Microstory 1440: The War Begins

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Seers on Durus didn’t tell everyone, or even anyone, everything that they knew. They had to be smart about what information they let get out. If, for instance, one told their neighbor that they were going to run into a door today, the neighbor would go outside, and try to avoid doors for twenty-four hours. Then seven hours later, a construction worker walks by with a door, and accidentally hits him with it when he turns around.  The seer actually exacerbated the problem by saying something. The victim would have been much better off hearing that they should be careful, or to wear a helmet. That did not explain, however, why it was that no one seemed to know that the Mage Protectorate was destined to fall. The final battles of the war with the monsters began in 2090, and ended in less than a month, and it all started when an unexpected visitor appeared shortly after the Mage Selection Games. He was definitely not human, but nothing like what they had seen before. He was white, and tall, and fierce-looking. Speedstrikers looked just like you would think an unstoppable killer alien would. Mirror monsters looked like, well, mirrors. All the other types had been cataloged and classified, and nothing new had ever appeared since those very early days after Springfield fell into the Deathfall portal. So what was this thing here? It seemed intelligent, just like the verters, and it didn’t take long before his true nature was fully understood. Based on some things that the verters had said over the years, people always suspected that time monsters were only temporal glitches, and that real, intelligent, and independent monsters were the ones who were actually trying to step through the portal. This pretty much proved it. He was the real deal, and all the things that had come through before were quite accurately mistakes. There was something wrong with the portal, which this new monster explained led him here from his home universe of Ansutah. No one else ever survived the trip intact, so even if it turned out to be possible to travel back through the ring, it had never happened before. So the other monsters never knew the portal wasn’t working, which meant nothing could warn them to stop trying.

This monster, who called himself a Maramon, was a one in a million success story. He didn’t make it through the ring whole because of anything he did, but because the chances that it would happen at least once were not zero. They were low, but not impossible. He told them that time wasn’t passing the same way for his people on the other side. While the monsters had been arriving for decades, he had only waited a couple hours for his turn to step through. Time probably wasn’t moving at a different rate on his homeworld, though. They were probably just being spit out at random intervals. Hell, it could even be that every glitch that had shown up before him had actually come from a Maramon who tried to cross over sometime after him. There was no way to know, but that wasn’t the point here. All this time, the humans on this planet had been fighting an enemy that mostly didn’t know they were enemies. They weren’t actively trying to hurt the humans. They were most likely just moving along the surface on instinct, attracted to the presence of other moving creatures, and destroying them incidentally, rather than deliberately. If it was possible for a Maramon to cross over without being turned into an abomination, then a real war might start. This new enemy was free-thinking, and capable of forming motivations. They were a huge threat. Though he was the only monster who had ever kept his faculties during the trip, there was no proof it wouldn’t happen again, and he was making no attempt to quell their fears that he really was an enemy. He made his motives remarkably clear; that he wanted to kill all the humans too, and that he would be doing it on purpose. At first, they figured they could contain him before he could cause any trouble, but he easily escaped, and he used his intelligence to control the glitches all by himself. Things were only going to get worse from here as the War for Durus began.

Microstory 1439: Town Sixteen

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The end is near for this world we have

Town Sixteen, built strong, built slow

You may have lasted; we’ll never know

You were unfinished, this much is true

But people loved you in proportion to

The possibilities they were due

The monsters came, and brought you down

Warning bells did not even sound

Death came for you, all around

Now nothing’s left upon this ground

How did we not see what was coming?

What kind of protectorate were we running

To let our enemies be so cunning?

The seers’ jobs—I know, it’s funny

Is to say when things will get too bloody

As for the rest of Durune life

I fear a future defined by strife

If we cannot restore Earth’s sunlight

This could be the end of our long fight

Mages of every class and type

Will be drained down into the waste pipes

But there’s still hope for us to win

We must fight with our leading chin

Your heart, our strength, the power within

May be enough to underpin

What makes us great, and free from sin

Human courage, it comes built-in

And that is why we’ll never end

Thank you, Town Sixteen

Microstory 1438: The Penultimate Towns

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Shieldon was the last town they built on Durus that had any special characteristic that could be used to describe it, in contrast to all others. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth towns, which were named Milton, Bristol, and, Tidsdel, respectively, were built in 2084, 2086, and 2088, respectively. These three only had a few years in them before the Mage Protectorate fell—not to the war with the monsters—but the end of the war; the final battle. After Shieldon put up their protective barrier, everyone sort of agreed that there were no more new ideas. Except for Astau, there really weren’t any towns that actually followed the standard model. The source mages envisioned a world where they created a town’s mages, and those mages would protect that town’s borders. The unique ideas to add an extra layer for safety and security all came later, during the planning stages of each. Milton, Bristol, and Tidsdel were made to be simple. They were just places that people could live, and be happy, as they would have on Earth. It would ultimately be a relief that they didn’t waste energy trying to figure out how to make these towns special. Society collapsed into chaos shortly thereafter. Of course, they didn’t know this. They just thought that the world was becoming more normal. If they could make Durus look more like Earth, then that could only be a good thing. This desire spoke to the innate goodness in the Earthan way of life, at least when it was at its best. Almost none of the people alive in the 2080s were also around early enough to recall their world of origin. Only Ecrin was old enough to have been there, but she was very young at the time, so she didn’t know too terribly much about it. Still, they read about it in the books that made it through the Deathfall portal, and even though few were conscious about it, that always seemed like their goal. These three towns were finally it. In fact, people were now starting to believe that these would be some of the last towns ever. Back on Earth, that was how a civilization began. Settlements started out small, and expanded from there. At some point in the future, Durus would probably have a city of its own. Some even believed it was only a matter of time before they figured out how to contact Earth, so people could come and go as they pleased. That would turn humanity into a real interstellar species. Sadly, this was not in the cards for them, or rather, it would not be for a very, very long time.

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.”

< > Entire Story

Microstory 1435: A Child is Born

< > Table of Contents

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.