Microstory 1437: Shieldon

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Shortly after Motus was created, and started jumping around the surface of the planet, a group of people came together to brainstorm ideas for the twelfth town of Durus. Now, what could they do? Some of the towns avoided the monsters, if at all possible. Others were built specifically to defend the whole species against them. Each seemed to have their own special thing. Even Astau had a unique history, even though it ended up fairly normal. The new town’s planners didn’t want to be like that, or like any of the others. They felt they had to do something to set them apart, even if that was a self-imposed obligation, and one which pretty much ended with them. Either way, there was a reason why their proposal was never attempted before. It sounded reasonable, but it wasn’t. They wanted to use time powers to deploy a dome over their town, which would repulse the monsters automatically. It would hopefully extend much farther than the border, so their enemies couldn’t even get near them. It was similar to the concept used for Splitsville, but their towers worked by sending signals outwards that disrupted the monster’s already fragile physical integrity. They only sent this signal when necessary, and the machines required constant electrical energy, because they weren’t based on mage powers at all. Now, they weren’t the first to think of a time power version. In fact, the source mages once believed that would be the best solution to their problems. If they had found someone with the ability to form a protective bubble powerful enough to keep any intruder out, they probably would have ultimately built a single city where everyone could live.

The 2050 Mage Games gave them someone who could do it, but only on a much smaller scale. She could raise a shield around her body, as well as those closest to her, which would force an attacker away from them, whether monster, human, or anything else. If she gathered enough energy for herself, she could essentially punch a monster hundreds of meters away. The bubbles didn’t last long, and producing them always wore her out eventually. She was now also old, retired, and trying to live out her days in luxury. With the help of a seer, The Diagnostician knew something about this person’s future. Upon her death, she was fated to release a blast of energy the likes of which Durus hadn’t seen for decades. The original plan was to apport her to the monster portal just before her death, and let that moment destroy the whole ring, break it apart, or at least damage it a little. The planners begged the source mages, and the rest of the leadership, to change their minds about it. No one knew whether her death would be able to accomplish what they wanted. Was it powerful enough to end everything? So powerful that it killed all the humans too? Would it even make any real impact at all? No seer had been able to confirm these details, and the planners used that in their argument against it.  This woman’s domes were not necessarily meant to be used as weapons. They were a defense tool, which her teachers trained her to use as weapons of war, because personal shields weren’t useful enough in battle. If they timed it just right, her death could theoretically make a permanent bubble, just as they wanted. It might require constant energy input to stay up, but the initial swell should be large enough to be a viable option. There were plenty of people whose responsibility it was to transfer temporal energy, so that would not be a problem. In the end, there was no convincing the source mages that this was better than the original idea. If they could stop the monsters from getting to their world in the first place, a town with a defensive bubble around it was obsolete anyway. But it didn’t matter. The shield creator was the one with the power, so she was the one who decided what happened to her when she died. She agreed to what the planners asked of her, and after three years of slow construction, it was time. The town of Shieldon was born in 2082.

Microstory 1436: Motus

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Following the 2070 Mage Selection Games, a young man was sourced what would turn out to be a very powerful time power. He could teleport, but also apport, which means he could instantaneously transport other things besides himself. Not all apporters are alike. Assuming a given mage or choosing one is standing at point A, some would be able to move an object from A to B only, while others could move it from B to A, while still more could move it either way. There are even a few who can move something from B to C, but they would have to know a whole lot about the location of just about anything within range, whether they were looking at it, or not. These were the three primary classifications of apportation, but there were variants within them. Baran Avan was a Class A apporter, but with a special twist. He had to teleport himself along whatever it was he was trying to move. Of course, regular teleporters were limited to this, but they generally had to be at least touching the target for it to work. He just had to be close enough to see it. The thing about him, though, was that his power grew over time, the more he used it. When starting out, Baran could only transport something the size of a penny, but he kept practicing, and upgrading, and becoming more powerful. In under ten years, he was so strong, and his range so wide, that he was capable of moving an entire town from one place to another. Knowing this would be the case, a group of people started building a new town to capitalize on its utility, which they called Motus. They didn’t dig into the ground, though. They first constructed a gigantic platform, on top of which every building would sit. It required a flat surface to remain stable, but these weren’t too hard to find. While Durus did have mountains, valleys, ravines, and the like, it was actually pretty smooth. They had, by then, surveyed the whole surface, so Baran had an accurate map to know where to make his jumps. Once completed in 2079, Motus required fewer mages to be assigned there than other towns. It wasn’t like they didn’t need any, but their primary means of surviving monster attacks would be Baran. When the alarm sounded, the other mages would fight the threat, while Baran gathered his strength, and prepared to make the jump. At first, this often resulted in his fellow mages being left behind to fend for themselves, but as time continued, he not only grew even stronger, but also more precise. He could select individual objects within his range to tag along with them, even if they were a hundred meters off the platform. Some believed his power would never reach a limit, and that he would one day be able to move the whole planet across the void. They never found out, though. Motus was only around for a little over a decade before the final battles of the war began. While many of his contemporaries survived to pass their genes onto their offspring during and after the Interstitial Chaos, Baran ultimately became a casualty of the war. Until then, however, the Motus method proved productive. It just made travel between it and the other towns a little more complicated.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Friday, July 2, 2117

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RPS stood for rock, paper, scissors, which was a simple game to play on its own. A player can throw one of the three choices, and can beat or lose to the other player, depending on which one they choose, or draw if both throw the same one. RPS-101 was an insane variant of this game that involved ninety-eight additional gestures, each one capable of beating about half of the others. It was practically impossible to play without a cheat sheet and patience, or genius-level intellect. RPS-101 Plus was a computerized version of this, complete with graphics, visualized consequences, and a total abandonment of the original concept of throwing gestures. It was a video game. Each player will choose a gesture out of the entire list, and stick with that gesture throughout the whole round. It will be represented by an actual interactive image. Should a player choose lightning, for instance, they will see their lightning bolt on the screen, and control how it moves about. They will then use this character to navigate a hazardous playing field, where other characters attempt to attack. But since only half of them pose a threat, the other half of the gestures are available for the player to attack instead. Doing so will gain that player points, speed, and agility. This game was designed to be played by one to a hundred and one players, with all unused gestures falling under control of the computer. Upon learning from Sanaa that the AOC’s system contained a local copy of it, the group played for hours together, and barely got any sleep. Before they knew it it was 2117, and their cuffs were directing them into the city.

The window wasn’t going to be for awhile, so instead of teleporting to the location, they decided to walk, and get some fresh air. Since they didn’t really talk about anything during the games, they took this opportunity to catch Mateo up with what they figured about Xearea. The reason her story didn’t match up with their recollection of it was because she was from a different timeline in the main sequence. In this version of events, the bad men from the future were more successful in their mission, and would have been able to finish the job if Leona hadn’t intervened. It was presumably with knowledge of this outcome that prompted The Cleanser to conscript Mateo, Gilbert, and Horace to fix things.

“So, wait,” Mateo said. “You sent Xearea back to her timeline, knowing that it would collapse soon anyway.”

“No, we didn’t,” J.B. clarified. “Jericho went back, even though we warned him he might not survive, just like Ariadna wouldn’t have. We kept her here, though.”

“Where is she now?” Mateo asked.

“We don’t know anymore,” Ariadna replied. “Ramses showed up, and offered to help set her up with a new life here. We never spoke to her, though. She was still asleep when they took her away.”

“I’m right here.” It was Xearea, but she was much older now. Seventeen years had passed for her.

“Oh, Miss Voss,” Leona said, surprised. “You’ve fully recovered.”

“Of course,” Xearea said. “These people have excellent medical technology. I was intending to finally reunite with you, and thank you for saving me, but then I caught wind that you have an appointment here.” She looked towards the building they were standing in front of.

“What is this place?” Sanaa asked.

“It’s like an airport,” Xearea answered. “It’ll take you to other worlds. Your trip is scheduled for the Andromeda room. Follow me, I’ll show you where to go.”

“We’re going to Dardius, aren’t we?” Leona guessed.

“That’s the thing,” Xearea began. “It says you have an appointment there, but no final destination is listed. We don’t know where you’re going. Andromeda 21 isn’t the only galactic neighbor.”

“Surely it’s the island, isn’t it?” Mateo figured. “That’s what makes the most sense to me.”

“We can’t know that for sure,” Leona advised him.

Perhaps Tribulation Island only seemed like the logical choice, because that was where they were in this time. But they didn’t have a personal connection to everyone they rescued, like Jericho. Still, Jupiter sent them to the intergalactic portal, so…

“Sanaa?” J.B. prompted.

She consulted her cuff. “The cuffs can access information from satellites orbiting the planet we’re on, so we don’t just have to follow the arrows, but they can’t see beyond that. There’s no proof we’re going to Tribulation Island, or even Dardius, for that matter.”

They arrived at the Andromeda room, where a portal operator was waiting for their coordinates.

“If we go to the wrong place, can we come back, and try again?”

“Certainly,” she responded. “You may make as many jumps as you need.” People here were really friendly and accommodating. It was even better than the future in the main sequence. All these god-like powers probably made it really difficult to encounter an inconvenience. The way they understood it, energy and other resources were infinite, so there was no reason to deny anyone anything unless it infringed upon someone else’s wishes. If someone wanted to have an entire galaxy to themselves, for instance, where no one else could go, that was kind of all right, as long as that galaxy wasn’t already occupied, because whatever.

After the operator input the coordinates, everyone stepped onto the platform, and transported across millions of light years of space, to Tribulation Island, Dardius, Beorht, Miridir. The operator on the other side greeted them politely, and welcomed them to the island. They expected it to be heavily developed in this reality, but it was actually more sparse than it ultimately became in the main sequence. They were presumably conserving the wildlife here. The portaling seemed to have interfered with the Cassidy cuffs, but after they recalibrated themselves, the directive arrow came back to lead them down the beach.

“Who is it?” Sanaa asked them. “I’m not alive yet, so I don’t know that much about y’all’s time here.”

“I don’t know anyone who it could be,” Leona said, “unless they’re from a different timeline. No one disappeared that we can remember.”

“Maybe they’ll only disappear briefly, and then we’ll put them back,” Ariadna suggested.

“Why would we need to transition anyone?” J.B. asked. “I thought you said Jupiter admitted that we’re rescuing people. Is someone in danger here?”

“I don’t think so,” Leona answered. “Vearden dies here, but that’s not for several years. I think everyone else is okay.”

“Whoa. This is a nice place. What is that, a helicopter?” They had come into a clearing, where a lavish resort sat up against the water.

“It’s a jet with vertical take off,” came a voice from behind them.

“Baudin!” Mateo shouted, with a little more excitement than he would have liked to express. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve been here for eight years,” he answered. “This is where I live now, I s’pose.”

“Wait, you don’t exist anymore,” Leona said to him.

“I don’t?” Baudin feigned shock, and looked at the palms of his hands. “Oh, no. What about the others? Do they exist?”

“Stop screwing with them.” Samsonite was walking out of the hotel, followed by Gilbert. “We do exist. You can’t stop people from existing. You can just make other people think that’s what you’ve done.”

“This is the explanation,” Leona asked rhetorically. “When Arcadia was taking people out of time, all she was doing was bringing them here?”

“No, some other guy is doing it for her,” Samsonite corrected.

Mateo nodded. “Jupiter.”

“This is crazy.” Leona mused. “That means either all of you lie about it when we see you again, or someone alters your memories. I don’t even wanna think about what this means for when it happens to you, Mateo.”

“Well, I’m different,” Mateo reminded her. “The Superintendent was the one who took me. Maybe he really can rip people from the timeline. That’s not really the point, though, is it?” He directed his attention back to the other three. “You’re not alone here, are you?”

Gilbert smiled, and lifted one eye to a window above them. A group of people was watching them from inside their hotel room.

“Aldona’s family,” Leona realized.

“They’ve been here the longest,” Samsonite acknowledged.

“We’re here to add to your ranks,” Ariadna told them. “We don’t know who, or exactly where.”

“Yes, we do,” Sanaa said. “It’s across the ocean.”

“Lorania,” Mateo confirmed. It’s 2117. We’re here to save Xearea Voss. Again.” He looked back up at the Buchanan-Lanka-Calligaris window. “Those people don’t seem to wanna talk to us. Could you ask Gino to come help us, though. We need a doctor.”

Aldona’s family simply didn’t know who they were, which was why they didn’t come out initially. Aldona’s husband, Gino was more than happy to provide his services, once he understood the need for them. They didn’t need anyone else to go, though, so while everyone else stayed at the resort to relax, only he and Mateo flew off to retrieve Xearea, who was about to be stabbed by a very unstable immortal named Ambrosios. She came through the transition window, Gino stabilized her on site, and then they transported her to the mainland, where she could be treated in the Parallel facilities. Mateo wasn’t worried about whether she would survive or not, because he knew she would later return to the main sequence, and continue with her pattern as the penultimate Savior of Earth.

Jupiter Fury showed up while Mateo was alone in the waiting room, and sat down next to him. “You were working with Arcadia the entire time?” Mateo presumed. This was just another layer to the mystery of what happened to them during Arcadia’s expiations. A lot was going on in the background that they never knew about.

“No, I’m not,” Jupiter contended. “Everything she says is the truth as she sees it. She believes that she’s taking people out of time, because that’s precisely what she’s capable of. What she doesn’t know is that her memory-wiper is working with me. I’ve been transitioning your friends at the moment Arcadia attempts to pull them. She has a lot less influence over people than she thinks she does. I don’t really need you for this, because most of them aren’t in danger, and they won’t be receiving egress windows until it’s time for all of them to go back at once. I only brought you into it now, because it fits with your pattern, and I wanted you to see it for yourself.”

“So, who will we be saving next year, and then on?” Mateo asked him.

Jupiter breathed deeply, and stared into empty space. “You have about a week to figure out how you’re gonna save Vearden Haywood’s life, if it’s even possible. You cannot alter the timeline. Whatever the truth, everyone in the main sequence has to believe that he dies on Tribulation Island, millions of years ago. You have to preserve that, so the future unfolds as it should. Yet you still have to rescue him, so he can transition for medical treatment. Again, I’m not sure it’s possible, but that’ll be your responsibility. Until then, go back to the resort. You’re on vacation.” He patted Mateo on the knee, used it to help himself out of his chair, and then he walked away coolly.

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Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida: Deeply (Part IV)

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I blink and look around, immediately seeing a mirror next to my chair. It’s facing away from me, though, so I turn it. It’s my old body. Well, no it’s not. But it’s at least my original face. “Report,” I say to the girl standing on the other side of me. I just keep looking at my reflection, though.

“I was gonna put you back in your new body,” the girl replies, “but then I thought maybe you would prefer to look as you did before. Everything my father explained to you about how it works—how strong and resilient this substrate is—remains true. Now you look like yourself, though.”

I sigh, and lean my head back. I close my eyes, but it doesn’t have the same relaxing effect as it once did. Even after I started upgrading my body with technology, this would help make me feel better. Way back in the day, futurists would boast about how powerful we would one day be. They were right, I installed incredible physical strength, endurance, faster processing speeds, and lots of other stuff. What they failed to realize was just how beautiful it was to be a living organism. These upgrades cause you to lose something about what it feels like to be alive. Sleep was something I always took for granted, because it took eight hours out of my day, and I didn’t have a choice. Ancillary to that was the ability to close my eyes, and shut the world out. While I could still hear, suppressing some of the stimuli still helped slow my brain, so I could calm down when my emotions got the better of me. I actually had to downgrade my systems after I realized I added too much, and lost my ability to sleep. But that only lasted so long. I never want to age or die, so I later had to upgrade again. Sleep and immortality just don’t mix, I guess; I don’t know.

The only solace I took in my new situation was that I could turn my systems off. I could shut myself down, not entirely, but close. I could still maintain my perception of the passage of time. Other people would find this horrific, existing inside a void, conscious of their own existence, but unable to do anything. I embraced it, because it was the closest thing I could find to sleep. In fact, I loved it so much that I set a timer to not wake me back up for five hundred years. I wasn’t even in there for a hundred and fifty years before this girl’s father forced me back awake by transferring my mind into a new body, and then promptly destroying the old one. I don’t blame her, though. I’ve only known her for a few minutes, but she doesn’t seem to be on his side. She may actually be the best person I’ve ever met in my life. After several seconds of my eyes closed, I start feeling a sense of sleepiness. It’s not enough to make me fall asleep, or even start nodding off, but it’s definitely more what I’ve been missing for centuries. I almost feel human again. “What’s going on? I’m a little tired.”

She smiles. “That means it’s working. I modified more than just your face. I installed a hibernation mode. You still won’t need to sleep, but you can, whenever you want. You’ll also wake up if, say, a saber-toothed cat shows up to attack you, but you should otherwise be good.”

“That asshole could have given me the power of sleep, but chose not to?”

“With more time, yes,” the girl answers. “He didn’t think to include that, but I’ve been working on it for months. You’ve been completely dormant this whole time.”

I stand up out of the chair. She’s right about how she changed me. I’m a little weak, like a regular person would be. It’s nothing I can’t get over, but...it’s amazing. “Oh my God, thank you so much. I don’t think I could explain just how important this is to me. I haven’t felt this great in centuries.”

“I’m glad you like it. My name is Abigail, by the way.”

“Oh, yes, sorry. How rude of me. I’m sure you know this, but let me introduce myself. I’m Thor Thompson.”

“It’s nice to finally meet you. I grew up on this planet, and I passed your storage case every day to get to Trinity and Ellie’s labs. I always wondered what you were like.”

I accidentally release a scoff, but it’s a Freudian slip, because what she said deserves it. “I’m not that great,” I admit.

“Oh, I’m not so sure about that. Way I hear it, you were one of the first colonizers of Mars, and you were directly involved with Operation Starseed.”

Project Stargate was a secret endeavor to send automated ships to every single star system in the galaxy, so people could travel to them instantly with quantum communication technology. Operation Starseed was a super secret companion to that, which added biological samples from Earth, so life could be seeded on those planets. The public wasn’t sure whether they wanted us to conquer the Milky Way, which is why a few key people in the government gave the greenlight without telling anyone. The public was pretty much completely opposed to Starseed, though. Some people were cool with it, but the majority found the prospect irresponsible, and upsetting. Together with my friend, Saxon, I was in charge with transporting the samples to the launch site in a star system called the Gatewood Collective. Only an even fewer number of government officials, time travelers, and time-traveler adjacent people knew anything about it. “Those are just accomplishments, and they say nothing about my character. Your father is quite accomplished too, isn’t it?”

“That’s true, but Trinity and Ellie have said good things about you, and I trust them.”

“Are they still here, or did they move on?” I ask.

Abigail checks her watch. “They’re at work right now.”

“Why did use airquotes?” I question.

“It’s because of something I learned about in my studies,” she says. “People used to have set hours that they would work. They had these things called jobs, so they could make money and if they wanted to survive, they had to have one.”

“They didn’t have to have a job, or even money, to survive; only if they wanted to live in town. They could go off and live off the land, if they wanted to. But go on.”

“Obviously we don’t have jobs anymore. People just work on things that they want to do. But Ellinity like to pretend it’s the olden days. They live farther away from their workspaces than they used to, and they go into work every day. They don’t leave until the work day is over.” She seems to think this is silly, and it is.

The old ways made some bit of sense at one point, but not in a galaxy where quite literally all work can be automated. I have a better appreciation for it, though, since I grew up in a time period where work was ubiquitous. The only people who didn’t have jobs were too rich to need them, or too poor to get them. The irony in that is precisely why we did away with money. I nod. “That’s hilarious.”

The doorbell rings. Abigail answers it, then lets Trinity and Ellie into the room.

“Mr. Thompson,” Trinity says. “How are you feeling?”

“Better than ever.”

They look at me funny, not because it’s a bad answer, but because it’s uncharacteristically genuine of me to say.

“No, really, I am. I’ve always wanted to live forever, but never wanted to lose what it means to actually be alive. If I were to ever consume the Immortality Waters, I wouldn’t take Energy. I like sleep. You guys get it.” They’re both immortal too, but in their own ways, and they’re still fully biological.

“That’s great,” Ellie says. She almost sounds bubbly again. It’s not that she was faking it, but she does kind of have two sides to her. When she meets someone new, she’s really outgoing and carefree, but once she learns to trust them, she’ll let a little bit of that go, and act more reserved. I hope this doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel she can trust me anymore.

“What are you two working on?” I ask them.

They look at each other, like two secret agents, who know they can’t talk about their work with their old roommate from college, who they’ve just run into in a bar.

“Whoa, sorry I asked.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s just—” Trinity closes her mouth tightly, not to keep herself from explaining, but so she doesn’t say it the wrong way.

“It’s a crazy idea.” Ellie can’t go any further either.

I look to Abigail, who shakes her head. “They won’t tell me either. It has something to do with dead people.”

“We didn’t wanna say anything until we knew we could do it.” Trinity finally feels like she’s ready to talk. “Making ourselves look insane is a lot easier now that we know it’s a real possibility. We’re just not sure about the ethics.”

“And some of the logistics,” Ellie adds.

“Come on guys, what is it? Dead people?”

Trinity gestures towards Ellie. “I’ve learned something about her ability. She can teleport people’s minds. Regular people. Of course, you can upload yourself into another body, but she can do that with anyone, or herself, with no technology.”

“We’ve figured out how to harness that, and mass produce it,” Ellie explains.

“You’re gonna use that to bring dead people back to life?” I imagine.

“Yes,” Trinity answers. “All of them.”

“All of them?”

“Literally everyone who has ever died.”

“How?”

“With these.” Ellie holds up a stack of microscope slides. “I call them synthetic central nervous neurolemmocytes. They will change everything about everyone.”

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Microstory 1435: A Child is Born

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As the source mages were coming into control over Springfield and Splitsville, they came up with a lot of rules about how to keep the town safe, from the monsters, and any other threat. Some of these rules were for the people to follow, while others were internal. But these internal laws were still devised in order to protect the citizens. There were certain things the source mages would allow each other to do, and things that they would not. For one, they would not let themselves become the leaders of some kind of religious cult. There was a scientific explanation for their time powers, whether anyone understood the science, or not. They were still just people, and God should be left out of it. Furthermore, ruling power could not be consolidated into one of the mages, or even all of them. It would remain a fair and democratic society, even though a lot of their conventions would feel very medieval. That was only because of their combination of magic, and only enough technology to survive, rather than an actual feudal system of government and justice. One thing they decided, in order to prevent any abuse of their position over others, was to outlaw mage children. This was especially important for the sources, but town mages couldn’t conceive children either. This made the logistics of competition a little difficult, but not impossible to overcome. Two mages could raise a child, of course, but only if that child was born before either of them had their powers. This meant that a twelve-year-old mage—that being the minimum age at the time of the Selection Games—simply would not be able to have kids. Unless they waited to be sourced their abilities. Like deferring college enrollment, a winner could delay being given powers until after they had however many kids they wanted. This delay was limited to ten years, however, so if they didn’t think they could make it happen by then, it was probably best for them to just wait the full twenty years before the next competition. Again, this complicated matters, but the source mages didn’t know what kind of power a legacy child would have, and they weren’t jazzed about finding out. It just seemed like too much of a risk, except in one case. Knowing which power a new mage received—and how powerful it was exactly—could take too long if they just waited for them to figure out on their own. The holistic diagnosticians belonged to a single bloodline of people with the ability to understand a patient’s abilities just by examining them. The Taggart family was the only exception to the no-child policy. Breaking it was kind of a big deal.

Out of all of the source mages, only Valda Ramsey and Lubomir Resnik were in a relationship. It wasn’t technically disallowed, but the others did discourage it, because it could lead to a breach of their other internal rules. None of the others took any romantic interest in anyone else. They were absolutely not asexual, and they didn’t think of themselves as elitist, but they certainly had trouble relating to other people. In 2077, Valda and Lubomir took their relationship to the next level by having unprotected sex with each other. They weren’t trying to get pregnant, but they weren’t trying not to either. A part of them wasn’t thinking about the consequences, or how upset the others would be for it. They were just in love, and caught up in the moment. Another part of them, however, was terribly curious what the child of two source mages would be able to do. Nine months later, Valda delivered a little baby girl. Fortunately, the source mages saw time move differently, and fully expected to live forever, so the fact that they didn’t see Valda for seven months didn’t seem strange to them. Most of them didn’t even notice she wasn’t just busy in the other room. They named the baby Jayde, even though they knew they couldn’t keep her. If she developed powerful abilities, she would have to do it somewhere else. No one could know that she was the offspring of two source mages. They searched through the census, and found a nice couple to raise their daughter for them. The Kovacs had been wanting a child of their own, and Valda and Lubomir knew that they would take care of her, and also not tell anyone that Sadie never carried a pregnancy. Jayde would grow up to change everything about life on Durus, but for now, she was just an infant, and she didn’t deserve to be treated differently because of her unique origins. Valda and Lubomir regretted letting her go, but they would see her again one day, and they would never regret having her.

Microstory 1434: Fort Salient

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Now that Durus had a decent number of mages, it was so much easier to get things done. Construction was easier than it would probably ever be on Earth, and the monsters had become more of a common nuisance than a real enemy. A monster came in, a town mage was assigned to dispense with it, and they did. No one had died from an attack in decades, and no one had been seriously injured in several years. The Durune humans knew what they were doing, and their population continued to rise at a predictable rate. They stopped planning for new towns ahead of time, because each one would only take a matter of weeks, depending on which mages they had access to for a given development, and how complex they wanted that town to be. People did still want to move to new places though; that was a value that wasn’t going to change anytime soon, so whenever the need arose, someone would be there to make it happen. They would keep planning to build them until something changed about their situation, which it did. Fort Frontline proved to be one of the best ideas that the mages had ever come up with, but it was beginning to be less effective. The monsters were seeking out people, and to get to most of these people, they would usually end up going through Frontline first. That stopped being such a reliable outcome, though. For reasons no one could tell from this end of the broken portal, starting around 2077, monsters were coming in faster, and more abundantly. Experts still weren’t sure exactly what was on the other side or even what these things were—and no one was brave enough to investigate—so there was really no way to know what was causing the influx, but it could prove to be a problem.

The Fort Frontline method was no longer good enough on its own. The monsters were simply going around the fort, and not because they were becoming smart enough to avoid it, but because there were too many of them now, and they didn’t exactly travel in a single file line. Fortunately, there was a simple solution to this. All they would need to do was build a second military outpost. The tenth town, insomuch as it was a town, would be called Fort Salient. It was built closest to the portal ring than anyone ever thought it was possible to survive. While it was a crapshoot where on that ring a monster appeared, they did seem to come through more often on the Southwest side. So that was where Fort Salient sat, within clear view of the ring. It was the first thing these monsters saw, so they always went right for it. The strongest fighters in Fort Frontline, and elsewhere, were assigned there. If you were posted at Salient, it meant that the source mages saw potential in you. They wanted you to fight in the war until its bitter end, and there wasn’t a question whether that would happen, only when. Seers were predicting the end of the war, but seers are always purposefully vague. They’ll only give you enough information to make it to your destiny. If they just laid it all out on a roadmap, you would probably try to change it, and screw everything up. Some people interpreted this omen to mean they needed to go on the offensive, instead of just defending themselves, and Fort Salient became the first staging ground for these battles. This was when it turned back into a true war, complete with damage to infrastructure, and casualties. Some called this year the beginning of the end of the Protectorate, but most agree that it would have fallen much sooner if not for the brave men and women who fought here.

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.