Glisnia: The Last Gate (Part XI)

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To practice using her time power, Hogarth first took Jupiter back to where he belonged in the 21st century. She didn’t have to be extremely accurate with her temporal navigation, because he was flexible, but she managed to land on the target moment anyway. This gave her a better understanding of how to do it, and when it came time to deliver Ambrose Richardson to his home universe, she was up to the task. While the team didn’t need either of them to complete the matrioshka body, had they not shown up, Hogarth would never have found the solution she was looking for. With this new plan, she would be able to take a little bit of matter from quadrillions and quadrillions of different places, all over the universe. Each time she connected with something, or someone, it would act as a relay point, so she wouldn’t have very far to go before reaching the next point. The more things she connected with, the stronger she would become, and the farther out she would be able to reach through the voids. She could take thousands of molecules from smaller objects, and billions from others, without causing even the least bit of disturbance in what she left behind. The structural integrity of these objects would remain perfectly fine, but once combined, these molecules would be invaluable towards their goals. She could do this, as long as she had help.

Ethesh used his technical know-how to build her a machine, and together, they refined it. It was a chamber inside a room that was to be connected to every single system in the matrioshka brain. From here, they could control mirror angle, energy output, even the hallway lights; everything. It only took the team three weeks to convince the Glisnians to give them access to all of these things, which they didn’t have to do. Those separate systems were compartmentalized for a reason, because when together, they would be too easy to exploit. This put the entire population in danger. They had no reason to believe anyone would want to sabotage Glisnia, but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. Of course, very few people were allowed in the room, and the only reason Hilde was one of them was because she was, to be honest, too incompetent to be of any threat to them. Beyond the walls, the greatest security contingency ever protected the room from any external influence, and they used an interesting tactic.

Most security plans assumed one thing; that a given set of people would have a certain level of access to the inside, and as long as only those people were accepted, everything would be fine. The problem with that was time. The longer something existed, the more chances a nefarious entity had to interfere with it, and that interference often started through some weakness in the population. A receptionist, for example, might have an ill father, who needed certain expensive medicine to survive. All an intruder would have to do was pay for that medication, and the receptionist would let them past the badged area. There were no receptionists on Glisnia, but the analogy held. The best way, they figured, to prevent any weak spots in the security system, was for it to be in constant flux. Robot A will only be on the front lines for an hour, before it’s removed, and replaced by Robot B. Robot B will last a day and a half before Robot C comes along, and to keep would-be intruders on their toes, it will only be around for seven minutes, before it’s forced to make way for Robot D.

If someone wanted to hack one of these robots to let them in, they wouldn’t know how long they had before it became useless anyway, forcing them to start over with something else. Access codes, data transference, and other vulnerabilities followed the same model by constantly shifting. The most vital component of this was secrecy. The robots and mechs they used to guard the room had absolutely no clue what was in it, and the people of Glisnia predominantly didn’t even know this was happening at all. Some weren’t even cognizant of the fact that the matrioshka body was in the plans in the first place. To coordinate, they needed a single person with the brain capacity to handle the randomized decision gates. Mekiolenkidasola was that someone. Lenkida, Hogarth, Hilde, Ethesh, and Crimson would be the only people ever in the room. They would not leave, and literally no one else would be allowed in, until the job was done. Once it was, the room would be completely destroyed, and never rebuilt.

They lived there for a month, the mechs surviving on an isolated miniature fusion power source, and the humans on mostly nonperishable food. They didn’t want anyone to need any supplies or other resources from the outside. They had all the tools they required to make sure Ethesh’ machine operated correctly, and that Hogarth would be able to run it. After countless simulations, Hogarth was ready to take the penultimate step. She knew she had access to all the energy in the bulkverse, but she still needed to reach out to Aitchia once more, to make sure he was cool with it, and to help, if necessary.

Now that she was organic again, Hogarth couldn’t just scan the QR code on the back of the Book of Hogarth with her eyes. This was something they forgot to ask for before the room was sealed, but that was okay. Ethesh had everything he needed to build a scanner from scratch. After all this, that was probably the least difficult thing they had to do in here.

“You’re back.”

“Is that okay?”

“Of course,” Aitchai assured her. “The bulkverse belongs to everyone, I just keep it running.”

“I was gonna ask you for permission, or a favor, or...forgiveness, depending.”

He grinned. “What do you need?”

“Oh, not much,” Hogarth began, worried how he would react. “Just access to all the energy in the entire universe.”

“Done.”

“Really? You don’t even wanna know what it’s for?”

He shrugged. “It’s just one universe. It would be like if I asked you for one of your atoms.”

“That’s kind of what I’m trying to do.” Hogarth then went about telling him their plan to extract miniscule amounts of matter from everywhere, but not too much from any one place.

“Diversify!” Aitchai exclaimed. “My finance guy always recommends I do that,” he joked.

“So, you’re cool with this?”

“I don’t see any problem with it. You’re a bookmaker, you have all you need to do what you need to do. I wouldn’t go getting a big head about it, or anything, but I’m happy for ya.”

Hogarth thanked him, and prepared to leave, but stopped. “Just one more thing. It’s...I don’t know if it’s big or not. I’m not a hundred percent certain that my friends are a hundred percent certain that you exist.”

“You want proof,” he guessed.

“Have you ever needed to do that before?”

“Tell ya what, you go back to them, and tell ‘em to look out the window.”

“Which one?”

“Doesn’t matter, I’ll know. While they’re watchin’, clap your hands once. That’ll be my signal.”

“I appreciate this; the signal, and everything.”

“It is a joy.” He smiled like a loving father.

“He wants us to watch the window?” Hilde asked.

“The stars, I believe,” Hogarth assumed.

They didn’t budge.

“What’s the worst that can happen? You’re looking out a window. Or...a viewscreen.”

Crimson simulated a sigh, and switched on the screen.

“This is realtime, right?” Hogarth confirmed. Their silence answered the question, so she clapped her hands, as instructed. A beam of light shot out from one of the stars, and made its way down to another star. A second beam then came out of the first star, and made its way to a series of other stars, eventually forming a curve, which stopped back at the second star. The lines and curves continued from left to right, until a complete imperative formed, reading DON’T PANIC.

“Holy shit,” Ethesh exhaled.

“Is this authentic?” Crimson questioned.

Lenkida walked over to a nondescript panel on the wall. He opened it up, and took out what looked like a red landline phone. He held it to his ear. “Did others just see that?” He waited for a response. “Has it been authenticated?” He eyed Hogarth as he listened to whoever was on the other end of the line. “Well, it was proof, in case anyone doubted that we could do what we said we would do. I know we had a protocol for beginning the procedure, but I believe this will suffice? Please open the last gate.” He stayed on the phone for another moment before hanging up, and casually punching the phone with his fist so hard that it shattered. He looked over at the team. “We’re a go.”

After completing the launch sequence, Hogarth closed her eyes, and said a prayer, not to god, but to Aitchai, who could make or break this whole project. When she was ready, she nodded to Ethesh, who activated the machine, and gave her access to the whole matrioshka brain. She didn’t need it to build a body, but things could go awry if the brain and body weren’t perfectly compatible. Having every qubit of data that the network was storing—about itself, about everything—was vital in completing this mission properly. It would allow her to find the right matter from the right places, and install them at the right spots, to create a seamless transition from head, to shoulders, to knees, and toes. She could see it all, it was glorious, and it was exactly what she needed.

She took a chunk out of her own body to start, then moved on to stealing a little bit from Hilde, and then from everyone else in the room. Then she continued with every independent entity on the shells, and a little extraneous matter from the shells themselves. She took some from the star, and the nearest stars, and their orbitals, and then from Sol, and the rest of the stellar neighborhood. And still, it was impossible to detect that the matrioshka was any larger than it was before. She needed more, she needed a shit ton more. No, she needed a shit ton of a shit ton more, and then she needed to take that to the power of a shit ton. Every star in the galaxy, every planet, every moon, every asteroid, every meteor, every comet, Andromeda, Triangulum, beyond; she took from all of them, and only then did they notice any progress. She reached out farther, to the rest of the cluster, and the supercluster, and the hypercluster, and the great wall; all across the observable universe, and then the rest. Before a man in Tokyo could finish his morning coffee, it was done. It was all done. The matrioshka body was complete. It had arms, legs, a torso, a behind, and even protrusions that resembled breasts. That’s right, the matrioshka was a woman, which made the most sense since the word meant mother.

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Microstory 1495: Time Rocks

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There was only one person left with powers in 2234. Everyone else had completely lost any ability to manipulate time in any way. Had Durus the medical technology necessary to study these former paramounts, they might have learned whether their powers were gone forever, or if they just didn’t have the temporal energy necessary to use them. The world was emotionally troubled. Fearing the worst, engineers expanded the bunker clusters, and moved everyone underground. Though the sun was still shining, and the wind turbines still turning, trying to remain on the surface was just not worth the risk. Only a few technicians went out daily to make sure these perfectly normal power generators were still fully operational. And only they were left outside when the sun blinked out of existence. Calluna—named after Missy Calluna Atterberry, who was a historical figure from the interstellar ship, The Elizabeth Warren—didn’t disappear completely, but it was no longer useful to the people of Durus. The old woman who still possessed a modicum of temporal energy used it one last time to explain what had happened. It was the Time Crevice. When a group of apporters banished a kilometer wide patch of land from the surface of the planet to get rid of the crevice, they didn’t give much thought to what was going to happen to it. It didn’t seem like it was their problem anymore, and they didn’t think they would have to deal with it ever again. The instantaneous journey from Durus to outer space took a toll on the land, and broke it apart. These parts were still on the same trajectory, however, so they stuck pretty close to each other. Most of it didn’t have any special temporal properties at all; they just wanted to make sure they got the whole thing. They ended up calling the central structure the Time Rocks, for they were the ones responsible for messing with the passage of time inside the crevice. Evidently, even as a bunch of rocks, they were powerful enough to place the whole sun into a temporal bubble, and since it was stuck in this bubble, light could not escape fast enough to shine on Durus anymore. They were smart to move underground, because they would not have survived for long above.

It was absurd that something smaller than a house could have any impact on something as massive as a star. Experts hypothesized that there was more temporal energy stored in those rocks than anyone realized, or that it was channeling it from somewhere else. Then it dawned on them. They didn’t know how, or why, but that was finally the answer they were looking for to the question about their own time powers and time tech. Somehow, as the Time Rocks were hurtling through space, they were also absorbing temporal energy from all of Durus. The rocks were draining people of their powers, and stripping away everything that allowed the Durune to manipulate spacetime. All that energy, concentrated into one tiny spot, was like setting an armed nuclear bomb next to a lamp post. The lamp post never stood a chance. The energy exploded, overtook Calluna, and trapped it in time. Now remember that it was still giving off light, but it was doing it at an incredibly slow pace, and that just wasn’t enough to keep the planet warm. The world didn’t end, but even if Calluna escaped eventually, it would do the Durune no good. The resulting explosion sent a gravitational wave towards Durus, which was strong enough to knock it out of orbit, and cause durusquakes all over, but not enough to destroy the bunkers, which were designed to withstand heavy seismic activity. The remains of Aljabara above collapsed, though, as did most structures still standing after all this time. So now their relationship with 70 Ophiuchi was all but over. It would seem that Durus, or some other entity, did not want it to be anything more than a rogue planet. It would take them a long time to escape interplanetary space, but there was nothing they could do to stop it. They had no temporal energy, very little electricity in the reserves, and not a lot of time to repair the turbines. Fortunately, once they did make those repairs, they were up and running again. Through all this, Durus lived up to its name, and endured. Some suggested they change the government back from the Solar Democratic Republic, but most agreed it didn’t really matter right now. They had to focus on survival, and hope that something about their situation changed eventually.

Microstory 1494: Shutting the Stable Door

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The evidence was piling up that there was nothing the Durune could do to stave off their eventual total loss of temporal energy. By 2230, most people with powers had already lost them, and the rest could only use them sporadically and unpredictably. Time tech wasn’t reliable enough to be worth it either. There was no more teleportation, no more filter portaling, no more transdimensional living spaces. Aljabara was the only city on the planet that had built enough regular renewable energy to continue operating sans temporal manipulation. It was looking like a world without time powers was where they were headed, so everyone had to once again consolidate into one place. The outposts and distant settlements were entirely abandoned as everyone literally converged upon the Capital. They weren’t all crammed together, however. The most efficient living spaces available today were constructed underground. They were protected from the elements, easier to keep warm, and residents were able to spread out more without wasting energy, or taking as many resources as would be required for the same real estate above ground. Technology wasn’t nearly as advanced as it was on Earth right now, but engineers had learned enough to build these connected bunkers. They didn’t know what was going to happen to the world, but it was the best way to survive a number of disaster scenarios. Wind. Wind was their best friend, because without sun, without geothermal power, without fusion, without crazy temporal energy—wind would remain a constant. If they didn’t have wind anymore, it was because they didn’t have a planet, and there wasn’t really anything they could do about that anyway, because they weren’t anywhere near advanced enough to build exodus ships. They would just die, and that would be it. A normal fledgling world would be okay without any energy, but those all had host stars, and were at a quite minimal threat of losing them. At this point, there were one and a half million people, so the only way they were going to make it is if they fixed anything and everything that was wrong with their planet. People were still dying; their agelessness having long been stolen from them, presumably by the suns of 70 Ophiuchi. They still weren’t sure whether real sunlight was detrimental to their way of life, or if there was something particular about these stars. It didn’t really matter in the end, of course. They had no way of moving off to another star system, and even if they could, they weren’t confident about being able to survive the trip, even with their trusty wind turbines. A lot of things were capable of wiping them out while they were here, but it would be so much worse in interstellar space. At least they were still able to utilize solar panels while they were orbiting Ophiuchi A, which they had since named Calluna. Things were getting really rough, and everyone was making sacrifices. They would be nowhere, however, without the hard work of their ancestors, who fought for equality and justice. Without them, they would still probably be suffering the same problems, but they would not be armed with the tools necessary to combat them. They were a unified peoples now, and that was going to get them through this, even if it wouldn’t be very easy.

Microstory 1493: Just a Circle

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It is perfectly normal for a human being to be able to lift a fifty pound rock. They have the fingers and hands to grasp onto it, the arms to attach them to the body, the muscles to make it all move, and the brain to exert its will upon everything. Every time this person lifts that rock, however, it will require energy. That energy has to come from somewhere, and it does in this example through respiration, and nutritional consumption. As much work as one wants to get done must be completed with the exact amount of corresponding energy. There are different forms of energy, of course—some more efficient than others—but there is no such thing as magic. Temporal powers operate the same way; without magic. A paramount, or whathaveyou, will be capable of performing amazing feats by manipulating time and space, and they will do this by tapping into a kind of physics that most people don’t even know about. But these abilities only account for the talent, not for the energy required to complete any given task. Having the intelligence and skill to lift a rock is not the same thing as actually lifting it. Regular humans use adenosine triphosphate to do work, and empowered people use temporal energy...and also ATP, because they too are alive. No one knows where temporal energy comes from, but scientists assume that it replenishes itself by the passage of time. They don’t know why it would do this, or why certain people are able to harness it; it just always seems to be there, and available. For centuries, the people of Durus took temporal energy for granted, and allowed it to run their lives. It was the basis for their spiritual beliefs, their sociopolitical organization, and their technology. So when this energy stopped replenishing itself as it normally always did, people didn’t know what to do. They knew things needed to change, but how.

Why was the temporal energy disappearing? Were they using too much of it too quickly, or were they only ever allotted a certain amount, and they were now approaching that limit? Everyone hoped that the first hypothesis was the truth. If they never got their powers back, who knew how the world would end up. If they could lessen or stop their dependency on it, however, perhaps they would eventually get back to normal levels, and then they would start being smarter about how they used it. They had already started working on ways to lower their expenditure, by heavily regulating powers and tech, using them only in the most dire of circumstances. The biggest drain on this energy, however, came from their solar orbit. Keeping a planet on a very unnatural path through space, as you can imagine, takes a lot of work. Unfortunately, it wasn’t easy to just stop doing this. If they simply let go, they would be shot off into space, or worse, collide with another celestial object. No, they had to wait for the perfect time, and this came in the year 2226, as they were entering their third eleven-year full orbit. They needed to make one last push to alter their course. They would abandon their figure-eight, and begin a regular orbit around Ophiuchi A. It wasn’t beautiful, magical, or poetic, but there was nothing wrong with a circle. Every planet in the universe that orbits a host star or stars does so in a circular manner, be it highly elliptical, or otherwise. The job was the most difficult thing they had ever done, because the last time they entered an orbit, they had a lot more energy. Now, they not only had less, but they had to hold onto at least a little bit in order to maintain their atmosphere afterwards. That was one thing that they weren’t sure they would ever be able to fix without powers or time tech. They were victorious in their latest battle against annihilation, but that didn’t mean the war was over. It would turn out to be too little too late, and kind of like shutting the stable door after the horse had escaped, found a new home in a new city, foaled offspring, and died peacefully on a Tuesday.

Microstory 1492: Death of an Immortal

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Life on Durus only got worse after the realization that no more paramounts were being born. People’s time powers started becoming less intense, and less reliable. By 2224, they were in the middle of their second orbital pattern in the 70 Ophiuchi system, and people were beginning to feel like they ought to be setting off for a new home. Perhaps another star system would be kinder to them, or maybe it was best to just not be orbiting a host star at all, and survive on what temporal manipulation abilities they still had left. Unfortunately, this was proving to be nearly, if not completely, impossible. Even collectively, the Durune were not strong enough to alter the planet’s pattern. It was one thing to stay as they were, but to try to move off in some other direction just wasn’t in the cards for them anymore. They tried to contact someone from the past to help, but their powers weren’t strong enough for that either. Something had to be done to drastically change everything about their lives, and they would vote for these contingencies during the 2225 round of elections. The experts writing up these proposals needed time to work on them anyway. Until then, a worldwide mandate went out, limiting people’s ability to manipulate time and space. Teleportation would be used only in emergencies, spatial locks were replaced with regular physical locks, speed school and other time bubbles were outright banned. All temporal energy had to be conserved, in order to have enough to maintain their world’s homeostasis. If they flew back off into interstellar space now, they wouldn’t be able to protect themselves against cosmic radiation, and the vacuum. For some, that didn’t matter anymore, because there was one essential time power that stopped working, even without the government dictating it. Based on one case, it would seem that they were no longer ageless.

Agelessness was a right that every citizen of Durus enjoyed, whether they were rich, poor, smart, or not so smart. It didn’t matter whether they contributed positively to society, or not. If they were alive, they deserved to stay alive forever. By whatever interference the Ophiuchi stars were giving off, people started aging again, and this all came to its inevitable conclusion when one of their older immortals passed away from age-related diseases. Of course, no time power was capable of eradicating a disease—congenital, or otherwise—but their youth made it a lot easier to treat just about anything without worrying about old age making them more susceptible. Now that that was gone, nothing was stopping the Durune from being wiped out. Almost literally everyone attended the first funeral in decades. The only people not there had to maintain everyone’s survival in some way. It was a frightening day more than a sad one. This wasn’t to say that no one cared about this individual, or that no one was in mourning, but it was becoming clear that everyone was doomed. If death was back on the table, their whole society could collapse. If they wanted to survive, physically as well as socially, they were going to have to change a lot more about themselves than they ever thought they would, and they would have to do it very soon. While the right people were working on a way out of this mess, others were making laws and policies to adapt to the ever-changing present, and to prepare for every eventuality conceivable. Through this, things continued to get worse, but the Durune continued to endure at pace. It was going to take a lot more than a little wrinkly skin to get them down. Unfortunately, fate did indeed have more in store for them, and their success was not assured.

Microstory 1491: Power Failure

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The alarmists who feared that the destruction of The Abyss meant the ultimate destruction of all time powers found some validation years later when it became apparent that no more paramounts were being born. A child with time powers will generally discover their abilities by the time they reach adulthood. Depending on what it is, they may demonstrate it during infancy, or it may not happen until puberty, but rarely does it wait until their twenties. The last known paramount was born sixteen years ago, just before Durus finally managed to reach its destination in the 70 Ophiuchi star system. It would seem that these suns were having a greater impact on the perception and usage of time than just the Abyss. That was apparently only the first noticeable change. As of now, the birth of no new people with time powers was the only other thing that had changed about their world, but that didn’t mean it would stay that way forever. Some people worried that this was only the beginning, that they would eventually lose all time-based privileges. After all, what exactly was the difference between a person with time powers, and a machine that could manipulate time? Biology? Yeah, maybe. But the sunlight had already had an effect on something nonbiological, so there was a strong chance that all nonlinear time, and temporal manipulation, would go away eventually. On Earth, that would be totally okay. Time powers were a perk, but not essential. They were literally vital to the people of Durus, however. They kept a stable atmosphere, and a rotating planet, and they allowed it to orbit the suns in a particular pattern. Even if the scientists hadn’t chosen to use an unnatural figure eight pattern, they would have needed these powers and technologies in order to enter an orbit at all. Otherwise, they would have either passed the stars on by, or collided with one of them. If a celestial body isn’t on the right path to orbit a different celestial body of greater mass, then it won’t. Things were really getting serious now, and it was time to truly focus on finding regular technological solutions to terrible eventualities. It wasn’t impossible, but it would be immensely difficult. They could survive on a rogue world, likely by retreating underground, but they would have to progress in a way that they never had before. And the real problem was they didn’t know if they had time to develop enough to accomplish this. They had already gotten started, but knowing what they knew now about the lack of young paramounts, the eleventh hour would forever be their resting state.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, July 13, 2128

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Angela Marie Walton was born in 1784 to a wealthy slaveowner. He wasn’t the cruelest person in the world, but he did own people, and that was wrong in every time period. Angela grew up fascinated by the black people who worked for the family. She liked to watch them, not to remind herself that she was superior, but also not because she felt that they should be treated as equals. She was indoctrinated into the world she lived in, and she had trouble fathoming any world beyond it. She had somewhat contradictory feelings on the matter. It was wrong how African people were taken from their homes, and forced to live somewhere else. But the slaves her father owned today were not Africans. They only knew this country, so they ought to stay. They deserved to be treated well, but they were uneducated, and perhaps they could never be taught to be civilized, so at least this gave them a purpose. They had a roof over their heads, and food to eat, and she rationalized that there was little difference between that, and a freeman who had to work for a living. They weren’t getting paid in coin, but in living resources, so maybe that was good enough.

As Angela grew older, her contradictions started slipping away. She stopped seeing the good in the system, and started focusing more on how broken it was. Life was about choice, and these slaves were fundamentally not given a choice. The fact that they were born into this was not their fault, their lack of education was not their fault; nothing was their fault. She slowly became an abolitionist. But there was a problem. She was still a woman; a girl, actually, and her opinion mattered very little. If she spoke out against the injustices, she could lose everything. What she needed to do was find a husband who felt the same way. She did, in a man named Ed Bolton. He was more outspoken about his sentiments, and she admired him for that. In 1809, she began a courtship, of course, against her fathers wishes. But it didn’t matter, because once she was married, she wouldn’t have to worry about what her father thought, or how he felt. Ed wasn’t the richest man she knew, but he made a decent living, and he would be good to her. Unfortunately, they never made it to their wedding day. On September 9 of that year, Ed Bolton disappeared from his home, and wasn’t seen again for two years.

In the meantime, Angela lost what few privileges she had, and was forced to marry another man. This man was far more cruel to his slaves, and he firmly believed in their inferiority. Angela’s father didn’t even like him all that much, but he felt betrayed by his daughter for the whole Ed Bolton thing, and vindictive towards her, so her husband was her punishment. Her husband was as abusive to Angela as he was to the other humans he owned, and it all came to a head in 1816, when he dealt her a fatal blow. Ed Bolton was returned to the timestream when it happened, and tried to save her, but was unable. Angela’s husband took this as an opportunity to frame Ed for the crime, and when the latter resurfaced yet again five years later, the law swiftly intervened. He disappeared after three weeks, but the true killer was never caught, and Angela was still dead. Fortunately for her, there was life after death, and she spent the next three centuries making up for her past sins, until she was finally promoted to Counselor. Then it ended, when she tried to counsel a group of other time travelers, and it prompted a major demotion.

Over two hundred years after Angela’s death, new life was coming into the world. A woman of unknown identity was giving birth to a baby boy, completely alone. Down the hall, a man named Lowell Benton was killing someone else. The victim had done nothing to Lowell personally, but Lowell had a power. He could see people’s sins. Or rather, he always saw their sins. Whenever he looked at someone, the worst thing they did in their past flashed before his eyes. If he looked at them a second time, the second worst thing they did flashed. The cycle would continue ad nauseum, and the strain from this drove him crazy. It drove him towards murder, because dead bodies didn’t ever show him any visions. Funny he didn’t seem to get the idea to just go live out in the woods somewhere, and avoid people. He decided that being a vigilante was his only option. When he heard the screams of the mother after finishing his last jobs, he became curious. It sounded like she was in pain, but it didn’t sound like someone was purposefully hurting her. He quickly picked her lock, and broke in to find her alone, on the floor, with some towels. The baby was coming, and there was no time to get her to a medical facility. The most surprising thing was that she wasn’t giving him any visions. His theory was that the baby had never sinned, so it was sort of interfering with the signal, but the truth was that being in labor forced her to think of nothing but the pain, and whatever her sins were, they were buried so deep that Lowell couldn’t get to them.

By now, he was used to gross things, and of course, death. With nothing better to do with his night, he knelt down, and helped deliver that baby. And when the mother died by whatever specific cause, he didn’t bother to contact the authorities. He just stood up, and washed his hands. But the baby kept crying, and it was starting to get on Lowell’s nerves. He was about to leave when he caught one more glance of the infant, and felt a calm. He had also never thought to surround himself with babies before, who were the only living humans on the planet without sin. They could give him peace. So he picked up the child, and took it with him on the road. He never did call anyone about the dead mother, so by the time the autopsy confirmed she had died while giving birth, Lowell and the child were so far away, that no one could have made a connection between the two. He spent a week with that baby before growing bored with him. Sure, he was a calming presence, but he would start sinning eventually, and Lowell didn’t want to have to kill him for it. Besides, there were plenty of targets that actually did need killing, and running around with a child was obstructing that cause. He happened to be in Kansas City at the time, so he dropped the kid off at the nearest fire station, and moved on with his life with barely a second thought. The firefighters, meanwhile, named their new charge Jeremy Bearimy.

“Wow, you know a lot about me,” Lowell said. “Every time you talked about Ed, though, you gestured towards this woman right here.”

“I’m Ed,” Téa explained. “I died and was reincarnated as a girl.”

“Oh,” Lowell said. “Gotcha. Except, why would I rescue this Jeremy Bearimy fellow?”

“Weren’t you listening?” Mateo questioned. “He’s the kid you delivered back in 2018.”

“Yeah, so I saved him once. Why do I need to do it again?”

“Yeah,” Mateo realized, “why does he? Why do we need him?”

“You need a team,” Jupiter replied. “This is the one I’ve chosen for you. You’re primary objective is Leona. Once Missy returns from The Fourth Quadrant next year, hers will be Sanaa, Téa’s is Angela, and Lowell’s is J.B.”

“J.B.?” Lowell questioned. “He’s doing the initials thing? Nah, I’m not into that. Jeremy is a fine name, I’ll call him that.”

Jupiter stared at him a moment. “That’s between you and him, I don’t give a shit.”

“Who’s the fifth person?”

“That is your first mission,” Jupiter answered. “Trinity is the new team member who corresponds to Ellie. The problem is, I’m not sure where she is. I figured she would be on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida—”

“Thayla-whatnow?” Lowell interrupted.

Jupiter sighed loudly. “Your first mission is to locate her, and bring her into the fold.” He pointed to their wrists. “You’re limited as to when and where you can do that, though.”

“Wait, what do these things do?” Lowell was an interesting character. He was a bad dude, of course, and he questioned everything anyone asked of him, but he didn’t seem antipathetic to these requests. He both wanted all the information, and didn’t care what those answers were. Nothing was going to stop him from helping, not because he was altruistic, but because he wasn’t doing anything else right now.

“I’ll let Mateo explain. He’s your leader, by the way. He reports to me, but you report to him, and if he tells you to do something, you better do it.”

“Or what?”

Jupiter lifted his primary Cassidy cuff; the one in control of all the others. “Or I’ll switch off your time power dampener, and force you to watch all of my sins. You think the people you’ve killed were bad, you haven’t seen evil like mine.”

Now Lowell shut his mouth, and took a quarter step back.

Jupiter went on, “you are all on Mateo’s original pattern right now. I want him to be on the Bearimy-Matic pattern, however. Fortunately for you, through a loophole, those two components coincide with each other right now. The issue is that this loophole ends in less than three weeks. You have that long to find Trinity, figure out how to break into Tamerlane Pryce’s afterlife simulation, and get at least J.B. out, so he can rejoin the team. Lowell, there are only eleven cuffs total, which means you will be giving yours to him. That’s your motivation. If you fail, you’ll be stuck like this forever. Everyone understand what is expected of you?”

“Yes,” they all replied in perfect unison.

« < » > Table of Contents

Glisnia: Flesh and Bone (Part X)

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“Well, I know that body belongs to you, but that was a little jarring,” Crimson Clover said.

“I’ll make it up to you,” Hogarth replied. “Lenkida said this was a long-term project, but I’m gonna prove him wrong. I’m gonna build his matrioshka body, and I’m gonna do it all at once.”

“How is that even possible?” Ethesh questioned. “I know I’m not anywhere near as intelligent or knowledgeable as anyone here, but that doesn’t seem physically possible.”

Hogarth shook her head, glad to have it back in her possession. The upgrade was nice, but it wasn’t really her. She was more of a flesh and bone kind of gal. “You’re thinking linearly. Everything happening in order, and over time, is the exact same thing as everything happening all at once, as long as you’re looking at it from the right perspective. I can see it now. I mean, I can’t see it like Aitchai can, but I understand it better. Everyone, everything, contributes just a little bit. We’ll all become part of the Glisnian collective. It will be the body that’s made up of the whole universe.”

“I’m not sure you’re making sense,” Ethesh pointed out, “and not because I’m just a dumb technician, but because you’re only giving us half the information.”

“I know,” Hogarth said with a nod. “I will explain everything. We just need to put the team together.”

“Who is on this team?” Crimson asked, like he was preparing a grocery list.

“Call everyone who’s still here. We don’t need Ambrose, Jupiter, or Hilde, but they can join us if they want.”

They met back in the room where The Shortlist and The Shorter List had their respective meetings. Hogarth, Hilde, Ethesh, Mekiolenkidasola, Crimson, Holly Blue, Jupiter, and Ambrose were there.

“Oh, God,” Jupiter said, “are we doing this again?”

“You’re not here to decide how we’re going to move forward,” Hogarth began. “I just want to tell you my new plan.”

“If there’s a new plan, then we should contact the others,” Holly Blue announced.

“I’m not going to do that, I’m done with the meetings. Holly Blue, you can leave, if you would like. Once I’m finished here, I will honor our deal, and get you back to our son, but if you don’t want to continue helping, I won’t make you. I think I can handle this.”

“Are you even capable of traveling to Declan’s world?” Holly Blue asked.

“Let me put it like this,” Hogarth said, “if I’m not capable of getting you back to Declan, I’m not capable of completing the matrioshka body.”

“How do you propose you do that?” Lenkida asked, wanting to get to the matter at hand.

“The time siphon,” Hogarth started her presentation. “You told me you wanted me to help you reach other star systems at faster-than-light speeds, so that’s how I went about tackling the problem. I saw each star as a target, but it doesn’t have to be like that. We could reach every star...every orbital around every star, in multiple galaxies. If we take just a little bit from everything—and I’m talking a molecule here and there—then it doesn’t matter if there’s life, or potential for life, or anything. No one will notice it’s gone, and they won’t miss it. I don’t see an ethical problem with it.”

The group sat in silence for a moment before Holly Blue spoke. “You wanna build a filter portal.”

“If that’s what you call it, then yeah,” Hogarth agreed. “Am I not the first to think of it?”

“You’re probably the first to think of something on the scale you’re talking about, but I know of other filter portalers. Keanu ‘Ōpūnui is a notable example. He uses his powers to manipulate the weather.”

“He can teleport individual molecules from one place to another?” Hogarth asked to make sure she was understanding her correctly.

“Yes.”

“That’s what you do, but only with your body,” Crimson reminded her. “What makes you think you can scale it up that much? Mr. Richardson?”

“Hey,” Ambrose said, “I’m not sure I feel comfortable with that. I still have no clue how we conjured a star from another universe.”

“I don’t need you to do anything anymore,” Hogarth assured him. “I can get all the energy I need from the universe itself. Every time I reach out to a celestial body, it will connect me to the other nearby bodies, like a chain reaction, or a web crawler.”

“That’s absurd,” Holly Blue argued. “What makes you think you can do that? I can’t build something that can do that. My powers only let me invent time technology that exists as a power or salmon pattern that is exhibited by someone else. It’s a lot easier when I’ve seen it done by that someone else, and even easier when I can study them. I don’t know anyone who can filter portal the universe, do you?”

Hogarth smiled. “I do. I just met him, the Aitchai.”

“Ugh,” a few of them said.

“We don’t know anything about this mysterious energy god you claim to have met,” Holly Blue added.

“You think I’m lying?” Hogarth questioned. “Tell me, Holly, how could I have gotten rid of the star intruder if not by his hand, and why would I have not just told you that truth?”

“I dunno,” Holly Blue admitted, “and don’t call me that; you know I don’t care for it, which is why you said it.”

“We used to be friends, a long time ago.”

Holly Blue took a breath. It would seem she was having a hell of a time with her respiratory system. Hogarth had thought she was imagining it, but now it seemed real. Holly Blue could sense this realization in the others. “I’m dying.”

“What?”

“I have a time disease.” She smiled quite sadly.

“Do you mean a time affliction?” Hilde asked. “That’s what we called what Piglet had before we learned she could control it.”

“No,” Holly Blue answered. “It’s an actual disease.” She breathed heavily again. “It’s the kind of thing that humans go through when someone messes with their linear pattern, and they don’t receive the proper treatment. It happened to me, ‘cause...because time and I have been working against each other for a long...um...space.”

“What does this mean?”

“It’s a unique cerebrovascular disease that affects my autonomic nervous system.” She reached up, and tapped on her eyeballs, removing two contact lenses from them. “It started out by blocking my pupillary response. I had to invent these things to regulate how they constrict and dilate, because my brain can’t do it on its own. The disease then moved on to my urinary system, which I imagine you don’t want to hear about. Now it’s gone after my lungs. Eventually, if I survive long enough to reach the final stage, my heart will just stop beating. Even if you implant artificial organs, my capillaries will stop exchanging chemicals with my tissue, and I won’t be able to transport water, nutrients, or oxygen. Can’t replace those, not all of them, anyway.”

Lenkida reached over and placed his hand upon hers. “Yes, we can.”

Holly Blue nodded negatively. “Yeah, but I’m not going to do that. I have to see my son, even if it’s the last thing I do. I don’t know if I can jump universes as a mech, but I know I can as a choosing one. I might consider upgrading afterwards, but...”

“But what?” Hilde encouraged.

“The disease might follow me through any transhumanistic upgrade. That’s why I called it a time disease, because it doesn’t respond to medical treatment. It...disappears, and comes back in the future. I think it’s literally traveling through time.”

“Have you spoken with Dr. Hammer or Dr. Sarka?” Hogarth suggested.

“Both,” Holly Blue said. “They tried, but they couldn’t do a thing.”

Hogarth looked over at Crimson. “How do you navigate the bulkverse? How can you find Declan?”

“Give me back the body, I’ll take her,” Crimson requested.

“No, I want to take her,” Hogarth insisted. “Just tell me how.”

“It requires calculating hyperdimensional metamathematics,” it responded.

Hogarth accidentally let out a belly laugh. “I sent an entire town to another planet when I was a kid. You think I don’t know metamath?”

“You did that on accident,” it said to her.

“Can you teach me, or not?”

“Yeah, I’ll teach you,” it promised. “Of course I’ll teach you.”

“Thank you.” Hogarth returned her attention to Holly Blue. “I’m sorry I’ve been hard on you.”

“No, I should be apologizing,” Holly Blue contended. “I’ve been grumpy about it. When you’re a time traveler, the future seems inevitable, as does the past. You can live in 1992, and then jump right to 2400. It can really feel like you’re immortal, because you see how things change. But I didn’t watch history unfold, I just skipped a bunch of parts. I’m just as prone to death as anyone else, and I can accept that. It’s just been tough. So many people have promised to help me find my son, and they have done so with the absolute best intentions, but they have not been able to deliver.”

Hogarth glanced over at Crimson for a half second. “I can deliver. I will. I wasn’t trying to be dismissive earlier. I can do this without you now, because you’ve been invaluable thus far, and not just on the technical side. Your sense of ethics is unmatched by anyone I’ve ever met, and I won’t forget the lessons that you taught me. But it’s time for you to go home.”

Holly Blue looked like she was tearing up, but nothing came out of her ducts, probably because of the disease. “Thank you.”

Hogarth tabled the discussion on the intergalactic time siphon thing, and focused on helping her friend with her dying wish. Crimson spent the better part of the next week teaching her how to transport her atoms to other universes, and more importantly, how to navigate to a specific point in spacetime. Then it showed her the coordinates to Declan’s location specifically. Once Holly Blue was packed, and ready to leave everything she had ever known behind, Hogarth embraced her, and dismantled every molecular bond in their bodies and belongings.

Declan was waiting for her on the side of a road, apparently having settled on this moment as a rendezvous with Crimson Clover long ago. It warmed Hogarth’s heart to witness the reunion, and reminded her that the point of doing anything in life was to progress, and support others. The matrioshka body was great and all, but it wasn’t the only path to the future, and it wasn’t essential. She would still do it, for sure, but at least she was no longer so anxious about getting it done. She had all the time in the worlds, which was nice, because that allowed her to hang out with her friends for a good month. When she left to go back to their universe of origin, Holly Blue was still alive, and actually kind of doing okay. It was possible that her time disease couldn’t follow her here, but Hogarth would never know. Holly Blue asked that she leave before seeing proof either way. She wanted her friends to move on with their lives without knowing how things turned out. She somehow took comfort in that, and Hogarth did too.

When she returned, a few days had passed for everyone else, indicating that the calculations Hogarth had come up with were a little off, and she needed to really nail those down before she tried something like that again. For now, they had work to do, and Ethesh was eager to show her the prototype that he had built in her absence.

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