Microstory 1433: Peak Valley

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Before there was even a spark of an idea to build the eighth town of Astau, construction began on a new town called Peak Valley. It may seem like an oxymoron, but there really was a smallish mountain to the south of Springfield and Splitsville, on top of which was a sort of bowl that looked like any other valley. Experts believed it once housed a glacier, but they couldn’t explain what would have happened to all the water on the surface. In fact, it was a question they never answered about the whole world. There were signs of water erosion all over the place, but no liquid or solid water anywhere. The planet must have ventured close enough to its star to evaporate it all away before that star expelled it from its system, but there really wasn’t any proof of that either. Regardless, the real magic of the Peak Valley was that there was an extra seed portal from Earth there. For the most part, seeds only showed up on Durus in a certain region, and any plants that grew beyond it did so due to the normal spread of vegetation. They appeared from small flashes of light, like fireflies. It wasn’t particularly safe, because of the monsters, but teenagers liked to go there on quick romantic getaways, and watch the seeds appear. The Peak Valley was the only other place where this happened. It would have been a nice place to live all along. While monsters definitely had the ability to climb up the side of the mountain, or simply fly, it was still a well-fortified area. It was easy to see them coming from pretty much anywhere in the valley, which would give mages enough time to prepare for an attack. As always, the main reason they never settled there before was because of resources. It was difficult to pump water up from Watershed, but as time went on, both technology and time powers promoted progress. By the 2070s, it was a sufficiently viable option. The filter portaler would remain in Distante Remoto, where she belonged—even though they could have used her—because there were other ways of getting what they needed, which they didn’t always have. Laying pipe in the ground was a fairly easy endeavor when dirt could be teleported out of a hole, the pipe could be teleported into the hole, and then the dirt could be teleported back on top of it. The new town was initially planned for a 2075 completion date, but in 2072, a new member of Mad Dog’s Army was sourced who could make quantum replications of objects. A single pipe could be manufactured once, and then copied thousands of times. This process was not instantaneous, but it started moving a lot quicker once the quantum replicator joined the project. Peak Valley was finished in 2073, and prospered for seventeen years.

Microstory 1432: Astau

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The third vicennial Mage Games were a huge hit. The population of Durus, across the seven towns, was booming. The number of people applying to become town mages was unprecedented. The number of mages needed to protect the towns was lower than expected. The number of people who performed excellently was incredibly impressive. The inception of the fourth town, Hardtland showed that a pattern had formed. The number of towns was rising proportionately to the growth of the population. People were moving out to new places, and over the next twenty years, it was becoming clear that the ability to do this was an expectation. In 2070, the only ones applying for mage selection were those born on Durus. They had never known what it was like to live on Earth, besides the stories their parents and grandparents told them. They fully understood why it was so important that the competition happened, and that the people who were selected knew what they were doing. So they trained. And they trained, and they trained. They prepared their whole lives for the chance to prove that they had what it took to be part of security. Some just wanted cool powers, but it was easy to weed them out, because they lacked true heart, and the dedication that was required to succeed in the contest. Still, there were more winners than there needed to be to serve the towns. Both Hidden Depths and Distante Remoto required fewer mages, because of their strategic locations. Engineers had made the technological solutions surrounding Springfield stronger, and more reliable over the years, even after their original inventor left the planet, so they didn’t need a whole team either. The source mages could not decide who they would select out of all the people who deserved it. They didn’t just want to raise their standards higher; they wanted to reward the people who had dedicated themselves to the cause. So they did something new. They built an entire town in a day, and nearly everyone in it would be a mage. There were a few families, but for the most part, the ones who moved there were single, and ready to go out into the world without their parents’ oversight. They called it Astau. This was based on the root for eight, because it was the eighth town on Durus. They weren’t going for originality here.

It was really important to the founders that this mage town not be seen as elitist, or separatist, but there was always tension. They tried to alleviate these problems before they began by situating the construction site as equidistant from the other towns as possible. Of course, Distante Remoto was farther away than anything, but they found a pretty good spot to be in the middle of everything else. They encouraged people to visit, and their residents to travel to other places, but the friction remained. Things weren’t any better within Astau’s borders. Everyone there thought they were too good for menial jobs, so no one wanted to work in the fields, or on the repair detail. They wanted to use their time powers, and sometimes, they weren’t necessary. They didn’t really feel the need to keep any border security, because when a monster came by, there would always be someone around with the necessary skills to get rid of it. So there was no one working, and no one in the other towns who liked them. They weren’t real mages, because they weren’t protecting people who needed it. They were just there, hanging out by themselves, not contributing to the community, or even being capable of supporting themselves. It was the first major failure since the Mage Protectorate rose to power, and an embarrassment for all involved. In less than a year, many of the residents moved back to the towns they had come from, or requested assignments elsewhere. Some stayed, formed the usual border patrol, and allowed regular people to come in. It became just like any town. In fact, it was probably considered to be the most normal out of all of them. It wasn’t original, like Springfield; tech-based like Splitsville; well-irrigated, like Parade; forested, like Hardtland; militaristic, like Fort Frontline; concealed, like Hidden Depths; or far away, like Distante Remoto. It was just a town in the middle of Durus, with regular people, who were trying their best to live their lives. Perhaps that was what made it special. On Earth, most towns didn’t have some kind of niche, or defining characteristic. They were just places that people lived, instead of living somewhere else. And that was completely okay.

Microstory 1431: Distante Remoto

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In the year 2058, a woman was sourced with a power that Durus had seen once before. She was a filter portaler, meaning she could transport clumps of molecules, but nothing too large. This really only helped her move water and air from one place to another, because nothing else was small enough to fit through the filter. No one knew why it was that this rogue planet held an atmosphere, or more importantly, where the air was coming from. They did have a pretty good idea of where this air first showed up. Several kilometers North of Hartland was a special location they called Gaspunui. A seer town mage had named it that many years ago, but never said how he thought of the word before he died in 2054. There was nothing particularly special about the land itself. It looked just as the land looked anywhere else. But the oxygen levels here were slightly higher than anywhere else. The atmosphere originated here, and spread everywhere else, but it wasn’t evenly distributed. The air was thinner the farther away one traveled from this spot. All six towns were well within normal range, but if one attempted to spend a significant amount of time on the other side of the world, they would have a harder time breathing. It wasn’t impossible, and certainly people could acclimate to it, just like people on Earth did with higher elevation, but it wasn’t ideal, and there wasn’t much reason to try.

It was too far from Watershed to build irrigation pipes, so why bother? Well, the people in charge of coming up with the seventh town knew why it was worth a try. Being so far from everything included the time monster portal ring. As far as they knew, these monsters never traveled so far, because they sought out life to destroy, and there wasn’t anything out there. Much of the planet was covered in weedy plants they simply called the thicket, but not even that extended this far out, because the seeds that portaled there from Earth couldn’t float that far; and the now native plants had not yet done so themselves. But the filter portaler changed everything. She could give hopeful inhabitants of a distant new town the opportunity to live peacefully, free from the monster attacks. She just needed to be convinced. Filtering worked both ways. She could transport molecules nearby to somewhere far away, or she could summon these molecules from somewhere else, to her location. The latter was a lot easier. Portaling something away took more energy, and more concentration, than bringing it to her. So if she wanted to help the people of the new town, she would pretty much have to be one of them, and that wasn’t something she was naturally interested in. In the end, though, she agreed to leave Springfield, and the rest of the Mad Dog Army, to make sure these people had what they needed. She sacrificed her own happiness for the good of the community. It wasn’t entirely without its advantages, however. She met a good man there, and later married him under the Arch of Endless Water, which she created with two looping portals that stayed open permanently on their own. She was also given the honor of naming the town whatever she wanted. She chose Distante Remoto, which was obviously redundant, but she liked the cadence, and everyone else liked it too. Walking to Distante Remoto became a journey that people trained to be able to do, and was ultimately incorporated into the 2070 Mage Selection Games.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Wednesday, July 1, 2116

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Mateo met with Camden Voss of the IAC, who agreed to send him up to the year 2114. That was about as close as he could get to his people. Other time travelers would have been able to get him closer, but he knew Camden would do it without asking for anything in return, and he just wanted to get as close as possible. If he had to wait two years until the next transition window, then so be it. In fact, maybe this was best, because he had no way of knowing where exactly the window would show up, so he needed time to figure that out. That could be left as a problem for tomorrow, though, or maybe next week. For now, he just wanted to relax, and take in the sights. The powers that be couldn’t get to him, even though he was in the main sequence, because this new clone body didn’t have his original pattern. He was finally free—away from Leona, but still free, and if it could be done for him, it could be done for her too.

In 2030, workers finished the construction of a highly advanced intentional community called Hexagon City. They broke ground on former farmland just outside the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. Starting from scratch so late in human history allowed them to build with a better understanding of the future in mind. Living spaces were predominantly vertical; not nearly as large as the megastructures people were erecting all over the world right now, but taller than most skyscrapers of 2030, and designed for maximum efficiency. A railway loop, two-way buses, elevators, and people movers connected the residents to one another, and they were all connected, so traffic jams were a thing of the past. It was completely self-sustainable, growing its produce in vertical farm cylinders, and producing its own renewable energy. It wasn’t a prison; people could come and go as they pleased, but no cars were allowed within its borders, so if you wanted in on this, you had to get with the program.

Following the Kansas model, several more like it were built over the decades, in various locations that were inspired by the original designers, but not a whole hell of a lot. Engineers and futurists knew it was only a matter of time before the extremely consolidated arcologies would be possible, so it never really caught on. Their heyday was short, like the one car phones enjoyed before cell phones overtook them in popularity. The hexagons would one day be bulldozed, but for now, they remained, and just as many people still lived there, even though there were better options. Mateo and Leona had heard of this place back when they were first jumping through this time period, but never managed to see it before it faded away. She probably never would. That reminded him of how sad it was—

“Mateo.”

“Yes? Oh, it’s you.”

“I finally found you,” Jupiter said. “It was not easy. I had to contact a lot of your friends, and they all thought they knew where you were, because there are two versions of you in this reality.”

“Ah, yes,” Mateo remembered. “I’m on Tribulation Island right now, though. I wouldn’t go back there. Too many people would recognize me.”

“I figured,” he said. “I didn’t bother checking.”

“How did you even know that I existed at all?” Mateo asked. “Didn’t I die in the Parallel?”

“You did,” Jupiter confirmed. “You’re completely dead. There’s a body, and everything. Which doesn’t make any sense, because you’re fated to die on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. The universe should have automagically transported you there to avoid a temporal paradox. So it was suspicious.”

“Yeah, I can’t explain that,” Mateo said.

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“You’re right, I won’t.”

“Let’s sit.”

“Okay, but I’ll lead.”

“What?”

“I’ll ask the questions here!” Mateo said jokingly. “Seriously, though, I will. When we’re done, you’ll agree that I legit can’t explain myself to you, even though I technically could indeed tell you my truth. Let us begin. Are you my enemy?”

This question made Jupiter squirm. “No, sir.”

“Why did you pretend to be?”

“Would you have helped, if my brother and I had asked?”

“Why wouldn’t we?”

Jupiter bobbed his head, like he was weighing his options. “We toyed with the idea, but we decided that there was no way for us to explain our motivations to you. You help people all the time, of course, but only people who seem to need it. We didn’t need it; we just wanted it. Perhaps we chose the wrong path, but we determined the best way of recruiting you was to make you think you had no choice. You always make the right call when someone tries to get you to be bad. You’re used to having an enemy to fight, or an obstacle to overcome, so we gave you that.”

Mateo nodded his head. “I still don’t get your motivations, though. You’re pushing people through transition windows to the Parallel, but then letting us send them back? Why? Surely there would be easier ways to save their lives, if that’s really all you’re going for. It feels like there’s some master plan that we can’t see, because we’re too close to it.”

“There’s no grand plan. I mean, obviously we’re rescuing people we think can help the future. Jericho Hagen, for instance, is better for the timeline when he embraces the future of the adjudicative system than he is when he operates against it. The best way to do that was to stop him from being around while the new system was forming. Fourteen years ago, Jericho returned to this reality, pretended to be his own son—to avoid having to explain where he had been for the last twenty-two years—and started a new life; a better life. But that’s a personal situation. We’re not grooming him to have some profound impact on the people he meets. We mainly wanted to help him, just like we wanted to save your once-mother from the 2025 pathogen, and The Escapologist from the collapse of her reality.”

“But why these people?” Mateo questioned. “Sometimes we skip, like twenty years worth of people who can be saved. It seems a little unbelievable that the only ones you care about are the ones we’re around to help.”

Jupiter giggled. “These are the people that you’re helping, because you’re around to do so. You’re not my only team. You just never see the others.”

“Oh.”

He smiled. “I know you know you’re not special. You’re part of something great, and that’s good enough for you.”

“Yes, of course. I guess I still just don’t understand why you felt the need to create the Parallel in the first place? Why don’t you just teleport in and pull people to safety?”

“I can’t teleport, Mateo, just like you can’t jump backwards in time on your own, or see the future. The Saviors, like Daria and Xearea, are responsible for doing what you describe. They break into hotel rooms to stop men from beating their sex workers. They appear behind someone sitting on a park bench, choking on their sandwich. That’s what they can do. The Kingmaker goes all throughout time, doing similar things, for a particular breed of person. I’m different. I can access alternate realities, but only for a specific reason. I have the power to copy myself, and I do this by reaching into a different reality, and extracting my alternate self from it. But I can’t actually go explore his reality, because it doesn’t really exist. He’s from an unstable, collapsing timeline. The difference between our two worlds has only happened on the quantum level. The Arborist can go to truly separate timelines, because she’s reaching backwards in meta-time. Maybe I’m not explaining this right. When you go back in time and change something—take note of the airquotes—you’re not really going back at all. What you’re doing is staying in place, and pulling the past to the present, so that you can branch into a new timeline. Again, I don’t have the ability to do this, but the Parallel is a loophole. It’s an alternate reality that is not also an alternate timeline, which means I can access it physically. I created it so I can help people in my way, because that’s all I got.”

“I understand,” Mateo told him. “You’re doing what you can. What can I do? How do I get back to my friends?”

Jupiter removed a pair of Cassidy cuffs from his bag. “I repossessed these from your other body. There’s a proximity feature that will transport you to one of the others, should you choose to go that route.”

“What other route would I go?” Mateo was confused.

“I told you about those other teams. You could join one of them, and do the same thing, but with a different pattern. You might wanna consider it. Leona has mourned your passing twice now. It could be traumatic to make her go through that again. This really is a choice, which you have to make. I’m not trying to coerce you, or even persuade you to go either way. I’m just giving you the option, which I probably should have done in the first place.”

Mateo had to seriously consider this offer. For a while now, Mateo had felt like a burden for Leona. It kind of started from the very beginning. When they met, his situation was so intriguing to her that trying to move on from him would have seemed like a wasted opportunity to learn something interesting about the universe. Then he gave her his kidney, and brought her onto the pattern. Even after creating the new timeline, which changed all of that, he couldn’t do anything to stop her from reentering his world. Then he disappeared from existence, and she had to go through a lot to get him back. Then they got separated by the intergalactic void, and then he had his indiscretion with Cassidy Long, and then he died. He had put her through too much, and if he let himself go back to her, he would probably do it again. He had two patterns; uncontrollably jumping forwards in time, and also making his wife’s life more difficult. But that was the caveat, wasn’t it? She was his wife, and suggesting that everything was his fault was actually also taking away her agency as an independent human being. She made a lot of her own choices, and it wasn’t fair for him to dismiss those because of his guilt. Her being his wife also meant that he had to do everything he could to put them back together, because that was what marriage was.

“Get me to 2116.” Mateo extended his arms, like a bank robber who knew he had been caught.

“As you wish.” Jupiter snapped the cuffs onto his wrists, while simultaneously pulling them both through a transition window. Then he tapped on one of the cuff’s interfaces to activate the proximity feature.

Mateo jumped two years and three months into the future.

“I knew it,” Leona said, taking him into a neck hug. “I knew you couldn’t be dead. There’s something fishy with the extraction mirror they used to bring you back. What do you know? Where have you been?”

While he was talking to Jupiter, Mateo was working through an explanation for his absence in the back of his mind. He wanted to get as close to the truth as possible. There was no reason his friends weren’t allowed to know about 2014, or Camden, or even his discussion with Jupiter Fury. He just couldn’t say anything about Bida, the clone tank, the people who brought him back to life, or how they did it. That was a secret that deserved to remain hidden. “Do you remember walking through Holly Blue’s homeportal? Do you remember what it felt like?”

“Yeah,” Leona said. “It was kind of slimy, but it didn’t leave behind residue. Still, I felt pretty warm for a long time afterwards. My theory is that the de-aging process is a form of reversing entropy, so heat concentrates into you.”

“Well, that’s what I felt, just after I died.” Mateo used airquotes. “One second, I was heading for the ground, and the next, I was walking through the cemetery, and I felt very warm. It’s like the homeportal did leave a residue, which saved me from death, I guess by making a new copy of me, or something. Anyway, I made my way to the IAC, asked Camden to send me to 2114, where Jupiter found me, and gave me back my cuffs.” There, that was it. That was a good version of the truth. “I don’t want you thinking you’re invincible, though, Leona. It might have been a one-time deal, or it’s just now worn off for you, I don’t know. Don’t tempt fate.”

“I don’t intend to let myself almost die,” she assured him.

Mateo was glad to hear it. “So, what did I miss with you guys? I assume Jericho went back to the main sequence through Xearea’s window? Did Ariadna go with them?”

“I’m here.” Ariadna popped her head out of the AOC’s airlock. “I was thinking about leaving this year, but there doesn’t seem to be an upcoming window for me to stowaway.”

“Well,” J.B. began, “you only got one more year. We’re in July now, so the Bearimy-Matic pattern is exactly like the original Matic pattern was, and will stay this way for thirty more days.”

“Let’s not waste our day off,” Sanaa said. “I, for one, could use a break. Who’s up for a game or RPS-101 Plus?”

“What’s RPS-101 Plus?”

“Oh...you’ll see. I just hope I don’t get fenced again.”

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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.