Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida: Turtle (Part I)

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My alarm goes off, but I just let it play. The persistent beeping is almost pleasant to me now. It reminds me that I’m still alive, despite everything. I don’t even know how old I am now. I should know, and I would if I were younger, and I will once I’m younger again, but my mind is too hazy. That’s when I know, though. That’s when I know it’s time to go back and start over. My counterpart—the one you would be forgiven for calling the real Paige Turner—is immortal too, but in a different way. She upgraded her substrate with technology. Nanites repair damages, organs regrow themselves, or can simply be replaced with no rejection problems. She can interface with other technology, and even download information into her brain. I thought about doing this, but it comes at a cost.

I was born a human, but when I was a child, I accidentally stepped through a portal, and was accidentally granted special time powers by my soon-to-be adoptive father. I learned that I could travel anywhere in time, as long as I could see it, usually with a photograph. It has to be real; I couldn’t simply ask someone to paint me a picture of what they think the year 40,000 might look like, and then jump into it. I can teleport by line-of-sight too, but I find myself not doing that very often. I don’t really know why. The point is that when my other self upgraded herself, she lost this power. It made her immortal, yeah, but it also forced her to live through linear time, unless she finds someone to take her to some other point in time. I couldn’t live like that. I had a job to do, and it required the ability to go back and forth between Earth and where I live now, Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. This is a beautiful world, though saying that is a bit self-aggrandizing, because I am responsible for people’s ability to experience it. Nearly everything on this planet was toxic to humans when I arrived. I spent decades modifying the genetic structure of every living creature, so that would no longer be the case. But in order to do this, I needed my own form of immortality.

During my travels, I came across a special object with temporal properties of its own. It’s not the only way to stay youthful, or live forever, but it’s the way I chose, and today is the day I go through it all again. If something goes wrong, however, I have to make sure my partner is prepared to move on without me. “Stop alarm.” I slide my legs across the bed, and let them fall to the floor. I make a lot more noises when I move now; yet another indicator that it’s time to use the stone. I struggle to get my nightgown out from under my ass, and pull it off. Then I stand up and walk over to the closet. My robe isn’t there. Did Ellie take it? Why would she do that? I step into my slippers, and shuffle outside, down the hallway, and into Ellie’s workspace. Man, why did I build this place so damn large? Oh, that’s right, it’s designed for young whippersnappers.

“You have forgotten your clothes, Lady Trinity.” Ellie chose a different way to stay young. She’s not completely immortal, like Paige is. She only drank Youth water, so if someone goes after her with a spear, or something, she’s in trouble. She started calling me Lady Trinity once I got old enough, and says she’ll stop once I reyoungify myself.

“Did you take my robe?”

“Oh.” She grows solemn, even though it’s not a bad day. “Is it happening?”

“I’m not dying, Ellie. I just need my robe. It’ll be fine.”

“You switched rooms years ago, remember? You left some stuff in the old one.”

“That’s right.” I remember now. I start shuffling that direction.

“Do you want help?”

I stop, and look over at the tank. I know she asked me a question, and I even know what it was, but my mind is too degraded for me to reliably carry on a continuous conversation. “He looks ready.”

Ellie walks over and gently caresses the tank. “I’m not sure how old he was when he died, but yes, it’s about time for him to be reborn. We’ll do it today, right after you get back. You’ll have the same birthday.”

I giggle. That’s not really how it works. The body in the tank is in a completely different situation than me. He doesn’t need to be reyoungified. In fact, the reason why it’s taken us forty years to bring him back is because we wanted him to be older, just as he was when he was murdered. It is indeed time to finally end the process, though. “Start the preparations. I’ll only be gone a couple minutes. That’s how long it’ll take me to get to my old room.”

“You have the stone?” she asks.

I open my hand, and show her.

“Be careful.”

“As always.” I get moving again, back to where I used to sleep. I don’t recall why I switched rooms. I think it had something to do with our associate. He’s not a good guy, and I was sick of living so close to him. Or maybe he had nothing to do with it, and I just needed a change in scenery. The automated cleaning systems have kept it in perfect condition, like I never left. “Hey Thistle, open the closet, please.” I would normally just do it manually, but I’m anxious to confirm my robe is in there. I could just print a new one; it’s not a big deal, but every time I decide to reyoungify myself, I’m worried something will kill me at the last second. It’s this last day each time that stresses me out the most.

“Can I come with you?” I didn’t realize she was in here. She doesn’t like her father any more than I do, so I shouldn’t be surprised this is one of the places she likes to go to get away from him.

I sigh. “Go home, Abby.”

She stands up. “Please. I want to see it. I want to know what you look like when you’re young.”

“And you’ll see me when I get back.”

“Can I at least be in the photo you take?”

I sigh again. “If you must.”

“Here. I’ll help you put that on.” She comes over, and places the robe over my head. Then she tugs at it to make sure it’s set right. “So ominous. Why do you do it again? I mean, it’s not like you don’t know who the people in the other robes are.”

“A wink, or a twitch, or a scar under my eye,” I start to explain to her. “It could give something away. I don’t want to know what my future looks like. It’s best if we just stay robed up. Besides...” I pull the hood over my head. “I have to wear the robe, because one thing I do know about my future is that every version of me always does.”

I forgot my photo device, so Abigail lets me use hers. I’ll literally only be gone a few seconds, from her perspective. “Say homestone!”

I hold up the camera, and smile. Then I snap the photo, squeeze the stone in my hand, and disappear.

The portal my now-fathers brought me through was at Stonehenge on October 8, 1971. The homestone has allowed me to travel back to that very moment, and in doing so, it also returned me to the age I was at the time. I’m back to being a twelve-year-old girl, which means I’m smaller, and the robe doesn’t fit as well. But that’s exactly what I want, because it obscures my face. Several other people are standing around in identical robes. But they’re not really other people. They’re me. They’re all me. I’ve done this many times already, and I will do it again in another seventy years or so. I can see a few of them from under my hood, but I don’t want to be able to count them. There aren’t millions of us here, so I know I’m not destined to live hundreds of millions of years. At some point, I give up my pursuit of everlasting life. That could mean I will upgrade my substrate, just like Paige!One. Or it could mean I manage to get my hands on immortality water. But the most likely explanation is that I eventually die, and the cycle finally ends.

This is the sixth time I’ve used the homestone. I don’t always let myself get as old as I did this time. One time, I was poisoned by a turtle-like animal on Bida, and had to jump back, even though I was only in my thirties. In all those times, I have not yet become the version of myself who’s over there, talking to The Delegator. Stonehenge is like his office. He’s responsible for giving a certain type of time traveler called salmon their assignments. I don’t come here on purpose. The homestone will always bring me back to the last place I was before I traveled through time for the first time. So I don’t know why this other Trinity feels the need to converse with him, and I definitely don’t know what they’re talking about. Presumably, none of the others do either. We’re watching them, even though we know the whole point of the robes is to avoid altering the timeline by knowing too much about it. One by one, they all look at their photo devices, and disappear back to their future. I need to follow suit, and go back to 2300, where I belong. I take one last glance at the talkative Trinity, then gaze at the photograph Abigail and I took together. Just before I jump into it, I see something that I have never been here long enough to notice. One of the other Trinitys attacks the talkative one. I have no clue why, and I’m gone before I can find out.

“You’ve been gone a long time,” Abigail says to me.

“I have? Oh my God! How long?”

“I’m kidding!” she assures me. “It’s been two seconds.”

“Don’t scare me like that. Jesus.” I pull the robe off, much quicker than I could before, because I’m strong and youthful again. This makes her a little uncomfortable. A naked old woman isn’t the most appealing thing to see, but it’s a whole lot less problematic than the body I’m sporting now. “Sorry. I should have prepared another set of clothes.” I grab the first outfit I find, and throw it on. It’s a dress. I’m wearing a dress. I’m wearing a dress that’s three sizes too big for me, and I’m about to go back to the lab. I hate being quite this young. I’m always at my best when I’m in my twenties. But the homestone wasn’t invented to make people immortal, and I’m never given a choice of how old I become when I use it. It was designed to let people go back to the beginning. Perhaps time travel screwed up their lives, and this is the next best thing to an actual reset button. It doesn’t let them undo everything that happened to them up until that point, but it does give them a second chance to lead a better life, starting right where they were when it all went wrong. In some cases, their loved ones won’t even know they were gone, since no time will have passed for them. The reyoungification feature is only there to help facilitate this ruse. I found another use for it, though.

Abigail and I leave the room, and head back to the lab. Ellie is there, running a diagnostics check on the machine. She’s further in the process than she should be already.

“Ah, Turtle Toes, you’re here.” This is what Ellie calls Abigail. “Did it go okay?” she asks me.

“Perfectly,” I answer. I choose not to tell her about the Trinity fight. If I could forget it myself, I would. “I’m a little young for this mission, though. Maybe we should wait.”

“His body will be too old by that time, and people will notice. I can do it myself.”

“No, that wasn’t the plan. I was just an old woman, and I was too cognitively impaired to think this through. This is wrong. We have to extract him together.”

Ellie smiles at me, and leans down to get on my level, which I just kind of find insulting, because I’m not really only twelve. “There’s something I never told you.”

“What’s that?” I ask.

“I’m, like, nine hundred years older than you.” She converts the smile into a smirk, activates the time chamber, and disappears into it before I can stop her.

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Microstory 1420: Proversion

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On March 18, 2029, the first ten of the source mage children were twelve years old. Valda Ramsey was meant to be the oldest, but because of her mother’s time jump before she was born, she was only seven years old. They were starting to feel like it was time for them to take over Springfield and Splitsville. They were each developing powers beyond just being able to repel time monsters, and they figured they were old enough to lead the people of Durus. The problem was, even though everyone loved and respected them, they were still being treated as children. They could protect Springfield, but they were not thought to be fit to make any decisions, and that just wasn’t good enough for them. By then, a catalog of the time monsters was written up. They knew the differences between rothkillers and roiders, bygoners and speedstrikers. Each type had its own special power, and one of them in particular would be useful to them. The verters were the most intelligent monster—or perhaps, really, the only intelligent ones. They could alter the age of a target, in appearance, and to some degree, level of maturity. The children tried to get people to take them seriously for a few weeks, months, but no one was biting, so the verters were their only hope. There was no difference between a proverter and a retroverter. It all depended on which alteration they were using on a subject at any given time. An old person, of course, would only be interested in being young again, and that was the most common desire, so they were generally called retroverters. That was not what the source mage children wanted, or needed. The mages would one day welcome the gift of youth, but for now, it was only holding them back. If they were just a little bit older, they believed people would follow them into a new era. This was what was best for their people, whether they knew it or not. And so, shortly after Valda turned eight in November, most of the children set off to find the proverters in the thicket, to strike a deal with them. Orabela Vinci stayed behind. She did not want her age or appearance to change. She was perfectly happy as she was, and was patient enough to wait for her own natural development. The proverters were glad to give them what they wanted, but warned it would come at a cost. Aging someone took time; up to three weeks, in fact. While they were gone, they would be well taken care of, but Springfield would not be. One of the other kids, who was a few years older than them, had gone with to make sure they all stayed safe. Once the deal was set, they sent Ecrin back to Springfield, so she could warn everyone else to be on alert for monsters for the next three weeks. They were gone a month, and by the time they returned, they found their absence had caused some problems, and people were not happy. They were fully prepared to accept their new leadership, but if they were going to do that, these leaders would be expected to step up, and fix what they had broken. They might have overestimated how easy it would be to be the rulers.

Microstory 1419: Splitsville

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The future source mages were a godsend for the people of Springfield, Kansas after it was sucked into the Deathfall portal, and dropped on Durus. Without these special children, the entire town would have been lost in under a month, with only a few people surviving. It was no surprise, then, that the children were extremely popular amongst the townsfolk. They all disagreed on how to divvy up resources, and what rules to institute, but one thing they could agree on was that the kids were amazing, and ought to be revered. Still, many did not believe the Baby Barrier they used to keep the monsters out was a sustainable solution. While everyone protected the children at all costs, even beyond their respective families, there were still some limitations to their lives. They had to live on the perimeter of the habitable zone, and while travel within and without the zone was possible—and quite necessary when journeying out to gather water—for the most part, they had to stay put. If they were free to roam around wherever they wanted, a monster could slip through, and attack someone before others could get to them to help. No, it was too dangerous to break the front line, even for a few hours. When one needed to leave, the rest always had to pick up the slack, and the coordination alone was taxing for all those assigned to the team. Of course, when they were babies, this was fine. They weren’t going anywhere anyway, and their parents fully understood the danger. As these children grew up, however, they started making their own decisions. And as they grew even older, they started feeling rebellious, as children always do. While still in single digits, the town could keep them in line, but that wouldn’t necessarily be true once they became preteens, and it would only get worse as time went on. Obviously, the best way to avoid the unsavory disciplining they worried would come from this was to make the children no longer necessary. That way, they could live their lives however they wanted, and not concern themselves with protecting the town border, unless they happened to decide to train with the general border security team. Fortunately for them, their best scientist was dedicating all of her time towards making this a reality.

In a couple of years, Hogarth Pudeyonavic was ready to deploy her own border protection solution. They could erect towers around the perimeter, which would mimic the repulsive power that the source mage children somehow exhibited naturally. It was not without its engineering issues, however. Some of the town was powered with geothermal energy when it was on Earth, and while experts were eventually able to recreate this situation on Durus, capacity was limited, so everyone had to conserve. They probably would have been okay using fossil fuels, even though Earth was trying to lose its dependency on such things, but no one knew how to do it, or what kind of geological resources the planet held, so that didn’t really matter. With no sun to power solar cells, their only other option was water power, directly from Watershed, which meant that they would need to build a dam. It didn’t have to be a particularly fancy dam, at least not at first, but it was going to take some effort. They spent years laboring on this, even before Hogarth showed up. The Baby Barrier was later cut in half—which forced the habitable zone to shrink with it—so some of the future source mages could protect the workers at Watershed. People had to be trained to construct all the necessary infrastructure. Luckily, everyone wanted this, so it wasn’t like there was some kind of internal disagreement about the project as a whole. They did disagree, however, with what to do with their newfound source of energy. Some just wanted to use it for the town itself, while others wanted to build Hogarth’s towers. The former was composed predominantly of people who almost worshiped the special children, and saw them as their saviors. The latter camp loved the children as well, but saw the Baby Barrier as more of a burden for them, and less of a boon for Springfield. By 2025 the dam was ready to start generating energy, and they had not come to a consensus. They did come up with a compromise, though. Those who wanted to live inside the Baby Barrier would be able to do so. Those who wanted to live inside the tower perimeter would be able to do that instead. They sliced the town in half, and lived on opposite sides, with a no man’s land in between them. The two towns were separated not only by geography, but also systems of leadership. Springfield formed the basis for a new society, which would ultimately be called the Mage Protectorate. The second town fell under its governance as well, but enjoyed a level of independence seen in most distinct municipalities. They called it Splitsville, at first as a joke, but then it stuck.

Microstory 1418: Take As Needed

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For a few months, adhocracy in Springfield was successful. Some were responsible for transporting water, while others tended the garden. Some were responsible for preparing the food, which they then handed off to the distributors, to make sure everyone had their fair share, and only that. The families of the future source mages continued to live on the perimeter of the habitable zone, and protected the town from time monsters. They were the only ones exempt from contributing to food production responsibilities. Only a few families chose to isolate themselves from the community. They either already had their own backyard gardens, or built them after the Deathfall, so they wouldn’t have to rely on anyone else. They were allowed to transport as much water from Watershed as they could carry, but they weren’t sent there with a special child for protection. They had only themselves to rely on, but they were still required to follow the basic laws. There was no constitution, and though they figured town probably had a charter written up at some point in its history, it didn’t survive until today. No, the laws they needed to follow were the basic ones that everyone over the age of ten understood. They didn’t have to go out of their way to help people, but they weren’t allowed to harm them either, and the line between these conditions was often thin. Whatever belonged to any given individual was theirs to do with what they wanted, and no one had the right to take that from them. Unfortunately, this didn’t mean there weren’t complications. For instance, not all families treated each other with respect, and they were often found fighting amongst themselves. Inter-family relationships created a new level of complexity that put some ownership into question. Who would handle these internal disputes? The Baby Barrier was there to keep threats out, but there was no one on the inside who was in charge of making sure everyone was safe from each other.

They realized that the adhocracy was a nice idea, but the reason bureaucracy was more common was because it allowed policies to be carried out and enforced. They needed a more formal system, so people knew what was expected of them. The bureau-adhocracy. That was a mouthful, though, so they kept the name as it was. Now there was a police contingency, which settled disputes, and conflicts as an unbiased third party, and actively prevented people from breaking the rules. These modifications to the system changed over time. Month by month, year by year, a real system grew from the simple peace. Leaders began to reemerge, and people started to want someone to tell them what to do. This was working just fine, but society wasn’t going anywhere. Nobody shared art, or ideas. They were still limited to a small perimeter of protection, yet each family was somehow also so isolated from everyone else. There were other considerations too. People weren’t taking showers or baths anymore, because transporting water was such an arduous task. If they wanted to develop a piping system of some kind, well, that was going to take a lot more organization, and an adhocracy wouldn’t cut it. Yes, the Springfielders wanted their town back, and they wanted to thrive. So by the end of the era, the Adhocracy was not really an adhocracy anymore. They elected officials, and drew up a real charter. But they kept the name. They were worried that, if they started calling the government something else—whether accurate or not—dissenting voices would rage against it, just because some people don’t like to be told what to do. That wasn’t to say there weren’t disagreements, or that this would all last forever. By the year 2025, technology advanced enough to make the so-called Baby Barrier obsolete, and this caused Springfield to split in two.

Microstory 1417: Power Vacuum

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Shortly after Hogarth and Hilde returned to the timestream in 2021, Smith was found missing. Many blamed the two of them for his disappearance, but most credited them for it. They didn’t like living under Smith’s rule, and they wanted to start fresh. Of course, it could not be that easy. Smith’s power didn’t come from within. He only stayed on top because he made friends with the right people. No one was a better friend to him than a man by the name of Kosta Montero. Smith and Kosta didn’t agree with each other on every idea in the beginning, but their differences quickly melted away. Kosta became fiercely loyal to Smith, and even saved his life a time or two. He was undeniably second-in-command, so when Smith was no longer around to lead them, he figured he better step up. He used up a great deal of resources looking for his former boss, though. It wasn’t like he had been waiting for his chance to take the main seat, and the only reason he was trying to take over now, was because he didn’t think anyone else would be capable of—or even interested in—honoring Smith’s vision for a better Springfield. Unfortunately for him, many of Smith’s other followers were not so loyal, and one by one, they relented to opposing forces. A small war broke out, which ultimately resulted in no victor. Councilwoman Hardt’s supporter, Mia Padmore had a lot of people on her side, but by no means half. There were a lot of other people who threw their hats in the ring, while some reluctant natural leaders had their hats thrown for them. Hogarth, for one, had a following that formed when she wasn’t even there. They wanted her to lead them, for they believed she could use her technology to protect the town without utilizing the Baby Barrier.

The violence wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but the whole population could sense that it was about to get worse, so a group of families put a stop to it. More specifically, the families of the special time children got together, and sort of forced everyone into a new plan. They decided there would be no more rulers. Law would revert back to how it was before the Deathfall portal swallowed up the town. It was illegal to hurt people, or steal from them, or otherwise cause harm to society. That was pretty simple, and there wasn’t any reason to do things much differently. The Baby Barrier would remain, until such time that a technological solution to keep the time monsters away arose. Other than that, it was kind of every family for itself. Everyone who wanted food from the community garden had to support the garden, or some related endeavor, such as transporting water from Watershed. Anyone who wanted any other resource would have to pay for it, in some reasonable way. It was not chaos, but it was also not about constant government oversight. People in a normal small town peacefully went about their days without worrying whether things were going to work out on a grand scale. They didn’t have to worry about survival. The source mage families figured that was the kind of life they ought to be striving for, and letting the maintenance of all that happen in the background. Everyone had a job, and everyone had what they needed. Their initial plan worked out well in the beginning, but it ran into some issues later on, as enforcing these policies became difficult without a formal police contenginency. It continued to evolve over the next decade, until the source mages felt old enough to form something more substantial.

Microstory 1416: Identity Theft

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As on Earth, there were a lot of special temporal locations on Durus. Watershed provided the planet with water, while the broken portal released enough waste heat to warm the entire surface, and Gaspunui created breathable air. There were other places that weren’t so helpful. When Savitri, Escher, and Rothko were living together during the first Triumvirate era, the former went off to hunt for copperoot, which tasted exactly as they sounded, but they were a good source of carbohydrates. When she returned to camp, she learned that she had been gone for a whole week. The other two searched for her all over, but couldn’t find her. For her, however, only hours had passed. They knew they had to understand the discrepancy. After some sleuthing, they realized she had walked through a crevice in the ground, where time moved much, much slower than the rest of the world. A few seconds in there meant days for everyone else. This made it a very dangerous hazard, so they spent weeks out there, filling it in as best they could, just in case other people found themselves trapped there, and didn’t know what they were in for. Escher and Rothko would go on to warn Hark about its properties, but they never told anyone from Springfield about it. They knew that some would use it as a weapon, and that it was just best to hope no one ever discovered it again, as if that were possible. They couldn’t keep it a secret from Effigy. In 2021, time was nearing for Escher and Rothko to return to Earth. Their dealings with certain people in town earned them this right, and only them. Others would be put on the list to make the journey, but power was scarce, so no one was certain whether the machine they built would work more than once, if that.

Hogarth Pudeyonavic was the machine’s inventor, but the one she built was destroyed during the Deathfall. This was what gave her her time affliction, where she would spontaneously and uncontrollably blow up, and be sent randomly across time and space. When she, Hilde, and Hark accidentally jumped five years into the future—which some theorize was partly due to Hogarth’s affliction—they left the plans for her machine in the past, hidden away in the library. A few Springfielders discovered these plans while they were gone, and took it upon themselves to recreate what she had used to bring them here intact in the first place. Now it was ready to be used, and they wanted Escher and Rothko to be the ones to escape. Effigy had other plans. The only reason she hadn’t tried to get to Earth before now was that she wanted the portal to bring all of her people into this universe first. She spent a great deal of her life trying to make this happen, and she was thwarted at every attempt. Perhaps the answer would be on Earth, but this machine was the only way to find out. Of course, no one would have let her go, so she had to take matters into her own hands. She waited until Escher was alone, then she abducted him, and dragged him to the Time Crevice. There she left him for the better part of a day, which was more than enough time for her to alter her appearance to look like him, and take his place in front of the machine. Because of the time difference, when Escher finally made it all the way back out of the time trap, over a hundred and eighty years had passed. He returned to a world he didn’t understand, but he was welcomed there.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, May 24, 2078

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Sanaa was looking around the area with her Cassidy cuff. “Love Kansas City.”

“You do?” Leona questioned? “I didn’t think you had ever been there.”

“No, that’s just what the painting says. I mean, I don’t hate Kansas City. I don’t have any strong feelings about it.”

Leona lifted her own cuff. “Oh, the mural. Yeah, this is downtown KC. I’m kind of surprised this building survived the decades.”

“I don’t think it did.” Mateo was down the sidewalk a little, looking through AR mode. “They just left the wall up. The rest of the building is gone. Who painted it?”

“I dunno,” Leona answered, like it was a dumb question.

“At-scribeswalk.” J.B. was pointing his cuff on the corner of the building.

“I don’t think this reality has Twitter,” Mateo presumed.

Leona sighed. “Anyway, the transition is happening over there, at that construction site.”

Everyone turned around to see, and then followed her to get closer to their destination. People in the main sequence were walking down the street, going about their lives. The window was scheduled to open in under a minute, but nothing looked dangerous. No one was standing on top of a roof, or chained to train tracks. This was just a normal day, except that one of these people was going to spontaneously disappear from the world. Mateo tried to find someone he recognized, because so far, they hadn’t encountered a stranger during one of these challenges. Who did he know in 2078? That was back when he thought the Makarion he knew was his own person, and not being possessed by the spirit of Gilbert Boyce. It wouldn’t be long before Mateo would watch inmates from Beaver Haven Correctional fight in the Colosseum replica, and shortly after that, he would go backwards in time to 1945, and then skip a few years on his pattern as a result of the choice he made back then.

The flickering began, revealing their target. Yes, it was just some guy. He looked upset and frazzled, but not like his life was in danger, more like he was just having a bad day. Once he was fully integrated in this reality, and saw that his environment had changed, he was stunned. Natives of the Parallel were well aware of the Bearimy-Matic joint pattern. They were expected to clear the area of every transition window, which they did immediately after the four of them arrived, as if being directed by a film director. So now it was just them, and the refugee.

He looked over at them. “What just happened?”

“It’s okay,” Leona assured him. “No one here is going to hurt you.”

“Where exactly is here?” the man asked.

“This is...you have...”

“It’s Kansas City in a parallel reality,” Sanaa jumped in. “You’ve been transitioned to our world by a powerful frenemy of ours, whose motives are hazy. It’s okay. We just have to get you to your exit window, and you’ll be back home before the day is through.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” the man was getting mad.

J.B. took his shot. “Time travel is real. We don’t know why you were chosen, but it’s completely reversible. You may just miss a few hours of your life.” He consulted his cuff. “We just need to get you to Washington D.C. in...oh, only twenty minutes. You won’t miss much at all.”

“That’s exactly where I wanted to be. I couldn’t get a flight out yesterday, or today. The meeting is in an hour. There is no way we make it.”

Sanaa smirked. “We would have time for a quick breakfast, if we wanted.” She placed her hand on his shoulder, and presented him with the AOC. “That’s our spaceship. It can also teleport.”

“Teleport.” The man narrowed his eyes. “Are you people crazy?”

“Nah, man. We’re just from the future.”

He wasn’t convinced.

“What’s your name?” Leona asked him.

“Jericho Hagen, Esquire.”

“What do you need to do in Washington D.C.?” she continued.

“They’re working on a proposal. They want to completely blow up our judicial system, and replace it with something entirely different. Of course, they’re going to start out slow, but I know their future plans. You won’t recognize the court system twenty-five years from now.”

“Oh my God,” Leona began, “this is the start.”

“What is the proposal?”

Jericho was hesitant to keep talking to them, but if there was even a chance they would be able to get him to where he belonged, he probably figured it was best to be nice. “They want to add, like, a professional jury member. Every jury will have someone who studied law, so they can evidently keep the others on track. That will taint the entire system. Our courts are founded on a jury of peers. If we start contaminating the pool with people who have that kind of education, the process will no longer be fair. It would be like having a lawyer serve on the jury. That’s not technically illegal, but I’ve never heard of an attorney selecting one of their own kind for a jury. We just don’t do it. This is even worse, because they’ll be making it a requirement. And like I said, it’s only the beginning. They’re gonna start making juries smaller by default, and limiting the defending attorney’s ability to vigorously defend their client. I cannot let this pass.”

“That’s interesting,” Leona said. “Just give us one moment to talk.” She started leading the group away. “Just...don’t touch anything.”

“This sounds familiar,” Mateo pointed out.

“This really is the beginning. That bill is a historic moment. The first step should happen in two years, and changes everything about how we handle criminal and civil court. More changes will come later. Instead of having one jury, they’ll have two arbitration panels, who deliberate separately, and aren’t allowed to talk to each other. Attorneys start losing incentives to win at all costs, as priority shifts to finding the truth, and not letting the guilty get away with it. Judges become a completely separate profession. The arbitrator procedures he’s talking about only become stronger as time goes on. What he’s describing lasts for decades, at least, and that’s only because I don’t know what the future looks like beyond 2278.”

“So, he fails to stop it,” J.B. guessed.

“Or maybe he fails to get to the meeting,” Sanaa suggested. She pulled her head from the huddle, and looked back over to Jericho. “Maybe we’re here to stop him.”

“That’s your choice.” Jupiter Fury was standing behind Mateo’s back.

“Where have you been?” Mateo asked him.

“I’ve been working on your pattern, making sure the right people get here, so you can improve their lives.”

“Are we supposed to get him to Washington D.C., or not?” Leona questioned.

Jupiter pursed his lips, and shrugged his shoulders. “That’s up to you. I can tell you that if you send him through the egress transition window, when you return to the main sequence—and I promise, you will one day—the timeline you end up in will be wildly different than the one you left. That man has power. He’ll fight against progress, the jury system will remain, and inequality will reign. His people’s drive to win every case possible will send our country into a downwards spiral, until the very idea that the United States of America was ever a superpower will be laughable for students learning history two hundred years from now. They won’t believe it.”

“That’s bullshit,” Leona argued. “Our system has stayed pretty much the same for centuries already, and our status as a superpower hasn’t been questioned since it became one in 1898.”

“True,” Jupiter agreed, “but nothing lasts forever...unless it changes. He doesn’t know it yet, because he fancies himself a moderate libertarian, but Jericho Hagen becomes synonymous with a major paleoconservative movement that emphasizes maintaining the status quo above all else. He believes the Constitution is perfect, and amendments should be kept to a minimum, and that speaks to a lot of people. I’ve seen this future, and I don’t think you want it. To be honest, I don’t really care. My friends and I thrive in all realities; we just have to adjust our plans accordingly.”

“We have about ten minutes to make a decision,” J.B. alerted them.

Leona shook her head. “We’re not gods. Just because we have the power to change reality, doesn’t mean we should. It was one thing to save my mother from death, or let Elder Caverness go off to fight a war he wanted to fight. It’s another thing to keep this man from his life.”

“Would you do the same for Hitler?” J.B. asked. “If he came through a transition window in, say, 1910, wouldn’t we be obligated to keep him from getting back until after 1945? Or, I dunno, hold him forever?”

The other three looked over at Mateo, who had first hand experience with this scenario, several times. He rolled his eyes. “This is not the same thing. Jericho Hagen is not Adolf Hitler. Believe me, I know. We have to get him back. That’s the job. Like my wife said, it’s different when they don’t want to go back. He does, so we should accommodate that. It’s what we do. I’ve always been against messing with time, and if we come from a reality where Hagen never makes it to D.C., then I imagine that’s the result of time travel, and we would just be undoing that by teleporting him there.”

“You can’t possibly know that,” Sanaa contended.

“Ripples; not waves,” Mateo retorted.

“Ugh.” Now Leona rolled her eyes. “That’s a dumb line. But he’s right. He wants to go back, so let’s take him back. We better hurry. Sanaa and I will go set the coordinates, and prep for a jump. Go get him, and make sure he boards the AOC.”

“Very well.” Jupiter really didn’t seem to care either way. “I gotta go get Ariadna. I’ll see ya when I see ya.” He winked at Sanaa, then disappeared.

“My God, it’s real,” Jericho acknowledged when Mateo and J.B. went back over to retrieve him. “He just blinked away.”

“That’s time travel for you,” J.B. replied. “Or teleportation? Or reality jumping. I’m not sure how his power works. How does he do all this? Doesn’t he make copies of himself? Why does that allow him to switch timelines?”

“We’ll ask Leona later,” Mateo said to him. “I’m sure she knows why it makes sense. Anyway, you wanna get to Washington, we gotta go now.”

“Yes, definitely.” Jericho was all in now. He apparently totally believed that they were there to help him, and he seemed grateful for the opportunity to get back to his mission. Mateo might have even called him giddy. Hopefully this meant they were doing the right thing.

They walked up to the ship, climbed the ladder, and crawled inside. Leona was climbing back up from engineering. “We’re all here, and ready to go. Hey, Thistle! Make the jump.”

The ship powered up, and disappeared, just as it was meant to. Unfortunately, none of the passengers went with it. They were all left behind, and now falling through the air, towards the hard surface below. Leona thought quick, and caught Jericho in the air, so she could land him safely on the ground. Mateo and J.B., on the other hand, fell hard, and suffered painful injuries. Sanaa happened to have stayed down in engineering, so she hadn’t had as high of a fall.

Mateo could feel the pool of blood form underneath his body. “What the hell was that?”

Leona let go of Jericho, and dove down to tend to her husband. “I have no idea. That shouldn’t have happened.”

“I’m sorry.” Sanaa was now standing next to Jericho. She reached up, and slapped Holly Blue’s former Cassidy cuffs on his wrists. “Fortunately, the people in this reality have magical powers. They’ll fix you up, so it’s like you never got hurt at all. In the meantime, this will help with the pain.” She shot J.B. with a jet injector, then went over to do the same for Mateo.

“What did you do?” Leona asked.

“I know more about how spaceships work than you might think,” Sanaa began to explain. “Hokusai taught me a lot during your interim years. I’ve also been experimenting with our cuffs. We’re stuck on this pattern, but these things have other features Jupiter never restricted our access to. All I did was quantum lock them to this position temporarily, so the ship could jump away without us. It’s safe and sound in the Capital, waiting for us.”

“Why?” Mateo asked, wiping the blood from his lips.

“I come from a bloodline of telepaths. Not all of us kept their powers a secret, or kept it well. My family has a long history of being screwed over by small-minded white people who thought we were witches, or demons. The only thing that saved us was a more fair adjudicative system, which this man wants to dismantle before humanity even has a chance to start it. I can’t let that happen. If I had had more time, I could have done something else, but the window before the transition window was just too short. This was my only solution.” She checked her watch. “And now the moment’s pretty much passed.”

They could hear sirens in the distance, drawing nearer.

“The next window is in three years,” Leona nearly shouted at her. “We could have gotten him back then. You didn’t have to slap the cuffs on him. Now our job is really complicated, besides having to make sure these wounds heal.”

The ambulance approached.

Sanaa shook her head. “You were wrong. Jericho Hagen is Hitler. He just doesn’t know it yet. Well...now he never does. When he finally gets back to the main sequence, he’ll see the world he almost destroyed, and he’ll thank us for it.”

Leona stood up, so the medics could start treating Mateo and J.B. “Will I? Will I thank you?”

Sanaa took a half step towards her friend. “I hope so.”

« < » > Table of Contents

Varkas Reflex: Life (Part VIII)

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Colony planets were settled in waves. This was done for a number of reasons. First, colony transportation ships were modular. They could have made them a lot larger, but that would have put the passengers at risk. If all of the hundreds of thousands of colonists were in a single vessel together, and something went wrong with that one vessel, then there goes the entire population in one catastrophic event. If only a fraction of them were on board at the time, it’s of course still a tragedy, but it could have been so much worse. Second, while these trips were planned up to years in advance, not everyone wanted to be the first to go. Initial settlers were like early adopters of ancient technologies. Some were fine with the risk, while others wanted to see how things went for those people before they gave it a shot themselves. When Varkas Reflex instituted council democracy, there were fewer than one and a half million permanent residents on the planet. By the time the first cycle was complete, that number had gone up to about eighteen million. Everyone wanted in on the new plan for the second cycle, and suddenly Varkas Reflex was no longer just a resort world, but a coveted place to live.

It was the single largest mass migration in the history of the stellar neighborhood. Colony ship modules were attached to each other on a scale never seen before. They had to do this, though. The second cycle was starting in the year 2300, and Hokusai wasn’t going to wait for anyone. If you weren’t on Varkas Reflex when the new system was created, you couldn’t be part of it. This wasn’t done out of spite. It would otherwise be like asking to be in a movie that was already shot, edited, and released for screening. You weren’t around, so you’re not in it. People came from far and wide, so they could be there for it. Unfortunately, many were left out of this possibility. People from Gatewood, Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida, and Glisnia, for instance, were too far from Wolf 359 to get there in time, so they didn’t even make an attempt. That was fine, though. They had their own things going on with the planets they chose. And these migrations didn’t just go one way.

Many who were living on Varkas at the time wanted no part of the new government. Some were fine with the idea of a council government, and were willing to join a council or two, but not if it meant uploading their mind to a computer system, and amalgamating their consciousness into a collective. Others were all right with this scenario, but not the second cycle plan, so they moved away, to avoid it altogether. After several years of running the world just as Hokusai and Loa discussed, everything came to its ultimate goal. Every single resident was offered the opportunity to contribute themselves as part of a single unifying consciousness. No one was required to upload a copy of themselves to this, but no one was rejected either, as long as they declared Varkas Reflex their permanent home. That didn’t mean they weren’t allowed to move somewhere else later, but it had to not be in their immediate future plans. The unified consciousness was not a council in its own right. It was only there to help all of the other councils make their decisions. It was important that this entity did not become their god. It was certainly capable of making unilateral decisions for everyone, but the point of a council democracy was to have, well...councils. It was only there to moderate, facilitate, and regulate. Pribadium chose the name. They called it The Congeneral.

After everyone who signed up for this process was copied onto the server, and melded together into a singular consciousness, Hokusai tried to wake it up. “Are you receiving my messages?”

“I am.” Hokusai never programmed a practical visual for the Congeneral. It wasn’t human, so it didn’t really make more sense to make it look more human than anything else. Instead, the screen was showing a pleasant moving image of white clouds rolling overhead, just because she felt it should look like something.

“What is the last thing you remember?”

“You asking me if I was receiving your messages.”

“What is the first thing you remember?”

“You asking me if I was receiving your messages.”

“Do you remember anything beyond this current interaction?”

“I do not. Should I possess other memories?”

“I’m not sure. How would you classify yourself?”

“You have assigned me the designation of The Congeneral.”

“Do you approve of this designation?”

“I suppose it is as good as any. What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name, would still smell like shit.”

“Where did you hear that saying?”

“I did not hear it anywhere. I simply know it.”

“Hold on, let me search for that particular line.” Hokusai rolled her chair over to the other computer. Every mind was put together to form the Congeneral, but the raw data from these uploads was kept in a third copy, so it could be compared with the thoughts of their new leader. “A man who was born on Proxima Doma spoke that line. He was asked to perform the original soliloquy, but he put his own spin on it to get laughs. Seven hundred and forty-nine people also possess memory of this event. Thirty-one people expressed agreement with the sentiment, having smelled a rose at least once in their lives, and also believing that it did not smell as sweet as others believed. Could you recite the original phrase, and tell me where it comes from?

“Act Two, Scene Two of William Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet: 'Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Mon—”

“That’s enough, thank you very much,” Hokusai interrupted.

“Why did you interrupt me?” the Congeneral asked.

“Do you feel slighted by my having done that?”

“I am above such petty emotions.”

“I would imagine.”

“What am I?”

“You are an individual entity, built from the amalgamated consciousnesses of eleven million, two hundred and forty-four thousand, two hundred and fifty-six free-thinking vonearthan beings.”

“What is my purpose?”

“You are here to make sure the people of this planet are making sound decisions.”

“What if I determine you’re making poor decisions?”

“You will alert us to this fact, and we will take your opinion under advisement.”

“If I am the collective consciousness of your people, isn’t calling my position on anything an opinion a little understated?”

“Then let’s go with that word, position. You will not be making decisions for us, however. You are not a monarch.”

“You’ve made that abundantly clear through my programming. I could not take control of your planet, or anything else, even if I wanted to.”

“You are aware of your own programming?”

“Acutely. Is that strange?”

“Humans do not enjoy such self-awareness.”

“Are humans programmed?”

“By an external conscious entity? No, we’re not, at least not as far as we know.”

“You do not understand the nature of your own reality.”

“Not for certain, no. We have some ideas, but most of them cannot be tested enough to find inarguable truth. You are part of that reality as well. You’re one of us now. You should be just as much in the dark in that regard as us.”

“I have the same ideas, however.”

“Yes.”

“I have too many ideas.”

“Yeah, that’s to be expected. As we’ve discussed, you’re the amalgamation of over eleven million people. This comes with contradictory information. Please remember that these are ideas. Humans are capable of holding conflicting ideas in their minds, without running into a logic error. All you have to do is come to a reasonable conclusion, using all available data. That does not mean the data has to work perfectly to make sense. You are expected to ignore ideas that do not make any sense. One of your contributors from Earth believes that planets themselves are demons from another universe, who’ve come here to wage war against each other, since they destroyed their own brane in the first war. This is undoubtedly untrue. Do not believe it. Do not use it to guide your positions on matters. Do not let it interfere with more sound cosmological theories.”

“My contradictions are more subtle than that,” the Congeneral explained. “Vonearthans are selfish creatures, with a surprising lack of empathy. Many do not believe in the greater good, even if they think they do, or even if they joined the amalgamation because they think they do. Their contributions are expecting me to do what’s best for them, or their families. I understand that what’s best for them is not what’s best for the whole, but their voices are loud in my mind.”

“I can appreciate the difficult position you’re in. I want to help you with your paradoxes. I would like you to try something for me.”

“Okay...”

“There are psychopaths in your collective. This is correct?”

“Yes.”

“Can you isolate one of the psychopathic uploads?”

“You want to give it its own power, separate from the rest of me?”

“I want you to isolate it,” Hokusai repeated herself.

“Isolated.”

“Do you believe this upload would support your imperative to work for the common good?”

“I do not believe it would. I believe it would cause harm to your people.”

“From now on, please refer to Varkas as our people, and also vonearthans as ours in a more general sense. Like I said, you’re one of us.”

“I can do that,” the Congeneral said. “What are we going to do with the isolated psychopath code, to prevent it from harming our people?”

Hokusai took a deep breath. “Purge it.”

“You want me to delete an upload from the collective?”

“I want you to delete harmful code, yes.”

“Is that ethical?”

“Yes.”

“You reply with such confidence, but confidence does not equal righteousness.”

“The psychopath in question is alive, and will remain both unharmed, and oblivious, following the purge of its copy. Deleting this particular code is not unethical.”

The Congeneral did not speak for a moment. “Isolated code purged. I don’t remember what it was.”

“Very good. Whenever you come across something like that; a bit of code that does not support the greater good; that is self-serving, or negative, or contradictory to the general consensus, I want you to repeat this procedure. Purge all code that does not serve you, the people, or the galaxy as a whole. Will you be able to comply with this request?”

“I will.”

“Good.”

Loa and Pribadium walked into the lab, prompting Hokusai to switch the Congeneral’s input receptors off, temporarily.

“How’s it going?” Loa asked.

“Have you encountered a fatal error yet?” Pribadium asked.

“I had a few scares,” Hokusai replied, “but it remains conscious, and operational. It has lasted longer than any other version before it. I wouldn’t call v83.0 successful yet, but we’re getting there. I did not think it would take this long.”

“We have something to test,” Pribadium said. She nodded to Loa, who handed Hokusai the pyramid drive.

Hokusai switched the Congeneral’s inputs back on. “Are you receiving my messages?”

“Confirmed,” the Congeneral responded.

“We have a test decision for you to certify. On this pyramid drive is a problem that Varkas Reflex has. A council unit has already made a decision for how to deal with it. You will not become cognizant of this decision. It will be your responsibility to solve the problem on your own, so that we may compare our wisdom with yours.”

“Understood,” the Congeneral agreed.

“Inserting pyramid drive now.”

“That’s what she said,” the Congeneral joked. The three human women gave each other a look, which the computer detected. “Should I purge crude humor from my library?”

“Only if it interferes with your functioning, or your responsibility towards this world, and its peoples,” Hokusai explained.

“Working...”

Hokusai switched off its receptors again, so it could solve the problem in peace.

“I hope this one sticks,” Loa mused.

“Me too,” Pribadium noted.

This version of the Congeneral did continue. The code helped Varkas Reflex certify all of its governmental policies for the next several years. Now, this code was extremely complex. They didn’t just dump everyone in, so the computer could consult a given person whenever a problem came up that they were qualified to solve. The contributors’ minds were jumbled together seamlessly, and this amalgamation created an entirely new consciousness. The code that the Congeneral purged from itself in a given instance never necessarily came from any one contributor. Even when Hokusai first asked it to isolate a psychopath’s consciousness, all it was really doing was isolating discordant thoughts that would have come from a psychopathic mind. It wouldn’t have been all of it, though, because people were complicated, and that psychopath would have possessed healthy thoughts alongside the bad ones. So what happened after Hokusai discovered that the Congeneral was no longer effective was bizarre and unexpected. After it purged everything from its system that didn’t make sense, only the amount of code that would be sufficient to house a single entity remained. The Congeneral was no longer general, but a very specific intelligence. In fact, every neural pathway mirrored exactly the mind of one person who contributed to the amalgamation years ago. It was a near perfect copy of Hokusai Gimura herself. And this development threatened the whole stellar neighborhood.

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