The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 3, 2271

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Mateo Matic: Oh my God, it’s frickin’ freezing out here.

Leona Matic: Where are we?

Nerakali Preston: This is Peter Island. We’re about three hundred and fifty kilometers from mainland Antarctica, and a hundred and sixty from the prime location to see a partial solar eclipse.

Arcadia Preston: Why do we want to be here for that? It’s a partial eclipse; that doesn’t sound very impressive.

Nerakali: It’s not that big of a deal on its own—though, it is happening pretty close to midnight central, which is a little interesting. The reason we’re here is because this is the site of a hundemarke murder. In the next few minutes, after the eclipse begins, someone is going to be killed here, and someone is going to be doing the killing. It’s up to us to find exactly where that is, who that is, and get the hundemarke from them.

Mateo: We can’t just take it. If we try, a magical force field will throw us against a wall, and knock us out.

Leona: How do you know that? You act like you’ve tried before.

Mateo: No, I just...I must have heard it.

Nerakali: Well, you’re right. We can’t take it until it’s been used. We’ll have to let the murder play out.

Arcadia: That’s not entirely accurate. We can’t interfere as long as the hundemarke is active. While it’s operating, it’s maintaining a moment of fixed time, which cannot be altered. It doesn’t matter whether you kill someone during that moment, or not; it still can’t be changed.

Leona: How will we know when the user deactivates it?

Mateo: Is there a time limit, or a power threshold?

Arcadia: That I do not know, but it’s actually likely. I’ve never heard of a hundemarke event lasting more than a few minutes. What would the world look like if someone went back to prehistoric times, and just never turned it off? It would erase time travel.

Mateo: What would the world look like? Normal. You were born with the knowledge of nonlinear time, but most people have no idea that it’s real. They go about their days, thinking everything that happens—good or bad—is just the way it has to be from now on. If you used the hundemarke to erase time travel, the world would just look like that, but for everybody.

Arcadia: Are you sure about that? Just because people don’t know about time travel, doesn’t mean they aren’t impacted by it. You saved thousands of lives when you killed Hitler, which went on to affect millions more. Few are aware of your involvement, but billions are aware that it happened. Without time travel, would humanity have survived up to today? I’m not convinced.

Mateo: Wull...

Nerakali: No, don’t try to deny it, Mateo. Everyone knows you killed Hitler, then went back in time in someone else’s body, and killed him again. Old news.

Leona: We don’t have much time now. How are we going to find the site of the murder. Could it be anywhere on this island?

Nerakali: The coordinates aren’t precise, but I know it will be somewhere on this side.

Mateo: Is there a feature on these time power cuffs that would allow us to scan for life signs? I imagine there aren’t any other people here.

Nerakali: No one has so much as stayed at the resort since the 22nd century, but unfortunately, no. There is no way to seek the murder. We’re going to have to split up to cover more ground. When the time comes, I’ll initiate burst mode.

Leona: Won’t we all just teleport to the same place each time? That’s what the cuffs do.

Nerakali: I’ve programmed them to be almost as imprecise as the coordinates themselves. We technically will be teleporting to the same places, but instead of being a few meters close to each other, it’ll be measured in acres.

Arcadia: It’s almost time.

Nerakali: See something, say something. You all know how to use the intercom system. Let us know where you are, and we’ll come to you.

Arcadia: Okay. Break!

Mateo: Guys, I see it.

Nerakali [through the speaker]: Where are you?

Mateo: The screen says subduing.unpraised.soreness. What the hell does that mean?

Nerakali: Exactly what you would think: a coordinate system that designates three random and unique word combinations to each nine square meter tile on a map of the whole globe.

Mateo: Makes sense.

Leona: Who’s that?

Arcadia: Whose job was it to bring the binoculars?

Mateo: Will this thing work?

Leona: Where the hell did you get that thing?

Mateo: What’s the big deal? It’s just a spyglass.

Leona: It’s the Jayde Spyglass. I used it to bring you back from nonexistence.

Mateo: Oh, cool. Well, as long as I can see what’s going on over there...

Nerakali: No, don’t!

Stan Humphrey: What the hell just happened? How did you get here?

Arcadia: Dammit, Mateo. You can’t just start running around with temporal objects. You have to ask an adult first.

Stan: I mean it! Who the hell are you people?

Nerakali: You don’t get to talk. Arcadia, temporarily remove your cuff, and try to disarm this man for me.

Arcadia: Oh, you want us to be unlinked, so if the attempt kills me, I’m the only one who gets hurt?

Stan: Hey! Stop!

Nerakali: Exactly. See? You get it. She gets it. Leona, could you remove his future victim’s gag, so he can talk?

Leona: What is this all over you?

Vasanta Gadhavi: You need to wash your hands. He retched on me. He thinks it’s poetic justice.

Stan: It is! Give me my gun back!

Arcadia: Do you have to yell everything you say?

Stan: I do! It’s a medical condition called go screw yourself!

Arcadia: Oh, I have that. Yelling is not a symptom, faker.

Nerakali: Arcadia, please. Now. I don’t understand what’s happening here. This is meant to be a hundemarked moment, but you were able to take his gun.

Leona: Maybe it hasn’t been activated yet.

Mateo: Or this is part of the fixed moment. Maybe we were destined to come here and attempt to stop him.

Arcadia: Mateo...that..actually isn’t the dumbest thing you’ve ever said.

Leona: We need more information. Who are you, and why does this man want you dead?

Vasanta: My name is Vasanta Gadhavi. I’m a member of the rescue division of the salmon battalion. Stan here is all butthurt about a time when Saga and her then fiancée, Andromeda threatened his worldview by marrying each other? I don’t really understand his position. He’s basically a nazi, though. He’s just spent a decade of his life hunting the people who wronged him. Andromeda’s already dead, and Saga’s impossible to track down, but he found me.

Stan: It was eight years; don’t give yourself so much credit.

Vasanta: You’re the one who deserves all the credit. You walked through the haze on Durus, and got yourself transported to Ansutah. Then you traveled through time, so you could become a Comronian refugee, and be rescued by Gatewood. Then you made your way back to Earth, where you hunted me down throughout the timeline. That’s impressive. If you were a good person, you could have done great things with your skills. I could have used someone like you on my side. We could’ve even been partners.

Stan: I would never. I would sooner throw up on you again.

Vasanta: Oh no, I wasn’t offering. Vasanta Gadhavi is a good man, and you tried to kill him.

Leona: Why are you talking in the third person?

Vasanta: Am I?

Nerakali: I’m still confused. How have we interfered? This makes no sense. Arcadia, see if you can take the hundemarke from him. It’s probably inside of his shirt.

Stan: What are you talking about? Stop touching me! What the hell is a hoondamarka?

Arcadia: He doesn’t have it. How did you find out about this moment? We’re in the middle of nowhere, quite literally. People can get away with murder these days in a location this remote.

Nerakali: It was pinged. I don’t know what was meant to happen here, but it is a hundemarke moment. It has to be.

Vasanta: Oh, it is. You just frisked the wrong person.

Stan: Oh, shit! No, please! I’m sor—

Vasanta: Uh-uh-uh! Back up. If I shoot any one of you, the other two die. I only came here to kill him, and it’s done.

Arcadia: If you shoot me, you’ll die. My sister won’t stand for that.

Vasanta: I’m not worried. Mostly because I’m not going to shoot you. I would never. I was asked to get you to Mateo’s memorial services, and this is how I do that. You’re coming with me, Salvy.

Arcadia: What did you just call me?

Nerakali: Who are you?

Vasanta: I think you know. Goodbye!

Nerakali: Wait! Stop! [...] Oh my God.

Mateo: Where did they go? Can we track them?

Nerakali: Not a chance. He’s too smart for that. He won’t take her anywhere I would think to look.

Leona: It’s not a he, though, is it? That name, Salvy. What does it mean?

Nerakali: It’s short for Salvador, as in Salvado Dalí? Arcadia was the only one of us up in the Gallery dimension who legit loved art. Dalí was her favorite artist, and that makes sense, because he was a surrealist with a thing for clocks. Her whole thing is manipulating reality.

Leona: So, your mother always called her Salvy.

Mateo: I’m confused.

Leona: It’s an illusion. That wasn’t Vasanta Gadhavi. It was Savannah Preston in disguise.

Mateo: How’s that possible?

Leona: It’s like how Vito Bulgari can make things invisible, but instead of making it look like something isn’t there, she can make it look like someone else’s face is where her face actually is. The precision of such an endeavor, though; I can’t imagine how much concentration that requires. You didn’t know she had that ability?

Nerakali: No one does, throughout all of spacetime, as far as I know, except one person. He would have to be using some kind of temporal object that was imbued with Alyssa McIver’s power.

Mateo: Why do you keep calling her a he? I thought we concluded it wasn’t really Vasanta.

Nerakali: No, that wasn’t Vasanta, but you were wrong, Leona. Our mother never called her Salvy. We’ve been wrong this whole time. Savannah Preston probably has nothing to do with it. That was Erlendr Preston, our father. He’s the one behind all the hundemarke killings.

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Dardius: Meliora Rutherford (Part VII)

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Savannah Preston: Hello. I figured it was high time we met. Hi, my name is—

Meliora Rutherford: I know who you are.

Savannah: Are you sure? Because...

Meliora: Yeah, I know. I can see the hat.

Savannah: You can?

Meliora: Listen—wait, what do you want me to call you?

Savannah: Savannah will be fine.

Meliora: Fine. Listen, Savannah, I’m not going to interfere with what you’re doing. You think you’ve seen a lot, and it gives you some sort of entitlement to manipulate the passage of time on a grand scale. But you’re a little baby compared to me, and you haven’t seen past your nursery. I have been all over the bulkverse, and I can tell you that all this...is pointless. You’re going to lose, and you know that, because you’ve seen the future.

Savannah: No future is immutable.

Meliora: That’s not entirely true, and you’re going up against the Matics.

Savannah: So what? They’re not so amazing. Mateo is a dum-dum.

Meliora: He is, and you’re right, they’re not powerful. He’s a salmon, and she’s a spawn with limited abilities. But that’s not really what we’re talking about here. What makes them so special is all their friends. People want to help them, and they do. You can’t beat them, not because they’re better than you, but because no one will let you. My God, Savannah, your own daughters are helping them. Nerakali and Arcadia are powerful, so you should be scared.

Savannah: I’m not worried. When this all comes to its inevitable climax, I can count on Arcadia to betray her new friends, just like she always does, and I can count on Nerakali to break down and go along with it.

Meliora: It’s over, Madam Preston. You have hundemarked everyone on your list, so why are you putting this off?

Savannah: I was hoping to get your help.

Meliora: Why would I help you?

Savannah: All powerful being to all powerful being.

Meliora: ...

Savannah: All right, very powerful being, at the least.

Meliora: What do you want from me?

Savannah: How do you do that thing you do?

Meliora: Are you going to elaborate, or just—I do many things. I really am all powerful.

Savannah: How do you jump to other universes?

Meliora: Very carefully.

Savannah: I’m serious. I want you to teach me.

Meliora: You think you’re done with the work you need to do in this brane, so you’re ready to move on to another?

Savannah: Isn’t that what happened to you?

Meliora: Yes, but I went to those other worlds to help people. And before you start arguing that what you’re doing is a necessary evil, spare me the apology. You know what you’re doing is wrong. The love of your long life died, you flipped out, and corrupted your own life’s mission.

Savannah: You listen to me now, buckaroo billy. I may not be the holy angel saint that you are, but I have my reasons, and I’m not evil. Mercury’s family had to die so he could become the hero his city needs. Mateo had to die so he could return through an extraction mirror with temporal invincibility. My daughter had to die so she could have eight more chances to be a better person.

Meliora: Why didn’t Arcadia earn the same gift?

Savannah: She already became a better person when she stepped onto The Prototype.

Meliora: And your son? Why did he have to die?

Savannah: That wasn’t me.

Meliora: It wasn’t? I thought—

Savannah: That I was the architect of the hundemarke’s entire journey? No. Plenty of people have used it to serve their own agendas.

Meliora: Well, I didn’t know that.

Savannah: Maybe you’re not as all powerful as you thought.

Meliora: That’s how you talk to someone whose help you’re asking for?

Savannah: Will you help? Is there a world where that happens?

Meliora: Well, there is one, yes.

Savannah: You mean...?

Meliora: I can’t teach you how to jump universes. It’s not a skill; it’s just something I can do.

Savannah: I was to understand you spent decades in training for it.

Meliora: I did, but it was always in me. No one else could replicate it. I can help you escape to another world when the time comes, but that will be your home forever, unless someone helps you travel somewhere else.

Savannah: You would do this for me? You would go against your own mother?

Meliora: Leona Matic is not my mother.

Savannah: No, Nerakali blended her brain. She remembers the reality where she and your father got married.

Meliora: Horace Reaver isn’t my father. Lincoln Rutherford is, because he’s the one who raised me.

Savannah: Everyone knows the story. Rutherford took you in when your mother died, and your father went to prison. He barely had anything to do with your life.

Meliora: That’s the story I spun. I was very young and stupid back then. I came up with this story about choosing ones and powers that be, claiming they were one and the same. I was trying to create a reality where people believed I could exercise more control over the salmon than I really could, and the best way to do that was convince people I was removed from foster care, and indoctrinated into the system. My birth father died in prison, and Lincoln Rutherford raised me for years, until I felt confident enough to go back in time and alter the past. Everyone calls me Meliora Rutherford Delaney-Reaver, but my name is Meliora Rutherford.

Savannah: Does he know that, the Lincoln from this reality?

Meliora: He knows everything. Literally. He is a great man, and I try to honor him everyday with my actions. So I’ll help you, but only to stop the dream team from killing you. If that future comes to pass, they will never recover from what they did to you.

Savannah: Mateo and Leona have killed before.

Meliora: I’m not talking about them. Your daughters will regret what happened, but since they used the hundemarke, they won’t be able to go back and change it. We all know what happens when a Preston spirals.

Savannah: We don’t know if they use the hundemarke on me. That’s a big mystery.

Meliora: You die from by means of the hundemarke; that’s no mystery.

Savannah: ...so it can’t be changed. It really is inevitable.

Meliora: No, there’s a loophole.

Savannah: ...?

Meliora: The other world. Nothing is more powerful than the bulkverse; not even the hundemarke. It has consequences, though. Time will never be the same if you do this. In fact, it will undo everything you have ever done with the hundemarke.

Savannah: What?

Meliora: There is a reality out there where the hundemarke does not exist. All we have to do is get you there, and then you can leave. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll die, but not you you. It will be a different version.

Savannah: Well, why do I have to go to another universe, if I can just live in this other timeline?

Meliora: You can’t stay there forever. It’s unstable. You have to leave, and let it collapse behind you.

Savannah: Why would you do this for me? I came here asking for help, and you were very adamantly against it. What’s changed in the five minutes since we’ve been talking.

Meliora: It has been longer than five minutes for me. After you told me that you weren’t responsible for your son’s death by means of the hundemarke, I took a little detour, and investigated the timeline to corroborate your story. That was about a month ago.

Savannah: I must have blinked.

Meliora: No, I froze you in time for three seconds while I disappeared, and returned.

Savannah: Why are you like this? How did a salmon and a spawn...spawn someone like you?

Meliora: I won the lottery. It’s as simple as that. The fact that my birth parents experienced nonlinear time before conceiving me made it so that I was genetically predisposed to being born with time powers. At that point, it was a crapshoot which ones I got. I could have ended up with anything, and it just so happened that I ended up with pretty much everything.

Savannah: So now that you know I was telling the truth, and maybe I’m not as bad of a person as you thought, you’ll help me survive my hundemarke death?

Meliora: I will, but I won’t do it for free.

Savannah: What’s your price?

Meliora: As we’ve established, I’m very powerful, but I don’t have a mind like yours. You can see the threads of time, and make subtle changes to arrive at the outcomes you want. I need that gift now. There are several people who are meant to attend Mateo’s memorial services here on Dardius. They were all torn away from that, for reasons I do not yet understand. There is someone else; someone like you, who is manipulating events from the shadows. They’ve been destroying Nexus replicas, and causing other problems. My month-long sabbatical allowed me to rule you out as a suspect. I’ve also ruled out Mirage, Boyce, and Zeferino. I don’t have any reason to believe the powers that be themselves are involved, but I can’t rule them out yet. Either way, I need someone smart enough to combat their changes. I’m going to give you a list of people. I’m not going to tell you anything about them, but the list itself is dangerous. You could hurt a lot of people with it, so I have to be able to trust you. With your skills, it’s a simple task. Get these people to Dardius within the next hour, and I will help you. Miss even one of them, and our deal is off. Cause harm to any one of them, and not only is our deal off, but I will kill you myself. Like I said, your hundemarke crusade has been completed. This mission doesn’t interfere with that, but you can help a lot of people feel a lot better about themselves by helping them go through this catharsis. Mateo is important to people, throughout all of time and space, and they want to be there for him. Do you think you can help?

Savannah: I can make no promises. I would have to see the list first. Just a glance, to make sure there aren’t any conflicts of interest. You can erase my memories if I choose to decline because of something I see there.

Meliora: I agree to your terms. Here it is.

Savannah: This one is going to be tough. I know a lot about his timeline, and he would not be cooperative in later years; I can tell you that much.

Meliora: When would you suggest we take him?

Savannah: Uhh...2027.

Meliora: He didn’t even have his brain blended back then.

Savannah: I can arrange for it to happen early, if I have your permission. You said I’m not allowed to hurt these people, which I have no problem with, but this is a bit of a gray area. I don’t know who Pribadium Delgado is, but I think I can get everyone else with just a few historical nudges. This guy is more complicated, though, and brain blending isn’t exactly pleasant. He has a lot of really bad memories, so it’s going to be particularly bad for him.

Meliora: Do what you have to do, but he’s really busy in 2027, so make sure he gets back before anyone there misses him.

Savannah: They won’t even know he’s gone, until he...tells them about it.

Meliora: Okay, go ahead. You have fifty-seven minutes now.

Savannah: I only need one.

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Microstory 1300: Nick Fisherman by Tavis Highfill

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Tavis Highfill: Thank you for coming in. I know it’s easy for us to meet up with each other, since we share the same body, but it’s not often that we interact so directly.

Nick Fisherman: Thank you for having me.

Tavis: Now, you’re working on a new project, correct?

Nick: Yes. It’s a series called Interview Transcripts. I’ll be posting one each weekday, all the way through June, and then some.

Tavis: Tell me a little bit about that.

Nick: June?

Tavis: The interview transcripts. Are these real transcripts from real interviews between real people?

Nick: Absolutely not. I could not, and would not, betray someone’s privacy like that.

Tavis: So, where are they coming from?

Nick: My mindbrain.

Tavis: What the hell is a mindbrain?

Nick: It’s the hypothetical source of an original thought.

Tavis: I see. That sounds stupid.

Nick: Well, you came up with it, so...

Tavis: Are these going to be job interviews, or celebrity interviews, or what?

Nick: Yes, and yes, plus a lot of other things. I broke them down into eleven categories: employment, celebrity, journalistic, psychology, survey, police, court, college, clearance, suitability, library reference; in that order. There will be fourteen job interviews, but only four library reference interviews.

Tavis: What the hell is a library reference interview?

Nick: I don’t remember.

Tavis: ...

Nick: I’ll figure it out.

Tavis: Is this a fixed format, or can you adjust?

Nick: I can adjust, if necessary; for instance, if I can’t figure out how to write an intriguing enough suitability interview—let alone five of them.

Tavis: Are these going to be very good?

Nick: Probably not. But that’s not the point of my website. These are all experimental. Anyone can write seven books about a boy wizard, or three vampire fanfics. I’m not at all saying I’m the best writer in the world, but I do take risks, and I don’t worry about whether it ends up being good or not, because the experience alone makes it worthwhile.

Tavis: Is there anything else you would like your audience to know?

Nick: Ha! What audience!

Tavis: You know what I mean.

Nick: Yes. [Leans in real close] King Dumpster’s senate acquittal doesn’t mean he’s fit to maintain his seat. Vote him out in November. Thank you, and enjoy the series.

EDIT: These aren’t necessarily going to be entire interview transcripts. Some can be hella long, and ain’t nobody got time for that. If it looks like I ended the story without a conclusion, I guess we call that an interview excerpt? You’ll be okay.

Microstory 1299: The Soldiers and the Ceasefire

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If you’ve never heard of the Christmas Ceasefire, I’ll bring you up to speed. Starting on Christmas Eve in 1914, hostilities between British and German soldiers during the Great War (what you may know as World War I) halted temporarily. Opposing forces not only allowed each other to bury dead and repair trenches, but even came together to observe the holiday. They sang songs and played games in the area between their two sides—generally known as no-man’s land. I’ve heard this story told a million times, and in case you’re wondering, it’s not a fable. It really happened, and it happened as it’s been told. According to sources, I’ve never heard any embellishments or alterations, probably because the original story seems so beautiful on its own that it doesn’t need to be changed to teach the lesson. But what exactly is the lesson? Well, if everyone who has ever told it is to be believed, the magical Christmas truce is meant to teach us that we’re all human. We all have red blood, and we want the same things, and we don’t have to fight each other to get them. Those things are true, more or less—though I would contend that I don’t give a crap what species you are, or what color your blood is; I’m not going to hate you for who you are anyway. The problem is that the Christmas Ceasefire story is an absolutely dreadful means of teaching this lesson. Why? Well, because the British and Germans were killing each other on and before the 23rd, and they continued to kill each other well after the 26th. The war raged on, and did not end until November of 1918. It was also not exactly the last war ever.

There’s this Latin phrase people like to say: si vis pacem, para bellum. It translates to if you want peace, prepare for war. People hear phrases like this, and they’re so short and concise that they don’t really question whether they’re true or not. It’s another example of an aphoroid, which I mentioned in the introduction to this series. In this case, people believe the phrase to be true only because history is littered with war. That’s all we seem to know, but guess what? When I was three, I didn’t know that two plus two was four. I had to learn it later. I recognize that sounds reductive, but I feel the analogy stands. We can learn to live in a world without war. We can achieve peace without it, and we can maintain that peace without the threat of it. The world has been changing ever since it coalesced, and I see no reason for it to stagnate just because we’re here. So I don’t really have a revised version of the Christmas Ceasefire story, because I don’t believe the problem lies in the story itself, but what people have taken from it. It’s great that the soldiers took a break from killing each other for a couple days, and it’s great that it wasn’t an isolated incident. What’s terrible is that these nations felt the need to fight in the first place. Ceasefires should be rare, because war should be rare, if not completely a thing of the past. The human race was built on a foundation of violence and hate, but the thing about foundations is that they are not immutable. All we have to do is tear it all down...and build a better foundation in its place.

Microstory 1298: The Burro and the Bust

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There was a burro whose responsibility it was to carry food and other goods over the mountain to sell at the market. It was a thankless job, but he was proud of it, and always felt that things could be worse. One day, a man approached the burro’s owner, and asked her if he could borrow the burro. They wanted to transport a very important statue through town, so that all could gaze upon its magnificence during a small parade. The woman agreed, and so did the burro, even though he didn’t really understand what was going on. He was just happy to meet a new friend. The man loaded the burro with the statue, and led him down the path. When they reached the town, the crowds came out and cheered. They smiled and laughed, and some even wept a little, for the statue was a bust resembling their late leader. She was a wonderful woman, who did so much for the whole county, and they were grateful to be honoring her in this way. The burro still did not understand, though. He thought the people were cheering for him, so in response, he grunted, and he groaned, and he brayed. And the people cheered louder. They had no problem with it, because the statue didn’t have any feelings, but the burro did. There was no point in ruining his day, and the truth was that he was pretty great anyway, so it wasn’t like they were lying to him. It made everyone happy. The burro continued to walk through town with the bust, smiling with pride, and the day was better for it.

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

Microstory 1297: The Bat and the War

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A war was brewing amongst the animals of the southern dry lands. No one was quite sure why there was such animosity between the birds and the beasts, but neither side wanted to concede. They wanted to win, and to prove to the other side how much stronger they were. “We are large and fierce,” said the beasts. “Any one of us could easily take down an entire flock of you, if not for your wings.”

“Ah, said the birds, “but we do have wings. That is our great advantage. You may be able to rampage, but we can always fly away. We can also strike down, and peck out your eyes, and you will be hopeless to run away.”

The animals continued to argue, but did not yet resort to violence. Surely it was coming, though, and everyone was secretly afraid of what that might mean for them and their families. As things were deteriorating, both sides noticed something strange. They realized that the bat seemed to be both a bird, and a beast. He had wings like a bird, but fur like a land animal. Each side tried to coax him over to fight with them, but he was hesitant. They insisted that he choose which one he would identify as. “I choose neither side,” said the bat, “and I choose both. I am proof that birds and beasts can live in harmony. Our holy ancestors must have come together at some point long ago to make me.” And so the bat continued to speak his word, and since both sides respected him, they listened, and they also felt comfortable airing their own grievances. It was through the bat’s mediation that war was prevented entirely.

This story was inspired by, and revised from, an Aesop Fable called The Bat, the Birds, and the Beasts.

Microstory 1296: The Fisherman and His Small Catch

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There once was a humble fisherman who possessed no skills but fishing, no assets but his little hut, and his fishing gear, and no hope for a better tomorrow. He lived day to day, surviving on the catch he made when he went out to the center of the little pond near his home. Over the years, the fisherman noticed his catches were getting smaller and smaller, and the fish themselves were getting smaller too. During one of these times, he caught a very, very small fish—probably the smallest he had ever seen on his line. The tiny fish begged for its life, claiming that the fisherman should throw it back into the water, and wait for it to grow much bigger. The fisherman scoffed, for he felt he was too old and wise to be fooled by such nonsense. “I might as well keep you, because you may be small, but I would rather eat very little tonight than nothing.” But the fisherman was wrong. You see, even though he was the only one who ever fished in that pond, he did it every day, and what he didn’t realize was that he was cleaning it out more and more each time. The fish population was shrinking by the week. Some small fish were meant to be food for the larger fish, but with nothing to eat, these larger fish died before they could lay eggs. The fisherman needed to learn that good things would come to those who wait. A small catch wasn’t better than nothing if he had to put too much effort into it. He was better off being patient, and waiting for something more rewarding…more useful. But the fisherman was not patient, and did not think things through, and he thought he would spend his whole life fishing in this pond without a care in the world. As it turned out, he was the architect of his own demise. He was starving, and near death, before he finally gave up on that pond, and moved somewhere else.

This story was inspired by, and revised from, an Aesop Fable called The Fisherman and the Little Fish.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 2, 2270

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Back in the first timeline that Mateo could remember, which people often referred to as Reality 2—even though there were many before it, and many since—his life was pretty normal. Sure, his family situation was a little different, but no two families are exactly the same, right? There was a period in life before all this time travel business when he was just an average joe who drove a taxi. Taxis were a little different in Topeka than they were in, say, New York or Chicago. They didn’t roam the streets constantly, waiting to be hailed by someone on the sidewalk. If you wanted to be picked up, you pretty much had to call the cab company. If you saw one driving towards you, it either already had a fare, or was on its way to one. Even though Topeka was, by no means, a small town, it was chock full of licensed drivers, and had a decent public transit system, so the taxi customer base was relatively small, and it wasn’t unheard of for a driver to encounter a client they had driven before. Mateo even had a regular.

Depending on how one measures time, Mateo’s experiences as a driver were thousands of years ago, centuries ago, or only around a decade ago. Either way, there were very few things Mateo could recall about his regular client, which perfectly illustrated the point he was trying to make to himself about his present-day life. Since Mateo literally had no one he could talk to about what he knew of Cameo’s past-impending death, his survival of the burden was entirely dependent on internal conflict resolution. So while they were waiting for something to happen in 2270, he was spending a lot of time in his own head, trying to give himself therapy, which was where his taxi years came in.

The client’s name started with an D, or an F. He couldn’t remember which, but to make things easier, he decided he was going to call him Favid for now. So Favid had some sort of medical condition that made it hard for him to work, and made it impossible to drive. It was something he developed after he started his job, so it wasn’t like he had lied to his boss about having reliable transportation. He did, however, technically lie to his boss all the time when he continued to not disclose what was happening with him. The real problem with his case was not just that he needed a ride to work every single day, but also that he worked at multiple locations around the city. At least twice a week, he would be sent to work at a given site in the morning, and then be rerouted somewhere else in the middle of the day, because something came up. As you might imagine, his wasn’t the kind of position that could be held with public transportation. Lots of employers ask a candidate if they have reliable personal transportation without it being necessary, but in this case, it was definitely necessary. What was Favid going to do if not hire Mateo to basically be his personal driver for a month while he searched for a job closer to home? Mateo agreed to it, even though the money was terrible, because he felt it was the right thing to do. If Favid was rich enough to afford a permanent driver, he could have just quit his job anyway, and lived off his savings until he found something that worked better. So Mateo had to essentially take a sabbatical from his own job, and just always be there for him.

Well, sabbatical probably wasn’t the right word, because he was still taking other fares; he was just limited to which ones he could accept. The customer had to be close to where Favid was working that day, and their destination had to be close too. This was at the very beginning of nontraditional ride-sourcing companies that relied on the ubiquity of smartphones to plan routes, and facilitate payment. So it wasn’t impossible for Mateo to know where it was any given customer wanted to go before he offered his services, but it was difficult, and that only added to his financial woes. Still, he was always there for Favid, because he needed the money more than Mateo, and again, it was the right thing to do. He could always rely on his parents to give him a little money for rent, while Favid enjoyed no such safety net.

But this story isn’t about how great of a person Mateo always was, or a way to relate what he did back then with what he did recently when he erased his group’s memories so that they wouldn’t have to interact with a new friend they knew was destined to die. This story is about the conversations Mateo had with Favid. More to the point, it’s about the fact that Mateo could remember that these conversations took place, and could even recall a few details about them, but not the conversations themselves. For every ride, Favid paid partially with actual money, and partially with interesting stories. He would always have a new tale about something that happened to him, whether it be recent, or awhile ago. They were always fascinating, and they always lasted from the moment he crawled into Mateo’s car, to the moment before he stepped out. It was almost as if Favid wrote these up ahead of time, and knew exactly what he was going to say, and how long it was going to take. He was a brilliant storyteller, which is an important characteristic, because it would go on to inform his future.

One day, as they were nearing the end of their business relationship, Mateo asked Favid whether all of these stories were true, or if he was making them up. None of them featured ghosts or aliens, or anything. He could reasonably believe that each individual story really happened to Favid, but combined, they seemed a little improbable. How could one person really have gone through all this? No, they were true. Of course, Mateo had no way of verifying them, except for the one where he found himself in the newspaper, but he still chose to believe it. The real question was how Favid was capable of remembering all these things. Was he embellishing the details, or did he really have such clear images in his head? It was then that Mateo started questioning if his brain was wired differently than other people. He was never a rockstar student, which explained why he was driving a cab, and not running a multi-billion dollar biomedical conglomerate. He hadn’t realized until then, however, that maybe even regular people had better memories. Maybe he was even dumber than he knew.

It occurred to Mateo that he couldn’t remember a single particular conversation in his life. For instance, he had dinner at a restaurant with his parents the other day. What did they talk about? What was one single sentence that Randall said to him? Nothing. If he tried to have a flashback to that hour of his life, the three of them would just be sitting there in silence, smiling at each other, because that was all he knew for sure actually happened. He and Favid were extremely different people, and this idea was only reinforced weeks later—after their special arrangement was long over—when Mateo realized he couldn’t remember any of the stories Favid told him. If someone asked him to regurgitate one of them, or even provide a summary, he would not be able to do it. Those memories were gone. He could tell you the places he took Favid. He could tell you the kind of clothes he wore, and even how long their arrangement lasted. But he couldn’t relive the events themselves, because his brain just didn’t retain that information. Over the years since then, he tried to deliberately prevent himself from forgetting these kinds of things, but it never worked. He continued to lose what he would later learn were called episodic memories; not entirely, like amnesia, but enough to bother him.

Favid went on to work at a public library. Per Mateo’s suggestion, he applied there to no particular job. They actually created a position for him, so that he could use his storytelling skills to regale audiences, both kids and adults alike. Some of his stories were probably the same ones he once told Mateo in the car, but he also started making them up, and adapting stories that could be found in the library, written by someone else. He became a bit of a local celebrity; a very much-loved pillar of the community. He later thanked Mateo profusely for what he did for him; for helping him with rides when he was desperate for help, and also for putting him on his truth path. He wrote a book about his life, which sold pretty well in Topeka, and the surrounding areas. Mateo was in it for about two pages. It was one of the most rewarding times of Mateo’s life, which only made it more frustrating that he couldn’t really remember much from it. He went on to become an unwilling time traveler, and alter history so that none of it even happened. New realities formed to replace the old one, and if Favid still existed in this one, he never knew Mateo, and perhaps never found his true calling, which was an incredibly sad thought. But even this isn’t the point of the story. This story is all about Mateo’s memories, and what he was going to do with them.

According to Nerakali, brain blenders were not capable of erasing their own memories. They could add memories from their alternate lives, but they were not capable of removing them. The way she explained it, erasing memories wasn’t like deleting a file from a computer. A blender had to basically absorb a target’s memory, so that the target no longer had it. The memory has to go somewhere, so if a blender were to try to do it on themselves, all they would be doing is removing the memory from their head, and then putting it right back. That was why Mateo had no hope of forgetting Cameo’s death, and would have to figure out how to deal with him without giving anything away. He took this on himself so that no one else would have to do it, and it would hopefully turn out to be the best decision he ever made, because maybe he didn’t really have to erase his own memories to forget them. After all, his brain wasn’t very good at remembering things anyway. It would always be in the back of his mind, but if his plan worked, he might be able to bury it so deep that it wouldn’t be able to rear its proverbial head, and overwhelm his thoughts.

Through Nerakali’s instruction, he learned how to blend brains. He didn’t reveal to her why he wanted her to teach him how to do this, but she was pleasantly respectful of his wishes, and didn’t ask questions. Once he felt ready, he reached all the way back to the second reality, and found the events he was looking for. He blended his own brain, filling himself with memories of the stories Favid gifted him with. The time he fell into the crocodile pit, and just chilled with them until zookeepers came to the rescue. The time someone in a grocery store parking lot wasn’t looking where they were going, and ran straight into his cart, knocking all his food out, and then just drove off. The time the cops banged on his door in the middle of the night, because they had the wrong address. Mateo could remember it all, and it was so much that he could barely think about what it was he was trying to forget. It might take a few days to have any real results, but he already felt better after the blending was done. He didn’t even scream like other blending people did. That was because he didn’t have any bad memories of Favid. No, his real name wasn’t Favid; that would be stupid. His real name was Erotan Blumenthal, which was so much cooler.

“Are you okay?” Leona asked.

There was probably a big goofy smile on his face. “I’m great.”

“Did you blend your brain with memories of another reality.”

“I did.”

She didn’t say anything, but she was clearly waiting for him to elaborate.

“They’re not relevant. I just wanted to remember something really nice.”

She seemed to understand that he wasn’t ready to clarify, and may never be. She just sat down next to him, and presumably enjoyed her own moment of self-reflection.

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