Microstory 1453: Last Man in Ladytown

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It took eight years for the smartest women in Ladytown to figure out how to save young Cletus Márton’s life, which was about as long as it took the Aljabaran scientists to synthesize the haemophilia virus in the first place. They brought him out of stasis, and started treating the infection. It cleared up right away, but now he had haemophilia itself, so he had to receive further treatment to stay alive. He spent the rest of his life with the disease, but he was also well cared for, and only partially because he had a job to do. Since he was the last man in Ladytown, it would eventually turn into a ghost town, once the last remaining girls grew up, and either died off as well, or just moved to Aljabara. The city wasn’t letting anyone else immigrate there, so if they wanted to keep the dream alive, Cletus was their last hope. Before they revived him, a group of the townsfolk built a luxurious house for him, and provided him with constant medical attention, and just about anything he could ever want. Each month, he would meet a new partner, and attempt to impregnate her with a child, so they could restart the population. He was fortunately not the only participant, or everyone in the next generation would have to choose between full and half-siblings. Two paternal bloodlines wasn’t the most genetically healthy, but it was better than one, and really all they had available. Fulcrum Nielsen, the man who helped train the Ladytowners in combat skills, had a son who was coming of age, and he wanted to contribute to the cause as well. Anchor Nielsen was not a fighter, but he was empathetic, caring, and fully against the misogynistic government. Fulcrum raised him to be open-minded, but he probably would have come to the same conclusions about social justice on his own eventually. It was wrong what the Republicans were doing, and he wanted to help. If that meant having a bunch of children with strangers, then so be it. For a few years, Cletus and Anchor did their civic duty, which may sound like a big win, but neither of them would have been interested in sleeping with that many different people if they didn’t need to do it to save the human race. They were both extremely monogamous, and hoped they would one day be able to settle down with just the one partner, and be happy. They persevered, though, and did what they could to protect Ladytown. The government was enraged when they found out that their plan to destroy them had failed. They knew that at least two men were involved, but they assumed they had somehow survived the virus, and had no idea that Anchor had had anything to do with it. He went on to continue pushing boundaries, expressing outcry, and changing minds. His work was instrumental in ultimately ending the phallocratic republic, though it would not happen for a very long time, and he didn’t do it alone. Meanwhile, once his paternal duties were complete, Cletus went on to live a very simple life in Ladytown. Though being there was itself an affront to the Republic’s values, he didn’t actively work against them, like most people around him did. He helped the effort further when he could, but he had already done so much that no one expected him to do anything more.

Microstory 1452: Nevertheless, They Persisted

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After the haemophilia virus wiped out all of the men and boys trying to live in Ladytown, the women were devastated. They knew that this was no accident. Haemophilia was a genetic disorder, and did not spread like a contagion. Sure, it was possible that the rogue planet of Durus came with diseases that didn’t exist on Earth, but there was no logical reason for it to spread at this point in history. This whole area had been dug and altered to make way for the old town of Hidden Depths, as well as the irrigation system. It was just far too unlikely that they somehow managed to unlock something now. The Trojan horse woman disappeared shortly after the virus ran its course, so obviously they suspected her to have been involved, but they possessed no evidence, let alone proof. The Aljabaran government got away with it, but that didn’t mean the survivors were just going to roll over and let this destroy their way of life. The Republicans weren’t going to win, no matter what they did. They wanted the women to come crawling back to Aljabara, and not because of any particular affinity for them—in fact, the government considered them damaged goods by now—but hopefully the act would solidify the Republic’s hold on the city, possibly forever. The Ladytowners couldn’t let that happen, and they were willing to go to war if they had to. The tragedy galvanized them into action. They were content to just stay on the other side of Watershed, and leave Aljabara be, but if a plague was their first attempt to end them, what would be their second? They had to be prepared for everything. They started to come up with new responsibilities for the townsfolk, even though they were already stretched thin with their labor force. 

Some were tasked with dressing themselves up like men, making the rough journey across the thicket to Aljabara, and infiltrating the city. They weren’t there to make trouble, or sabotage the government; they just needed resources. In particular, they needed books. The one male survivor of the virus was still in his mother’s stasis bubble, and in order to save him, they needed to understand what exactly was wrong with him, and how his symptoms could be treated. Perhaps they would even be able to cure him one day. While the infiltrators were stealing information, and handing it off to the scholars, the rest were leveling up. They forged weapons, and trained in combat, and studied wars of the past. Everyone had to contribute to the lasting prosperity of the town itself, as well as future war effort. Unfortunately, as always, research was no comparison to practical experience. They needed someone who knew how to fight. Now, the reason none of them knew was not because women weren’t capable of being warriors, but because these women were never allowed. They went to school as children, just like the men, but they learned very different things, and military tactics simply wasn’t on the list for them. Fortunately, they weren’t completely alone. A man by the name of Fulcrum Nielsen was sympathetic to their cause. He wasn’t raised to be misogynistic, and he wasn’t raising his own son to be that way either. He was a well-trained martial artist, because he was completely free to learn whatever he wanted. He was also a teleporter. He had to be able to see where he was going, but it only took a few jumps for him to reach Ladytown during his off hours, where he would help the women learn what they needed to protect themselves. For years, the oblivious government left them alone, content in their belief that there was nothing that Ladytown could do but wait to die out. Little did they know...

Microstory 1451: All The Queen’s Men

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Ladytown was a success, and that seemed great for the people living there, but that caused problems for the Aljabaran Republic, because that was not what they wanted to happen. It was meant to be a total failure. What these leaders did was fail to consider the consequences of their own actions. At the time, it seemed prudent to require that a population of men move out with the women, but that ultimately put their whole evil plan at risk. In 2119, the fifth administration passed a new law that forbade anyone from leaving Aljabara. According to publicly available documentation, Ladytown was fine out there, but if it was going to survive, it would have to do it on its own. They were not allowed to benefit from Aljabara’s hard work, and advancements. Behind closed doors, the truth was that they didn’t want to lose their entire constituency to this new settlement. If they weren’t careful, they would lose power altogether, and letting Ladytown exist would have been the biggest mistake they ever made. By halting immigration, they would have to persist through later generations. Well, some twisted men did some bad math, and discovered that the immigration laws were only going to help protect the Republic’s power in the short term. Later administrations ran the risk of being overtaken by what they called the unchecked propagation of the species by a whorish race with no regard for resource limitations. Basically, they said that, given enough time, Ladytown would grow far beyond their control, because women couldn’t be trusted to not just have babies left and right. Of course, people were having children at a reasonable pace for their current population size, and living conditions, but that didn’t matter to the government. The women had to be stopped, and the only way to do that was to kill. That wasn’t usually their style, but they were paranoid and desperate.

They didn’t wipe out all of Ladytown, though. They only decided to kill certain people. The problem was that the Republicans still couldn’t simply go to war with these people, because it would reflect poorly on them, and make them out to be the bad guys. So how does one go about targeting an entire sex, and only that sex? The answer the doctors came up with was haemophilia. This was going to be no easy task. Haemophilia was an inherited trait, and no one had been diagnosed with it since the year 2020. They still had a sample of the boy’s blood in the archives, but they couldn’t simply inject people with that, and wait for them to contract the disease themselves. They had to synthesize the disease itself, and attach it to a virus, so that it could spread. It had to spread quickly, and die out on its own before it could reach Aljabara, however, or the whole human race on Durus would be doomed. They spent years working on this problem, until they finally came up with a viable solution in 2128. It was devastating. Like a viral blanket, they dispatched a very loyal woman to claim to be a refugee, seeking asylum in Ladytown. She was not able to get sick from the virus herself, but she managed to infect half the town, and by the time anyone knew what was happening, the other half caught it as well. It was the first truly violent thing that the Republic ever did, but unfortunately, there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Everyone pretty much knew that the government was responsible, but they couldn’t prove it, and no one was brave enough to try. Nearly every single male died of this extremely aggressive viral form of haemophilia in a matter of days. They didn’t have the resources or expertise to stop them all from bleeding out. They were only able to save one. A mage remnant placed her teenage son into temporal stasis, until medical treatment could be developed to combat the disease. And that young man went on to save Ladytown.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Friday, July 5, 2120

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Mateo and Leona argued yesterday. The latter demanded to go with the former and Ellie to The Fourth Quadrant, and Mateo wasn’t having it. In the end, she had too many cards to play, what with him constantly abandoning her, and his indiscretion with Cassidy. She also had a point that she knew more about the cuffs than he or Ellie did. But then Sanaa caught wind of their plans, and argued that she was actually more proficient with them. They never did figure out how to co-opt Jupiter’s power, or so much as contact him, but she knew everything else about them. The next year, Ariadna asked where they were going, and there was even more arguing, because she didn’t understand how they were going to get into this new reality.

“Oh, that’s just this thing,” Ellie assured her.

“You’re not gonna dismiss me,” Ariadna said. “You know, don’t you? You know what I can do. How? I’ve worked really hard to curate a timeline where no one knows who I am, and what I’ve been through.”

“I’ve been doing the same,” Ellie explained. “Lots of people have told me lots of things without remembering it, because it never happened.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Sanaa jumped in. “You’ve been able to cross back to the main sequence this whole time?”

“What?” Ariadna asked. “No. I mean...I don’t think so. Dimensions and realities aren’t the same thing. Right?”

They all looked to Leona, who was surprisingly unsure of herself. “I don’t know everything about physics. Asking me that question is like asking me whether black holes exist. No one knows.”

“Black holes don’t exist?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Let’s get off of whatever this is,” Ellie said. “Madam Traversa, I’m sorry I wasn’t honest about why I was here, but as I understand it, my ability to adopt your ability does not affect you. It doesn’t drain you of your energy, or force you to be a part of it. These cuffs just copy and paste your code, so I can borrow it.”

“Why didn’t you tell us then?” Sanaa questioned.

“I wanted to do this alone, so no one else would be in danger.”

“How very noble of you,” came a voice from outside the circle. It was Jupiter.

“Thank you for coming, Your Grace,” Sanaa said to him jokingly.

“I’ve been listening to your conversations—”

“You have?” Mateo asked. “How?”

“There’s a microphone in each cuff, obviously,” Sanaa explained.

“Obviously,” Jupiter agreed.

“Are you gonna try to stop me?” Ellie asked Jupiter.

“Nope, but I have some conditions, one for each of you. Ariadna, after this mission, you must relinquish your cuffs, and give them to Mr. Bearimy.”

“No, I’m the one wearing J.B.’s cuffs,” Ellie reminded him.

“That doesn’t matter,” Jupiter contended. “I was not aware of the extent of The Escapologists’s time powers. I can’t have you people slipping back and forth at will. So Aria, you have to leave, and you can’t involve yourself with this team ever again. Ellie, if you do this, you have to remain on the Bearimy-Matic pattern. While she has to leave, you have to stay. You wanted the cuffs, you got ‘em.”

“I can do that,” Ellie promised.

Leona frowned. “El, are you sure? He hasn’t said how long we’re doing this.”

Ellie shrugged. “I ain’t got nothin’ but time. I’ll get back to my other friends later, and it’ll be fine.”

“Leona,” Jupiter went on, “you can’t go.”

“I’m sorry?” she asked, perturbed.

“If the others do this, you have to stay behind with J.B., so if something goes wrong, the two of you can rebuild the team.”

“That’s bullshi—”

“Leelee,” Sanaa stopped her. “Rule Number Fifteen.” It was a relatively new entry into Leona’s Rules of Time Travel. Don’t antagonize the antagonist. Mateo didn’t consider Jupiter an antagonist anymore, but the others could be forgiven for continuing to believe as much.

Leona bit her lip, and didn’t say anything else.

“Sanaa, that brings me to you,” Jupiter began. “The people living in the Fourth Quadrant have created a new society. They wouldn’t belong anywhere else. If you try to bring them into the main sequence, Beaver Haven will just find a way to lock them all up again, so the two realities don’t interfere with each other.”

“Cool,” Sanaa sassed. “What does that have to do with me? This is Ellie’s mission.”

“You’ll still be able to save them, but you’re going to solve the problem in a different way. In order to do this, you’ll need to extract someone else from the main sequence. Kismet has it that today is perfect for the side mission. This individual doesn’t need to be rescued, but you need their time power.”

“Again, cool,” Sanaa repeated, “and again, what does that have to do with me?”

“You specifically don’t like this person, but you’re going to have to ignore that, and extract them anyway.”

“Who?” Mateo asked, more curious than anything.

“Finally, Mateo.”

“Oh, no.”

Jupiter smirked. “You have the power to cancel this whole mission, and if you do, you’ll be able to get back to the Vearden mission instead.”

“You won’t let me save him if I do this?” Mateo guessed.

“No, you’ll still be able to try,” Jupiter swore, “but there is a new limitation. You can’t transfer his mind to a clone.”

“What?” Leona shouted. “That’s the whole point! We can’t get him out without changing the timeline unless we do it this way. A clone is the only option.”

“You can’t transfer his mind,” Jupiter said again. “I have no particular reason for this, but I’m trying to disincentivize you from going against my brother. You said it, Rule Number Fifteen; I’ll let you risk it, if you really want to, but it’s gonna cost you. Ariadna, you can save this whole group by overriding my power to force you to stay in this reality. Ellie, you have to put yourself in danger. I know you think it doesn’t matter, since you’re a time traveler, but the more you live in one time period, the greater the chances are that you’ll die. That’s just how life works: older people have had more time to die, so be thinking about whether you want to risk never getting back to Trinity. Leona, you hate feeling useless, so you’re sitting this one out. Sanaa, you hate people, so...that’s it, that’s how I’m discouraging you. And Mateo, you either fail to save the Fourth Quadrant, or you fail to save Vearden. Choose.”

“I choose to save both,” Mateo said.

“Mateo,” Leona almost scolded, “there’s no other way. We all watched him die. We have to transfer his consciousness, or what happened, happened.”

“Trust me,” Mateo asked of her. This was something he had been thinking about for a while now. While he didn’t think of Jupiter as an antagonist, that didn’t mean he wasn’t an obstacle. He worded the new proviso in a specific way, and it wasn’t clear if he did it on purpose, or if Mateo was just the smarter one here, who came up with a loophole all on his own. If the latter was true, then he had to keep it all a secret. From everyone. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

Jupiter seemed almost impressed, even though Mateo hadn’t done anything yet. “Very well. If no one objects, please ask the transporter tech to return the four of you to Earth. Once you arrive, the map will direct you to your next transition window. Good luck.” That being said, Jupiter disappeared through his own window.

They bid their farewells to Leona, then went back to Earth, where their Cassidy cuffs directed them to the Kansas City area. They ate a meal, and played a couple rounds of RPS-101 Plus on their tablets while they waited for the window. About three hours later, the field around them flickered, revealing the terraces of Crown Center. It quickly ended, and deposited one Missy Atterberry into this reality. She wasn’t scared, but curious about what had happened. She didn’t have much time to make some guesses, though. Sanaa stood up, and stared at her with a passionate hatred. This was her? This was the person Sanaa hated so much? Mateo didn’t know her all that well. She died quickly after they met in the pre-Hitler assassination timeline, and every memory he had of her since was from Leona’s perspective, because he didn’t exist for that period of time. She appeared just after he left, and was gone before he came back to life.

“You,” Sanaa growled.

“Oh, crap,” was all Missy could say.

Like a bull in a stadium, Sanaa leaned forward, and literally charged at her opponent. Were they actually going to get themselves into a fist fight? Surely not. And no, they didn’t. Missy raised her hand instinctually, and pushed Sanaa into a time bubble. She hovered there, nearly frozen in place, but still technically moving.

“Report,” Mateo said to Missy.

“I agreed to stay out of her personal timeline,” Missy defended. “She was born in 2203, and I promised to never go back to the 24th century, so if I’m here, it’s not my fault. Someone else brought me here.”

“It’s 2120,” Ariadna clarified.

“That’s impossible,” Missy argued. “She’s not supposed to travel through time. That’s why it’s been this easy to avoid her.”

“She broke that rule,” Mateo explained. “Why does she hate you so much?”

Before Missy could answer, Sanaa disappeared from inside the bubble, and reappeared just outside of it. The now empty bubble remained, however. “You can’t slow me down! I can escape any dimension now!” She tried to attack Missy, but didn’t get far before something caused her to collapse, and reach for her ears.

Out of the corner of his eye, Mateo could see Ellie’s lips wrapped around a whistle. No sound was coming out of it, so she must have been teleporting the waves directly into Sanaa’s ears. She opened her mouth, and let the whistle fall down to her chest. Then she spoke for all to hear. “You’re gonna talk first. You try anything like that again, and I’ll make you go deaf. You’ll wish you were still psychic, so at least you could talk to people again.”

Sanaa stood up, her face still contorted, but she nodded once to agree to Ellie’s demands.

“Now,” Mateo started to say, kind of sounding like he was trying to take charge. “I’m outnumbered here. I’m gonna sit on the sidelines, and let you ladies work it out. I’ll be nearby if you need anything, though.”

Ariadna stuck her index finger up, like she was trying to delicately summon the waiter. “I’ll come with.”

“Do you know what happened between those two?” he asked once they were away from the other three.

“I make a point of staying out of people’s business.”

“Yeah, why is that? You’re such a nice and even-tempered person, yet you seem just as isolated as Sanaa is. Do you not like people?”

“People think that about me. I mean, I live in a frickin’ pyramid, so I can’t blame them. The truth is that I...it’s hard to explain.”

“I’m patient, and understanding.”

“I know that about you. I’m just...better at observing than I am interacting with others. I don’t like to...” She sighed. “I don’t like to do things.”

“Things?”

“Anything. I don’t have any hobbies, and I don’t care for social situations. I don’t dislike people, but I don’t get anything out of conversing with them most of the time. I just wanna sit in my little corner of the world, listen to classical music, read trashy romance novels, and maybe watch a little TV. I’ve never had any interest in going out to restaurants, or seeing a rock concert, or visiting a museum.”

“Well, that’s not that weird,” Mateo said. “Extroverts think that sounds like a really sad life, but I get it. Not everyone’s days are filled with mystery and intrigue.”

Ariadna went on, “I remember when I was a kid, my mom tried to sign me up for some sports team. I don’t even recall which sport, but it wasn’t attached to my school, it was the county, or something. Either way, I told her I didn’t like to play sports, but she said that wasn’t the point. She said it was a great way to meet people. So I’m like, so what? What’s so great about meeting people? She shook her head, like I was nothing more than an insolent child, but that wasn’t a rhetorical question. I really wanted to know what intrinsic value there was in meeting new people.

“Well, she didn’t have an answer for me, because there isn’t a good one. Two full days later, she came back to me and claimed it was about building a network. I may be stranded at a movie theatre in a blizzard one night, and I’ll wish I had someone to call who liked me enough to give me a ride. I pointed out that this was a selfish reason to try to meet people, so the conversation ended there, and we never talked about it again. I was an adult before I realized on my own that I should have been looking at it the opposite way, and she should have framed it that way instead.”

“How’s that?” Mateo prompted.

She sighed again. “I should have made friends, so I could be available when someone else needed help in a blizzard.”

Mateo nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“Anyway, by then I was too used to being alone, and well...you can make friends as an adult unless, that is, you never did it as a kid. New adult friends expect you to already have friends, because they want to meet them! I just couldn’t make any connections. So I gave up, and went back to the way I’ve always liked it, sitting comfortably in my pyramid.”

“Are you going to go back when the Fourth Quadrant is over? The pyramids don’t exist in the Parallel, but I suppose that doesn’t matter to you anymore. You’re free to travel wherever you want.”

“Well, I don’t use my powers, because they feel just as pointless as skydiving or having sex with people. But I’m not sure if—”

“Okay,” Ellie interrupted them. “Sanaa and Missy have signed a temporary ceasefire, and Missy has agreed to help us with the Fourth Quadrant. I guess all that Jupiter will let us do is adjust their speed of time. That’s kind of besides the point, but...it’s what we got. Get some rest. Busy day tomorrow. Could be our last.”

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Glisnia: Body of Theseus (Part II)

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Consciousness is a tricky thing. For as long as computers have existed, people have been trying to draw comparisons between hard drives and human brains. The analogy certainly seems reasonable. Both of them store information, both allow that information to be accessed, and interfaced with. But there is a huge difference between how the two operate. Computers process information in binary code, through logic gates that really just boil down to on or off. Brains, on the other hand, are a chaotic mess of neurons and synapses. Memory is retrieved through associations and connections. Each one is unique. In the 21st century, many researchers believed they were capable of mapping a given human brain, and recreating the structure in a computer model. But it was nothing more than a copy, and a copy is not the original.

The science behind mind uploading was always a gray area, and the problem of mind transference felt insurmountable. If you were to attempt to upload yourself into a new substrate of some kind, there is a fifty percent chance that you wake up in the new substrate. There is thusly a fifty percent chance that you wake up to find yourself still in your old body, while some rando copy of you is waking up, thinking they’re the real version of you. It’s just a copy, though. That doesn’t mean this copy isn’t real, but it  hasn’t solved your problem of wanting to shed your old substrate, and become something different. It doesn’t matter how many times you try this, in each attempt, there is also a version of you that’s the copy, and a version of you that’s just failed in getting what they wanted. There will always be someone left behind. And the reason that is is because a human brain is not a computer. Files can’t be transferred to some other location, because thoughts and memories aren’t stored as files in the first place.

Experts came up with a somewhat viable workaround to this issue. If the mind wasn’t designed with files and folders, then it had to be converted. They called it Project Theseus. The Ship of Theseus is an old thought experiment, which questions whether a ship that’s had every part of it replaced over time is even the same ship as before. The rational answer seems to be...sort of. Mostly. We hope. Even though none of the parts were there in the beginning, some of the parts are older than others, and they were around to be connected to even older parts, and those older parts were there with parts that are older still. As long as they’re replaced gradually, each new part can claim to be a component of the whole, and that doesn’t change even when all its nearby parts are also replaced themselves.

Project Theseus took this interpretation of the experiment, and applied it to the human body. You replace a patient’s hands, and let them use them for a few weeks. Then you replace their arms. Then their feet, then their legs, then their internal organs. By not doing it all at once, each new part can integrate itself into the system, so that that system has a chance to consider it a constituent, rather than a foreign extension. After discovering that this seemed to work, the experts decided it was time for the next step. They now hoped to apply the Theseus technique to the central nervous system, though they recognized that it would be far more complicated. It was going to take a lot more research, heaps more patience, and an uncomfortable amount of trial and error.

The Theseus technique worked well for decades, but it wasn’t perfect. The time it took to complete the whole thing wasn’t much of a problem for most people. The average human being was going to live for a century without it, so even if they decided to become inorganic later on in life, there was usually plenty of time. There were some people, however, who couldn’t wait that long. Even after all this, there were still some medical conditions that science couldn’t fix, and brain uploading was the only solution. These people needed a completely new technique, which scientists started referring to neurosponging. An artificial brain is first synthesized, which perfectly resembles the patient’s brain. Electrical signals are then basically absorbed into the synth, just as they’re being lost from the original. It was like Theseus on a profoundly shorter timeline, but it alone did not solve the problem. Though artificial, this new brain was still organic, and still prone to degradation. Fortunately, it could be programmed to rewrite itself, until it exhibited an easier to organize filing system. Then that could be transferred to something more durable. This was the route that Hogarth Pudeyonavic and Hilde Unger chose to take.

In a matter of days, the process was complete, and they were both mechs. There were two primary types of mechs in the stellar neighborhood. Some were artificial intelligences, while others were transhumans who passed the singularity when they were upgraded so much that they became mechs. There were no terms to distinguish these two types, however, because internally speaking, a mech was a mech, and they treated each other as such. Hogarth and Hilde now belonged to Glisnian society, and would be allowed to contribute to the cause.

“Why are we keeping your former substrate?” The mech they met when they first returned was going to remain their associate. His full name was Mekiolenkidasola, though he sometimes just went by Lenkida.

The tech from Dardius was still human, and named Ethesh Beridze. “Yeah, your dead bodies are freaking me out.”

“They’re not dead,” Hogarth reminded him as Hilde was closing the drawer that contained her body. “They’re in stasis. In order to help the Glisnians crack superluminal travel, I need to study my old body. How did I do it? I explored the answers all I could while I was still alive, but now it’s time to perform a dissection, and really figure out how it worked.”

“You don’t understand why you were capable of traveling through time?” Lenkida questioned.

“It wasn’t so much something I was capable of as it was a medical condition that was thrust upon me. I’m not the best candidate for this research. If you want to study someone who can travel the stars, you’re gonna want The Trotter. He’s not here, however, and my body is all we have right now. Still, I once jumped here from another universe, so this should at least give us a start.”

“There are other universes?” Lenkida wasn’t shocked, but he was surprised. It was practically impossible to shock anyone in the 25th century.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Wait, why do we need your body at all, if we’re just going to build more Nexus replicas?”

“I’ll be studying the replicas too,” Hogarth explained, “but I don’t want to just make more of them, not after what I’ve learned. I’ll go over my reasons later.”

“What do you need?” Lenkida offered.

Hogarth slid her metallic fingers over her old fleshy arm. “I need you to find me an assistant. Someone who was once human, understands both human physiology, and the human condition. Obviously they need to be discreet. I’ll build you a resource extractor, but not a stargate network. That’s my requirement.”

“Understood,” Lenkida said. “Let me go find you some candidates.”

“I’ll come with,” Ethesh asked.

While they were off doing that, Hogarth and Hilde took some time to get used to their new bodies. They chose a humanoid design, with a synthetic skin overlaid. It probably wasn’t too terribly common, but it wasn’t unheard of either. Many of the formerly organic mechs preferred this, because it made them look as they always did. Most eventually shed this facade, however, and just went with the robot look, because skin didn’t serve a utilitarian purpose, and faces only helped in certain social settings. The two most recent mechs weren’t going to make any rash decisions in that regard.

“How does it feel?” Hilde asked.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Hogarth said. “We’re in the same boat.”

“Not really,” Hilde contended. “You were the one with a time affliction. I haven’t lost anything I’ll miss, but your ability got you out of a lot of sticky situations, even if you weren’t in control of it. How many times did you almost die, only to be spirited away at the very less microsecond?”

“I don’t need to worry about that anymore,” Hogarth assured her. “My consciousness is constantly being backed up to eleven locations.”

“Still,” Hilde went on, it was a part of you, and now it’s gone forever.”

Hogarth smirked, and opened the drawer where Hilde’s body was resting in stasis. “Is it? Who says I can’t just jump back in whenever I want? Who says you can’t do the same?”

“Mech law—”

“Mech law can suck it. I haven’t ever followed anyone else’s rules, and I’m certainly not going to start now. I’ll do what I promised, and get them the resources they need to complete their matrioshka body. I may not do it the way they want it, and they’re just gonna have to accept that.”

“What didn’t you want to say when Lenkida and Ethesh were here? Why aren’t we just using the Nexus replica?”

“I cannot allow anyone the ability to travel faster-than-light. We’ve seen what humans do when they get a taste of a new world. They do whatever it is they want with it.”

“They’re mechs, though.” Hilde argued.

“Same same, but different. Vonearthans all come from the same place. Why, we’ve already seen it. Glinsia was a planet, with a surface, and a core, and satellites. They destroyed it, which is fine; there wasn’t anything living on it, but eating up resources is what people do. I have to be the one to control what they take, and where they take it from. I’ve seen too much not to.”

“What happened to you? When we jumped here from Dardius, you were on the floor, and you weren’t okay. Did you see something?”

Hogarth simulated a sigh. It felt strange, since she wasn’t breathing, and didn’t even possess any mechanism to pump or transmit air. She just let out a sound that sort of sounded like breath. “That jump is what destroyed, and will destroy, the Nexa. My affliction happened one more time, and combined with the transport. When that happened, it rippled all throughout spacetime. Every Nexus that’s ever been mysteriously destroyed, and each one we hear of from now on, will have been caused by what I did.”

“So what?”

“Huh?”

“So what, Hogarth, who cares? It’s like you said, vonearthans abuse the powers they receive. They don’t need the replicas, and the time travelers don’t need them either. No one needs them. They’re just more convenient.”

You don’t understand. I didn’t just destroy the replica network. I destroyed the entire thing. The explosion reached across to the originating universe, and is destroying all of those too.”

“Yeah, that sucks,” Hilde agreed, “but they’ll be okay. Or they won’t. Maybe people will die from that, or maybe people will survive because of it. Maybe a villainous force is on its way to invade an innocent planet, and you saved those people because the villains weren’t able to reach them. You keep using the word affliction, but you also keep trying to blame yourself for it. This isn’t something you’ve done, it’s something that happened to you, and in this case, it happens to have impacted other people. Again, it sucks, but you didn’t really do it. We have to find a way to move past this, because I know you, and you’ll brood for years. If the only solution is I hack into your episodic memory files, and erase the issue, I’ll do it.”

“I don’t want to forget anything,” Hilde. “My memory is everything.”

“Well, I guess therapy is your only other option. We’ll do that instead.”

“Did you just haggle me?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She shook her head, happy to be with someone who understood her. “I should get to work.”

“What are you planning? What will studying your organic body do for us? You use the word extraction.”

“I don’t know yet, but if I learn enough about how I was able to jump across dimensions, I might be able to come up with a new solution. I don’t like the word extraction, now that I’ve thought about it. I believe I would call it...time siphoning.”

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Microstory 1450: Ladytown

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After the fourth fake election process, people were really starting to wise up that their voices weren’t counting for all that much. Law after law was being passed, limiting women’s rights more and more. Nobody wanted to try for another revolution, but things were definitely not going to get better without one. It seemed that the only option was to secede from the union, and break the algebra apart once more. One might think this movement would be struck down swiftly and definitively, but Republican loyalists still only ever wanted to solve their problems through deception, spin, and other forms of strategery. The day they instigated war was the day they lost the approval of all the civilians who were at least happy that their lives were safe and secure. Many women were starting to get used to the new system, and didn’t complain anymore, because the more they opposed the rules, the worse those rules became, and the harder things got for those who didn’t support them. The female spirit could not be crushed, though, and there were still plenty of people who did not want to live under the man’s thumb. They didn’t want to revolt either; they just wanted to live their lives in peace. Perhaps the only way to do that would be to strike out on their own. They worked slowly, just as the phallocratic movement started way back during the Interstitial Chaos. They quietly built support, and gained momentum. They followed all the rules, and pleaded their cases in the appropriate ways. The only women working towards this goal had support from their husbands, leaving the ones without it with their mouths shut, only able to hope this would somehow also help them. Still, the Republicans made no attempt to shut them all down, because they did not want public opinion to sway out of their favor. In fact, they agreed to the secessionists’ pleas, but of course, they had some conditions. 

The first and most important condition was that the settlers were not to interfere with the affairs of Aljabara, nor make any attempt to war with them, or steal resources. Fine, they didn’t want to have anything to do with the city anymore anyway. Secondly, not only did some men have to agree to go to the settlement with them, but there had to be a certain ratio of interested people, according to gender. Well, that made things a little more difficult, but not impossible. Not every man’s life was super great under this regime, and many of them saw the ratio as beneficial to them. Lots of daughters who did not yet have husbands wanted to go, which sons without wives saw as a numbers advantage. The one condition that made it clear that the administration had less than no respect for women was that the government would be allowed to name this new settlement for them. They decided to call it Ladytown, principally because of how stupid it sounded. That wasn’t their only reason, though. By now, misogyny was ingrained in society as the way things were. All children alive at this point had grown up under these rules, and if they were ever told how civilization once worked, they possessed no context, and couldn’t fathom it. It sucked to be born a girl, and boys were aware of this fact, unlike on Earth, where many guys were oblivious to their own privilege. The government’s requirement that some men sign up to go with, in the government’s eyes, was contradictory to the name. What man would want to live in a place called Ladytown? Well, maybe the older ones would if they had fewer prejudices. They added an age mandate, which required there be a certain number of younger men, in order to combat the idea further, but as explained, this wasn’t too much of a problem either, since these younger men hoped to find wives, and some were secretly okay being with a bunch of independent women, in a settlement called Ladytown, without the comforts and freedoms they could find in Aljabara. In 2117, Ladytown was founded on the other side of Watershed. They complied with all conditions, and didn’t make trouble. They didn’t last forever, though.

Microstory 1449: Gender Laws

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Under the Republic on Durus, women were considered untrustworthy. Later on, laws will be passed to allow a woman to earn merit points for her loyalty, and enjoy some extra freedoms, but these freedoms will never include full autonomy. They will never be able to vote, and they certainly could never be allowed to hold public office. They were allowed to work certain jobs, but only under heavy supervision, and with responsibilities that didn’t result in too much damage when they inevitably made mistakes. But what they had not considered until around 2109 was the definition of woman. As bad as the Durune Republicans were, they didn’t see themselves as sexist, homophobic, or transphobic. Their distrust of women was rooted in something completely different from the systemic sexism that pervaded Earthan history. They cited very specific examples of particular women who caused problems for society. It still wasn’t right, but it was at least based on psychology and culture, rather than physiology. At least that was how they justified their position. That led to some questions, however, that no one had had time to think about until the system was fully established. It was clear that two men were totally free to be in a relationship together, but what about two women? Well, lesbianism in itself wasn’t wrong, but now there was a lack of male influence. They definitely couldn’t raise children, because..same problem. New laws had to be passed under the third administration that covered these topics. Lesbian relationships still required male supervision, so a man had to be included to some capacity. This man was obviously not entitled to sex from either one of them, but as far as household duties and child rearing were concerned, he would be in charge. After this was settled, there were more questions on gender that needed to be answered.

Because of the prevalence of time powers—and the absence of help from Earth—technology developed on its own unique path. It was a little steampunk, and a little sword fantasy, and even a little bit space western. They still had doctors, but the medical facilities were severely underresourced. About the only thing they excelled in was the dissemination of theoretical knowledge. The library came through completely intact, which allowed anyone to learn just about anything they wanted. In fact, throughout all of history on this planet, no leader made any attempt to stifle the pursuit of an education. Not even Smith tried to stop people from getting smarter. Unfortunately, this wasn’t enough, because reading about performing a complex surgery was a lot different than having the experience to do it safely. The only surgeries that were being done were the essential ones, because if something went wrong, the patient was likely going to die anyway, so at least someone tried. Sex reassignment surgery did not fall into this category. No one had the expertise required to complete a transformation, and they certainly didn’t have the experience. The few doctors with official credentials who made it through the Deathfall didn’t even know how to do it, and either way, they died decades ago. Technology was indeed progressing, but it was happening at a snail’s pace compared to where they would be if they were still on Earth. Still, as far as the Republicans were concerned, an individual had the right to identify as any gender they wanted. This didn’t mean every woman’s problems were solved. According to the Republic’s main tenets, women were not trustworthy. It didn’t matter if they were born with female parts, or not. So someone born a girl could not just claim to be a man when he got older, and suddenly his life was as easy as it was for other men. People generally agreed to use whatever pronouns he needed, but he still did not enjoy the upper class life. On the other hand, if a man decided to start identifying as a woman, she would lose all masculine advantages and entitlements, so there was very little incentive to transform in that direction. Still, it happened, when a woman-on-the-inside just couldn’t take behaving like someone she wasn’t, even though it meant losing a lot of privileges. There were more tweaks to gender laws to be ironed out over time, but this was the start.

Microstory 1448: Ecrin’s Return

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When the final battles of the war against the time monsters began, the source mages retreated into their special hidden dimension. They took with them nearly a hundred and fifty people, who could theoretically restart the population, assuming the rest of the humans on Durus were killed in the attacks. It would be a long time before anyone knew what happened to these people, because only one of them returned to the main dimension. Her name was Ecrin Cabral, and she was one of the first town mages ever. She protected Orabela Vinci when the latter chose not to be proverted to an older age. In reward for this, Orabela gifted Ecrin with the power of agelessness. So she was eighty-nine years old when she returned to the main dimension in the year 2101, but she still looked as she did when she was seventeen. She was horrified to find the world she once loved had been destroyed, and not by the war, but by the survivors. As a woman, as a mage, and as a human being with a conscience, she did not feel like she could stand by, and let things go any further. So she fought. She used the skills she learned over the course of six decades to fight against the establishment, pretty much all by herself. She tried to take the leaders down, and open up people’s eyes to the damage they were doing to civilization. Unfortunately, people had already made similar attempts before, and they had always failed. She didn’t really have anything that the other rebels didn’t. The authorities snatched her up, and stuck her in a room, so they could ask her where she had been for the last eleven years. Well, she wouldn’t tell them anything. No matter who asked, or how they asked, she literally remained silent. She would not tell anyone what happened to the source mages, or where they were now. The interrogators couldn’t even be sure that she knew the answers to their questions. They kept her alive for her time power, and because she was useful in many other ways.

They wanted Ecrin to propagate her species. It was already clear that the children of former mages had powers of their own. These powers were weak, however, and often not all that helpful, which was why this new class of people was called mage remnants. Ecrin never lost her powers, however, so if she had children, the assumption was that they would be full mages in their own right, and could bring Durus back to its former glory. At this point in history, there were a lot of things that men were allowed to do to control the women around them, but rape wasn’t one of them...yet. Ecrin didn’t want to bear children for anyone, and no one was going to make her. So they locked her up in a very uncomfortable cell, and every single day, someone would come back, and ask her if she changed her mind. She never did. She took the torture, and never budged. The world had changed so much while she was gone, though, and there was no reason for Ecrin to believe they would magically get better while she was in hock. She feared the government would only get worse, and policymakers would make her do what they wanted. There were a few options. They could keep rape illegal, but not enforce it strongly enough, or deter it. They could twist the wording of the laws, so that their way of forcing her to have children couldn’t be construed as rape at all, but something else. Or they could simply make rape legal, or legal under certain circumstances. She couldn’t take the chance that any of these would end up happening, so she took dramatic action. Luckily, her doctor was sympathetic, so he agreed to a medical procedure that the government wouldn’t like. He performed a tubal ligation, which served to sterilize Ecrin’s body, so that she couldn’t have children anymore, even if she wanted to. This didn’t guarantee that she wouldn’t be raped—in fact, she figured the chances were high someone would do that to her as punishment—but it did prevent her oppressors from getting what they wanted. The truth was, had the world turned out differently after the war, she might have considered settling down, and starting a family. But she couldn’t do it if it benefited a misogynistic government, or really anyone but herself. They moved Ecrin to a slightly more comfortable cell, right next to her doctor. She wasn’t released until 2161, when the Republic finally came crashing down.