Glisnia: Forerunners (Part I)

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Hogarth Pudeyonvic and Hilde Unger were back on Tribulation Island, awaiting some good news. It was time to go back home; or at least the last place they were living before their friend’s memorial services. They were pretty sure they would be able to get back to the Milky Way galaxy, but it might be a little more difficult to reach Glisnia specifically. The intergalactic transporter there was destroyed, and though they asked its mysterious engineer to repair it for them, she seemed hesitant to do that. It wasn’t that she thought it would be bad to help them, but she was very, very old, and none of this mattered to her. Anyway, it wasn’t absolutely vital. They really just needed to get close, and then they could travel the rest of the way by ship.

“Okay, I found it,” the technician said.

“What took so long?” Hilde asked. “That’s not a criticism, I’m just curious.”

“I had to change...a parameter.”

“What does that mean?” Hilde pressed.

“You had to adjust the fourth dimension, didn’t you?” Hogarth guessed.

“That’s right,” the technician confirmed. “I can send you to the recent past, to just before the Nexus replica explodes...or the far future, to just after it comes back online.”

“How far in the future?”

“The year 2400,” the tech replied.

“Why is that?” Hilde asked her wife. “Why that year?”

“That must be when The Engineer finally gets around to fixing the replica.”

“Well, we don’t want that,” Hilde decided. “We’ll go to the past instead.”

“We shouldn’t do that,” Hogarth argued. “We don’t wanna run into our Past!Selves, or do anything else that could disrupt the timeline.”

“What are you talking about?” Hilde questioned. “We’re time travelers, we do that all the time.”

“That’s true,” the tech agreed. “You’re time travelers. Twenty-two sixty-two, twenty-four hundred, what’s the difference? You may as well see the future. You’ve already done that once, right? Aren’t you from 2017?”

“Twenty-sixteen,” Hogarth corrected. “He’s right. We don’t even have to go to Glisnia. We could go to Earth, or Gatewood, or back to that place where we met the Engineer.”

“Oh no, I can’t get you there,” the tech said.

“Didn’t you modify the machine, as I instructed?” Hogarth wondered.

“I did not receive authorization to do that from Transportation Administrator Moss. She says we’re not ready to explore other universes. If you want to return, you’ll need to go to Glisnia.”

“I really do want that,” Hogarth said to her wife. She didn’t need her permission, per se, but every decision they made needed to be unanimous. Their relationship didn’t work when one of them resented the other.

Hilde shrugged. “Glisnia 2400; sounds like a TV show spinoff. Let’s do it.”

The tech nodded, and started pressing the appropriate buttons as the two travelers left the control room, and stepped into the transportation chamber. “Thirty second warning,” he announced, as per protocol.

“Thanks for helping us with this,” Hilde said.

Orange light rained down from the ceiling, and overwhelmed their senses, but then a problem arose. Hogarth thought she had gotten over this, but apparently it was still in her. Back in 2016, she built a machine she hoped would transport her to another world. It went wrong, and ended up sending the entire town with her. Though this would turn out to be for the best, it didn’t not come without its problems. For one, Hogarth began to suffer a time affliction. It wasn’t a pattern, like the salmon had, or a power, like the choosing ones. It was very difficult to control, very unpleasant, and dangerous. The last time it happened to her, she thought would be the last ever, but it was starting again. She was about to explode herself, and be sent to some random point in spacetime. “Wait! Abort!” It was too late. The explosion swelled from inside her just as the machine was reaching its final phase. Both of these energies released simultaneously.

Time slowed down. Hogarth couldn’t so much as blink her eyes, but she could still see. Her explosive power, and the Nexus replica lights, were crashing into each other, and igniting. She could feel her atoms doing the same, and being ripped apart from each other. She always knew this was what was happening, but it was the first time she could actually perceive it. She didn’t detect any pain, but it was still horrific. Then the scene changed, and she could see more than she ever thought possible. The entire network of Nexus replicas, and original Nexa was before her. She couldn’t reach any of them, but she could see them. She could watch them. She could witness them exploding all around her. First, the one on Durus, and then Earth, and then the Metanexus, which served as an entry point to the multiverse. Be it the past, or the future, they were all falling apart, and now she knew why. She was the one responsible for it. She had destroyed them all.

Time restarted, the network faded away, and her molecules reconstituted themselves. She fell to her back, and just lied there a moment. She still wasn’t in any pain, but she couldn’t bring herself to sit up, and get a look around. She and her friends had been trying to figure out who was running around, destroying Nexus replicas. Now they knew it was her. It was all her fault. While she was trying to work up the courage to get to her feet, and make sure Hilde was okay, Hilde did it first.

“Are you okay? Can you move?”

“I’m all right,” Hogarth responded. “You?”

“I’m okay,” Hilde said. “What happened?”

“That’s what I would like to know.” The tech was stepping into the chamber, and approaching them. “The controls are dead. I don’t know where or when we are. It’s not Darius, though, I’ll tell ya that much. That room is of a slightly different design.”

Hogarth finally got to her feet, and looked around. The place looked all right, so if the controls were off, it was probably a software issue, and hopefully easy to fix. “In that case, there’s only one way to find out.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Hilde asked again.

“I’m fine. I’ll explain later, but I need to know where the machine sent us first.”

“And why I came with,” the tech added.

“No, I know the answer to that,” Hogarth told him. “I screwed up.” She led them down the hallway, and towards the exit. There were almost no windows in this building. Glass was both reflective, and transparent, so it was counterproductive to the machine’s need to contain temporal energy. The window between the control room and the transportation chamber came from an unknown source. Whenever a new replica was built, the directions instructed the maker to leave that space blank. At some point by the end of the project, the window fabricated itself, out of an unknown material. It should have protected the tech, but Hogarth’s explosion must have interfered with its integrity.

Before she could open the door to the outside, it opened for her. A mech was on the other side, sporting a disconcerting smile. “The Forerunners. You have returned.” This wasn’t as glorious of a title as it sounded like. A forerunner was a type of ship that flew ahead of a new colony’s first colony vessel. If something ended up having gone wrong with the automated factory ships that were sent even earlier, they would be able to fix everything before the colonists arrived. When Hogarth and Hilde appeared in the Gliese 832 star system, they became the first vonearthans to set foot on Glisnia, which was its only terrestrial planet. This made them notable figures in Glisnian history, of course, but there was nothing else special about them, and they didn’t do anything. The only nanofactory ships that ever malfunctioned did so over a planet called Varkas Reflex. So Hogarth and Hilde used their time alone to build their own little home on the surface. It also gave them time to explore a little, and discover the Nexus replica in the first place, which they had tried to keep a secret. Apparently that plan failed.

“We have,” Hilde said. “Report.”

“It is the year 2400,” the mech began. “The Matrioshka brain is complete, and we’re now working on the body.”

“The whatnow?” Hogarth questioned. “I don’t follow.”

The mech now tried to show them a smirk, but it was even more unsettling than the first facial expression. Artificial intelligences were perfectly capable of understanding both why smiles were socially beneficent, and even also how to make one. Unfortunately, except for the ones that were built with synthetic skin—and, more importantly, lips—the actual execution of a smile was generally extremely difficult.  Their mouths just didn’t look quite right. Eye smiles were generally pretty good, though, so people were taught to focus on them instead. He bowed graciously, and stepped aside, so they could walk through the door.

Here there was a window, showing that they were no longer on Glisnia; probably because it didn’t exist anymore. It was taken apart completely, and integrated into a megastructure surrounding the star. A matrioshka brain was always on the schedule for the future of the star system. They only landed on the planet to get started, but the world wasn’t going to last forever. It was far more valuable in its new form. A dyson shell was constructed around Gliese 832. Most of the energy was absorbed by these artificial structures, and used to power their systems. The rest was bled off into space in the form of infrared light, and a not insignificant amount of visible light. They weren’t opaque spheres like old fiction liked to portray them as. That didn’t mean all the energy that escaped was completely useless. All they needed to do was build another shell around the first one. And then another, and another, and another. They built as many as they needed to maximize the energy input; until building more would be more trouble than it was worth.

They were clearly finished with this process, having been working on it for the last a hundred and fifty years. That was incredibly impressive, even for a group of artificials whose sole responsibility was to make it happen. “Was there enough raw material in this system to do this?” Hogarth asked.

“For the brain, yes,” the mech replied. “We sent refinery ships to nearby systems to get material for the rest.”

“Moar!” the tech exclaimed jokingly. They needed to learn his name.

“Indeed,” the mech agreed. Surely he had a name as well. “We do need even more, and we have to go farther out. That’s where you come in.”

“Me?” Hogarth asked. “What can I do?”

The mech gestured towards the door behind them. “You obviously have a way to travel the stars. We need you to replicate that for us, but on a much, much larger scale.”

She didn’t do that. She didn’t build the Nexa, or develop any other form of faster-than-light travel. That was Hokusai’s deal. She was more about parallel dimensions, and artificial gravity. Still, it should be possible. But why didn’t they figure it out themselves? “Why didn’t you just figure it out yourselves, while I was gone? Surely, with all this time...”

“We’ve been locked out of this structure since we discovered it. A human woman named Azure Vose told us to—and I quote—am-scray.”

“That sounds like her,” Hilde said.

“We just have one condition,” the mech said in a worried voice. “The other mechs won’t let you be involved unless you become one of us.”

“I have to upgrade?” Hogarth asked, though she knew that was what he meant.

“Humans aren’t allowed here. It’s been declared. Upgrading isn’t enough, though. You have to upload.”

This was no huge surprise. Though humans weren’t illegal in the beginning, it was probably always going to end up like this. There were hundreds of billions of stars in this galaxy alone. No one was going to get pissy about one of them being set aside for a particular group of vonearthans. Hell, there could be hundreds, thousands, millions, even billions of them in the future. There were plenty of resources for everyone. That wasn’t really the problem, though. Hogarth wasn’t sure she wanted to become completely inorganic. She grew up in a time before that was possible, and had been so busy as a traveler, that she had never given it any real thought. He was right, however, that she didn’t belong here in her current form. This planet was not meant for her, as it was designed for artificial entities. Perhaps it was time—not to change this fact—but to change herself. The only question was whether Hilde could ever feel the same way. Would she be willing to upgrade as well?

“I’m in,” Hilde said, shockingly. “I wanna see what this matrioshka body ends up looking like, and if nothing else, I need to survive long enough for you to finish it. Let’s do it.”

That was easy.

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Microstory 1445: Four Witches Stand

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By the time the Mage Protectorate fell, there were three women who were largely responsible for saving the human race on Durus. Hogarth Pudeyonavic sent the Springfielders through the Deathfall portal in the first place; this much was common knowledge. It wasn’t until later that people learned that, had she not expedited the process with her machine, the portal still would have pulled them through, but it would have chewed them up, rather than swallowing them whole. She was also instrumental in protecting the town following the thankful disappearance of its first leader, Smith. Councilwoman Hardt was a true leader, and continued to protect the people, even after all the terrible things they put her through. Jayde Kovac was a young girl with immense powers, who ended the war with the time monsters, and rescued the entire current population of Durus in 2092 when all of the oxygen disappeared for thirty seconds. Other women were involved in helping make sure humanity survived, including Hilde Unger, but these three were the most famous. Well, not everyone saw it this way. Councilwoman Hardt was a carryover from the old world, she always went against Smith’s decisions, and she didn’t let men push her around. Some didn’t appreciate that. Though the truth about Hogarth’s actions eventually came to light, she would always be associated with the Deathfall, and would always be blamed for it. It didn’t matter what good she did, people could only remember the bad, because that was what certain voices screamed about all the time. Jayde was in the same boat, because winning the war came at a great cost. Experts could try to explain that things would have been much worse for them had they lost that war, but again, it didn’t matter. In The Republic, none of this would matter, because reason didn’t matter, because truth didn’t matter, because women didn’t matter. Kovac, Hardt, and Pudeyonavic were later collectively called The Witches of Durus, and they were destined to be joined by a fourth historical figure. They didn’t know who this fourth woman would turn out to be, but they were told she would one day spell the downfall of the Republic—which was true. They used people’s fear of this in order to justify their decision to forge the Republic in the first place.

The Witches, along with other women, had done—or will do—so much to hurt the world that a small group of men decided they could no longer be trusted with authority, or responsibility. They had to be controlled—nay, managed. It wasn’t that they didn’t have the right to be safe, happy, and free, but they needed to be told what to do, and they weren’t allowed to tell anyone else what to do. Even a mother could not be left alone with a child, for she may instill them with values such as equality, social harmony, or good trouble. Like, literally. If the man needed to leave the house, the children had to go with him, or the mother did, but she could not supervise without being supervised herself at the same time. Some husbands didn’t let their wives out of earshot, even if they didn’t have children, but that kind of thing didn’t happen until later. For now, the new system was just beginning. It started as a vision amongst a very select few, but they whispered their warped ideas to anyone who got too close to them, like a viral load to an unmasked person less than two meters away. It would have stopped here, but the republicans, as they liked to be called, had something major on their side. They were in charge of Watershed, and its dam. They controlled the water, and the moderate amounts of electricity that Aljabara had, and that was enough to give them the influence they needed to pretty much just dictate whatever they wanted. Their ideas would evolve over time, just like it did for any governmental body, but the basic tenets were clear: women can’t be trusted, and...well, I guess that’s mostly it. Under the new laws, you could do anything you wanted, save killing, stealing, being antisocially dishonest, or having a vagina. This was the way things were in The Republic, and they didn’t change for over sixty-five years.

Microstory 1444: Aljabara

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Of course, there was only one town when Springfield fell through the Deathfall portal, and landed on Durus. Over time, people started spreading out, first to Splitsville, and then Parade, and all the way to the unfinished and unnamed sixteenth town. This was what made the Mage Protectorate prosper. People were able to diversify, and go visit each other across the lands, and learn about each other. A real civilization formed out of the chaos and struggle. After the war with the monsters, this dynamic became more difficult to hold onto. The towns were too far apart. Without any powers, and a severe lack of electricity, all repairs had to be completed by hand. Some towns didn’t even have the right technician for a given job, and it would sometimes take weeks before the right person had the time to make the trip. The time monsters were gone, but the world was not without its perils. One thing they did was keep the thicket from becoming overgrown, simply by trampling over it all the time. They also seemed to have another effect that no one could really explain. Where the seed portal once only ever brought useful or innocuous plants, it now brought them poisonous and thorny plants. It could have been completely unrelated to the monsters, but it didn’t matter, because they were here now, and they made life on this planet that much harder. By 2094, people were starting to realize how impractical it was to maintain the status quo. What would they be able to do about it, though? What they needed was someone with time powers.

While the source mages had a law against mages conceiving children, this was no longer enforceable, so people were doing whatever they wanted. They didn’t think it mattered anyway, because Jayde Kovac had stripped them of their powers. What they didn’t realize was that she never removed any abilities, but the energy it took to manifest them. This energy was always restored for new people (i.e. babies). Toddlers were now running around with powers of their own—albeit weaker than their predecessors—having been born with the energy needed to exhibit them. This gave some people hope for a better future, but it would be awhile before they found the right mage. They couldn’t wait that long, for they needed a solution now, before the human race on this world died out. One child looked to be the most promising. She could extract people from the timeline, and place them anywhere else. She could not change the past, so she would always have to put them back eventually—and sooner, rather than later, because of how taxing this was on her—but they figured this would help them realize their goals. It was difficult explaining to her what they needed, since she was so young, but they were eventually able to direct her to the right man, in the right moment. She plucked Baran Avan out of the timeline, and pulled him up to the future, so he could help them conserve resources. He used his mass teleportation abilities to transport every single still-standing building in every single still-standing town, all into one place. He stacked some on top of each other, so they almost looked like high rises, except not really at all. He might have spent more time curating a real city design, but the timeline extractor wasn’t strong enough for that. Once it was finished, the towns were mashed into one chaotic and moderately unstable city, which they later decided to call Aljabara. The end of the Interstitial Chaos, and the beginning of something much, much worse was near.

Microstory 1443: First Gasp

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On July 17, 2132, a man was dished a deadly blow on Earth. His name was Keanu ‘Ōpūnui, and he developed his powers in a very similar way that the source mages did. The Springfield Nine, as they were called, were a group of people from Springfield, before it became the one-horse town that it was when the Deathfall occurred the better part of two decades later. Precisely who was part of the Nine, and who was merely associated with them was a little confusing, and everyone you ask will give you a different answer, but either way, most of the people in it were friends. The source mages were given time powers because they were at certain points in the process of prenatal development. The Nine were elementary school children when they received their powers, but both groups got them from the same thing. A pocket dimension that once existed as a bridge between Earth and Durus messed with people’s minds, and their DNA, and was capable of changing both on a fundamental level. This dimension was shattered during the Deathfall, but these twenty people were already permanently affected by it. The source mages ended up living on Durus, but the Springfield Nine stayed on Earth, and often caused problems there. Keanu had what he called time meshing. It was like filter portaling, except that the filter was much finer, so it was better used to alter the temperature of the environment than anything else. He was basically taking the weather from one place in time, and sending it to another, which sometimes balanced out both. Dioxygen could pass through, but transporting water was always a little more difficult for him. Keanu didn’t use his powers for good. He could have kept protesters cool in the summertime, or warmed a homeless camp in the wintertime. Instead, he looked for ways to capitalize on what he could do, and he hurt a lot of people along the way. It wasn’t morally good, but it also wasn’t surprising when one of these people hurt him right back. For trying to kill his daughter, a man named Horace Reaver stabbed Keanu in the chin with a sword. He didn’t die instantly, though. He had one more move.

Since the Springfielders first appeared on Durus, many tried to figure out where the breathable air came from. It wasn’t physically impossible for a rogue planet to maintain an atmospheric shell, but this phenomenon wasn’t particularly easy, and the chances that it would be conducive to human life were negligible. Through seers, philosophers, and other experts, the people finally had their answer. Or rather, they had a pretty good idea when the air first appeared on the surface. They still didn’t know about Keanu, or his power, but they did know that the year 2092 was going to bring trouble. With his last moments falling upon him, Keanu attempted to take his enemies down with him, even though it would also kill some of his friends. He tried sending all of the oxygen in the cave they were in to the vacuum of outer space, where it would be wasted. But since he was so badly hurt, he was incapable of focusing his power. He ended up sending himself to Durus instead. It was a one in a million chance, but then again, so was everything else that had ever happened on the planet. The fact was that if this hadn’t happened to Keanu, no one would have survived long enough on Durus to wonder why not. It was Keanu ‘Ōpūnui who quite literally breathed life into the world, which was great, but it came with a catch. His death sent air from Earth in both directions of time, so that Savitri could use it in 1980, and later Durune had it in 2204, but for thirty seconds in the middle, it didn’t exist at all. Everyone on Durus during that time would be totally without air. Now, some believed that all they would have to do was hold their breath for that amount of time. They knew it would be coming, and most people—even children—had the lung capacity to survive this. Unfortunately, it was a lot more complicated than that. Oxygen wouldn’t simply disappear from the outside, but also inside their bodies. This would cause a lot of health issues. The only solution, in some people’s minds, was to skip over this short moment in time altogether. While families huddled together, preparing for the pain, a certain young woman with time powers saved them all once again, and she never even took credit for it. Sadly, there was nothing she could do about the buildings that were made of concrete and metal. When they returned to the timestream a minute later, the towns of Springfield and Splitsville were utterly destroyed.

Microstory 1442: The Interstitial Chaos

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The world was in ruins after the end of the war with the monsters. Not very many people died when you really do the math, and consider all the destruction that occurred. Still, the government was gone, and their protectors were gone. No one knew what ever happened to the source mages. Many believed they were locked away safely in their hidden pocket dimension, but no one had the ability to go up there and check. The majority of the town mages were still around, but they no longer had powers. Jayde Kovac had successfully sucked up nearly all temporal energy, and used it to defeat the time monsters. Had she not succeeded, all would have been lost, because though some of the monsters did manage to survive, they were few and far between, and it seemed they kind of now understood that there was nothing more they could do. They attacked every once in a while over the course of the next several decades, but for the most part, they remained in the remotest parts of the planet, and didn’t bother anyone. For four years, the Durune humans survived, but they were no longer a cohesive civilization. While it would come to be known as the Interstitial Chaos, the survivors didn’t initially call it anything. It wasn’t considered chaos until later, when history reflected on how life was at the time. In reality, it was a recovery period, where there was no government, but people still worked to rebuild, and find their purpose in a world without monsters or mages. Besides the military establishments, which once sat closest to the monster portal ring, none of the towns were completely destroyed. Enough of each was left standing to justify repairing the buildings, but they would never return to their former glory. People stuck to their respective towns for the most part—excepting those who couldn’t—though they did conduct the occasional trading. Hidden Depths had good mushrooms, and Hardtland good fruits, for instance. Not every town could survive, though. Distante Remoto was left almost completely standing, but they had relied on time powers for their resources, which no longer existed. The people from there headed out, and found homes elsewhere, but they brought a lot of their building material with them, so they were at least contributing something. Peak Valley also fared pretty well, because they too were harder to access, and their enemies simply never had enough time for more than one attack. Their pipeline was damaged, but not beyond repair. There were no internal conflicts, really; at least nothing major. If someone took something from you, you either took it back, or took from someone else. This sounds like it would only lead to true chaos, but the chain always eventually broke, as soon as someone was robbed who just didn’t care anymore. What the people living during this time didn’t realize was that things could indeed get worse from here. They were absolutely not at their lowest. That wouldn’t come until their greatest hope became their worst nightmare.

Microstory 1441: The War Ends

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Twelve years after she was born, Jayde Kovac was ready to take on the world, and prove herself at the fourth Mage Selection Games. Unfortunately, something went screwy with the spacetime continuum, and she was unable to make it to the competition. It would ultimately not matter, however, as she was born with time powers of her own, and never needed one of the source mages to give them to her. Once she learned this about herself, she went on a little adventure. She met friends and enemies, got a more detailed diagnosis about what specific powers she possessed, and unwillingly got proverted. When the source mages first asked the proverters to make them look older, the proverters had some stipulations, and one of these was that every person born like them would also find themselves in their debt. This was one of the reasons the source mages chose to not have children, because they didn’t want to impose that burden on anyone else. Of course, Jayde didn’t know anything about this, but she did go looking for answers about who she was, and where she came from. While she was indisposed, hell broke loose for the rest of the planet. The truth was that this was all a very unlikely coincidence, but it was indeed a coincidence. It just so happened that Jayde manifested her powers as the final battles of the war with the time monsters were beginning. Poorly researched history books would attribute her actions to the influx of enemy activity, but she didn’t have anything to do with it, and without her, the human race on Durus would have surely fallen, and Earth would have gone down next. That didn’t mean she made the best choices. While she looked like an adult, she was still only twelve years old, and could not foresee the consequences of her actions. Still, even though a lot of people got hurt, she did end the war once and for all, and she deserved to be commended for her bravery.

With the intact Maramon as their leader, the monsters came out in full force, and hit the towns hard. He was smart enough to get past their defenses, and go for the weakest points first, instead of just running around aimlessly, as the other monsters usually did. They leveled Forts Salient and Frontline on the first day. Then they went after the other towns, knocking them down pretty much simultaneously, so the humans couldn’t concentrate their forces. Even Hidden Depths wasn’t protected enough to avoid detection. While there had never been more mages alive at the same time before, most of them were either new, or retired. This being just after the Mage Games meant that the newbies didn’t know everything about how the military operated, and they didn’t understand the scope of their abilities yet. Many of the older retirees were called back into action, but they were out of practice, because they never thought they would have to work again. It was up to the recent retirees, from the 2070 Games, to step up, and suffer the majority of the weight of the war, but even they weren’t enough to go against the monsters. Seeing what they believed to be the writing on the wall, the source mages retreated to another dimension. They had already been living there for some time, but now they closed the gates, and kept everybody out. There were enough people inside to restart civilization, but thousands would still die if no one could do anything about it. Enter Jayde Kovac, who ultimately had to realize that she was the only person who could handle this, and she would essentially have to do it alone.

After a failed attempt at being trained by the source mages, including her parents, Jayde was told that she had a very rare power. Like Escher Bradley before her, she was capable of harnessing temporal energy itself. She had many specialized powers of her own, but she could also absorb the energy that other people had, and use it to boost her abilities. This wasn’t, strictly speaking, illegal, but the source mages decided long ago to never allow anyone else to have this ability. They figured the most altruistic of candidates could still be corrupted with this amount of power, and they didn’t want to risk it. Even Madoc Raptis agreed to make sure he never sourced anybody energy absorption. Jayde was the child of two source mages, though, and no one had any control over what powers she ended up with. Nonetheless, this was arguably the best thing that ever happened to them. Seeing no other options, Jayde left the hidden dimension, and returned to normal space. The monsters had defeated all the mages by now, and were primed to go after the rest of the humans if they didn’t agree to serve the Maramon. Fortunately, the one Maramon there didn’t want to kill anyone, because he assumed someone on this planet would be able to repair the portal ring, and bring the rest of his people there. They never found out whether this was true or not, because Jayde didn’t give them a chance. She absorbed the temporal energy from everyone in the whole world. She waited to release this energy until she traveled to the center of the portal ring. The resulting explosion quickly turned into an implosion, and sucked everything in its path into the portal. She effectively switched the portal’s directions, so anyone could travel through it to the monster universe, but none of the monsters would be able to come to Durus. Without the constant energy from the ring, most of the monsters still around were left without any powers. Unfortunately, the same went for all the humans. And thus began the four year period known as the Interstitial Chaos.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Sunday, July 3, 2118

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Mateo wasn’t sure how they could go about saving Vearden’s life. When it came to time travel, there appeared to be no shortage of possibilities, but a lot of them were out of the question. The obvious answer would be to simply go to that moment in time, and rescue him before that animal could trample him. But Jupiter said they couldn’t do it that way. As far as everyone knew, Vearden Haywood died on Tribulation Island on July 10, 2125. Perhaps they could try to use an extraction mirror, but that couldn’t alter his fate, only delay it. He wasn’t ageless either, so he would have to go fulfill his own death sooner rather than later. There had to be a way, though. As Mateo was pondering this the next day, the answer seemed to fall into his lap.

After making sure Xearea Voss was fully recovered, they went back to Tribulation Island together, so she could move into the fancy resort there. While they were on the mainland, Leona and their friends had spent that time getting to know Aldona’s family a little bit better. It was more awkward being around some of these people more than others. Marcy, for one thing, was a good friend from the future, but she wouldn’t be heading back to the main sequence for another sixteen years, and she had not met any of them yet. It was unclear whether they could tell her about that, because they still didn’t know if their memories of the Parallel were going to be erased, or if they just kept their time here a secret. The weirdest thing was interacting with Aldona’s brother, Nestor. Out of everyone during Arcadia’s expiations, he was the only person whose challenge they failed. What did all this mean about how he would survive that failure?

Right now, they were just coming back from a particularly grueling hike to clear their heads. The Buchanan-Lanka-Calligaris family requested someone take a photo of them together, to commemorate their accomplishment. As soon as Mateo pressed the button, he felt a gust of warm wind behind his back. Four people had just appeared there. He recognized all of them: Trinity, Ellie, Thor, and Abigail.

“Guys...” Abigail began mysteriously. “Where are we?”

“This is highly irregular,” Mateo said to them. “The way I understood it, there would not be a transition today. To answer your question, though, you’re in what we call the Parallel. It’s an alternate reality that is not an alternate timeline. It runs...parallel.”

“What year is it?” Trinity asked.

“It’s Sunday, July 3, 2118,” Sanaa answered.

“What year for you?” Leona asked back.

“Twenty-four hundred,” Ellie replied. “I can’t tell you how we got here, but it had nothing to do with this transition of which you spake.”

“Do you need us for something?” Mateo asked. “All of us? One of us?”

“We were just looking for a quiet place. We didn’t mean to interrupt,” Trinity said.

“Of course you’re not interrupting. This is a safe space.”

“It is?” Abigail questioned. Is this Haven?”

“No,” Leona responded, “but it’s close. The powers that be can’t get to us here, due to a loophole. Haven is in another universe, which they also can’t control, but is also more difficult to access.”

This was Mateo’s chance to get the ball rolling on this saving Vearden thing. It was the perfect opportunity to get a word in with Ellie without creating suspicion. He had not yet said anything to the others about Jupiter’s latest assignment. He wasn’t planning on keeping it a secret forever, but the lie he told about there just not being anyone for them to rescue for the next few years didn’t sound crazy. In fact, it wasn’t crazy at all, because that was exactly what Jupiter said was going to happen. Mateo just didn’t want to burden them with the ultimatum yet. They were at a relaxing resort, and enjoying it too much to let him ruin it. “If you need a spot to have a sensitive conversation, I know the perfect getaway.”

Leona was a little suspicious, but she bit her tongue.

Ellie caught his drift. “That would be lovely.”

“I’ll take them to Lorania, and catch up with you guys later. Love ya, bye.” He kissed his wife, then walked away before she could think of any reasonable questions to ask. The rest followed.

They didn’t say anything on the short helicopter ride over to the other island. It could have been bugged for all they knew. Sure, invisible nanobots could be following them around anyway, but this was their best option. “I need to talk to you guys, but I’m not sure who should go first. Do you want me to leave and come back, err...?”

“We’ll talk about your thing first,” Thor promised, “since you’re on a time limit.”

“No, he’s not anymore, remember?” Trinity asked.

“He is, though, aren’t you, Matty?” Thor pointed to Mateo’s Cassidy cuffs.

“I’m on a different pattern, but I still only have a day,” Mateo confirmed.

“What can we do ya for?” Ellie prompted.

“I need you to do that voodoo that you do.”

“You need to send a message?” she figured, or maybe she just hoped that was all he needed.

“I need you to save someone’s life, in the same way that you did me.”

“You want me to transfer someone’s consciousness to a clone body?”

Mateo thought over it for a few seconds. “I guess it doesn’t have to be a clone. It doesn’t matter, we just have to rescue him without anyone knowing that we did.”

“What’s he gonna do once you rescue him?” Thor pressed. “How will people not know he survived?”

“I suspect he’ll have to stay here,” Mateo conceded. “Few people seem to know this reality exists, even though it literally always has.”

“He’ll be okay with that?” Trinity continued. “Who are we talking about?”

“Vearden,” Mateo answered, “so yeah, I think he’ll understand.”

“Is this a riddle?” Thor asked, just as acerbically as always.

“No,” Abigail said with a cute smile. “It’s a challenge. I’ve heard stories about what you’ve been through. People keep giving you tasks to complete that are half-arbitrary, half-necessary.”

“That’s right,” Mateo verified.

“Who?” Trinity asked, concerned.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m not trying to quit. I wanna complete these challenges; especially this one.” Mateo directed his attention back to Ellie. “Can you do it?”

She thought his request over for a moment, not because she wasn’t sure if she could handle it, but because she didn’t know if she should. “It’s not that I can’t, or that I think I shouldn’t. I’m just not sure that I have to,” she answered cryptically.

“That’s why we came here in the first place,” Abigail started to explain. “We’re working on quite undeniably the largest endeavor in the history of humankind. The plan is to use Ellie’s power to save everyone’s life for the last seventy-four hundred years.”

Mateo looked to each of them one by one, and then back again a couple times. “Oh, I’ve seen that done before,” he told them, sadly unimpressed with their proposal.

“What? What are you talking about?” Ellie asked.

“Yeah,” Mateo went on. “That’s what this reality is. No one has died in thousands of years, perhaps even for longer than you plan on doing your plan.”

The four of them exchanged looks, and possibly telepathic words. Ellie opened the conversation back up before too long. “This is a world where nobody dies. Ours is a world where they survive death. And we won’t bring them back until later. Same same, but different.”

“Hey, man, I don’t mean to offend,” Mateo apologized. “I’m down for it. I just don’t know if it applies to Vearden’s sitchi’ation. Jupiter wants to save him in a week, not in the future.”

“Future, past, present, what does it matter?” Thor asked rhetorically.

“Good point,” Mateo responded. “Where are you gonna put all these people, though? I’m terribly curious now.”

“It’s Abigail’s job to come up with that,” Thor said, inviting her to speak.

“Oh, right. Well, do you wanna hear it?”

They all said yes and yeah and please and absolutely in unison.

“Okay.” Abigail was nervous. “So, Mohandas Gandhi and Orville Wright both died on January 30, 1948, right? So, what we do when that happens is insert their respective consciousnesses into the virtual simulation at around the same time. We can even time it to the minute, if we want. All the other people who died on that day are also waking back up at the same time. Meanwhile, the people who died on January 29 woke up the day before, and the people who died on January 31 will wake up the day after. The afterlife will operate in realtime, just centuries later. What they do with their simulation is up to them, but there will be new rules, like that they can’t die again. Hopefully that will stop them from, ya know...trying to kill each other. So when this Varden guy—”

“Vearden,” Mateo and Trinity corrected in unison.

“Right. So he’ll wake up in the simulation in...you said it was 2125?”

“July 10,” Mateo repeated.

“So he’ll wake up in the year ninety-eight hundred. Ooo, that seems long. Maybe we don’t do that. Maybe the simulation operates much faster.”

“Or it operates in realtime, like you said, but also at the same time,” Thor offered. “Maybe we all go back in time, and secretly set up shop around some other star system.”

“These are all really great ideas,” Ellie began, “and it’s going to take a lot of work to figure out the details. Something may go wrong before we do, and if we die before trying to save Mr. Haywood, it won’t help him. So let’s put the whole plan on the back burner, and focus on trying to bring back this one person. If we can’t do this, we won’t be good enough to do it for the whole species anyway. The three of you will have seven years to get me a clone body.”

“What are you going to do?” Trinity asked her, very confused.

Ellie gestured towards Mateo’s wrists. “Tell me how those devices work. Do you have an extra set?”

“Why would you do that?” Trinity maintained her wariness.

“I have my reasons,” Ellie replied.

Trinity wasn’t satisfied with that explanation, or lack thereof. “Ellie.”

Ellie’s voice came into Mateo’s ear, “Mateo, don’t react to what I’m saying right now.” No one else seemed to have heard that. “There are some things I just can’t tell you,” Ellie said out loud for everyone else to hear. “I need you to convince these people that I’m supposed to wear one of your cuffs.” She kept trying to alleviate her friend’s confusion, while having this secret conversation with Mateo that only he could hear, and while she wasn’t moving her lips, like a ventriloquist. “I noticed that The Escapologist is in your group. I need to borrow her power, just for a little bit. I promise I won’t abuse it. They’re not looking at you, you can reply to me without them hearing. Just do it like you did during your wedding.”

Mateo didn’t need to continue the conversation. If Ellie Underhill wanted something, she kind of deserved it. She had never given him any reason to doubt or deny her. “She’s right,” he said out loud. “I didn’t wanna say anything, but it is no coincidence that she’s here. She’s a part of this. She has to put on the cuffs. Saving Vearden isn’t the only thing we need from her.”

Just like Mateo knew he could trust Ellie, Trinity knew she could trust Mateo. “Fine. I will concede to this, but only because of Leona’s Rules of Time Travel, Number Twelve.” Don’t learn too much about your future.

It wasn’t going to be that easy, though. All of the cuffs were currently in use. If Ellie wanted in on this, someone would have to be released from the pattern. Fortunately, Mateo had a pretty good idea who that should be. J.B. had always wanted to know what it was like to not be on a salmon pattern. He would surely agree to step off it temporarily, just to see what tomorrow looked like. Only then would Mateo worry about exactly what Ariadna’s time power was, and what Ellie wanted with it.

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Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida: Beyond (Part V)

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I was named for a play on science words, which if you knew my father, would make perfect sense. I’m not certain what he would have done if the woman he impregnated had any other surname, but I wouldn’t have put it past him to just make one up for me. Abigail Genifer Siskin. Abiogenesis is the process by which nonliving matter evolves into living matter. At some point in Earth’s history, nothing was alive. There were rocks, and gases, and lots of other elements, including carbon, but there were no organisms. Then later on, there was life. How long did that take, how did it happen, and why? These are questions scientists have still not answered, but we’re all pretty confident about the idea of abiogenesis, because any competing theory would be paradoxical. Life had to start somewhere—even if it happened a million light years away, a billion years ago—and my father says I’m the embodiment of that.

I’m nobody, though. I mean, I’m not nobody, but don’t expect some crazy story about how I came into being. Tamerlane Pryce didn’t create me by shooting a bolt of lightning into a stone. He conceived me with my mother the old fashioned way, so him calling me Abiogenesis is really just about his compulsion to make everything about science, whether it’s relevant or not. And again, he didn’t give me her surname to be progressive, hip, or woke. He did it for the nickname, because—and I say this with all the love he deserves—he a basic bitch.

I hate my father, which is why I locked him in his tank, and I haven’t let him out for months. He’s the stellar neighborhood’s foremost expert in consciousness transference. The good people of Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida asked him to come here so he could use his expertise to build up their recreational ventures. Well, he’s done that, and we don’t need him anymore. People come here to temporarily load their minds into artificial animal bodies, and explore those animals’ natural habitat without interfering with them. They use his technology on Earth now too, which is presently the only planet we know of with such diversity of life. Anyway, this obviously isn’t the only application of it. There are many ways in this day and age to be immortal, but one of the ways he uses to avoid death is to transfer his mind into a backup body whenever anything goes wrong with the one he was in before. What he didn’t consider is the fact that he can’t kill himself and trigger a transfer if he’s unconscious and trapped in a clone tank, waiting for his rebellious daughter to decide to let him out. I won’t do it, though. He’s not a good person, and he’s been around for centuries, and if I killed him, I would be doing the galaxy a huge favor. The only reason I haven’t is because I don’t know how. I don’t know how to prevent him from transfering, or from just having an outdated backup somewhere else. I don’t tell people that, of course. They all think I’m keeping him alive because killing is wrong, or whatever.

I’ve moved on from him, and I’ll only go back to worrying about it once I discover a weakness to mind transference. It’s pretty difficult, because there’s always a chance he’s set aside a contingency I never knew about. If I were him, I would send a darkbursting automated ship to the Andromeda galaxy in case a cataclysmic failure took out all my other clones.

Right now I’m with my new family. Thor Thompson is another immortal human, who Pryce used as his test subject for a new substrate that would have turned my father into even more of a threat. There’s also Trinity Turner, who literally created this world. Nearly everything here was toxic to humans when she set foot on it, so she spent decades altering the native organisms on a molecular level, without changing anything else about them. Good thing she’s from the future, or her dream would have been impossible. Our friend, Ellie Underhill also has a time power; one which Thor and I are presently learning more about. “You’re bringing everyone who has ever lived in the history of Earth, and the stellar neighborhood, back to life?”

“Yeah,” Trinity confirms. “I know, it’s—”

“I don’t think it’s crazy,” I assure her. “I’m just...what are ya gonna do with them?”

Trinity and Ellie give each other a look, which they’ve been doing a lot lately, since they keep a lot of secrets from me. “We’re going to put their consciousnesses in a simulation,” Ellie answers.

“Why?” Thor questions.

“We don’t think they would do well in base reality,” Ellie continues. “I mean, well, some people would. You take anyone from, maybe the 22nd century, and you can get them up to speed. Hell, it might even be okay if we tried to integrate someone who regularly used a personal computer while they were alive, because at least they can fathom the concept. Anyone earlier than that, though, is going to freak out.”

“So, will you convince them they’re in heaven, or are you going to simulate the world they were living in at the time, and make them just think they survived death?” Thor knows what kind of questions to ask.

“A little bit of both,” Trinity says. “They’ll know they died. We’re not going to try to convince them that nothing happened. They’ll eventually wonder why nothing else has killed them, or why other people aren’t getting hurt, and all that. We’re not sure where to go from there, though. Can we tell them this is the afterlife when it’s not true?”

“Well...” I start to say. “It will be true. If this is universal, it’s no less of an afterlife than a so-called real one. Perhaps this is all destined to happen, and every theory about the afterlife is partially true, because you’re building it for them.”

“Hmm.”

At that, we stop talking for a good period of time. We all sit down, and stay in the room together, but we think on the matter in our own heads. I don’t know exactly what they’re thinking about, but I know what I’ve come up with, so I speak first, hoping it’s something reasonable. “When are you planning to start this? Will we bring back our primate ancestors? What is a human?”

“We’ve chosen five thousand years BCE,” Ellie replies.

“That’s as far back as my camera will go,” Trinity adds. She carries a magical camera with her that lets her travel to the past, and even the future. Someone else apparently invented the camera for her, and it automatically took pictures from all throughout history.

“We don’t have enough data from before that. So when we say we’ll bring back everyone, that’s a bit of an exaggeration.”

“Either way,” Thor jumps in, “how are you going to explain that? I don’t know much about the brain, but this neural implant you came up with, you’re going to give it to everyone in the past? Won’t people notice they have one, but their ancestors didn’t?”

“Those are the logistical issues we’re still working on,” Ellie says with a nod. “Neurolemmocytes already exist, but there’s no difference between the ones found in the central nervous system, and the ones in the peripheral system. What we would have to do is replace the ones in the brain with ours.”

“Won’t people eventually figure out there’s something strange about them?” I presume.

“They’ll probably give them another name, because they will see a distinction,” Ellie explains, “but they will function just as the real ones do. They’ll just also have this mind transferring characteristic they would never think to test for.”

“And do our primate ancestors have them?” I press.

“They do,” Trinity answers. “Evolution invented them a really long time ago. Even invertebrates have them.”

“This sounds incredibly complicated,” I tell them apologetically. “And when I say complicated, I think I mean impossible.”

“That’s why you got me.” Oh no. It’s my father. He’s somehow broken free.

Trinity and Ellie have known him longer than me, so they’re not exactly pleased he’s awake, but they’ve developed coping mechanisms. I’m pissed because my plan didn’t work, and Thor’s the worst off, because he doesn’t fully understand what this guy’s deal is. All he knows is that they’re never gonna be buddies.

“Oh, don’t look so surprised and upset,” he says to me. “I always have another plan, and I don’t blame you for trying to sweep me under the rug.”

“What was your plan? How did you get out?” I ask.

He chuckles. “I obviously can’t trust you with that information. Just know that there’s nothing you could do to get rid of me.” He sizes Thor’s new body up. “I built this new substrate to make myself stronger, but I don’t need it to be a survivor. I accomplished that a long time ago.” He claps his hands together abruptly. “That’s not what we’re talkin’ about, though, are we? You’re trying to save the human past. You’re gonna need me to do this. Trinity’s got the connections, Ellie’s got the power, Abby’s got the ideas, and I got the brains.” He looks back over to Thor. “Oh, and I guess you’re still here too.”

Ellie and Trinity have another one of their infamous psychic conversations. I’m starting to think that’s not just a metaphor about their facial expressions. They may have actually formed some kind of psychic bond that either can or can’t be intercepted.

“Don’t do this,” I say to them, shaking my head.

Trinity sighs. “There’s a reason I brought him to this planet in the first place. To be honest, waking him up was probably inevitable. I don’t like it any more than you do, Abigail.”

“I doubt that,” I contend, standing up defiantly. “He’s my dad, and that can never be undone. You, on the other hand, chose to associate yourself with him, and I won’t be a part of it.”

“Wait,” Thor says calmly. “He was right when he said we need you too. These three are clearly strong and capable individuals, but they don’t have your creativity.”

“We just met,” I argue.

He smiles at me. “I’ve grown pretty good at knowing when I encounter someone who’s the polar opposite of me. Before he interrupted us, you were saying you had an idea. I would like to hear it.”

“His interruption wasn’t a single moment,” I say. “It’s still happening.”

Thor nods understandingly. Then he stands up coolly, and punches my father in the throat so hard, it collapses his windpipe, and kills him pretty much instantly. I think there’s something seriously wrong with me, because I’ve never been more attracted to anyone in my whole life.

Ellie rolls her eyes, and starts swiping on her device. “He was listening to our conversation before he walked into the room. He must have hacked into our security system, and I don’t feel like correcting that right now. So if we want to continue our conversation, Trinity can transport us somewhere he can never go. I honestly don’t know where this photo was taken, but the person who took it claims there’s nowhere safer, and I trust him with my life. He said I would know when I needed it. Maybe this isn’t it, maybe it is.”

Trinity takes a look at the photo. “You say you trust him? This could be anywhere, anywhen. Who are these people?”

“You trust him too,” Ellie says. “I don’t know who the people in the photo are.”

“All right. I could do with a break from this place,” Trinity decides. “I wanna hear your ideas too, Abigail.”

We crowd around Ellie’s device, which is displaying a jungle. My eyes burn, as they do when Trinity is traveling to a different time and place through one of her pictures. In a second, it’s over, and we’re standing in that jungle.

“Whoa,” I hear behind us.

We all turn around to find a small group of people. There’s only one person I recognize, though. I saw a clone of his body in a tank for decades of my life. Mateo Matic.

“Ah,” he says. “This is unexpected. We were told there would not be a transition window today.”

“Where are we?” I ask.

“This...” he begins, building suspense, “is The Parallel.”

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