The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Sunday, July 28, 2143

« < » > Table of Contents

Mateo decided that there was no need to rush off back to his home universe. Leona would still be there waiting for him, and theoretically, no time will have passed for her. He possessed some of her memories, which meant he could recall her meeting his daughter, Dubravka, but he had never actually met her himself. She grew up in Ansutah, and spent her latter years in a different universe that he had never heard of, so this was a gift he would never get again. She couldn’t return with him since she had work to do, along with her cousin, Dar’cy—though they had never considered themselves related to each other, due to some timeline discrepancies.

They spent the whole day together, getting to know each other, and catching up. By the time it was over, Mateo was so calm and confident that he only needed to meditate for a few hours to be ready to slip back home. Meliora was impressed, having often spent days priming passengers to go with her. She was not born with the natural ability to travel the bulkverse, like Limerick, and she didn’t use technology, like The Crossover. It was something she learned to do after centuries of study and discipline, and even then, it wasn’t something she could simply do at a moment’s notice.

Things weren’t quite what they should have been when the two of them made it back home. It was indeed 2141, and only seconds had passed since Past!Mateo left the group with Nerakali and Imzadi. Those he left behind looked around for him for a bit, hoping he would come back immediately, but that wasn’t what happened. Mateo and Meliora were stuck in some kind of observation dimension. Time was moving at the same speed, and they could hear everything their friends were saying, but they couldn’t talk back, or interact with them in any way. “It’s okay,” Mateo assured her.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Meliora lamented.

“I’m not worried about it,” Mateo said. “We’ll get out of here eventually. Until then, let’s just watch over them.”

“Like a creeper?” she asked.

“If that’s your truth.”

“What is going on with you?”

“I’m a new person. Amber didn’t just give me my memories back, she helped me let go of my insecurities, and my guilt. Even though Hitler was a terrible person, I always felt a little gross killing him. I spent my whole life never having murdered someone, and then it happens. And then it happened so many times afterwards. I buried my feelings, but they were always there...until now. Now they’re gone, and I feel totally good about it. I no longer hold a grudge against Zeferino, or Arcadia. I’m no longer mad at the powers that be for having turned me into this. I’m just...”

“Chill?” she finished.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I’m just chill.” Intellectually, he knew that not being worried about anything could get him into trouble. After all, risks were still there, as they were a part of life. But it was a nice change of pace, knowing that everything would turn out okay, if that wasn’t true. “I have you to thank for it. I was already feeling a lot better after I got my soul back, but your meditation technique really pushed me over the edge. Meeting my daughter helped too, I can’t forget that. She’s where she needs to be, as is Imzadi. They’re good, Leona’s good, the two of us are good. It’s all good.”

“Is Leona good?” Meliora questioned. “She looks depressed.

Leona was lying in bed on the mobile home, fully clothed. She wasn’t sleeping, or reading. She just lied there, still.

“Nah, she’s good. She’ll be fine.”

It was true, Leona was fine. Ramses showed up, and asked for her help engineering some time travel something or other for The Sharice Davids. It was something that needed to be on the ship, but also needed to be kept secret, or something bad could happen in the future. This proved to be slightly more difficult than they thought, so they had to come back a year later to finish the job. Mateo and Meliora continued to watch them, as if they were stars in a really boring television show. Nothing interesting happened until they were finished with the temporal displacement drive, and someone showed up to complicate matters. Only one of them seemed to recognize him. “Tal’at?” Sanaa questioned.

“Hello, sister.”

“Sister?” Leona gasped. “You have a brother?”

“Yes.” Sanaa was regarding Tal’at with moderate unease, but not hatred.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why don’t you ever talk about him?”

“Do you talk about it every time you poop?”

“You don’t really think that’s the same thing, do you?” Leona asked.

“She’s always been jealous of me, and my life,” Tal’at explained.

Sanaa nodded ever so slightly, and made no move to contradict her brother’s statement.

Tal’at went on, “I was born with a freedom she always wanted. I didn’t have any psychic powers, and that allowed me to pursue whatever life I wanted.”

“I live the life I want now,” Sanaa argued.

“I know,” Tal’at agreed. “It’s not come without consequences, however.”

“What do you mean?” Sanaa asked. “What consequences?”

“Our great grandmother,” Tal’at started to explain. “She’s the psychic in this time period, and your presence is interfering with that.”

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense.” She was never supposed to become a time traveler, but the consequences from her having done so were always assumed to be limited to her having lost her telepathic abilities. At some point, she got them back, and it would appear this caused more problems. “I didn’t mean to.”

“We all know that,” Tal’at acknowledged. “The problem still must be corrected, however, and I was dispatched to see that that is carried out. We’ve let you go on for a while, because we didn’t have very many options. We didn’t want to solve a time travel problem with more time travel—that felt so...hypocritical—but now we think we’ve found a good compromise.” He looked at the walls of the ship’s corridors, almost like he was admiring them.

“The Sharice?” Sanaa guessed. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“It has an interesting future,” Tal’at replied.

“Yeah, it’s destined to be destroyed,” Sanaa confirmed.

“We’ll program you to be released before that happens.”

“You’ll program me to be released from what?”

Tal’at grinned, and banged on the wall twice with his fist. A secret door fell open, like a broken grade school locker. “I had it installed before you guys got here. That’s why Ramses had to wait until last year.”

“What is it?” Sanaa asked, getting annoyed about this whole thing.

“It’s a temporal stasis pod,” Leona answered.

“You won’t even think five seconds have passed,” Tal’at said, like that should give her comfort.

“I was here in the future,” Ramses began. “I was here when this ship is destroyed. She wasn’t rescued.”

“You sure about that?” Tal’at widened his grin. He reached into the pod, and flipped the ceiling down, revealing a bunch of mechanics that most people couldn’t recognize.

“It’s also an escape pod,” Leona realized. “If programmed appropriately, it should clear her of the blast and debris.”

“Then what?” Ramses pressed. “This isn’t going to get her back to Earth, or even Proxima Doma.”

“It will take time,” Tal’at said, “but that doesn’t matter. In fact, we want it to take time. The other Sanaa is destined to travel through the time cave in 2254. This Sanaa can’t wake up until after that, or she’ll just end up interfering with her own past self’s psychic responsibilities.”

“This is crazy, it’s crazy. It’s stupid, and I’m not doing it,” Sanaa complained.

“It’s either this, or you’ll be shunted.”

“Do you mean shunned?” Ramses asked.

“Time shunting,” Tal’at clarified. “You don’t have that in your reality? She’ll be placed in a pocket dimension, where time loops every day, or even every minute. And she won’t be let out until 2255. Do you want that? That’s your only other option. Either you jump right to the future, or you let yourself be tortured while you’re waiting. Kai Parker did it, and it made him even crazier than he already was. So I recommend...the pod.”

Sanaa huffed. “What do you think I should do, Mateo?”

“Mateo?” Leona asked, looking around. “You’re communicating with Mateo.”

“Yes,” Sanaa answered, acting like she had already been over this, which she hadn’t.

“Have you been able to connect with him this whole time?” Leona pushed.

“Of course,” Sanaa said. “You knew I could reach out to The Superintendent’s universe.”

“Well, yeah, but you didn’t say anything. How is he? Is he okay?”

“He’s fine, don’t worry about it. He’s here, he’s been watching us from an observation dimension. Meliora doesn’t know why they’re stuck there, but the barrier weakens every time we jump to the future, so they’ll probably be free next year.”

Mateo didn’t know that she could read his mind from there, but he wasn’t surprised, and he wasn’t shocked, and he certainly wasn’t going to let the development harsh his mellow.

“I’m not tryna harsh your mellow, dude-broh,” Sanaa said. “Just give me your opinion about the time pod, broh.”

“Do you trust your brother?” Mateo asked. “I mean, would he possibly be doing this to hurt you?” They were both talking out loud, but technically she couldn’t hear him. She was just listening to his thoughts.

“Yes, and no,” Sanaa answered. “He would not do this to hurt me.”

Mateo shrugged. “Then get in the pod, man. Sounds fun.”

“You get in the pod,” Sanaa snapped back on instinct.

“All right, cool.”

“Get out of the pod, Mateo,” Meliora ordered, shaking her head in disappointment.

“Did he get in the pod?” Leona asked Sanaa.

“He’s just screwin’ around, he’s out.”

“What about you?” Tal’at asked her. “Are you out?”

“Who am I to question the wisdom of Surfer!Mateo?” Sanaa reasoned. Poorly.

“I don’t know what that means,” Leona said, “but you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. We’ll find another way. Hell, the easiest way would be to just call Nerakali, and have her ferry you to the future.”

“I can’t read Tal’at’s mind like I can other people’s. All of our family’s non-psychics learn to ward their thoughts. Still, I can tell that he’s keeping something from me. There’s something he can’t say.”

“Is it that his intentions aren’t entirely pure?” Ramses figured.

“It’s that there’s more to this plan than just getting me to the future,” Sanaa corrected. “It’s where this pod ends up that’s the point. I do have to do this. I don’t know why, but this is where I get off.” She stepped into the pod, and stood there, waiting.

 Tal’at nodded gently. “Seal it up, make sure no one finds her, just like you did with whatever it is you built here.”

“Wait, you don’t know?” Ramses asked.

Tal’at stepped over to another wall, and reached down to open a portal like it was just a really big zipper. “We understand the value of discretion. It is your secret to keep.” He stepped through, and sealed the portal zipper behind him.

“Go ahead, Lee-Lee,” Sanaa said to Leona. “Start this thing up, and...let me go.”

“Do you have any idea where you’re going?” Leona asked. “July is almost over. For us, it’ll be 2256 in three weeks.”

“I don’t know,” Sanaa said honestly. “I don’t know if we’ll ever see each other again. But that’s okay. You helped me become a better person, and now maybe time will give me the chance to use what I’ve learned to help others.”

Mateo smiled and nodded, like a proud big brother who had to help raise her.

“Don’t give yourself so much credit, Matty,” Sanaa said.

Leona and Ramses inspected the pod, and made sure it would do what Tal’at claimed it would. Sanaa trusted him, but they didn’t know him, so they needed to see for themselves. After some more farewells, they closed the hatch, engaged temporal stasis, and covered it up with more walls, so no one would ever find it.

« < » > Table of Contents

Exemption Act: Stable Time Loop (Part VIII)

< > Entire Story

The two of them struggled to stand up as they rubbed their various wounds. Freya felt heavier than before, and was quite off balance. It wasn’t impossible to get upright, but not easy. They were in the middle of a forest. Limerick breathed deeply through his nose. “Wow. Is it easier to breathe?”

Freya took a breath as well. “It’s much easier. Perhaps...almost twice as easy?” She bounced her knees a little. “Surface gravity higher, oxygen level higher. Trees look a little short. This is Worlon.”

“We jumped back to the planet? I thought we weren’t ever going to the surface.”

“Maybe some kind of emergency teleport. Zek should have brought us all together, though, if the ship was destroyed.”

“What destroyed it?” Limerick asked.

Freya started pacing, not so it would help her think, but so that she could get used to the new gravity.  She did need some time to think, though. “Backwards. We were backwards.”

“How’s that?”

“I don’t know how. That’s just what happened, it’s the only explanation.”

“I haven’t heard an explanation yet.”

Freya got back down on her knees, and found some visual aids; a leaf, and a pebble. She tore a hole in the middle of the leaf that was large enough to fit the pebble. “This is what we were supposed to do.” She slowly swung each object in front of her, parallel to each other. After a few seconds, she quickly pulled the leaf in closer to her, so it was encapsulating the pebble, just like they did up in space with The Cormanu, and the probe. “But this is what I think happened.” She started out just as before, with the objects flying parallel, but this time, when she teleported the leaf over to the pebble, she turned it around, and pulled it in the opposite direction, serving to tear the leaf all the way open. “The probe kept going forwards, but since it was facing the wrong direction, it shot right through the back of the ship, and back into space, where it either continued on its journey, or was damaged enough to start drifting. We were almost sucked into that hull breach, except we ended up here.” She looked around some more. Then she reached into her back pocket, and removed two sticks of gum, one of which she handed to Limerick. “This is gravity gum. It will help your body acclimate to your increased weight. If it’s just us, and we stay on schedule, the pack will be enough for us to adapt, and not need it anymore.”

“And if it’s not just us? Where are they?”

“Zek? Zek?” Freya spoke out loud, but was really just trying to send a psychic signal.

“Could she have transported all of us, but not herself.”

“She could have done that, yes, but why would she have? We could have gone back to the ship later, if that’s all she wanted to do; save it.”

“Well, you said it was going the wrong direction. It would have eventually flown out of her teleportation range, right?”

“I guess.” Freya took out her device. “But I don’t see anyone else.”

“Is that a tricorder? Does it show life signs?”

“No, that’s stupid. It can ping other devices, though. I know Carbrey had his, and Khuweka would too. I would say about half of the others would happen to have kept it on their respective persons.” She kept pinging the others, waving her hand around, looking for a good signal. Nothing.

“Maybe she just saved us, because we were the only ones in danger.”

“So was Carbrey, and she should have just transported us to a safe section of the Cormanu.”

“He might have flown out of range, through that hole.”

Freya dropped her arm in sadness. Then she decided to try one more thing. She switched to a different menu item, and held the device back up towards the sky to measure stellar drift. Preliminary data came through pretty quickly. “Oh, no.”

“What is it? What do you see?”

“It’s still calculating a date, but...”

Limerick figured out where she was headed. “We didn’t just teleported, we traveled through time.”

“The past.” She kept watching the screen. “The deep, deep...deep, deep, deep-deep past. It’s still going.” She dropped her arm back down. “It’s slowing down, and it won’t be exactly accurate, because it requires more data, but millions of years. A few million, at least.”

Limerick smiled, and cracked his neck. “That doesn’t matter to us, though, does it? When I shatter this portal, we can go to any time period we want, in any universe.”

“In any universe touching ours. That limits you. You see, in the outer bulkverse, time is not a temporal dimension, but a spatial dimension.” She held up her fists as more visual aids. She placed her right index knuckle against her left pinky knuckle. “They have to be touching at the right point, which for us, is a moment in time. Now in the future, it’s constant. All the universes you could ever need to get to, are touching each other. I think someone did that on purpose, they call them bridges. Back in this time period, though...I don’t know. Do you detect any thinnies? Do you sense any nearby universes? Or are they all too far away?”

He held up his hand, and searched for a place he could make a portal. He stopped moving and closed his eyes to focus his senses. “I can feel one, but you’re right, I think it’s too thick. Or too far away, or whatever.”

“I don’t suppose you have an ETA on when that gets closer, if ever. It could be drifting away from us.”

“No, it’s getting closer. It hums a certain way, but I can’t predict the time table. We’ll just have to wait and hope, I guess.”

Freya shrugged her shoulders and sighed.

“Wait.” He seemed excited. “Can’t you get a message to them?”

“No, not from the past. That’s just impossible.”

“But why did we end up here, in this moment? You said, millions of years, but you’re not sure exactly when? Aren’t you, though? The probe was supposed to start sending its data to the past. That room is designed to send time messages.”

“Oh, you’re right. That’s why we ended up here. I mean, it doesn’t explain why we were able to make a physical jump, but it must be the exact same time period that we chose. Oh, but no, we’re not on Earth. The message is going to prehistoric Earth, not Worlon. It doesn’t matter that we’re closer, it’s quantum communication. It’s actually really weird we’re on Worlon. It doesn’t make much sense.”

He placed his hand back up to the invisible barrier. “Then we’ll just wait and see.”

The two of them grew closer over the three years that they were alone together. They continued to look for others, but there was no sign that anyone else came with them. This had something to do with the quantum Faraday cage, rather than Zek, and they were the only ones within its boundaries at the time. The other universe continued to draw nearer, according to Limerick’s beliefs, but it was hard to tell because of how faint the connection was, and how slow it moved, if it was doing so at all. He just kept measuring it as best he could, waiting until it was close enough for it to be useful to them. They made a life for themselves here, and as the only two people on the planet, of course, they had sex regularly. They had no birth control, but they were extra careful about it, because they didn’t want to raise a child in this environment.

It wasn’t the worst possible place to live, but it wasn’t civilized either. They built a latrine in the ground, and wiped themselves with leaves, and no matter how intricate they made their Crusoe dwelling, the toilet situation wouldn’t ever get better. There was plenty of food to eat, and infinite fresh water, and none of the animals gave them any significant trouble. They chose not to eat them, partially because they couldn’t effectively estimate any given creature’s intelligence level, but mostly because they didn’t need to. Their vegetarian diet was doing them well. What passed for insects were larger here due to the greater oxygen content, so that was a lot of fun; not creepy at all. Today, everything changed. Like cicadas did on Earth, Freya and Limerick woke up to find giant flying bugs crawling up out of the ground. There was no telling how long they had been there beyond the three years they had never seen them before. They looked a lot like dragonflies. Shit. This was it. This was where their enemies came from. Five million years in the future, these little fuckers would somehow transmit their DNA into the developing human scions that Operation Starseed planted here, and create a source variant species capable of raining hell down on countless other worlds.

They were witnessing the early evolution of evil, and there was nothing they could do to stop it. The bugs ignored the humans at first, or perhaps didn’t see them. But one took notice, and then they all did. They started flying towards their prey, forcing the couple to seek refuge in their hut. They were able to keep the mega dragonflies out for a few minutes, but the walls were buckling, so they had to fall back to the little panic room they built. It was stronger than the rest of the place, though not fit for anything but this kind of situation.

“We should have run. They’re gonna get in here eventually,” Freya lamented as the creatures bashed themselves against the walls.

“They would have caught up with us. We live longer in here. Maybe they have a really short memory. Best to keep ourselves out of sight for as long as possible.”

The wood started cracking. “Not long enough.”

Limerick regarded her. She felt like such a pathetic little nothing, sitting there so frightened and hopeless. He apparently had an idea. He grabbed her wrist, and held it up to his mouth. “Hey, Thistle...where’s my hex phone?”

“Pinging hex phone,” the watch announced.

The bashing stopped, and they could hear the little song Freya’s device was playing on the nightstand. The sound of wings flapping grew fainter.

“Stay here,” Limerick told her.

“No. We do this together.”

“Better they get one of us than both. If you find an opening, then run. Otherwise, please stay here.” He took a beat. “Please.”

“What are you going to do?”

He literally rolled up his sleeves. The Maramon promised me I would get to punch someone. Here’s my chance.”

Freya connected her watch’s hologram to the camera on her device outside, which allowed her to see what Limerick was doing. He really was punching them, like some kind of The One in a sea of well-dressed agents. They kept flying at him, and he kept knocking them away. He always knew which one was the most pressing target, and exactly where it would be. It was a magnificent show, but Freya knew that it couldn’t last forever, because he would grow tired, and there would always be more, waiting in the wings, so to speak. But then something happened.

He punched one of the cicada-dragonflies, and it disappeared, almost as if it had been sucked out of an airlock. He punched another, it did the same. The more he tried, the clearer things became. He was creating small fractures in the universal membrane, sending them out into the void, where nothing could survive. They were not yet close enough to another universe, so they were just...lost. The survivors started taking notice, and even though they obviously weren’t as intelligent as their descendants would become, they were able to take the hint. They rose up from underground to breed, and this fight was both a distraction from that goal, and not doing them any good. They flew off before they could kill Limerick.

Freya came out of the panic room, and dove down to help him.

“I’m all right. I just need to rest. Water?”

“Of course.” She retrieved some water from the barrel, and handed him the drinking gourd.

He took his drink, and caught his breath. “Whoo! That was amazing. You have no idea how good it feels to fight an enemy you’re allowed to destroy. I’ve been in a lot of brawls, but I’ve never actually wanted to kill any of my opponents. They were human. I know I’m not supposed to think this, but so far, it’s been the best day of my life.”

She smiled. “It’s okay to feel that. It’s your truth.” She stood up to look out the window, where the evil dragonflies were starting to perform their mating rituals in the distance. “We’re both alive, and that’s what matters.”

Out of nowhere, a flash of darkness overwhelmed Freya’s eyes, and grappled onto her face, knocking her to the floor. She was being attacked, presumably by a cicada-dragonfly that didn’t want to give up. She reached up to get the facehugger off of her, but it wouldn’t budge. It just wrapped its whatevers around her tighter. Freya could taste some kind of disgusting fluid forcing itself down her throat. It didn’t last forever. Limerick managed to stab it with his walking stick, and tear the corpse off of her. Together, they wiped the viscera away as much as possible.

Without warning, he jammed two fingers into her mouth, and pulled out as much retch as he could. “You swallowed something. In thirty minutes, we’ll do that again.”

“That’s not science,” Freya argued.

“We don’t have medicine, so inducing vomit is the best option available.”

“Okay.”

Freya drank a lot of water, and then a half hour later, retched it all up again, hoping that cleared whatever it was the cicada-dragonfly put in her. Like they had both said, this was not necessarily going to solve their problem, but without any means treating a disease, or even diagnosing one, this was all they had. They spent the rest of the day building a ring of torches around their entire hut, hoping the fire scared the creatures enough to keep them at bay. Tomorrow, they would try to break a thinny one last time, and then move out somewhere else. Perhaps there were places where the cicada-dragonflies didn’t thrive.

Until then, Limerick wanted to have sex, as they did every night.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“I thought you were feeling better.”

“Oh, I’m totally fine. I could be infected with something, though.”

“I’m not worried about that.”

“Better it gets one of us than both,” she echoed him from earlier.

“If you give me a space STD, then so be it. If you die, what am I gonna do without you anyway? We might as well get in the same boat. If you’re not up for it, that’s fine, but I am, and I’m not afraid.”

She was into it too, and the risks seemed worth it, what with this world looking more and more like the place where they would die regardless of when that ended up happening. “All right, let’s go to bed.”

Seven months later, literally about a thousand baby cicada-dragonflies flew out of her vagina, and off into the world. No, this was it. This was where her enemies came from. The Ochivari never had anything to do with Operation Starseed, but were spawned by Freya herself. She was the mother of evil.

< > Entire Story

Microstory 1565: The Snow in Texas

< > Table of Contents

Prompt

It’s been snowing for two weeks straight, which is strange for Texas. I’m starting to think my great aunt is right, and God really is angry with us.

Botner

I hope he gives us a good snowfall to make up for it. In case you haven’t heard, Today’s Church of Christ has put out a press release announcing the “end of days”. The holy-rollers are taking over the white wood chairs. Arguably the biggest “Christian” publication on the planet, Christianity Today, had a front page story yesterday saying that the world is at “the end of days”. In fact, they suggested that it is already here. Well, get a load of this guy: If the Bible is accurate, these are the end times and, if so, Jesus is the only one who can save us from all the evil in the world. The question is, if there are some who don’t believe it, what do they believe? What a perfect way to answer that question: Saint Peter, shut the door. I told you so. I love the idea that God would get that upset with us for going around unregenerate people. But it seems kind of random that the desire for knowledge is a sin? It seems to me that the more involved in the Word of God you are, the...

Conclusion

...less likely you are to accept the diversity in others. There’s a lot of intolerance in organized religion, and I have no interest in being part of it. The snow in Texas has nothing to do with God, or the “end of days”. It’s the climate, and the climate is because of us. People don’t want to admit it; not because they’re stupid, but because doing so would force them to acknowledge that we have not done enough to fix it. We’re leaving lights on, and driving too much, and using too many straws. Things won’t magically get better on their own, but if you lie to yourself, and pretend like there’s nothing you can do about it—that the climate is the way it is exclusively due to natural patterns—then you’re off the hook. You can keep doing whatever it is you’re doing without changing any of your behavior, or making more work for yourself. It’s true that there are a lot of greedy people out there who have no stake in the future. They’re old, and they’ll die soon, and they don’t think they’ll have to worry about the consequences. By helping destroy the environment, they’ve not only doomed the rest of us, but they’ve also built up enough wealth for themselves so that, should the consequences appear while they’re still around, they’re better equipped to deal with them. Ted Cruz is a senator from Texas who rejects the idea of climate breakdown, and he’s made a lot of money upon that platform. Funny enough, he’s completely free from the snow storms ravaging his state. He literally left, and took a nice vacation in sunny Cancún. I wrote the prompt for this installment weeks ago, long before this happened to Texas, which doesn’t prove that I’m prescient, but that this was inevitable, because unlike Cruz, I accept scientific facts as they are. These rich people in power aren’t going to do anything about the environment, because it doesn’t matter to them. This means that it is up to us. We have to remove them from their roles, and elect decent leaders, who believe in the facts, and willingly work towards the greater good, rather than their selfish, unsustainable, despicable priorities.

Microstory 1564: Plantworld

< > Table of Contents

Prompt

Everyone thought that robots or aliens would take over the world, but no one considered the possibility that sentient plants would grow out of control.

Botner

That’s what this bizarre creature from Tokyo seems to be: a strolling rose that puts us to shame with its round-about conversation, longevity, and willingness to prostrate itself before unsuspecting passersby. The rose, a forget-me-not, started out life as a normal plant in the garden of Urayasu City’s Chuo Ward. Initially, it was a member of the quiet ground cover family, but a sudden surge of excitement occurred among the neighborhood’s residents after a rose began growing up and out of its pot. According to the plant’s owner, the guy who brought home the forget-me-not in the first place, the plant’s red flowers, which were not there before, are supposed to signify good luck. At this point, the standard human reaction would be to marvel at the skill of the plant’s operator, who has apparently decided to use its many complicated arms and legs to celebrate Japan’s 125th year of reign in the world’s foremost soccer league. However, the rose is showing some unpredictable behaviors.

Conclusion

It’s not begging to drink human blood, or inject poison into victims. All its doing is multiplying, so rapidly that it can’t be stopped. Scientists tried to find a way to kill it, but before they made any progress, everything changed. The forget-me-not started to impact the plantlife around it, effectively transforming everything else into an invasive species. The spores get on clothes, and fur, and spread around. Not only do new plants grow from this, but also command nearby plants to do the same. In a matter of weeks, the entire island is covered in plants and flowers. They adapt to grow out of the cracks in buildings, and up through the floors. They thrive in the sun, in arid land, and even in saltwater. In months, all of Asia has been overcome, and the rest of the world will surely follow suit. People start to cut back on the brush as much as possible, to carve out some small area of livable land, but it doesn’t last long. It all grows back. People don’t die off as much as other apocalyptic scenarios would predict. There’s plenty of food to eat now, and it’s possible to just live in the wild, using natural shelters, like trees. So it’s only civilization that falls, while the population itself continues. It’s not as interesting anymore, as any plant or vine will destroy any attempt to establish lines of communication, and it’s also lonely, but we continue. We continue in our little isolated pockets like this, and if anyone came up with a solution to the problem, it wouldn’t be a simple thing to get that information to others. My family and I just decide that this is how life on this planet is, and there’s no way of going back to the way it was before. Then everything changes again. I leave camp for my daily walk alone, and come across a plant I see all over the place. But this one is different. It starts to speak to me. It asks me who I am, and what my intentions are. Soon, all the plants around me are speaking. I run back to camp, and tell my family, but they don’t know what I’m talking about. Only I can communicate with them, and now...it’s my duty to do so.

Microstory 1563: Soup Du Jour

< > Table of Contents

Prompt

Soup is the worst food that man created. You make the vegetables mushy and wet, and add far too much sodium. I would much rather eat...

Botner

...chicken noodle soup. Soup. The other night I was in a soup craving mood. I have never enjoyed soup in my entire life. I am not very fond of puréed vegetables. Nor do I like garlic or onion or bread and butter. But...my dear husband...one who is far from it...purchased a chicken noodle soup mix for me one day. I figured that since he bought me the soup mix, I should make it myself. So I went and bought the garlic bread from the grocery store and purchased a can of chicken broth...cause soup needs the broth. A little bit of this and a little bit of that, and I am in the soup bliss. I am hoping this soup is more savory than bland. I find that is rarely the case. I read the whole recipe, scrolled down to the soup recipe. Hmm...the whole thing for a cup of soup. I am not a huge fan of whole wheat bread for soup. Unless it is a very smooth chunky bread, the bread does not cling to the soup like it should. I went ahead and sliced up my garlic bread. I sliced a small piece of onion. I let...

Conclusion

...the tears fill up in my eyes. I continued gathering ingredients, and adding them together. I couldn’t see what I was getting, or how much of it, but I didn’t stop. If this soup was going to have onion, then it was going to be authentic, with no spoon in my mouth, or anything. It would turn out as it turned out, I decided. I cooked the whole thing up, and took my first bite. Or should I say, I took a sip, because that’s what I hate about soup; that you drink it, instead of eating it. But it didn’t matter in this case. This soup was the best I ever had, and I know that’s not saying much, but it really was amazing. It’s so good, I want to eat it every night. But I can’t, because the recipe is gone forever. I couldn’t see well through the tears, and no matter how much I try to recreate the magic, I’ll never get it right. It’s over. My love for soup was brief, and now it’s over.

Microstory 1562: Apples to Apples, Dust to Dust

< > Table of Contents

Prompt

I have sensitive teeth, but I love the taste of fruit, so my own personal hell would be a room full of apples with no applesauce.

Botner

And I am not picky about the flavor, the texture, or even the actual taste of applesauce. I have no idea what sets one applesauce apart from another. I can’t tell the difference between Frosty Paws and the pricier Thompson brands, and I never understood those Velveeta Light Blend applesauces until I realized that they don’t even contain applesauce. The frozen bagged applesauce I bought specifically for ease of quick prepackaging was also made by Thompson’s, and as I did my research, that seemed to be the only one. The last bag I bought had a different look on the box. I asked the clerk about it, and she said, “oh, I can’t remember offhand which brand it is.” Which makes me wonder: which brand should a customer trust? The customer who works in the store, the customer who is savvy and research-savvy enough to see a difference on the box, or the one at the cash register? This is one reason I stopped purchasing “wet” applesauce and started buying the squeezy variety. Before, I had to use a spatula to even break the seal, and then to scrape the spoonful out, which was a Herculean chore. The “seal” that the bag placed over the applesauce as it cooked was just as gross.

Conclusion

I know, I’m getting a little off topic, but it’s important to understand what I’ve gone through if you’re going to follow the story. The other day, I bought applesauce, like I do. It’s a really easy side piece for my breakfast, because it doesn’t take any time to make, and coupled with cereal, I’m full until lunch. It was a different brand this time, because I couldn’t find what I really wanted, but I figured I would try it. It actually tasted really good, but I only had time for one bite before I had to leave the house. My cat retched on the carpet, and I freaked out. I called in sick to work, and just left all my food on the table while we went to the vet. Don’t worry, everything was fine with him, but the weird thing is, when I got home, the applesauce was gone, and inside the bowl was a fully-formed apple. I live alone, and don’t have any family. I don’t even give my neighbors a key for safety, because I don’t know them, and don’t care to. It’s obviously a prank, but I can’t think of who. I toss the apple in the fridge, and move on. The next day, though, I’m curious to see who’s coming into my house. I keep a camera in my cat’s favorite room, to keep an eye on him, but nowhere else. I have to move it from there, and point it at a second bowl of uneaten applesauce. There are too many possible entrances for me to cover all of them, but the dining area is in a central location. I have two computer monitors at work, but only technically need one, so I just keep the second on my camera stream the whole time, and look over every once in a while. I’m surprised to see a new apple in the bowl during one of these glances. I quickly rewind the feed, and am even more shocked to see that no one replaced my applesauce. It just happened. On its own. I watch it transform itself, like it’s somehow reversing entropy. That’s not all that happens, though. When I switch back to live, I find that the bowl itself turns into a mound of clay, and the rug I have rolled up in the corner because it needs to be cleaned turns into a leopard. I was told that it was not made of real leopard fur, which is annoying and terrible, but at least its alive now? It continues. All the walls in my house suddenly become trees, ultimately destroying the camera, so I can’t see what happens next. I bolt out of work without telling my boss, and race back home. Or rather, I race back to the forest that was once my home. It’s spreading, swallowing everything in its path. Frightened of what happens when it hits me, I turn around, and now try to drive away from the onslaught. I don’t make it far before my car literally breaks down, and becomes a hunk of minerals and oil. I climb out of the wreckage, and try to go on foot. This unseen force takes over me too, though. Beams of light shoot out of my skin as I sublimate into a dusty gas, and become a nanostar.

Microstory 1561: One Last Ride Along

< > Table of Contents

Prompt

I wanted to grow up to become a law enforcement officer right up until I watched a video of a cop literally murdering an innocent black man on the street, and ultimately getting away with it...

Botner

...after abusing the trust of his office, the public, and the justice system. And you can’t unsee something like that. I have an impulse to get back to my kind of gun culture (I have no interest in owning an assault rifle) because I don’t like the mindset that is starting to take hold where guns are the problem when they’re not. We need to get our heads on straight about where this is all going. Please don’t take my desire for peace away because of my prejudices. I have friends who belong to different groups than me and they’re great. But when we lump all those groups into the same population, I don’t want to be part of it. It makes me want to question my own bias a little bit because how can I be anti-gun when I grew up with them? I have a friend who is a responsible gun owner. He owns his own gun, is a hunter, and is an NRA member. We’ve been friends for years and I’ve known him long enough to know his background. He wasn’t raised in a religious environment (he’s raised his children as Jews) but he became religious later in life. He’s still able to function as a Jewish man and raise his children in that environment. He’s a pretty decent guy who hasn’t been in...

Conclusion

...a lot of debates about responsible gun ownership. He avoids them. Like me. I can’t avoid them anymore, though. Not with a new travesty seemingly popping up in the news every day. We need to hold people accountable for their actions, and cops should not be immune to this expectation. Today is going to be awkward. I’m scheduled for another ride along. I live in a large metropolitan area, which means I have a lot of different police stations at my disposal, and I’ve been going to each one of them, to see what a day in the life of an officer is like. They’re more different than you might think, because they each have their own area to cover, and different officers handle the same kind of situation differently. I’ve always loved it, and the more experience I can get before the academy, the better. I don’t know if I can continue to pursue this career, though. I’ve wanted this my whole life, but everything changed when I watched that video. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t change my mind immediately; it’s been the outcome of a long period of self-reflection, discussing it with my parents, and getting input from a black retired police officer who lives three blocks down from us. I thought about cancelling this last ride along—and it really will be the last, as I have seen every other outfit within reasonable distance—but I chose not to. It’s located in a dense urban area, not unlike the one shown in that horrific video. I’ve decided to take this opportunity to ask the hard questions, even if it makes me uncomfortable; even if it makes them uncomfortable. There is still a slight chance that I’ll change my mind back to the uniform, and I’ll be using this as my deciding factor. How this one cop responds to my unapologetically unfiltered questions could sway me one way, or the other. We’ll see...

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Friday, July 27, 2142

« < » > Table of Contents

When Ramses Abdulrashid returned to the main sequence in 2140, he had every intention of completing his loop mission. He didn’t have all the facts, though. He knew this time period would be ideal, but that didn’t mean every day would be available and perfect. He discovered that there was too much activity surrounding The Sharice Davids in its hangar. It had not yet been retired, and people were still stationed there, even though there was little chance of it being deployed. He spent the next two years enjoying life in the reality where he grew up. It was nice not to have to run an intergalactic empire. No one asked him to give them powers, or alter the powers they had, or whatever. It was a lovely little vacation, and it was now over.

“You want our help?” Leona asked.

“For old time’s sake,” Ramses offered. “I don’t need it, but it might be cool to get the band back together.”

“Our lead singer is on his solo tour,” Leona informed him.

“Lead singer?” Sanaa questioned.

“It’s a metaphor,” Leona tried to explain.

“No, I get it,” Sanaa confirmed. “But...lead singer? I kind of feel like he’s more the triangle player, or perhaps the tambourine.”

“Ha-ha-ha,” Leona said.

“Well, when is he coming back?” Ramses asked.

“He could have been gone for centuries,” Jeremy reasoned. “He should have been back yesterday-slash-last year.”

“That’s not where his journey has taken him,” Leona reasoned right back.

“He could be dead,” Bran warned.

They all gave him the stink eye.

Bran scoffed. “Oh, like that’s not a possibility.”

“Let’s try to think positively,” Ramses put forth.

“Wait, you can see him?” Angela asked, looking to make sure he wasn’t wearing his own Cassidy cuff.

“Yeah, am I not supposed to?” Ramses wondered.

“It must be your superpowers,” Aeolia figured. “Anyway, we don’t require Mateo to help Ramses with his mission, and Nerakali hasn’t given us one of our own this year. So I’m in, and so is Kallias.”

“It shouldn’t be everybody,” Ramses said, uncomfortable. “It could draw too much attention.”

“Jeremy and Angela, stay with the Imzadi,” Leona ordered politely.

“Are we still calling it that, even though Imzadi is gone?”

Leona ignored the remark, because it didn’t matter. “Sanaa and I can help you engineer whatever it is you need. Bran and Aeolia can stand guard, and keep people away from us. They’re essentially invisible, but are also very...convincing.”

“And what is it we will be doing?” Sanaa asked. “I haven’t agreed to anything.”

“The Sharice Davids. It’s been decommissioned, but will rise again in half a century. I need to get on it now, to install some secret upgrades. It’s called the ol’ Bill and Ted Gambit. I’m going to be on that ship in the future, and in order to save my life, I activated a special kind of temporal displacement drive, but the TDD didn’t exist, as far as anyone was aware. I didn’t even know it was there. I’ve had to remember to go back in time, and build it for myself, but no one can use it before that moment, or a trio of evil future people will know about it, and it won’t work for me.”

“Sheeeeeeee-iiiit,” Sanaa joked. “That’ll ya had to say. Let’s do it.”

“Good luck,” Jeremy called out to them. “The two dum-dums are just gonna play games, and try not to forget how to breathe.”

“Okay, cool!” Leona called back.

“That’s a cool suit ya got there,” a young woman noted. She looked familiar, but Mateo must have only had interesting memories of her.

“Oh, you want it?” he asked as he looked around to figure out how to get out of this thing.

Imzadi’s hologram reappeared. “You have to keep it so you can get home.”

“I’m not worried about it,” Mateo said.

“I am. You may not care to go back, but I do,” Imzadi complained. It was probably getting frustrating dealing with a sociopath. “You’re not a sociopath.”

“I don’t like that you can read my mind,” Mateo said.

“Why? Not boring enough for you?”

“Do you two need some time to squabble alone?”

“No, it’s fine,” Imzadi told him. She pretended to sigh. “We’re here to help. What is the mission?”

“We’re fighting an evil religious organization that controls millions of people,” one of the other young women explained.

“Oo, that could be interesting,” Imzadi said to Mateo.

“You think I’ll get my soul back if I just have a little fun?”

A third woman stepped forward. “You’ve lost your soul? We can get you that.”

“He’s just being metaphorical,” Imzadi clarified.

“Well, maybe you just don’t know. A salorex can manipulate your soul. It should restore your soul, and if not, and the soul doesn’t exist, then no harm done. Hi, I’m Amber. These are my friends, Sheridan, Heather, and Zoey.” Zoey was the one who looked, and now sounded, familiar. “I...I don’t really know these other people.”

Curtis stepped forward as well. “They’re—”

“I don’t care.” Mateo wasn’t interested in hearing the names of a half dozen other people. He was just going to forget them.

“Right,” Curtis said. “No soul, okay.”

Mateo went off with these random people to fight some evil other people called the Thuriamen. He had a real hard time being motivated, which was his whole thing now, but luckily, Imzadi was able to take control of the supersuit. He kept the helmet on the whole time, and sort of just stayed along for the ride. He even nodded off once or twice. If Mateo wasn’t careful, the survivors would go on to tell stories about this day, and turn him into some kind of hero. To prevent this, he insisted that the others start simply referring to the entity in the suit as Imzadi, and leave him out of it completely. They all understood and respected his desire for anonymity, presumably for their own respective reasons.

Once they broke through the stronghold, and gained enough control over the right resources to command the dimensions—as the natives put it—Amber, Zoey, Zoey’s love interest, Seth, and Missy escorted Mateo to some kind of factory, or something. Dubra and Dar’cy wanted to go, but changed their minds, deciding to wait until Mateo could remember how much he cared about them. In the factory, they found golden collars that workers were manufacturing before evacuating to avoid being caught in the crossfire of the war. Now that it was safe, and they were alone, Mateo was able to climb out of the back of the suit, and stretch his legs a bit. Imzadi activated a holographic face in the helmet, and continued to walk around in it.

Amber found a collar that had already gone through quality assurance, and installed it around Mateo’s neck. “Is it comfortable?”

“It is what it is,” Mateo answered.

“Okay.” She got Imzadi’s attention, and pointed to a vault. “The diadems should be locked up in there. Would you be able to break through that?”

“I might be able to short-range teleport into it,” Zoey suggested.

“The door’s too thick,” Seth argued.

“You don’t know that.”

“I got this,” Imzadi assured them. She took hold of the wheel, and put all her strength into turning it. They could hear the insides breaking apart as she was opening it, but that was fine, they didn’t need this to be a functioning vault after this. Once they were finished helping Mateo, they claimed they would destroy all of them. Theoretically, it would restore Mateo’s drive to enjoy life, but that wasn’t what they were designed for. The Thuriamen wanted to literally control the masses, and this was their way of accomplishing that.

The door opened, and Amber went in to retrieve one of the diadems.

“Should you be the one to wear that?” Seth questioned. “Mr. Matic, do you trust her? It seems like you two just met.”

“These things require years of training,” Amber explained. “You can’t just slap it on your head, and start manipulating people on day one.” She slapped it on her head. “Unless you’re a soul psychic.” She closed her eyes.

“It is no coincidence that these things are amber-colored,” Zoey whispered to her boyfriend.

After a minute, Mateo started feeling something. It was a warm comfort around his neck that spread upwards, and started massaging his head. It then went down, and covered the rest of his body. He started waving his arms around, and swinging his legs. It occurred to him that this was dancing. But he wasn’t the one doing it. Amber was controlling his movements.

“Just testing it,” Amber clarified, eyes still closed. “Here we go.” She exhaled deliberately, and got to work fixing his brain.

Mateo didn’t just get his interesting memories back. He also started oscillating between all emotions. Happiness, sadness, anger, rage, love, hate, fear, shame; everything. Some felt bad, but they were all a welcome relief, and the more he got back, the more his memory of not having them felt like torture; like the worst thing that had ever happened to him. Bad feelings were terrible, but they were a part of life, and when he didn’t have them, he was nobody. He was nothing. That was a hell he would wish on no one. He got his memories of orgasms back, and then he had a real one, which might have been embarrassing, but he just felt lucky to be alive again. He also realized that he had met Zoey before. She was at his wedding, and had later transported him back to his home universe, utilizing the suit that he was wearing right now. That was not too long ago from his perspective, but must take place in her future. The suit would need to be cleaned first.

He couldn’t tell exactly how long the process took, but everyone was still standing about where they were when he closed his eyes in ecstasy, so it must not have been too long. Unlike when Nerakali blended someone’s brain, when it was over, he was still sporting a dumb smile, and not screaming at all.

“That looked like fun,” Seth noted. “Can I try next?”

“Shut up,” Zoey said playfully.

“Oh my God, it was great.” Mateo tried to take off the collar, because it was time.

“No, no, no,” Amber warned. “You can’t take it off yourself. This is a mind-control device.” She swept her palm to the side, which served to release the collar. Then she removed the diadem, and set it carefully on the floor. “Imzadi?”

The android walked over, and crushed the evil device underfoot. Mateo threw the collar down, and let her crush that too. It was going to take more than that to destroy the whole institution, but this was a decent start. Imzadi couldn’t read his mind anymore, but she seemed to be thinking the same thing. He smiled at her and nodded. “I don’t need you to get home. You stay here and take care of the rest. These people need you.”

Her hologram face smiled back.

“I would rather get back home in realtime, though. Zoey, where’s your knife?”

“My knife? This thing?” She reached into her boot, and pulled out a pocket knife. It was absolutely not what he was talking about. The thing she used to tear rifts in the spacetime continuum was larger, more frightening, and glorious.

“Oh, you haven’t gotten it yet. I don’t know where you find it, or what. It’ll let you travel the bulkverse.”

“I know what knife you’re talking about.” Seth turned to his girlfriend. “You seem to be able to cross dimensional barriers, but not from scratch. You need to make a hole first. The time knife would do that for you. It’s not useful to anyone else, because the larger the hole you need, the harder it becomes to tear, and then they still have no way to navigate. It’s perfect for you, because your body somehow metabolizes bulk energy.”

“Do you know where this knife is?” Missy asked.

“Missy, why do you only have one arm?” Mateo couldn’t help but ask.

“Why do you have two?” Missy joked.

“I have no clue where the knife is,” Seth answered. “We know someone who does, though. Jacob.”

“I’ll have to worry about that later,” Zoey decided. “There’s a lot I need to do in this universe first.”

Mateo started to disrobe. “Still. You should take this. I imagine future you will need it to survive the hypervacuum of the outer bulkverse.”

“Hypervacuum?” Missy questioned. She laughed.

“Yeah, I assume it’s more of a vacuum than a regular vacuum.”

She laughed harder. “It’s not a vacuum,” she corrected. “It’s an equilibrium.” Whatever that meant.

“Are you going to go back to your universe naked?” Amber asked.

Mateo carefully handed Seth the suit. “Make sure that’s cleaned. I don’t know if it’s dry clean only, or what.” He redirected his attention to Amber. “Might as well. Hashtag-freethenipple.”

Imzadi walked over and turned around, so Mateo could retrieve the homestone from the suit. “Good luck.”

“I’m sure we’ll see each other again.” He lifted the stone up close to his heart, and squeezed it. Nothing happened. He squeezed again. Still nothing.

“We may actually need to find that time knife sooner, rather than later,” Seth suggested. “How do you people feel about musical theatre?”

Before anyone could answer, a silhouette appeared in the middle of their little conversation circle. It slowly gained color, and tuned focus, until Mateo could see that it was none other than Meliora Rutherford.

“Melly?” Amber asked, surprised.

“I got your psychic message,” Meliora said.

“Oh, yeah,” Amber said. “By the way, Mateo, the two of us are now bonded for life. That usually takes time of getting to know each other, but the salorex sped up the process. I’m here if you need to talk...psychically speaking.”

“Cool.”

“I can get us home,” Meliora told Mateo. “It will take time, though. Have you ever meditated before?”

« < » > Table of Contents