Exemption Act: Well-Intentioned Extremists (Part VI)

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After debrief, Freya and the rest of the team went back to their universe. Well, it wasn’t all of their universe, but this one certainly wasn’t home for any of them. Not anymore. Had they stayed, the leadership at Bellevue would have wanted to keep apologizing every five minutes until heat death destroyed everything trillions of years later, and that wasn’t helping anything. Zek could not be saved but for time travel, and that was against policy on their world. Sure, Limerick could ultimately punch a portal, and deliver them back to Zek’s universe in a moment before the first time they showed up, but all that would do was create a copy of everyone. This version of Zek would still be a diamond, and that would still be irreversible. The remaining team members were silent and aimless when they returned to the hangar underneath their newly retrofitted Sharice Davids. There was a suggestion that they change the name, and everything else about its appearance, in order to prevent anyone from ever realizing what ship it truly was, but they hadn’t gotten around to that yet.

It took them a hot minute before they realized a stranger stood among them. She was just standing there patiently, waiting to be addressed. “Um...who are you?” Freya questioned.

“My name is Eliana Prime,” the stranger replied.

“Is that your real last name?” Limerick asked, fully aware that wasn’t really the most pressing question here.

“It is a surname blend,” Eliana answered. “My parents were...complicated. I didn't want to take either name, but also didn’t want to make up something random.”

“What are you doing here?” Freya was in no mood to be polite.

“Now, hold on,” Khuweka warned. “She could very well have every right to be here. We too are squatters.”

“I have no right to be here.” Eliana was quiet, even-tempered, and presumably quite understanding. She seemed like the type of person who was always open and honest, but never volunteered information, instead generally only speaking when spoken to.

“Then why are you here?” Landis asked.

“Bellevue sent me as operational replacement for your original teleporter, Zektene Cormanu. The keyword here is operational. I shall make no attempt to instantiate myself into the social role she filled within the group. I am only here to transport you where you need to go, and will do everything I can to ease any thoughts you might have that I might have the expectation to be accepted, or treated as one of you.”

Limerick stared at her blankly, nearly drooling on the floor as he did so. “Did anyone else follow that? Because I did, I know what she said. I just wanna make sure you’re all on our level.”

Khuweka sighed. “She wants to be our teleporter, but she understands she cannot replace Zek as our friend.”

“How did you even get to this universe?” Carbrey asked her. “I went through the portal last, and it closed right behind me. I would have seen you.”

“I can teleport through portals,” Eliana explained. “It’s a little like jumping out of a train on a bridge, and landing on a plane as it’s taking off below, but it can be done. Bellevue disapproved of the secrecy, but I decided it would be best if we had this conversation here, rather than there. If you would prefer to send me back, I will not argue, or try to convince you otherwise. But now that I’m already here anyway, it might be easier for you to justify my recruitment to your respective selves.”

“Again. Totally understand what you said,” Limerick claimed, fooling no one.

“Better to ask for forgiveness later than for permission now, and be told no,” Andraste translated.

“Oh,” Limerick realized. “That’s my excuse for everything I do.”

“I don’t think we need to vote,” Khuweka determined. “If you reject her nomination, then just speak up. I will say this, we need a teleporter. That booster platform doesn’t work on me, but it def will on her.”

Landis handed the Zek-diamond to Carbrey. “Zek greatly appreciates that she’s here, and challenges anyone to come up with a good reason not to accept her...in every capacity as a member of this team.” He stepped forward, and offered Eliana his hand. “Can you jump blind?”

“I can,” Eliana replied. “I can even let a passenger be navigator through a mild and temporary psychic link.”

“Then let us go up to The Sharice, and find you some quarters.”

Eliana looked to the rest of the group, still waiting for anyone to speak now, or forever hold their peace. Once she was made rightly confident by the silence, the two of them disappeared together.

“Now that that’s done,” Khuweka began, “we should run mission simulations.”

“We need to come up with a new name for the ship first,” Carbrey said. “My simulations will rely upon this. Or rather, they might falter to the ambiguity or uncertainty.”

Freya stepped over and took Zek from his arms. “It already has a new name.” She started to walk away with her friend. “It’s The Cormanu.”

Two years later, they were ready for mission launch. Whether she meant to or not, Eliana was able to integrate nicely into the team. She became fast friends with Zek, and even coached her through her new life as a gemstone. Making physical contact with Zek was only necessary at first to start forming a psychic bond. As time went on, these bonds grew stronger, until they discovered that she was capable of maintaining a persistent connection to her crew all the way on the other side of the planet. She was still just as much part of the team as she was before, and continued to participate in their training. They had to learn how to work together, and how to overcome obstacles and complications.

They fell into job roles that went beyond the responsibilities for which they were originally recruited. Andraste was a great cook, and Landis adopted the responsibility of overseeing the general maintenance of the vessel. His life as a healer had been so dull. To maximize his abilities, he sat in a chair for literally half the day as the terminally ill stood in line, and came up to him one by one. He couldn’t watch TV, or read, or learn something new. He lost all sense of wonder, and was not used to being around people who didn’t worship him. He was happy to be busy now. It helped him find himself again, and enjoy the company. Limerick was an entertainer at heart, which helped keep the team from getting lost in the mission, and not taking time out for themselves. Two years was a long time to do nothing but work. Khuweka taught them all the Maramon language, which wasn’t probably ever going to come up, but it was nice to have a way to communicate with each other that most others wouldn’t be able to decipher. They had their psychic connections with Zek to take care of that in most cases, but you never know.

Carbrey was pretty much only the engineer, and that was absolutely enough. His was the most important job, and they banded together to alleviate the burden as much as possible. They all learned some basic mechanics, so it wouldn’t just be on him. Freya took this the most seriously. The others watched some tutorials, and hung around while Carbrey did his work. Freya actually transported to the Kansas City Arcology, and entered an accelerated engineering education program. It wasn’t enough to make her an expert in the time allotted—and she still didn’t feel comfortable calling herself an engineer—but it made her competent in the field, and perfectly suited to serve as Carbrey’s assistant. It reminded her of working as a nurse with Dr. Sarka. Neither was a profession she ever intended to be part of, but both opportunities were important when they arrived, and she ultimately found them to be very rewarding.

On launch day, Eliana strapped herself into the chair on the booster platform, and used it to interface with the rest of the ship. Carbrey was in charge of running the whole ship, so it became Freya’s duty to make sure Eliana was both effective, and safe. They ran a final systems check, crossed their fingers, and jumped away.

There was a bit of confusion as the teleportation interlocker of The Cormanu started to power down to high idle. The navigation systems were evidently not perfectly calibrated for the jump, which meant it was going to take a minute to figure out exactly where they were. And that was a literal measure of time. It was only going to take around sixty seconds, and then they would be fine, but Carbrey was freaking out, because it felt like an eternity to him. As Freya was confirming Eliana’s vital signs, she could hear him on the shipwide comms, barking orders at people, trying to expedite this process. He didn’t have zero reason to be worried, as the whole purpose of this exercise was to clear present-day Earthan detection space, so that no one would know they existed. Still, there was no way to get the computer to make the necessary calculations faster, and panicking wasn’t helping anything.

A minute later, the computer confirmed their highest of hopes. One light year. They were exactly one light year from Earth. “Is that possible?” Carbrey asked. “I was to understand we would barely pass the plutinos.”

“Different universe, different interpretation of the physical laws,” Khuweka guessed. “Bellevue’s prediction of our maximum jump distance was based on their understanding of these laws, not ours.”

“What does this mean,” Landis asked, “in practical terms?” He was leaning against the wall of the booster compartment, ready to heal Eliana, should she need it. It was looking like she wouldn’t. She reported feeling as good as she ever did after a jump.

“It means we can go a lot faster, right?” Limerick figured. “A jump takes about a second. Eighty-seven light years equals eighty-seven seconds. That’s under two minutes on my world.”

“She’s not going to do that,” Freya said as she was needlessly dabbing Eliana’s forehead with a warm washcloth.

“She won’t have to,” Khuweka promised. “We wouldn’t do this through burst mode, even if there weren’t a biological consideration. It will take us forty-five days to get to Worlon at maximum reframe. I want us to get there in forty-five days. Not forty-six, not forty-four. This is the schedule, and we’re sticking to it. Miss Prime did her job, and now it’s done.”

Freya curved her index finger and thumb towards each other, and twisted them once, gesturing to Landis that he should mute his comm badge. They were very sensitive, and while the humans would not have been able to hear her talking from across the room, the ship’s sensors would pick it up, and log it. “You want to say something, Eliana. What is it?”

“It wasn’t just me,” Eliana told her quietly. “I didn’t jump us this far out alone.”

“Who else could have done this?” Freya asked, the answer came to her quickly. “Zektene.”

Eliana nodded. “She still has her anomaly ability. She may even be stronger now. You never needed me.”

Freya ran her fingers through Eliana’s hair. “I’m glad you’re here anyway.”

While their end of the comms was muted, they could still hear outgoing messages. “Boot up the reframe engine, Mr. Genovese,” Khuweka ordered. “Let’s take this show on the road.”

The doors to the booster compartment opened, and Kivi walked in, holding Diamond Zek in her arms. It didn’t look comfortable for her. Landis held out his own arms, not to commandeer the diamond, but be passively available, should Kivi want to have a rest.

“We should put her on a cart, or something,” Freya suggested. “I can rig something up quite nice. I’ll make it look like a throne.”

“We’ve been talking privately,” Kivi said. “Zek is not sure if she wants to inform the rest of the crew about what happened.”

“She added a second boost to the jump?” Freya asked. “We already know.”

“No, not that,” Kivi said. “We’ll tell everyone about that. No, she saw something on the way. Or, I guess it was more of a feeling?” She hesitated.

“What is it, Kivi?”

“She believes we are being followed.”

Landis stepped forward. “Who would have such capabilities?”

Freya shook her head, not to answer in the negative, but because there was no answer. “You have to understand something about my universe. Time travel is all but ubiquitous. It’s not that everyone has it, but anyone may have it. If something exists at any point, it exists in all points. Everyone is dead, everyone is alive. Almost nothing can’t be undone. Who else can shadow the fastest ship in the stellar neighborhood? Someone from the future, or one that’s piloted by a man named The Trotter...or maybe his son, I don’t know. They would have to interface with their vessel in some way, but that’s not too difficult when you have all of time and space to figure it out. If you want to know who specifically possesses comparable speeds, I’ve never heard of it, but that in no way means this person or persons don’t exist.”

Kivi finally handed Diamond Zek to Landis. “Due to this uncertainty, I feel it is best we inform the crew, so that we may prepare for any eventuality. I do not want to use the weapons systems, but we may have no other choice.” She turned to walk away.

Freya stopped her. “Wait. Do you know who our shadow could be? You’re from this universe too.”

Kivi chuckled once. “I was literally born yesterday. Don’t you remember?”

On that bizarre note, Kivi left, and Eliana took this opportunity to get herself out of the booster seat before Freya could stop her. “I don’t need rest, I’m fine.” She demanded that Freya give her some space, so she could move about the cabin upon her own agency. As she passed Landis, she patted Diamond Zek like she was a loyal dog. “Thanks for the assist, cuz.” They weren’t really cousins, but seeing as they were both descended from the original Composite Universe astral teleporter—a man by the name of Nur—they were technically related, albeit across two timelines.

As they were discussing the possibilities, and their options, as a group later, Freya noticed that Kivi insisted on holding Diamond Zek in her lap, which was weird. That was no longer necessary, as they should have all been fully capable of communicating with Zek through a permanent psychic connection.

Andraste interrupted her thought process as she was questioning Kivi’s very existence. “What do you think? Do we prepare for war?”

“I’m sorry?” Freya hadn’t really been paying attention.

“As per usual,” Andraste started over, “Khuweka, Limerick, and Carbrey are ready to fight. They’ve all done it before. Landis and I disagree, as does Zek. Kivi is abstaining from voting.”

“She is, is she?” Freya questioned, still suspicious of the ninth crewmember. “I mean...okay. Wait, am I the tie-breaker?” She started checking people off.

“No,” Andraste said, “there are eight voters. Both you and Eliana have yet to respond.”

Freya couldn’t help but continue to leer at Kivi, who seemed unsurprised by this. She broke herself out of the trance so she could address the crowd. “I think we’re all on our way to commit time genocide.” She stood up from the table. “Having scruples about a hypothetical space battle with an invisible enemy is a bit like washing down your entire large pizza with a diet cola. We may be well-intentioned, but we are still extremists. Everybody needs to find a way to embrace their dark side, and get on board, because it’s too late to get off.” She walked down the table, and placed her hand on Diamond Zek, but looked into Kivi’s eyes. “We need to talk.” All three of them teleported to the other side of the ship.

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Microstory 1555: Fate: The Causal Saga

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Prompt

Some people think that they have free will, while others believe in fate, but the truth is that it’s impossible to ever be sure one way or another, so why ask the question?

Botner

The answer is, for me, something that should be applied to the whole question of what we believe and why we believe it. What we believe to be true and what is true are relative terms. The thing is, free will is based on what we can control. Even when we say we’re playing the random number generator, the results are as predictable as any calculation. It’s not that we can’t be lucky, but even chance is ultimately determined. I suspect that we will only really start to understand the mystery of free will when we realize that there’s nothing we can do, that there’s no one for us to blame, and therefore no one to control. That’s when we’ll understand what true freedom is. About a week ago, I finished a book that has kept me away from blogging and reading for a while. I first heard about it a while back, when it was on the list for a discussion I was having with someone, and was intrigued by the idea. It’s the story of a family living in northern Alberta, and how that environment changes the lives of those involved. The wife is pregnant and has gone into labor, and leaves her husband to go to hospital, with her young son and her mother in tow. As she’s being wheeled away...

Conclusion

...a man rushes in, and claims to be the father. It’s not the husband, though, and you probably have a pretty good idea where this is going. So what does this have to do with fate and free will? Well, all the characters in the story had the opportunity to make whatever choices they felt necessary. They might have regretted it afterwards, or not. It doesn’t matter, it can’t be changed. Furthermore, each character is beholden to whatever choices the other characters made, as well as other people who aren’t characters. They’re also influenced by the weather, the geography, the time in which they were born. Now, when you add this all up together, a lot of people think this spells fate, but that’s not the case. Just because you don’t have control over everything, doesn’t mean you have control over nothing. If you could control all of reality, that would be omnipotence, and that is neither the opposite of, nor answer to, fate. So what’s the answer to this? Does fate exist? Or just free will. I say neither, really. We’re all just trying to make the best choices we can with the cards we’ve been dealt. It’s all about causality, which started with the big bang, and will end with the heat death. Trying to figure out any more details is futile, unnecessarily taxing, and unproductive. Just live your life, and be as happy as you can, while helping as many others as you can, as much as you can. Or don’t, who am I to judge?

Microstory 1554: Shame

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Prompt

The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is check outside to see if anyone is passed out on my lawn. I live next to a frat house, so this is a regular occurrence.

Botner

Literally. They have no shame. [Here are nine more things you should know about me.] 3. I have never pooped at a gas station (and probably never will, because I refuse to pay $6 for a cup of coffee...even if they were roasting the beans with their bare hands...a lot). I try to use public restrooms at gas stations when I can, because they are generally cleaner and just usually very busy. 4. I’ve been drunk in 17 states and 7 countries. I love traveling...a lot. 5. I’ve hit a deer and I’ve flipped over a car (not at the same time). 6. I hate mushrooms and I’m vegetarian... but not for cultural reasons. When I’m inebriated I want nothing more than to have a plate of red, heart-shaped things for dessert. 7. I’ve been in a room with 1,000 women and we’ve talked about everything from N’SYNC to soap operas. I’ve come to absolutely love my girlfriends as well as become a healthier person for it...truly. 8. My favorite color is brown. 9. I’ve kissed at least two strangers in my lifetime. 10. I bought my first purse at Target...two years ago. 11. I’m fluent in Korean. I lived in Korea for 10 months and I can actually speak it. 12. I love men...but I love women just as much. I am mostly single, because I’m not sure what I...

Conclusion

...really want out of a relationship. Will anyone truly want me if they know all these personal things about me? It has taken a long time for society to accept homosexuality, and we are nowhere near out of the woods yet. Omnisexuality, which is how I identify, is so much harder. Even gay people don’t accept us. They think that we should just get off the fence, and decide already. Of course, that’s not how it works, and they’re being just as ignorant as people have always been, but I’ll keep trying to change their minds. The frat guys are actually pretty cool. The fact that they pass out on my lawn has nothing to do with me, it’s just proximity. My older brother is a lawyer, and he says this could turn into a problem, though. If one of them were to end up dead, or something, I could be liable for the damages, even though I don’t even know the guy, and I didn’t do anything wrong. He tells me I should invest in a front yard fence, but nobody has those anymore, and it’s not exactly on brand for me. Besides, I would rather they end up sleeping on my lawn than trying to drive home after the party. Still, I feel I should do something, but I don’t want to seem elitist, or anything. People think that about me when I say I don’t eat meat anymore. I’m probably overthinking all of this, and I should just stick to my own problems, and worry about who I’m going to take as my date to my cousin’s wedding. There’s this guy I really like, and I think he would be interested, but there are those in my family who do not know about me, and positively would not approve. Should I ignore them, and take the guy anyway, or should I make sure the night doesn’t end up about me, and let my cousin have her special day? Everyone else gets to take whoever they want, though. Why should I pretend to be someone I’m not? Perhaps these situations are exactly when we should start expecting people to learn to be better.

Microstory 1553: Our Ages

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Prompt

There are so many things I would rather be doing than this. But my parents wanted me to come support my little brother, and I can't ever say no...

Botner

...I’m 17 years old, I’m going to be 18 at the end of this month. But I don’t think I can legally drink. Last year, at a younger age, my parents would’ve been okay with me doing it with my friends. But because I’m 17, I can’t even do that. I have my reasons...well...I’m 17, and I have sex. (Not much, but still) And I also have a baby-daddy. (I won’t put his name out here, but he’s on here. I just know that his name comes up, and my mother always reads this. Lol.) Anyway, he wants me to have sex, but he also doesn’t want it to be messy, so he wants to wait until we’re married. He’s 30. We are only 19. So my parents said that if he married me before we are able to have sex, I’ll go to a boarding school. I think this is wrong. I want to be in school. I want to be close to my friends. I don’t want to be forced to stay at home. I don’t want to be a kid and play with Barbies all day, and do my homework at night. I want to be a normal teenager, for once. I’m tired of being reminded that I’m not a normal teenager...because I am. And I want to be treated like one. But since I’m 17, I can’t. My parents said that if I have sex, I’m gonna get pregnant, and then I’m...

Conclusion

...in real trouble, because who knows what age I’ll end up after I have the baby? I keep switching between 17 and 19, and I never know how old I’ll be when I wake up. This is the life of our species, and we’re all quite used to it. Seventeen and 19 might not make much of a difference to you, but it is always very clear for us. When we look at each other, we can tell exactly how old the other is on that day. Babies are incredibly dangerous for us to have. There’s about a 24% chance that the process ages you up so that you’re near your deathbed. The chances double when you have twins. Guys don’t have to worry about this. My brother keeps aging too, and now he’s much older than me, but men live longer, and after several years of the process, eventually stop, so they can age normally, and die after a reasonable amount of time. This was done to use centuries ago, in order to control the rise in our population. The well-intentioned extremist aliens who did it to us, however, have either died out themselves, or left. This is why our respective ages are so erratic and unpredictable. My boyfriend is eight, which is so much younger than he should be, and waking up that young is very rare for us. Now he can’t be a father. We have an age of majority, just like your species does, and when that barrier is crossed, the dynamics of their relationships can shift dramatically. Your mother can fundamentally become your sister if she wakes up young enough, because it would be inappropriate for her to keep raising you. I have the baby, and things are good for about a week. I’m 40 while I’m doing it, and mature enough to handle it on my own, because my boyfriend is only ten. My brother helps, which he should, because I’ve always supported him. Things go bad, however, when I wake up the next day. I’m now a baby, and my child is 40, and she raises me, and this is how we stay for two centuries.

Microstory 1552: Fire Store

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Prompt

I broke into the store, as one does in the middle of an apocalypse. The shelves were nearly completely empty. All I ended up finding there was a box of rotten fruit...

Botner

...that nobody wanted, and a lone bottle of gas that had somehow made its way into the frozen food section. I poured the gas into the mouth of the nuclear bomb. Then I lit a match. It didn’t take long for the entire store to catch fire. I escaped with a few of my comrades, and we fled into the desert. I later learned that the whole thing was a controlled action. The peaceful protests that I had witnessed before had been staged in the hopes of making the current government pay. I had left behind two of my friends, who, having stayed behind in order to “protect the people” were taken as prisoners by the terrorists. They were held in what we would later learn to be a torture chamber, along with about thirty or forty other protesters. The rest of us were made to stand in lines in the blazing desert sun as the soldiers gave us a speech about what we were all doing wrong. “This is no way to live,” one of them said, as he pointed to his own bare foot. “Your life belongs to the state. You are here to serve it.” It was...

Conclusion

...the most humiliating day of my life, but I will also make it the most important for the movement. We were galvanized into action, to put right what is wrong, and make the world a better place. Nuclear war is not the answer, and I should have known that. We have to show them that they cannot break us, that we will continue to fight, but will not do so with guns, or sticks and stones, or even our fists. We will fight them with words, and turn hearts to our favor. Not everyone will join us, but enough will, and those remaining will lose in the end, not just because there will be so few of them left, but because nothing will come of their actions. We leave the desert, and regroup in the tunnels under the city. A rival faction of rebels has heard what happened to us, and meets us in the neutral zone. They’ve decided they want to help, and that maybe, our goals aren’t as misaligned as we once thought. They don’t want the terrorists to win either, and if we can come to a compromise, and formulate a solid plan, they won’t. Our first order of business is to declare someone leader, after our last one was executed to prove a point to the rest of us. Someone anonymous nominates me, and even though I don’t want the job, I can’t protest. Our ways prevent nominees from campaigning one way, or the other. I realize that no one is going to actually vote for me, but someone wanted to shut me up, and keep me from swaying minds to the woman I know is right for the role. A man from the rival faction is elected instead, and the rebellion fails, for good this time.

Microstory 1551: Color of the Sky

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Prompt

I run outside and find the sky has turned green.

Botner

Not a good sign. I call my mom, who is in town, and she says she’ll come get me. I grab my waders and run for the truck, just as a huge thunderclap sounds and the sky begins pouring rain. My phone dies after two tries. It is super annoying because I am outside with no coverage, but I can’t tell my mom that because she’s not answering her phone. I go to leave the house, and as I open the door, it occurs to me that I do not have a hat. The moment I leave, the sky clears up, and it is a gorgeous day. I spend the day wandering around town, shooting the scenery. In the evening, I camp on one of my favorite places on the lake. I have to walk about a mile to get to my campsite, and I run into a nice guy who is also setting up his tent. We talk for a bit, then he says, “I’ve got a campsite right across the street. Are you hungry?” I get to camp and make my dinner. I’m lying on the ground trying to figure out what to do for my tomorrow when a couple of guys appear out of nowhere. They take me on a two mile hike, then we sit around a campfire and they share their beers with me. It was a pretty sweet experience, even though I couldn't understand a word they were saying. I wake up bright and early, and it is sunny and gorgeous. I have decided that after finishing this section, I will be going home and taking some time off. After a day of riding, I hit the road, and it is amazing. I’ve come a long way in the past week, and I’m feeling strong and confident. My plan is to climb the entire thirteen miles of a paved highway to meet my first Expert level rest stop, and then drop down to town and restock, which will get me a little bit closer to the summit. This is a difficult section, but my body is feeling good and I’m getting plenty of rest. As I ride, I fall into a rhythm. I push a little bit, and then I ease up a bit. I don’t need to save my legs for the big climbs. I know from experience that I can handle anything from the present moment, and it is much less stressful that way. I finish the day and it is amazing. I’ve caught up to Tim, and we ride together through the night, chatting about climbing, life, motorcycles, everything. It feels so good to share this experience with someone else. It helps break up the monotony, but I don’t have to be the one to carry the conversation. We ride together through the night and camp at the second highest rest stop. It is freezing cold. We...

Conclusion

...look up at the sky, and find that it has now turned purple. It is no longer a gorgeous day, and I realize how much I dislike Tim. It’s nice to have someone else around sometimes, when I don’t have anyone else, but as I’m watching the orangish clouds roll overhead, I realize that I can do better than this. Without saying a word, I stand up, take off all of my clothes, and ride out of the campsite. I imagine Tim watching me go with total apathy, but only because he does nothing to stop me from going. It feels amazing, being out here, knowing how close I am to frostbite or death. My life is pretty boring, and you have to find ways to push yourself to your limits, or you’ll never amount to anything. The harder I pedal, the warmer I get, proving to me that I can do just about anything if I ignore the risks, and press on. I’m wrong, though. As the sky falls into a deep red, and the sun melts away, I look down at my blue fingers and toes. I was dying the whole time, but it’s not like I could have stopped it. The sun continues to disappear, taking everyone on the planet with it.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Monday, July 25, 2140

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Mateo explained how it happened the last time; how he lost his mind in the void. At least, he explained it as best he could. It wasn’t like he was some expert on the matter. Of course, everyone came to the same conclusion, that Mateo was essentially suffering from extreme boredom. He didn’t need to sleep, or center himself, or even clear his mind. He just needed to not be presently caring about anything. Apathy, as Sanaa put it, was like the death of a soul. It was a death he could come back from, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t suffer serious psychological consequences down the road. It also wasn’t going to be a piece of cake. People grew bored all the time, it didn’t kill their souls. Perhaps Mateo’s newfound connection to the dreamvoid was the secret ingredient these other people didn’t have, but now that they were cognizant of the goal, would that prevent them from reaching it? Could he get bored if he was trying, or was it inherently something that would always have to happen naturally, on its own?

Nerakali was too far away to transport to The Imzadi, but she was still able to quantum communicate with them, and she had an idea. As they were all connected through the Cassidy cuffs, someone else could use her brain blending ability on Mateo. They could scoop the thoughts out of Mateo’s mind, leaving him with the stuff that didn’t matter. Living organisms were all born with the instinct for self-preservation. It was the one thing they all had in common. If a creature did not evolve this trait, it did not survive, so by its very nature, such a creature did not exist. A movie came out many decades ago where evil plants took this trait away from the humans around, which caused them to commit suicide. Accepting the premise as a given, this probably would not be the natural result. The opposite of self-preservation was not self-harm; it was apathy, which was perfect. Nerakali’s psychic powers were generally used to manipulate memories, and not other neural functions, but there was a loophole. If they took away all the memories he had of love, it wouldn’t destroy his capacity for it forever, but it could suppress it long enough for them to complete the mission. They were running out of time. It had to work.

“You can’t do this,” Leona said defiantly.

“It’s the only way,” Mateo argued.

“Nerakali knows we can’t get there in time,” Leona fought back. “She can just send someone else on the mission.”

“No one else is on a ship close enough,” Jeremy pointed out.

“What are you talking about?” Leona questioned. “Literally everyone in this reality has a ship, and all those ships have FTL. Hell, when you think about it, the natives could handle all the missions. They don’t need us at all!”

“We’re the only ones with Cassidy cuffs. Only we can get the timing right,” Sanaa added. “Besides, this is our calling.”

“She’s a time traveler!” Leona shouted. “None of this is dire.”

“We have to get back to the stellar neighborhood either way,” Bran noted calmly, juxtapositioning her passion.

Leona shook her head. “The Parallel natives can come rescue us. It might take them a little time, but they can send a rescue ship using an off-grid Nexus egress, and they can transport us to the nearest inhabited star system. “Imzadi, where is that?”

“Fifty-thousand light years away,” Imzadi replied.

Leona looked confused. “Viewscreen.” A hologram popped up, showing the space outside. They didn’t see lone stars, but a sea of them, all turning around the galactic core of the Milky Way. “You didn’t tell us we were in the intergalactic void.”

Imzadi pretended to clear her throat. “We’re in the intergalactic void.”

Leona sighed.

“Love, we’ve been through worse,” Mateo reminded her. “Nerakali assures us the brain blending can be reversed. You’re just going to borrow my memories, and then put them back.”

“Me?”

“Yes, I want you to do it. You have the most experience with sharing her power, and I trust you the most.”

“Goddammit,” Leona said. “I’ve been an asshole to you all day. How can you trust me?”

“It’s fine. Please. We have to do this now.”

Leona took a beat. “Walk me through it,” she ordered into her cuff

Nerakali was ashamed that she had done this procedure before, but glad it would help now. She taught Leona alone how to remove Mateo’s decent memories, leaving only boring ones, like standing in line, and waiting for dial-up to connect to the internet.

Mateo could feel his memories leaving his mind. He was reliving the time his parents first took him to see his birth mother, once she was finally ready to form some kind of relationship with him. At first, he couldn’t remember what she said to him, and then he couldn’t remember her face, and then he couldn’t remember anything else about her. Soon after that, he forgot that he even had a...uh... Well, he must have... Ya know. There was someone, er, something. Or maybe it was the other. Oh my God, this lecture is so uninteresting. What is he talking about? The war? Some war. Who cares? Why do I keep getting all this junk mail, and why am I bothering sorting this anyway? Everything important comes through the inter—inter-something. Oh, there’s Leona. She’s drunk and so young right now, but she’ll... What was I talking about again? I feel like I’ve been in this waiting room forever. I don’t even remember what I’m here for. I don’t remember anything. I just remember sitting. And waiting. And doing nothing. My life is nothing. And now...it’s just blackness.

“Report!”

“Calculating status.”

“Calculate faster! Where are we? When are we?”

More waiting, this sounded important. “Eight hundred kilometers from mission coordinates. Friday, July 24, 2139. Time to first defenestration, eleven seconds.”

“Is that enough time for you?”

“Does the pope not exist anymore, because religion is an outdated and antiprogressive institution that only ever served to justify selfishness, encourage disunity, and segregate the masses?” The teleportation drive booted up, and sent them to their destination. Enough momentum was added to the jump to keep the Imzadi moving at a fast enough pace to pick up passenger after passenger. One, two, three. All told, eleven people were rescued. It would turn out that they were sent off on a secret mission to study the long-term effects of interstellar travel on the human mind and body, and to test the technology necessary to keep them alive. It was a reasonable endeavor, and the crew was unable to explain why it was they kept the truth from the public. They would have died on the way, however, as the micrometeorite shield they placed in the front of the vessel was insufficient and inadequate. Their stasis pods weren’t working well either, and they did not have enough resources to last the forty-two years it was bound to take them to get to Proxima Doma, which was harsh and uninhabitable anyway.

Aeolia suggested they erase the crew’s memories, but humanity would never learn from its mistakes if it didn’t remember making them. Instead, they came up with a lie that was as close to the truth as possible. They purported to be aliens, presenting themselves in forms the humans would be most comfortable with. They scolded the crew for developing technology that wasn’t ready for primetime, and set out to return them to Earth, where a transition window would be waiting for them. As their mission was so secretive, the survivors would only need to tell this lie to a very select few people in Earthan government, who would be compelled to retain the secret as well. Leona and her team warned the humans that they were not generally benevolent aliens, and would retaliate decisively should the secret of their existence be revealed to the world. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but they were able to use Sanaa’s mind-reading powers to ensure the scouting crew was well fearful of their alien rescuers.

Mateo, meanwhile, sat there in a stupor. He could hear everything people were saying, and even respond to questions, but he couldn’t care about anything, and he couldn’t volunteer information, or actively engage. It felt like he was half asleep, unable to wake up, and also not really worrying about it anyway. Leona spent the rest of the day trying to fix his brain with absolutely no luck. Sanaa tried as well, but if she couldn’t combine it with her own telepathy, there was probably no reason for any of the others to try. It could not be irreversible, though. There had to be a way to fix him. They needed Nerakali herself, and they didn’t reach her until next year. In order to prevent him from accidentally slinging them back out to the outer bulkverse, they were forced to give him psychedelics. He wasn’t as fascinated by the visions that a normal person would, but they were enough to keep him busy until he could be repaired tomorrow.

Once tomorrow came, and they were finally back on Earth in the main sequence, they broke off into groups. Angela and Aeolia stayed with Imzadi to help make sure the latter cleared herself of all connection to the galactic blockchain. Sanaa escorted the human guinea pig crew back to their top secret facility, where she continued to press upon them how important it was that the fewer the people who knew anything about the “truth” the better. Bran went with her, in case they needed him to use his mind-controlling powers to urge the government officials deeper, and strike fear into their hearts. Ramses went off with Jeremy to complete whatever mission he needed to in order to protect his own future. Mateo would hear about that later, when he was capable of even giving a flying fuck. Until then, Leona took him to Nerakali, where she would start working on the problem.

“Let me guess,” Leona began, “you can’t fix him, and this was all a monumental mistake that has ruined my life.”

“I don’t understand what happened,” Nerakali said, upset. “I’ve never been nice enough to undo when I’ve done this to other people, but I’ve blended billions of brains, this shouldn’t be any different. The fact that he’s missing memories shouldn’t mean he can’t get them replaced.”

Leona was working very hard not to freak out, and attack her friend. “What are our options? Is there anyone else who can help? The Warrior has your power too.”

“As do you,” Nerakali said. “If you can’t, and I can’t, he can’t either.”

“Then what are we going to do?” she reiterated.

Nerakali stared into space for a good long while.

Leona had to be patient.

“There is so much about this dreamvoid place that we don’t know. In all my millennia, I have never heard of it. Mateo said someone who wasn’t a dreamwalker built it for them? We need to figure out who that is, and ask them for help.”

How hard could that be?

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Exemption Act: Critical Existence Failure (Part V)

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The team spent over a standard month in the Composite Universe, which was closer to six weeks in Earthan terms. The natives measured time differently. They learned a lot of things from these people while they were there, eventually figuring out that a nayko was equal to 2.442 kilometers. There was no Earth in this universe, but there were plenty of humans. Nearly all of them spoke English—though they did not call it that—and while they were genetically incompatible with people from other universes, they were indistinguishable in most cases. In a more taboo sense, men did not have scrota, so there were ways to tell the difference without a DNA test.

The information they gave Bellevue was invaluable to them, so much so that they agreed to give the team anything they wanted. Khuweka possessed a lot of knowledge about the Maramon, and their tactics, and Landis regaled them with fascinating tales of the voldisil. They even found Andraste’s input incredibly useful. People from her Earth were well known to the people in this universe, and they were decidedly off-limits. It was like the Prime Directive, except it only applied to this one planet. The chance to speak with one was a great honor to them, and they did not take it for granted. Earthan input was highly coveted on its own merits, as they had a completely different perspective, especially when it came to philosophy and psychology. Drug addiction was practically non-existent here, but not completely. Understanding how to help the few addicts they did have was something they had been struggling with for millennia.

Freya felt pretty useless here, as she had little to contribute. Her entire reason for being on the team was to help them navigate her universe. Not only was that probably not all that necessary at all, but it certainly didn’t help here. Faster-than-light travel was ubiquitous in the galaxy, except for the planet they were on right now, and even they were nearing these technological capabilities as well. Freya was able to give her insights about the Maramon, having spent time studying their descendants, the Gondilak, but that wasn’t much. Hopefully it was still useful information, however, because it illustrated an emphasis on nurture against nature, and suggested Maramon were the way they were by how they were raised; not by some inherent evil that was impossible to be rid of. Bellevue didn’t seem too bothered by how little Freya helped, but she did what she could, including a lot of grunt work when it came to hauling the retrofits back to salmonverse.

Bellevue gave them more than the power-enhancement platform, and the promises Zektene’s oncoming drug experiment. They retrofitted The Sharice Davids with its very own Nexus, which they could use to transport themselves to anywhere in the network. They also installed something called an astral collimator, which would allow them to enter their version of FTL known as the orange plex dimension. It would probably do nothing for them in salmonverse—or any other universe, for that matter—but it was nice to know it was there. They enhanced the Sharice’s capabilities with gravity transfunctioners, smaller transport ships with their own collimators, and they finally got the pocket dimension generators working, which were already there, but not yet in working order. It would seem Bellevue was even more advanced than they let on. They were ready to explore the galaxy, they simply hadn’t done much of it yet.

They had to travel back and forth from this universe to theirs a few times to transport everything through, so Limerick managed to get a lot of punching practice in. He was exhausted by the time it was over, but also a pro now. There was only one thing left to do. While all of this was happening, Zek was undergoing a battery of tests, first to prove she really was an anomaly, and then so they could tailor the ability-enhancing drug called Aukan to her physiology. They warned her of the risks, including unforeseen side effects, and she agreed to take the drug anyway. It was for a good cause, and she decided it was worth it.

They gathered in the infirmary, at Zek’s request, and watched as the doctor injected her with the substance. He explained it while it was still working her way through her system. “We have been working on this compound for decades. It comes from an old drug program a rogue group of scientists came up with that was dangerous and volatile. We’ve managed to correct their mistakes since then, and Savitri has helped us immensely.” Evidently, Khuweka and Savitri were part of a group of people who had lost their time powers while they were just trying to help other people who wanted to be rid of theirs. They went off on a quest to try to get them back, but the process was interrupted, and they all ended up just sharing each other’s powers. Soon thereafter, they were stranded in separate universes, and some, like Savitri, lived there without the others for centuries.

Zek reported a deep but dull pain throughout her entire body. While a nurse for a time traveling doctor named Sarka, Freya once got hurt herself, and was given narcotics. She recalled feeling heavy and stiff, and believed she could detect the blood moving throughout her body. This was what it looked like for Zek. It was surreal and uncomfortable, but at least not excruciating. Then it got excruciating. She started writhing and screaming, and the medical team had to hold her down. Landis tried to help, but they fiercely rejected his interference. There was no telling what would happen if their completely different kinds of powers interacted with each other. Zek turned blue, and not lack of oxygen blue, but a bright and glowing blue. Electricity surged around her skin, which was what her version of teleportation looked like, but only when she was in her home universe. It wasn’t supposed to last this long, or be painful. She just kept tossing and turning, and glowing brighter.

The blue light escaped from her body, and lit up the whole room. Then the room disappeared. It didn’t blink out of existence, but slid away rapidly, like they were on an extremely fast people mover at an airport. They were outside the hotel headquarters, and then they were across town, and then the state, and then the country. They flew across the ocean, through all the lands on the other side. More ocean, more lands, more ocean, more lands. They just kept circling the globe, randomly changing directions, sometimes going straight through the planet, and back out the other side. They appeared to be on the moon at one point too. They were falling and flying and being shot out of a cannon. Finally they stopped being able to see the world altogether, and were immersed in a sea of electric blue. It was hard to tell if they were still moving, or static. Zektene finally stopped thrashing about, though she appeared to still be in a little pain.

“Where the hell are we?” Freya demanded to know.

“This is an astral plane; the blue one,” the doctor explained.

“This is how she teleports in her universe,” Khuweka clarified. “She doesn’t just jump from one point to another. She falls through a simplex dimension.” No sooner did she say that did the lights turned from blue to a purplish blue.

“Okay, that’s weird,” the doctor noted. “Now we’re in the indigo astral plane.”

“One step lower than blue,” Khuweka added. “You can’t travel as far.”

The colors changed again, to full on purple.

“Okay, that’s bad,” the doctor said. “But we’ll be fine as long as it doesn’t turn black.”

Everything turned black; a hopeless void of busy nothingness. No one was talking anymore, but Freya still knew what they were thinking, like they were all communicating telepathically now. Zek started screaming again, but tapered off, not out of relief, but a lack of air. They sounded like the life was being choked out of her, and she couldn’t move. Freya couldn’t move either. She didn’t have a body anymore, just a noncorporeal mind. She couldn’t help. She couldn’t save Zek. All she could do was listen to her friend’s last thoughts as the space around her crushed her into a single point. Ten seconds later, the lights turned on, and they were back in the infirmary. Zek was gone, replaced by the largest diamond Freya had ever seen. You would need two arms to lift it up, even for a really strong person. You just couldn’t wrap your fingers around it with one hand.

“What happened to her?” Andraste wasn’t used to being so angry.

The doctor and her team looked ashamed and scared. She took off her stethoscope, and placed it on the diamond.

“What the hell are you doing?” Limerick questioned.

The doctor placed her palm on the diamond now. A few seconds later, she released. “It’s her.”

“What do you mean, it’s her?” Even Khuweka was lost.

The doctor sighed, distraught. She was trying to work through the problem. “This is like the virus, but they cured that years ago.” She stopped a moment, but didn’t wait long enough for anyone to press her for more information. “The drug this was based off of, it worked. It worked fine. It enhanced the anomaly abilities, sometimes even giving them related, but new, abilities. It had side effects, though, eventually causing the anomaly’s abilities to turn on them. Milo could no longer control magnets, but became helplessly magnetic. Diane, who once controlled fire, exploded. A few people experienced something called critical existence failure, which is worse than it probably even sounds. This was all before my time, I’ve just read the reports. They fixed that. They promised me they fixed it. This wasn’t supposed to happen. They used Aukan-6, this is Aukan-11.”

“Answer her question. Clarify what you meant when you said it’s her,” Freya demanded.

“Put your hand on the diamond.” The doctor took Freya by the wrist, and gently placed her hand on one face of the diamond.

“Freya?” came Zek’s voice. It wasn’t coming from outside, but inside Freya’s head. This was a psychic connection.

“You’re alive?” Freya questioned, both grateful for it, but horrified that her friend was now somehow trapped inside a gemstone.

“My consciousness has survived. As for whether I’m alive, I could not answer that question.”

“She’s in the diamond?” Freya asked the doctor.

“She has been turned into the diamond,” the doctor corrected. “Forced that way by the incalculable pressure from the black astral plane. It’s like being a one-dimensional object, I’m surprised the rest of us survived. We must have enjoyed a persistent connection with the higher dimensions.”

“I’m not enjoying this,” Limerick contended.

“Can it be reversed?” Carbrey suggested.

“It cannot,” the doctor apologized. “I am...” she trailed off.

“Landis,” Andraste prompted.

Landis had been waiting for someone to ask him to do his thing. “I’m obviously going to try. You cannot, however, get your hopes up. What’s happened to her is nothing like I’ve seen before, but it is not unlike being cremated. People have asked me to repair their cremated loved ones before, and I haven’t had any bit of luck. I don’t bring people back to life. I just heal them. At some point, they’re beyond my gifts. I would say being transformed into a diamond goes far beyond that point of no return.”

Freya presented him with the Zek-diamond. He stepped forward, and placed his hand on her so they could have some private conversation. Then he leaned over, and breathed upon the stone. Nothing happened, nothing changed. It didn’t even sort of almost begin to work, or even moderately illustrate that he had any kind of supernatural gift at all. The rock just sat there. Zek wasn’t gone, but she would never be the same.

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