general progress to skyrocket. The species was now a Type I energy civilization on the Kardashev scale, which meant it was capable of harnessing all of the energy that Sol provided to the planet. They were presently constructing a massive ring around the sun called the central processing belt, to provide energy for what was basically a giant systemwide computer.

The surface of Earth itself wasn’t too much different than the last time Leona was here. Most people still lived in arcological megastructures, scattered throughout the world. One notable difference was the loss of the Northern Forest multi-development circles. It wasn’t that there were no longer people who wanted to live less advanced lifestyles, but they now had opportunities to move out to the exoplanets, and build whatever colonies they wanted. Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida was a popular destination, since it didn’t require giant domes to maintain an artificial atmosphere. Newly terraformed Bungula was popular for the same reason, but scientists were still unsure whether any of the other planets in the stellar neighborhood were capable of such drastic transformations.

“What are we doing here?” Leona asked.

“Patience you must have, my young padawan,” Nerakali said.

“That’s not an actual quote from any Star Wars movie.”

“You’re not an actual quote from any Star Wars movie!” she shouted playfully.

“You’re right, I’m not. But seriously, where are we?”

“This is the underground military base where The Overseer first gathered the crew of The Sharice Davids.”

“Oh, okay.” She paused another moment. “Are we getting a ship?”

Nerakali turned her head to face her. “You already have a ship.”

“It’s not a warship.”

She turned back to look forward again. “We don’t need a warship.”

“What do we need then?”

“I struck a deal with a man named Mateo.”

“A man named Mateo,” Leona echoed. “Am I not supposed to know who that is?”

“Oh,” Nerakali laughed. “Different Mateo.”

“What?”

Nerakali didn’t respond.

Leona was growing a little impatient. “When is whatever is going to happen going to happen?”

Nerakali sighed. “Well, when does your next alarm go off?”

“Huh?” She instinctively checked Mario’s watch. “It says one minute. I don’t remember setting this.”

“Do you not know how to use that thing? It sets your alarms automatically. You just have to be paying attention.”

The alarm went off, and in response, Leona’s husband, Mateo Matic appeared out of nowhere. He keeled over, and massaged his chest.

“Time travel guuun,” Nerakali sang, “you know it’s not fuuun!”

Leona knelt down, and started to help him recover. “How did you get back here?”

“I—” Mateo began, but couldn’t remember what the answer was. “I don’t know.”

“No matter,” Nerakali said, now sporting a British accent. “Welcome to November 27, 2265.”

A minute later, midnight central struck, and sent them to the future together.

“Sorry. I meant...welcome to November 28, 2266,” Nerakali joked.

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