Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida: Amoral (Part III)

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My name is Tamerlane Pryce, and I’m not a bad person. Don’t listen to the rumors people spread about me. Did I break the rules? Yes. Do I regret it? Absolutely not. The establishment doesn’t want to admit it, but my work has been instrumental in the salvation of our species. Without me, people would still be stuck in their one body. There is no telling how many people I saved by not waiting for the science to catch up with our imaginations. The fact of the matter is that humans are true immortals now, and they couldn’t have done it without me, and a little bit of questionable ethics. That’s the thing about ethics; no one really knows what’s right, and what’s not. Everyone is just trying their best to do what they think is right. It may be right for only them, or maybe it’s for the whole world, but very few people actively try to do the wrong thing, and they know who they are, and that they’re not heroes. I’m a hero. Like I said, I saved lives. I gave people the ability to transfer their minds into new bodies. I won’t apologize for how I went about accomplishing that.

Now, some will say what I did, and how I did it, was unnecessary. Other people were certainly working on the same thing, but not like I was. They weren’t willing to take risks, and ignore the detractors. I don’t let myself get bogged down by the little things. I have a job to do, and I’m gonna do it. And now my job has changed to something else. Well, it’s not really new; it’s more of an extension of what I’ve been working on for centuries. The transhumanism movement has been attempting to improve the bodies that we live in since before it was possible to modify them with technological upgrades. Some think they’ve figured it out, and they’re happy with their own physical limitations. There’s still a lot they have to do, though. They keep having to drink, whether it’s gear lubricant, or regular water. They have to rest, and they have to worry about getting too hot, or too cold, and they’re still a little bit worried about dying. I’m trying to get rid of all that.

Now, technological implants are great. It’s really nice to be able to replace your body parts at will, or interface with computers. I’m personally not a fan of it, though. I’ve been looking for a wholly organic solution to the problem of mortality. I want to get this right, though, so I’m taking my time with this one. The year 2400 sounds like a good opportunity to finally turn myself into pure perfection, but there’s a step that comes before that. I need a test subject. The whole point of doing this is so that I can be the strongest, most powerful, impossible to killiest creature in the universe, but any defect could cause my death. To be safe, someone else is going to have to be the first one. Back in 2263, a man living on this planet decided to shut himself down. He had already been alive for 234 years, thanks to the tech I was telling you about. I’m not completely sure about his reasons, but it doesn’t matter too much. Like me, he plans to be around for trillions of years, so a few decades in power-saving mode is faster than the blink of an eye. He’ll be the perfect specimen for this test, and the best part about it is that he’s already incapacitated, so he won’t fight me on it. I complete the transfer before he knows what hit him.

“Tell me what you’re feeling.” I’m ready with a tablet to record my observations, and his responses.

I half expect him to flutter his eyes, and gradually reawaken, but he just pops his outer lids open, and looks directly at me. “Report.”

“I have uploaded your consciousness into a new substrate,” I explain to him.

“Why? What was wrong with my old one?”

“Nothing,” I tell him honestly. “I wanted you to be the first of a new species.”

He sighs, and takes a cursory glance at this body. “Transfer me back.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. I did destroy it.”

Most people would be extremely upset about learning this, but not Thor Thompson. Dude knows what’s up. “Then go back in time, and prevent yourself from destroying it, so I can have it back.” He does talk forcefully, though.

“Don’t you want to test this out first?”

“I did not consent to be your guinea pig,” he argues.

“No, I stole your mind, I admit to that. I think you’ll be pleased with the results, though, so I’m not worried about retaliation.”

He’s still pissed, but apparently willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. He closes his eyes, and tilts his forehead towards me, offering me the talking stick.

“This substrate is pretty much perfect,” I begin. “It’s cephalopedal, which means that brain matter is spread throughout the entire system. It’s nearly impossible to break apart, but if that ever does happen, any single body part should be able to remain alive, and independent from the rest, until such time you’re put back together. If you can’t be repaired, your thoughts and memories were copied and distributed, so the surviving parts can regrow whatever they’re missing, until you’re whole again.”

“What if multiple body parts survive, but separate from each other? Will that mean a bunch of different versions of me could regrow themselves?”

“Yes,” I reply. “You could create a copy of yourself, just by cutting off a hand. I don’t recommend trying it with just a single finger, though. I don’t think your entire consciousness can fit in an area that size. Now, understand that this does not make you more intelligent. These are constantly updating copies of the same mind. You’re still you, and you’re still responsible for learning new information, and exercising your mind, in whatever ways you choose.”

“Is that it?” he asks.

“Not by a longshot. Your body itself is also perfect. Like I said, your skin is impenetrable, but it can do more than that. It can process any atmospheric environment, and either filter out toxins, or convert it into energy. You can breathe underwater, or on a methane planet, like Titan. You can absorb solar energy to keep yourself moving, or even utilize the minimal ambient heat in a deep, dark cave, until you slowly crawl yourself out of it. You can turn air into water, and once that water is inside of your body, it will recycle it until it reaches diminishing returns, and then replenish itself with the moisture in the air again. Or you can just drink it, like normal people do.

Internal organs are programmed to replicate themselves upon being damaged, but these organs are different from the ones you’re used to. You now have two hearts, three and a half lungs, six of a kidney-liver filtration hybrid. You do have the equivalent of intestines, but they operate a lot more efficiently than the naturally evolved ones, and they take up a lot less space, which leaves room for all the other things. Now, back to the skin, it’s a pressurized system, which would allow you to survive extended periods of time in a vacuum. Should you ever find yourself in that situation, your throat will close up, and begin recycling the oxygen by scrubbing the carbon. If you don’t get yourself back to a pressurized atmosphere in time, you’ll revert to a tun state, which can last for decades, if need be.”

“Like a tardigrade?”

“Exactly like a tardigrade, yes. They’re the best preexisting example of an organism that can survive outer space, so I researched them extensively.”

“I don’t have any nanites, or neural implants, or anything?”

“Nope,” I say proudly. “You’re completely organic.”

“Anything else?”

“Just basic things, like you’re immune to radiation, and your cephalopedal brain consolidates information in realtime, so you never have to sleep—”

“I can’t sleep,” he interrupts.

“Well, I mean, I just activated you, so you haven’t been able to try, but...”

“No, you said I don’t have to sleep, but what you really mean is that it’s not possible for me to go to sleep. I have to be awake all the time, no matter what.”

“I don’t see where you’re going with this.”

“What year is it right now?”

“It’s 2399.”

“So, I’ve spent about a third of my life asleep.”

“I suppose, yes. But you weren’t dreaming; you were shutdown.”

“I didn’t say anything about dreams. I was off, because I wanted to be. That’s a choice I made long ago.”

“When were you planning to wake up? I didn’t see a reactivation timer anywhere.”

“It was internal,” Thor answers. “It doesn’t matter now when I was planning to reawaken, or for what reasons I shut myself down. You took that away from me. I didn’t just wake me up too early; you made it so that I can never go back.”

“I understand you’re upset, but you’re a part of history. In the future, this is how people are going to be. They don’t need the implants anymore; not when there’s an organic solution.”

“A solution for immortality? That’s not all we’re going for. You can’t just project your feelings onto everyone else. I didn’t get to know you very well before I went to sleep, but I know you’re an amoral, self-serving narcissist, who doesn’t care about anyone else.”

“I care about my daughter,” I contend.

“You have a daughter now? Well, I feel sorry for her, because no, you don’t.”

“You don’t know me.”

“You did this for you, and if you’re too weak to acknowledge that...” He effortlessly breaks free from his restraints, and grabs me by the collar. “...then you’re too weak to live.” He lets me go for half a second, so he can reach up, and literally tear my throat out.

I immediately transfer into one of my backup bodies, release it from its preservation tank, and make my way back to the other wing of my lab, where Thor is removing the rest of his limbs from the chair. “I was told you had anger issues, but the way I understood it, you got over those centuries ago.”

He crooks his neck, and shakes around to warm up his muscles. He’s capable of motoring a lot faster than I predicted. I thought he would be immobile for at least an hour, while I stimulated his muscles with electrical charges. “It comes out every now and then...mostly when someone fucking kills me!”

“Well, now you’ve returned the favor, so I guess we’re even.”

He shuts his mouth deliberately, and flares his nostrils. He walks over to me, but it feels like he’s going a hundred kilometers an hour, because I can’t get away fast enough. He goes for my neck, but this time, he either snaps it, or tears my head clean off. I die before I can tell the difference.

“Okay, okay, okay,” I say when I get back into the room, from a different door this time, knowing he would be trying to figure out how to escape through the first one. “I took your life without you even knowing it, so that gave me a bit of an advantage. Now we’re even, though, all right?”

“I’ll decide when it’s all right,” he spits.

“Any idea when that might be? Believe it or not, every time you do that, I can actually still feel pain, unlike you, who can detect medical concerns on your body without it hurting.”

He approaches again, just as angry as he was each time he’s killed me before.

“Wait, wait, wait!” I cry. “There’s one characteristic of your new substrate that I’ve not told you about yet!”

More curious than anything, he lets me go, and takes a half step back.

I straighten my lab coat, and clear my throat.

“What have you not told me?”

“I gave you this body,” I start. “I can do this.” I lift both of my arms, like a brave king, addressing his loyal subjects from the balcony. I tap my thumbs against my fingers. Inside of each one is a circuit, and every time it’s pressed, this circuit closes, and delivers a signal. Most of the time, they’re meaningless. I can tap my fingers all day, and nothing will happen, but when I tap them in a particular sequence, which only I know, the signal it sends at the end activates a command. It’s like a 24-character passcode I carry around with me at all times. If he knew what was coming, Thor probably would have had time to stop me, but he’s too confused to do anything about it. The final signal goes out, and instructs his consciousness to leave this body, and transfer over to the fairy substrate I have locked in a cage on the other side of the room.

His tiny little face seethes when he wakes up again, and sees a giant come over to pick up his wee cage. I peer at him, and start carrying him out of the room. “I could have killed you. I still can. Don’t test me. This is my life’s work, and I won’t let a maze rat stand in the way of my accomplishments. Now that I know a consciousness can survive at least a few minutes, I can try it out on my daughter. She and I will become perfect, and you’ll just be a mortal fairy in your tiny body. You can sleep as much as you want.”

“So can you, dad.”

Abigail has walked in with a gun. She lifts it up, and shoots me in the head.

At first I wonder why she bothered. She knows I can’t be killed, but then I find that my tank won’t open. I’m trapped in here, staring at my daughter, who is flipping me off with one hand, and holding Fairy Thor’s cage with the other.

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Microstory 1430: Hidden Depths

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If Fort Frontline was designed to protect the Durune humans from the monsters by standing before them, Hidden Depths was designed to hide themselves away. Watershed was a fairly difficult place to navigate. It was the only place with fresh water, but getting to it required climbing over rocks, and negotiating other impediments. While Parade was built as close to it as a surface town could be, while still on dry land, it wasn’t technically the closest place, full stop. Watershed was located at the bottom of a foothill that was up against a small mountain range. On the other side of the hill was a valley. This valley received none of the water from Watershed, and none of the seeds that were still being randomly transported there from Earth. So it was a lifeless place, rocky and dirty, and unfit for settlement. Unless that was exactly what you wanted. With a little bit of tunneling, water could be sent to this location. People had just never thought to do it before, because there was little point, but when the sixth town was first being conceived, they decided it was time to change that. They figured that the time monsters would not be able to find them there, precisely because it was so remote. Just because it didn’t look like a logical place to find humans to attack, didn’t mean they couldn’t be there. The workers dug that tunnel from Watershed to pipe water directly to them, and they built more tunnels for living spaces. They used their water source to irrigate hydroponic gardens, and slept in their underground bunkers. They were like a true group of survivalists. Other people thought they were weird for wanting to do this, but it made perfect sense to them. Doomsday preppers on Earth were all waiting for the world to end, and the residents of Hidden Depths determined that this was exactly what had happened. They were trapped on a mostly dead planet, faced relentless attackers daily, and technological advancement had all but been halted. If that wasn’t an apocalypse, they didn’t know what everyone else was waiting for.

Travel to and from was restricted. They had no reason to believe monsters were capable of surveilling them, but if the people living there wanted to stay hidden, it seemed a little weird to make that more difficult. Visitors weren’t illegal, just limited. If someone did want to see what Hidden Depths looked like, they had to go there with a very specific mage, who was capable of camouflaging a small area with his time powers. Basically, what she did was show any outside observer what a given spot looked like when she and her group weren’t standing there. That made them effectively invisible, so if a monster ever did try to find the location of the sixth town, they wouldn’t be able to follow anyone there. Hidden Depths was completely self-sustainable, and did not interact much with the other towns. They didn’t hate the others, and the others didn’t hate them, but their values were too misaligned to justify taking part in a lot of trade, or the same celebratory events. Mages protected this new town, but there were fewer of them, and since the word border had to be replaced with the term above ground in their case, they didn’t really patrol. They just kept themselves available, in case anything went wrong. They were more successful than anyone else in their mission. In the three decades they were around before the Monster War finally ended, they were not attacked even once. And when the Mage Protectorate fell immediately afterwards, they were the only ones truly prepared to thrive during the Interstitial Chaos that followed.

Microstory 1429: Fort Frontline

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The time monster portal was gigantic. It wasn’t like this single doorway that they all stepped through. If that had been the case, the Durune humans could have created some kind of blockade around it. Maybe they would have built an actual impenetrable structure, or simply stationed mages around to bottleneck them as soon as they arrived. Unfortunately, that was not practical. The portal was a ring, several kilometers in diameter, and a monster could appear from anywhere along that ring. Had the planet enjoyed Earthan population numbers, they probably could have figured it out, but they just didn’t have enough manpower, or resources. But the population was rising, and people were already developing a pattern of building more towns to accommodate the increase, rather than simply expanding the borders. It just became an assumption that a fifth town would follow the fourth, and would probably be finished around 2056. Every new town up to that point had its own reason for being, though. They weren’t making them just for the sake of it. Splitsville arose from a fundamental dispute about how to protect themselves against the monsters. The ones who built Parade wanted to be closer to Watershed. Hardtlanders wanted to live in a forest, which didn’t always exist, as plantlife took a long time to take root. So what would the fifth town be all about? Well, it had to do with the monster portal. As explained, the portal was a ring, so monsters could be heading in any direction when they arrived, but they wouldn’t stay that way forever. If they wanted to get to the other towns without circumnavigating the globe, they would all eventually head in the same direction. Experts surveyed the land, and found that—no matter where the monsters originally came from, and no matter which town they would end up attacking—they would all pass one specific spot. So they chose that as the site of the new town, and called it Frontline. Families would not be living in Frontline. Having children around would not only be discouraged, but against the law. It was designated only for mages, and particularly adept fighters. It would also remain pretty small, and be used primarily for defense. Once this was determined, they stopped calling it a town, and started referring to it as a fort. Fort Frontline. It did have everything anyone would need to live there happily, though, just like any town. It had an inventorium, and a forge, and even a barber shop. They did do some training, in preparation for attacks, but they didn’t spend all of their time that busy. They still enjoyed themselves. The other towns kept all the mages they needed, but their jobs suddenly became a little bit easier, because now there was this protective barrier between them and their enemies. The best part about it was that the monsters didn’t communicate with one another, or warn each other of obstacles. So they just kept coming this way, sensing that there was life to destroy, almost always completely oblivious to the fact that they were not going to get far. Some did manage to move around it. Speedstrikers, for instance, were cunning and strategic, and capable of planning for the future, instead of only following instincts. And there was the occasional monster who just randomly went all the way around the planet. But for the most part, Fort Frontline was considered to be a grand success.

Microstory 1428: Waterloo

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A great many people turned out to compete in the second vicennial Mage Selection Games. There were now four separate towns on Durus, with a fifth one in the middle of being built, and a sixth one in its planning stages. Knowing that these, as well as two more, would require mages to protect them by the time the next competition could backfill their ranks, the source mages selected a great many winners. Each town was thusly being protected by about fifty per cent more than they figured they needed, with further excess being sent off on other missions, like dam repair, and exploration. Most of the new mages wanted to be assigned to one of these other things, because it gave them a chance to get out, and look around. People otherwise didn’t generally go anywhere. They didn’t even travel to each other’s towns all that often. Being a mage, in some ways, meant more freedom and agency. Rumat Dunn was particularly disappointed when he was sent off to work in Splitsville. There was nothing wrong with this town, but it was the least coveted role, because it still maintained a lot of its border protection through the use of technology. The mages stationed there knew there wasn’t much work to do. Many were perfectly happy with that, being the backup force in the event the power grid suffered some kind of failure. Still, there were not enough of these volunteers, so some just had to accept their positions. It wasn’t like they would be stuck there for the entirety of their twenty-year contract. Transfers happened all the time; they just weren’t known to happen at a town mage’s request. It was something the source mages, and their advisors, decided, using whatever protocols they had in place. It was all a delicate balance that involved placing people where their work would do the most good for the community. For instance, temporal anomaly detectors—which were capable of sensing when a time monster was near—were great for any town to have, but no town really benefited from having more than one. So if there were only four of those, they would necessarily be placed separately. A new town mage spent two months in extremely intense training after being sourced, during which time their powers, their skills to use those powers, and their other talents, would be assessed. So when the source mages told Rumat that he belonged in Splitsville, that meant he belonged in Splitsville. Unfortunately, Rumat never accepted where he was assigned, and spent a lot of his time trying to prove that he was worthy to be transferred somewhere else. He was specifically interested in helping construct the as of yet unnamed fifth town, which was being built by a single construction crew, in realtime. It was located nearest to the broken portal that was sending the time monsters to their world, so Town Five was notably more dangerous than the other four, and required some pretty powerful mages to protect it. Rumat was good, but he wasn’t the best, and either way, Splitsville needed him, and in the future, others would too.

He had the power to open what came to be known as filter portals. No object of significant size would be able to pass through, so it wasn’t like normal teleportation. The best application of this ability was irrigation. He could instantly transport fluid from anywhere on the planet, to anywhere else. For now, Splitsville was located the farthest from Watershed, so it benefited most from this power, but the people in charge of planning Town Six were interested in choosing a site that was even farther away. Rumat didn’t care about any of this, and didn’t have the patience for delayed gratification. He thought he could use these powers to attack the monsters, if the authorities simply gave him the opportunity. They wouldn’t, so he grew angry, and lashed out. He flooded Splitsville from within by portaling massive amounts of water into its borders. They wanted him to irrigate, so he was gonna irrigate, and they weren’t going to be able to stop him. Well, they did stop him, and he didn’t like the way they did it. Now that he was contained, however, there was a problem. They didn’t have any clue what they were going to do with him. The source mages had never come to a decision of what to do about someone with powers who caused problems such as this. They had a jail, and forced labor, but neither of these things would be able to keep Rumat down. Some suggested exile, but that wouldn’t work either. Durus was a very, very small planet. It might even have actually once been a moon. The only reason the surface gravity was comparable to Earth was because it was so dense. There were no oceans or islands, so there really wasn’t anywhere to exile anybody. They might have made him go to the broken portal, but that would be a death sentence, and capital punishment hadn’t been legal here since the Smithtatorship. The source mages only had one option, and they were saving it for such an occasion, because they didn’t want people to know they were capable of it until they had no choice. They stripped Rumat of his powers completely, which few people were aware was possible. This changed everything about the Mage Protectorate, and how people viewed the sources. The good news was that their plan worked, and Rumat would go down in history as the first and last criminal mage ever.

Microstory 1427: Hardtland

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By the year 2048, there were over 4,000 people living on Durus. Some were in Springfield, some were in Splitsville, and some were in the still new town of Parade. There were pretty evenly divided too, which seemed to suggest to people that there was some kind of population standard for a town. Maybe there ought to be about a thousand to twelve hundred people together, and no more. Of course, that wasn’t necessarily true. Everyone could have easily lived in the same area, and any further space they needed, they could have found simply by expanding outwards. Still, a lot of people alive in the middle of the century remembered what it was like to be on Earth. The Springfield they could remember was a small town, and most of them chose to move, or stay, there for that reason. By building more towns, they were better simulating what life should be like for them. They wanted to be able to live in one place, but visit another, instead of just having everyone and everything within reach at all times. It just made sense. So they founded a fourth town, which they called Hardtland, in honor of their late leader, Councilwoman Hardt. Calling it a town, however, was a bit of a misnomer. It was more of a rural sprawl, as buildings were spread out, and only placed inside natural clearings in the wooded area where it was located. This was a major operation, which required the cooperation of a lot of people who were not even planning to move there once it was finished, which they hoped would be within a year. They chose not to expedite the process with temporal powers, like they did with Parade, instead relying on dozens of independent construction crews. They now had plenty of mages to protect them while they worked, and planning was so detailed that they easily managed to complete the project according to schedule. The first families officially moved into their new homes in the summer of 2049, and town mages were temporarily assigned to keep guard. Now that there was an entirely new border to protect, plans would have to be adapted, so that enough mages were selected in the next Mage Games, but some realized that it couldn’t stop there. This development also prompted an overhaul of the whole system. Experts did some math, and realized they even needed to be thinking further in the future than that. The next competition would be held in a year, and the next one after that wouldn’t be for another twenty. By the time that rolled around, the number of towns would likely double. This was a truth they confirmed with two separate seers, who knew a little about the future of the Durune population. If more people were going to be selected as mages than ever before, the source mages would have to reexamine their criteria for acceptance. More importantly, they decided they needed to help people prepare for this time, so they weren’t only depending on natural talent. They quickly threw together a training regimen, so hopefuls would already have an idea of what would be expected of them when the contest was held. Worried it wouldn’t be enough, this contest was also pushed back three months. People would later say that it probably should have been delayed a year, though, because of what happened.

Microstory 1426: Mad Dog’s Growing Army

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By the year 2042, Madoc Raptis had transformed thirteen people into mages. Most of them decided to join his little army, but not all of them. Vaion Newport, his first one, was determined to prove himself worthy of protecting the border against external threats. Maybe his powers wouldn’t help him do this, but there were plenty of other ways to fight. Some time monsters even responded better to physical combat, rather than special temporal abilities, and that was how people handled them long ago, before they fully understood how special some of the unborn children were. Two others chose to use their gifts in other ways; neither for the border, nor Madoc, and that was fine. Madoc wasn’t expecting anyone to be particularly loyal to him. He just wanted them to be honorable, and productive members of society. Ageless Ecrin Cabral—having been sourced by Orabela before the first Mage Games—had a choice of where she operated. She became a bit of a floater, helping people wherever she felt she was needed the most, and this often meant sticking with Madoc’s group. So in total, there were now eleven, which brought their number up to the same as the source mages themselves. Vaion was the only person who Madoc gave what boiled down to a useless power. Being the lucky one, he only ever sourced powerful and formidable abilities, even though he randomized them, and never controlled who received what. So his army was now almost evenly matched with the sources. This didn’t mean they were going to war against each other, but it was still an important occasion. The source mages were not perfect people, or gods. They were fallible, dangerous, and at risk of becoming corrupted. Madoc knew that this could become a problem, so in 2042, he released them from their attachment to him. He would continue to source one new mage every single year, and encourage them to join what was being called Mad Dog’s Army, but he made no requirements of them. He did not give them orders, or ask them to protect the source mages’ interests. In fact, he didn’t want them to do that at all. They should be there to protect the balance. They kept his name, but anything more could be considered a conflict of interest. This army was a lot more versatile than a simple military outfit. No single title would describe it thoroughly, and unambiguously, so the word army was good enough. They went on offensive missions against the time monsters, yes, but they also handled internal affairs in the same way a police force on Earth would. Much of what they did was completely nonviolent too, like when they used their powers to construct buildings, or complete other acts of public service. They even helped protect the towns’ borders, though they generally preferred to leave that responsibility to the other mages. This group continued to grow over the years, and when the Mage Protectorate fell, there were over fifty of them, all of which were considered to be the elites. It was a much coveted role, and almost no one who wanted to be part of it was selected.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, June 15, 2100

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They were happy to confirm the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had become like one giant Cassidy cuff. Anyone inside of it during the jump to the future would be swept along with it. This was important, because it would allow them to take people with them, in case something was wrong with the date they were already in, as it was with Ariadna Traversa. It would also theoretically let them remove their own cuffs somehow, and still have a way to escape any given time period. For now, they weren’t going to do that, but it might come in handy in the future, or even be quite necessary. Now in the year 2100, the cuffs were directing them back to Kansas, where they were scheduled to encounter the next transition window in several hours. This gave them time to get some more sleep, and some breakfast, before the job began.

At 8:15 in the morning, the transition began. The images started flickering around them. Sometimes they were in what looked like a hospital lobby, but other times they could only see a hospital bed hovering several stories above them. “Oh, no,” Mateo said. “It’s happening again. But we don’t have a teleporter to rescue them this time! What are we gonna do? They’re gonna fall!”

“I got this,” Sanaa said. She tapped a few buttons on her interface. Once she was finished, the flickering stopped, but the building didn’t disappear, and no one fell from up in the air. Everything just stayed as it was.

“What did you do?” Leona asked her, trying to find answers on her own cuffs, but they were frozen on one screen. It was a nine-minute, fifty-four second countdown. Fifty-three, fifty-two...

“Can I help you?” asked a nurse, who hopefully hadn’t just witnessed them suddenly appear out of thin air.

Sanaa ignored her. “Like I said, these gadgets are more powerful than they seem,” she nearly explained. “We’re in the main sequence right now, but we apparently only have ten minutes before the transition completes. It’s a failsafe, exactly for situations such as this. We have nine minutes to get up to the room, pull our refugee from their bed, and get them down to ground level.”

“Do we even know what floor that was?” J.B. asked. “I mean, it was high, but we don’t really have a frame of reference.”

“It was the sixth floor,” Jericho answered. When everyone looked at him funny, he said, “what? I have an eye for these things. I can picture what one foot looks like, so I just add them up until I get nine for one story, and then I divide the space I have left.”

“Fine, sixth floor, let’s go.”

“If you just tell me who you’re looking for,” the nurse began to call out to them as they were running for the elevators, “I can give you a room number.”

“We don’t know who we’re rescuing!” J.B. shouted back politely.

Once they were on the sixth floor, it was a little more difficult to figure out where they were meant to go. Jericho had an understanding of how to calculate the Z-axis in his head, but now that they were impeded by hallways, and counters, it was a little more difficult for him to know which room they were looking for. As the minutes ticked by, they were growing more and more worried. If they didn’t find their target soon, not only was this person going to fall to their death, but so would everyone else. They still didn’t even know who they were looking for. No idea.

“Everyone come back to the elevator bay!” Jericho shouted. Though he was not their leader, they all met back up. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. The cafeteria is on the second story. The ceiling is probably higher. I think we should be on floor five.”

J.B. pressed the call button. For a normal person, the amount of time they waited for the elevator to come was no big deal, but here, every second counted. When it finally arrived, they jumped in, and J.B. pressed the button for the fifth floor.

Then Leona pressed the button for the lobby. “Everyone else go all the way downstairs. Don’t argue with me, just do it. If you try  to come with me, you will die. I’m the only one who can save her.”

“Her who?” Mateo asked.

Leona bolted out of the doors without answering. He wanted to do what she said, but he couldn’t let her be alone. If they were going to die, they would do it together. He stepped out as well, and only stayed back long enough to make sure no one else followed. He then found Leona at the nurse’s counter.

“X. Voss,” the nurse was saying. “Room six-thirty-one.”

“Leona?” Mateo asked simply.

“I took a gamble,” she replied, “based on what year it is.”

They ran off for 631, and found Young!Xearea asleep in her bed. She looked very badly hurt, which didn’t make any sense, because even though they first met her in 2099, and didn’t know exactly what happened to her shortly thereafter, they knew it wasn’t this. “We have forty-five seconds,” Mateo said to Leona. “We can’t get back down ourselves, let alone with her.”

Leona started unplugging Xearea from the wall. “I have a way to get us to the AOC. I was able to get past the timer, and back into the cuff’s systems. There’s an emergency teleport function. I’ll be able to take two people with me. I’m just glad you’re the only one who decided to go against my orders.”

They both stopped for a few seconds to look over at the door, believing that to be the moment one—or even all—of their friends would show that they made the same bad call. They were shocked to see that someone was indeed just stepping through the door. It wasn’t one of their friends, though. Mateo actually recognized him as one of the men that attacked Xearea in 2099. Again, though, Xearea survived that onslaught unscathed last year when he, Horace, Gilbert, and even Darko showed up to protect her. They called it the Terminator 2 Tribulation, because this man had come from the future to kill her, because he was pissed off about something she hadn’t done yet.

“Who the hell are you?” the man asked very impolitely.

Mateo checked his cuff. Twenty-five seconds. “Go.”

“Mateo...” Leona said.

“Just because I went against your orders, doesn’t mean you should go against mine. Get her out of here, for the both of us. I can’t die, remember? My fate’s been sealed.” If anything were to try to kill him, the universe itself should automatically transport him back to 2256, so he could die on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. This was how it worked with Nerakali anyway. She often let herself be almost killed, so she could escape a situation, and get another chance. She had several opportunities to do this, but Mateo probably had none. He was a lot closer to his death than her when someone swooped in to rescue him. It would be worth it, though. He had to protect Leona, and especially Xearea. The latter was destined to grow up to be the Savior of Earth, so her death was absolutely not an option.

Mateo charged the attacker, and pushed him back out into the hallway. He wasn’t exactly a trained fighter—like Darko, or his students, Slipstream and Declan—but he knew he would be able to keep this man at bay until the timer hit zero, and his chance to get to Xearea passed. He was going to die anyway, so it wasn’t like he needed to protect his own life. That gave him the freedom to fight hard, and without hesitation. His cuffs started to beep near the end. Five-beep, four-beep, three-beep, two-beep, one. No flickering this time. The building simply disappeared from under their feet. The attacker came with him back to the Parallel, so he was going to die too. It was good that he wasn’t going to get a third chance to murder a lovely person. They dropped through the air. Mateo determined there was a small chance Xearea herself would show up and teleport him to safety, or someone else like her. But no, that wasn’t going to work here. The powers that be did not have control over this reality. That was kind of the whole deal. If Leona or Mateo ever took off their cuffs, they would be off their pattern, and free from them forever. Though this also meant that no one was coming to rescue him. This was finally it. He kept falling until he hit the ground. And then he woke up.

He was submerged in a liquid; possibly just water, but he couldn’t tell. He wasn’t drowning, so it was probably the special kind of water they used on Varkas Reflex that let people breathe through their skin. He was freaking out, though. He looked over, and saw the glass of his tank, as well as two figures on the dry land beyond it. He pounded on the glass. Upon noticing this, one of them rushed over, and slammed her palm against the side of the tank. This released the water onto the floor, and him along with it. He coughed on instinct, even though he wasn’t really in any danger. He was actually feeling fine; maybe just a little weak and tired. Once he felt stable enough, he stood up, with a little from... “Paige Turner?”

“Trinity,” she corrected. She was indeed Paige, but a specific alternate version of her.

“And I’m Abigail Genifer Siskin,” another young woman said. She handed him a towel that was large enough to help him get a little dried off, but not really large enough to cover his bits.

He patted himself down. It was only then that he noticed how wrinkly his skin was. He was old. He was real old. “Report.” 

“Hm. Well, I suppose the truth will do,” Trinity said. “You’re alive.”

“What year is it?”

“2340.”

“Is this...does this have something to do with Ellie rescuing me with the extraction mirror?” he asked.

“I didn’t use the mirror.” Ellie was walking into the room.

After they dried him off more thoroughly, and dressed him in some clothes, they sat him down, and explained themselves. The extraction mirror had had nothing to do with saving him from his death. What they did was clone his body, and transfer his mind into it. That was the body he used to travel back to 2258, and get back on track, having only missed a day of his life. The body Mateo was inhabiting right now was a failed attempt at this process, before they knew how to do it right, and had to start over. That was why it was so old; because they had just left it in the tank all this time.

“It was a failsafe,” Ellie continued. “I honestly didn’t think it would work, but if something ever happened to you again, your mind was supposed to be sent across time, into another clone. I didn’t plan for it to be this clone, in this moment, but I guess I never had that much control over it. How did you die?”

“I shouldn’t tell you about that,” Mateo said. They were finally being honest with him, but that didn’t mean he could reciprocate.

“Okay,” Trinity said.

“Mmmmmmm...” Old men groan a lot, for now apparent reason. “Mmm, what should I do now?”

“Well,” Trinity began, “I can make you young again, and send you back to 2014 while I’m at it.”

“You have a homestone,” Mateo guessed.

“Yes, but I will need it back, so...”

“Can I send it through the mail?” he asked.

“Hm,” Ellie said. “Yeah, we can contact Ennis, and he’ll return it to us.”

“Okay, cool,” Mateo said.

“Yeah. The problem is, once you’re in 2014, how are you going to get back to where you belong, wherever that is?”

“That’s not your problem,” Mateo assured them. “You let me worry about it.”

“Mateo...”

“Seriously,” he promised. “I have a plan, and it’s best I don’t tell you. You let me borrow the stone, and teach me how to contact The Courier, and I’ll send it back to you. That’s all you need to know.”

Trinity and Ellie looked at each other, and seemed to have a telepathic conversation, or something. “All right, we’ll trust you.”

“Great. Now help an old man up. I’m a little shaky.”

Trinity ran off to retrieve the stone, but came back quickly, and handed it to him.

“Oh my God,” Ellie said, “I almost forgot. There’s a reason we didn’t use this clone for you before. It’s defective. You’ve fallen off of your pattern.”

“That’s okay,” Mateo responded with a wink, and a smirk. “I don’t need it anymore.” He squeezed the stone, and disappeared.

The Courier, Ennis was waiting for him in the graveyard, having received a message from Ellie, who was capable of communicating with people across time. He opened a small box, and let Mateo drop the stone into it. “Can I help you with anything else, sir?”

“Yes, I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of the Interagency Alliance Commission. More specifically, can you get me a meeting with Demcov Sands?”

« < » > Table of Contents

Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida: Cloned (Part II)

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I can’t travel through time on my own. I can send messages through the timestream, but I can’t actually travel to these places unless I have help. Fortunately, my ability gives me access to people who can give me that help. Throughout my travels, I’ve learned to endear myself to others, so they do what I need them to without question, or compensation. I’m not evil, so I’m not trying to manipulate people, or anything. I just want people to be nicer to each other, and the best way I know to teach them that lesson is to make it personal. I’ve kept a lot from them, though. You see, one thing I learned about my abilities is that they’re a lot more complicated than I knew at first. Yes, I can teleport sound, and yes it also allows me to carry on conversations across time. That’s not all, though. I can also teleport my entire consciousness. Theoretically, I would be able to do this to take over someone else’s mind, but that’s always been very distasteful for me. So I only do it to myself.

I periodically send my mind back to my younger body. I don’t do this to make myself youthful again, since I drank a couple bottles of water once to stay young anyway. No, I just don’t want people to know how old I am, and what I’ve been through. When I go back in time, I prevent myself from doing all the things I did. So I can recall those experiences, but they never happened to anyone else in this timeline, so they don’t know that. I’ve given people my age every once in a while, and it’s always a lie. I’ve kept really good track of how long I’ve truly been around. At the moment, it’s been 24,425 years, across an ungodly number of timelines. Most of the timelines have been about the same. It’s not like I go back and make a bunch of changes to history. I just wanna see it all, and I need time to do that.

Anyway, I’ve just stepped into a time chamber in 2300, and ended up back in 2256, because not everyone has the luxury of reversing their timelines. I have to save a very important man’s life, and I’m going to do it in a different way than anyone knows. I’m standing at the bottom of the cliff, back pressed against it. Mateo Matic is dying a couple meters from me, but I can’t help him quite yet. His murderer is still watching him, not to make sure Mateo dies, but because he isn’t a natural-born killer, and he’s freaking out about what he just did. I’ve seen this moment a few times, so I know exactly what happens. Four, three, two, now.

I dive down to Mateo. I don’t have long before he expires, and it’s too late. Briar killed him while wearing a special temporal object called the hundemarke, which means that this moment absolutely cannot be changed. If I don’t do this right, I won’t be able to go back and try again. This is it. I place my hands on his head, and concentrate. He coughs blood onto me. Man, I really wish I had more time. I have never tried this before, but I know I can do it. If I can do it to myself, I can do it to someone else. I close my eyes, and breathe deeply. I’m almost there. He’s in a vulnerable position, which is actually good, because it makes it easier for me to enter his mind. Just a few more seconds. There. I grab his consciousness from his brain, compress it, and teleport it all into my own brain.

Before anyone can come down to retrieve Mateo’s now completely dead body, I activate the recoil protocol, and jump back into the future. Trinity and Abigail are standing there, waiting for me, but they both look older. They look much older. I grit my teeth, and stare at them. “How long has it been?”

“Eleven years.”

I tap on my tablet, trying to figure out what went wrong. I should have only been gone a few seconds, just like Trinity when she went back in time to reyoungify herself. “Are you joking with me, err...?”

“No, you have been gone eleven years.”

“Why are you in this room right now?” I ask them. “How did you know I would finally return today?”

“A little bird told us,” Abigail answered.

I watch her a moment. “Do you mean that literally...?”

“Yes,” Abigail began, “a flying creature came to us, and told us to come back here on this date, because you would be returning. They flew off before we could find out who they were, or how they knew it. We chose to take their advice, and it looks like they were right.”

I look back at my tablet. “I don’t understand what happened.”

“It could be sabotage,” Trinity offered, “or a malfunction. The point is you’re here, and I assume you have the crown.”

I growl, and take the device out of my bag. It’s little more than a paperweight with pretty lights around it. I claimed that it can absorb someone’s consciousness, and store it, and that it’s what I’m using to save Mateo. Again, I don’t know for sure why I lie about my powers; it just makes sense to me. “I do. I was successful, but...”

Trinity peers at me. “But what?”

“The clone body is in its fifties now. That’s way too old. When he goes back to his friends in 2258, they will see that he’s aged, and our lie won’t work. We’re supposed to make them think someone rescued him with an extraction mirror.”

“I don’t understand that,” Abigail said. “Why didn’t you just use an extraction mirror? It sounds easier.”

“Mateo’s death cannot be undone. An extraction mirror would allow us to take him out of the moment he died, nurse him back to health, then put him back into his old life. He would one day have to go back through the mirror, and experience his death, which we don’t want him to have to do. But that’s not the biggest problem.”

“His body cannot be saved,” Trinity answered before Abigail could press it. “Your father performed the autopsy, and I got a second and third opinion. Once Briar pushed him off that cliff, it was over. Not even the extraction mirror could save him from that. We tried to use it before he was pushed, but the hundemarke blocked us. The clone body is our only hope.”

“Except it’s not anymore,” I complain. “We let it grow too long. I’m too late.”

“How long will the crown house his consciousness?”

“What?” I question.

“How long?” Trinity presses.

“Forever, I guess, until the parts degrade.”

“So, twenty-nine years should be a piece of cake.”

“You’re growing another clone?” Now who’s keeping secrets?

“The bird came to us the day you left,” Abigail explains. She walks over and presents me with a second tank, right next to the other one. “We started Plan B immediately.”

I smile. “I’m glad you two are here to sweep my mistakes away.”

“It might have been necessary,” Trinity says to me. “Tamerlane examined the first clone for us. I don’t think it would have worked.

“Why not?”

“He thinks he screwed up the sequence,” Abigail answers instead. “The first clone wouldn’t be on Mateo’s original pattern. It would have just been a normal guy.” Mateo Matic is a salmon time traveler. He only lives one day every year. At the end of that day, he jumps forward in time, and this aspect of him is critical to our plan.

I nod. “Someone from the future is pulling strings. That’s who the bird was.”

“Yeah,” Trinity says. “It’s possible. I’ve seen it done, just not with birds.”

“No one else is supposed to know we’re doing this,” I preach to the choir, “or how we’re doing it.”

“I know,” Trinity agrees. “Perhaps that’s being a little too optimistic, though. I want you to check that crown, and make sure he’s in there. Keep checking it for the next three decades, until we can finally finish this mission. We’ll need time to work out the kinks in the time chamber anyway.”

That’s a long time to keep a second consciousness dormant in my head, but I think I can swing it.

Twenty-nine years later, it’s finally time to complete this mission. The second Clone!Mateo has aged in his growing tank enough to return to his time period, and make everyone think it was due to an extraction mirror. We could have increased the speed of development using any number of techniques, including time travel itself, but that’s problematic for the endgame. In order to force this clone to experience time in the same way the original Mateo did, it was best to let it grow at a normal rate beforehand. Of course, when it comes to time travel, it doesn’t really matter anyway. When I insert his consciousness into the new body, and send him back in time, it will be the same 2258 as it would have been had we tried it twenty-nine years ago.

Speaking of Mateo’s consciousness, I can still feel it rattling around in my brain. It’s not awake, and he will hopefully never know he was ever in there, but as far as I can tell, he’s completely intact, and ready for his new life. Mateo 2.0. I’ll have to call upon my acting skills to convince him of the lie, so he can convince everyone else without having to lie himself. There’s a chance it’s pointless. If the truth ever, ever comes out, everyone will always have known. Because time travel.

I tell the others that it’s best if I do this alone. When he wakes up, Mateo is going to have to interact with someone, but there’s no need for him to know too much about the future, or who else is involved. They have plenty of things to do on their own, so they don’t argue with me about it. I place the clone body on the bed, and inject a sedative, so he doesn’t wake up while I’m still in the room. Right now, the body doesn’t have a consciousness, but it still possesses its autonomic functions, like breathing, and pumping blood. As for the brain, it only has one thought. I implanted a memory in there, which will remain even after I teleport Mateo’s mind into it. Like I said, I have to make him think that he was rescued with the extraction mirror. So he should have a vague recollection of that happening. He’s going to remember time slowing down as he was dying, and being dragged from his place of death, and pulled through the mirror. The memory doesn’t have to be perfect, or detailed. After all, when you’re dying, your ability to make accurate observations about the world is limited.

After I’m finished reversing the consciousness teleportation process from forty years ago, I check his vitals, and wrap him in bandages, to make him think he simply received medical treatment, even though his body is fine. We talked about giving him a pain inducer, so the idea that he has to recover from his injuries is believable, but decide against it. He’s going to think a man named Dr. Baxter Sarka treated him, and being from even deeper into the future, Sarka has access to untold resources. Mateo’s going to be perfectly accepting of the idea that it’s possible to remove someone’s pain without leaving them with side effects usually experienced from narcotics.

He awakens a few hours later, and falls out of bed. I’m right. “Baxter!” he calls. “Are you still here?”

I calmly but quickly walk back into the room. “Hey Thistle. Set the lights to twenty-four percent, please.” The lights turn up, but not too brightly.

“Report,” Mateo says after he’s certain that he recognizes me.

“I’m sorry to tell you that you died,” I answer professionally. “We used an extraction mirror to bring you back to life, if only temporarily.”

“Do you know how I died?” he asks.

“Yes. Do you?”

“I remember everything. I’m just worried about saying something that messes up the timeline. Where’s Briar?”

“He died long ago.” This was either a lie, or true. I don’t actually know what happened to him. A few of our friends took a ship to some unknown location, and Briar went with them as a prisoner. We’ve not heard from any of them since. Briar ages strangely, so he could still be alive, but it’s not guaranteed, and I don’t want Mateo thinking he has any hope of going after him. I don’t want any more violence.

“What year is it?”

“That I cannot tell you.”

He understands. “What can you tell me?”

“Only that we’re returning you back to your life. It’ll be 2258, after your memorial.”

“I appreciate it. I think it would be weird to attend my own funeral.” He switches gears. “Is Sarka still here?”

“He had to go to another appointment.”

“Thank him for me, if you get the chance.”

“Will do.” I pause a moment. He lies back down to work off the sedative. “Are you okay, emotionally speaking? I can’t imagine what it’s like to survive your own death.”

“I’m all right. I’m grateful to you, and him, and anyone else involved, who I presume I shouldn’t know about, at least not right now.”

“Do you want a hug?”

“Please.”

After the hug, I remove a syringe from my bag, and place it on his nightstand. “You’ll need thirty more minutes to recover, so don’t take this yet. Once you do, it’ll give you enough energy to stay awake for about twelve Earthan hours. Take it just before you leave, so you can reunite with your friends without falling asleep on them.  When it wears off, though, you will fall asleep, and you’ll stay that way for almost a whole day. Just go to bed, and let it happen.”

“Got it. What can I tell them? More to the point, what can I say to the younger version of you?”

“Tell them someone extracted you, but you don’t know who. You don’t have to worry about telling Past!Me anything. I never saw you back then. You must sneak past me, or I erase my own memories, I don’t know.”

An hour later, Mateo injects himself with the stimulant, and just hangs out in his recovery room until the crash. He doesn’t explain why he does this, but when he reawakens, I usher him down the hallway, and into the time chamber, so he can go back to where he belongs. It’s true that the past version of me never saw him alive after his death. I think he slips into their spaceship while I’m not looking, and doesn’t come out before it leaves for a new destination. At some point later, he’ll actually go back in time, to a very distant planet called Dardius, so he can attend his own real memorial service in person. Thousands of people are, were, and will be there with him, including me, Trinity, and Abby, while billions more watch on television. Then it’s time for us to go back to work.

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