The Advancement of Serif: Tuesday, September 4, 2181

« < » > Table of Contents

Serif could remember Jeremy and Angela telling her about Tamerlane Pryce, and all that they had gone through after death. It all seemed very jumbled and sketchy, though, now that she was thinking on it. There were a lot of plot holes in their story, suggesting not that they were unreliable narrators, but that their memories had indeed been erased. There was at least one person they were missing, and if they ever got their memories of them back, these stories would probably start to make a hell of a lot more sense. For now, Jeremy and Angela didn’t think they could trust this guy, so they were going to proceed with caution. It was then that she noticed Pryce’s wrist. “Where did you get that?”

“Oh, this?” Pryce admired his Cassidy cuff like someone who had just been proposed to. “Do you like it? I think it’s pretty.”

“Where did you get it?” Serif repeated, agitated.

“It was in a bag on the couch.”

Angela scoffed. “Ugh. I don’t understand why I’m always in charge of them. Back in the simulation, if I forgot something at home, I could snap my fingers, and it would appear. I can’t get used to making sure things are where they should be, when they should be there.”

“It’s okay,” Serif assured her. “All he needs to do is take it off.”

“No, I don’t wanna do that,” Pryce said, as if Serif was giving him a choice.

“Take it off before I cut off your arm.”

“Such violence,” Pryce pointed out. “What’s your name again?”

“Serif,” she answered.

“Serif...” he waited.

“I’m Serif.”

“Serif what?”

“Yes.”

“Your last name is What?”

“No.”

“Goddammit.”

“Goddammit is right, goddammit. Now take off the Cassidy cuff!”

“Is that what these are called?” Pryce asked. “Who’s Cassidy?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“All right, look, I’m not the Tamerlane Pryce that you know. When he went back in time with his weird little heaven robot, he created a new timeline. The way he tells it, everything played out almost exactly as it did in his timeline, but it’s still technically a different branch. And because of that, there are now two of us. I’m the other one. I’m the one who hasn’t done all those things you hate him for. I’m innocent!” Innocent was too strong of a word for a man like this to be swinging around recklessly. It was irrelevant that he was an alternate version. Someone who declared himself in charge of tens of billions of dead people—in any reality—could never be trusted.

Serif’s cuff beeped, but no one else’s did. She tapped on the envelope to read a message from Nerakali, which told her to let him stay. “It seems I have been overruled.”

“Serif,” Jeremy started to argue.

“We’ll see what happens,” Serif interrupted. “Until then, we keep an eye on him.” She started off for the AOC. “Pryce, you walk with me. Somebody get Olimpia up to speed about him.”

They got some sleep in the AOC, but stayed on the moon. They probably wouldn’t know where the transition would be until after midnight central, so there was no point trying to go anywhere until they had that information. When Serif woke up about ten hours later, she could feel the familiar hum of the reframe engine. She opened her grave chamber to find everyone else was already awake. “Where are we going?”

“Best guess,” Olimpia said, “back to The Elizabeth Warren. Sorry, we didn’t want to wake you, and didn’t think you would object to us getting into position.”

“What do you remember about this time period?” Jeremy asked. “None of us was there. What is the significance of September 4, 2181?”

“I have no idea,” Serif answered. “I’ve never been to this time period before.”

“Oh, I thought you were from the future, and had already been through all this. Maybe I’m thinking of someone else,” Jeremy said.

“We know we’re missing people,” Serif reminded him. “We can’t think about that right now, though. We have a mission to get to.”

“We’re nearly there,” the ship’s computer reported.

Jeremy started tapping on the cuffs. “It’s not incoming. It’s an exit window. We’re supposed to travel to the other side.”

Serif was nervous. “I don’t like that. I’m getting a bad feeling about this date.”

“As am I,” Angela agreed.

“I may be able to clear some things up,” the computer announced.

“What do you know?” Serif questioned.

“The sequence of events is already in my database,” the ship began. “I know what happens on this date, and I know that by being here, Serif, that sequence has changed. As you know, Ubiña pocket four is experiencing a dimensional disturbance, brought on by two special children inside. One can increase the size of the space, and the other can create entire conscious beings, seemingly out of nothing. The instability of this dimension was threatening to destroy The Warren, and perhaps the universe. So they severed the link entirely, which served to create a whole new universe, which would come to be called Ansutah.”

“Oh,” was all Olimpia said.

Serif took a half step forward, as if she were somehow getting closer to the artificial intelligence they were communicating with. “Tell us everything. Start from the moment I left pocket four, up until now.”

And so the AI went into the story, helping them understand what had happened, and what was about to happen. It only served to fuel their suspicions that they were missing key members of their team, who should have been able to tell them all this, especially since Serif’s presence on the AOC was not what happened in the original timeline. Things were changing—minor things, yes, at least according to the story—but it still proved that it was possible. This dimensional destroyer woman was about to cause a terrible headache for people all across the bulkverse. It obviously wasn’t her natural power to create whole new universes. She had to have done that accidentally, and now that they were here, they had the chance to do it differently. The link between the real world, and the pocket dimension, still needed to be cut, but they had to do it more carefully this time. They had to find a better end result.

“Can we travel freely between these dimensions?” Angela suggested. “Or are we bound to the same barriers?”

“I’m not sure,” the AI answered. “I have no control over the transition windows.”

Another message came from Nerakali, once again only to Serif. Go to bed, choose your graves wisely. That was it. That was the answer. There were six Ubiña pockets on The Warren, and six grave chambers on the AOC. If they wanted to transition directly to a given pocket, they would need to be in its corresponding grave chamber. “We have thirty minutes until the window opens. Give me ten to come up with a plan, and then we’ll discuss it.”

Twenty minutes later, they could do nothing more than to hope their plan was a good one, and wasn’t going to go wrong. Predicting other people’s reaction to their interference was the toughest thing to guess, and they would never know the reality until it was happening. Serif wanted to go back to pocket four, where she was before, but that wasn’t good for the plan. They needed Pryce and Jeremy to be there, so they could kidnap the children. Yeah, that sounded bad, but their abilities were causing huge problems, and something had to be done about that. The best way they could think of was to snap Cassidy cuffs on all four of their wrists, and suppress their powers.

Meanwhile, Angela would stay in the ship proper, so she could interface with the crew of the Warren, so they understood what they were doing was for the best. Olimpia has a special job to take care of in pocket six, which wasn’t vital to the plan, but important on a personal level. Lastly, Serif had to go to pocket one, so she could talk with the dimensional destroyer about what she was about to do for them. The team climbed into their respective grave chambers, and waited for the window to open.

Serif found herself standing on the grass next to the residential building, looking down at a trail that led out into the wilderness. A woman was several meters away behind her, having an argument with someone that Serif couldn’t see. She walked up to her, and called out to Vitalie, who she knew to be an astral projection right now. “Miss Crawville, I am from an alternate reality. Could you please show yourself to me, so we can talk?”

Vitalie made herself visible to her, along with another young man. “I know who you are, Serif.”

“Indeed. The plan needs to change, but just a little,” Serif told them.

“How so?” Vitalie asked.

Serif faced the dimensional destroyer. “We can’t just have her sever the link. She has to keep the pocket dimension inside our universe.”

“That doesn’t solve our problem,” Vitalie argued. “The whole point is to get it away from our universe.”

“That’s no longer necessary. Our colleagues are in pocket four right now. We have a way to stop Adamina and Esen. We can suppress their abilities. The growth will stop.”

Vitalie was shaking her head. “I would have to talk to Leona about this.”

“She...she can’t know I’m here,” Serif contended.

“She won’t, we can’t find her. My point is that we can’t just change the plan. Hokusai, Saga, Camden. They all need to know. I don’t know where you’ve been, or what you’ve been through, but the plan is the plan.”

“Please,” Serif begged. “Please trust me.”

Vitalie turned towards their diagnostician. “Avidan? Can she do that?”

“It should be easier. Creating a new universe would be the hardest obstacle here. If all she needs to do is close the portal, that should be a piece of cake.”

“How would we access it again?” Vitalie questioned. “I mean, if they’re going to stay in our universe, we have to be able to get back to them. They’ll run out of resources.”

“Hokusai will be able to do that,” Serif promised. “Have her switch pocket four to the dimensional generator she built, just like she’s going to do with the other five pockets. All we’ll have to do after that is close the door.”

“We have people in there,” Vitalie reminded her.

“Once we get them evacuated,” Serif amended, “we’ll close the door. This will work. You don’t understand what happens when the new universe is created. I have a chance to stop that, and I’m taking it.”

The dimensional destroyer finally spoke up. “If it’s easier, that’s what I’m going to do, because quite frankly, I don’t give a crap either way.”

Vitalie kept shaking her head, uncomfortable with the whole thing.

“You don’t have a choice,” the dimensional destroyer continued. “This is what I’m doing.”

“Will you?” Vitalie pressed. “Will you try to help us, or will you just sit here on your throne, and keep command over pocket one?”

“I’ll do what I say,” she spit. “I do have some integrity.”

Vitalie sighed, and turned towards Avidan. “When I get back, you need to make sure she’s ready. First, I need to warn everyone else, regardless of the fact that I can’t stop it.”

“They already know,” Serif explained. “My colleague is on the ship proper, having a similar conversation.”

“How many colleagues do you have?” Vitalie asked.

“Enough.” Serif gazed into the distance. “But still somehow...not enough.” Leona was the person they were missing, and this was something she knew in her heart. A past version of her was in a secret seventh pocket dimension right now, but that was useless to her. Serif needed the future version of her. She needed the one she lost, and the other one needed to be able to move on with her life without her. Hopefully they would have time to look into that in three years.

“Ooookay?” Vitalie disappeared, along with Avidan.

In the end, the sequence of events played out shockingly close to the way they did in the original timeline, according to the AOC’s logs. They had to break Leona out of her little jail, there was a huge ordeal trying to get Adamina and Esen out of pocket four, and the dimensional destroyer severed the link. The difference was that Adamina never used her uncontrollable powers to enlarge The Warren, the crew was able to keep everyone in their respective pockets, only releasing the few people they needed to complete the mission, and Serif never ended up getting stuck inside pocket four. The Maramon alive at the time were still all in there, but their numbers would grow at a reasonable rate, and they now had time to figure out how they were going to deal with them. The real challenge made itself apparent when the window opened up to take them back to the Parallel. The seven of them, including the children, weren’t the only ones to transition. Avidan came through too, as did Vitalie, who had a huge destiny in the main sequence that they knew she had to get back to.

« < » > Table of Contents

Big Papa: Mods (Part X)

< > Entire Story

The escape hatch in Gilbert’s Purple Palace was designed to look like an actual hatch. In fact, it’s a perfect recreation of the one from the original Lost television series. Nerakali has already opened it when Pryce and I arrive. He jumps through to save himself, but I’m sure he’ll later claim it’s because he’s the only one who can push the button. Nerakali tries to get me through next, but I hold back. “We have to wait for Lowell and Gilbert.”

“Ellie, if even one of our enemies manages to get around that corner, we’re both dead. They might be able to manipulate time in here, we don’t know. We don’t know how powerful they are.”

“I’m not leaving without them.”

A figure appears, just as Nerakali said, but it’s not Pinocchio, or the goons. It’s Lowell. He’s running as fast as he can. “Go! Go now!”

Nerakali takes me by the waist, and forces me into the hole. She jumps through above me, followed by Lowell. I can hear them both yelling as we’re slipping down the slide. After several minutes, we catch up to Pryce. We’re still sliding, but it’s not so harrowing anymore. This is just our mode of transportation right now. Lowell can see the slide disappear into the void behind him. It would obviously be pretty worthless as an escape hatch if our pursuers could have just followed. Maybe an hour later, we’ve reached the bottom, where we land in a field of giant bounce house boobies. It’s a less disgusting version of the farting Buttworld in Rick and Morty, but still not something I would have chosen if I had created this simulation.

We walk between the boobs, some of us more distracted than others, and come to a door. This is where we find the armory. Ice picks, red axes, hock shanks, yellow hammers, green collars, plus keys, pink slips, a browncoat, and a big jar of gray smoke. There’s an unlit candle with a placard that reads Violet Flame: coming soon... and a place for the white staff. There is also a section for zero blades, but whether he ever had more than one, or only the one, it’s empty now. Gilbert already knew about all this stuff, and he was probably preparing for something like this war.

“Did he do this?” Lowell asks as he’s admiring the weapons and upgrade tools. Did someone get in here while we were gone, and replicate the stash to start the war?”

“This place is untouched,” Nerakali defends her friend. “He was probably collecting them, so this wouldn’t happen. He hates violence.”

“It didn’t look like it when I was fighting alongside him,” Lowell recounts.

“What happened?” I ask. “Where is he, and what happened to Pinocchio?”

It’s only then that I realize Lowell’s been keeping pressure on a stomach wound. “I tried to turn the tables with my fire poker, but I may have just made things worse. Pinocchio stabbed me. He stabbed me good. It gave me time to knock the weapon out of his hand, but he had already stolen the hammer from Boyce. O’course Boyce took that opportunity to grab the zeroblade, but before he could use it, Pinocchio got him with the hammer. I’m sure he’s fine, somewhere in a public space, and he’s in possession of the most powerful weapon in the simulation.”

As I’m trying to help Lowell onto the counter, where we find the med kit, Pryce shakes his head. “These weapons don’t just downgrade your IDCode. They feel like they would in the real world. As you can see, Lowell, the zero blade hurts, because swords hurt. If Gilbert was struck by the hammer, he’s probably bleeding out somewhere, and some rando has stolen the sword.”

“We don’t have time to worry about that,” I say. “Pinocchio is the one who’s coming after us. Tamerlane, if you really want to do the right thing, then we have to get you to the button.”

“I do want to do the right thing, I’m not lying.”

“Nerakali, what is in that cabinet right there?” I ask.

She opens it up. “Mods. Defensive, mostly, it looks like. Invincibility, lurking, pain patches, superspeed, savepoints. This vial is called Berserker Mode.”

“Be careful with that,” Pryce warns. “It’s as bad as it sounds.”

“Take ‘em all,” I order, “because I’m not taking any chances.”

“What about me?” Lowell asks as he’s running his finger under the staples I just put into his belly. “I don’t feel like I’m about to die, but how do zero blades work? Do they have to be fatal, or is any nick and cut necessarily fatal?”

“Any nick or cut is more likely to be fatal than a regular blade would be in the real world, but it is possible to heal,” Pryce explains. “Biological imperatives are built into your DNA, and that side of you will fight for its survival until your last simulated breath. Your source code is in maintenance mode right now, and should be attempting to repair any damage that the blade caused. Frankly, I’m surprised you’re still standing. Anyone else would have fallen into a coma to avoid wasting memory.”

Lowell puts his shirt back on, and hops off the counter. “I’ve felt pain before.”

Nerakali stays in charge of the injections, making sure each of us gets what we need. There’s a loophole to the lurker potion, which will allow us to still be able to see each other. Unfortunately, we’re not the only ones which such things, and it’s entirely possible that someone out there will see us, and try to stop us, even if they don’t know what it is we’re doing. Pryce takes a green collar from the wall, and tries to wrap it around Lowell’s neck, but a force field prevents him from getting close enough. In turn, Lowell tries to stab Pryce with a hock shank, but it can’t get within a few centimeters of his body. The defenses are working.

“I notice you’re not demanding I tell you where the button is,” Pryce points out. “Curious.”

“Oh, no, no, no. I don’t want you having any reason to back out of your promise to fall on your literal sword. You’ll take us all the way, and you won’t say a word about its location until we’re upon it. Is that understood?”

He nods.

I remove one of the vials from the cabinet that Nerakali didn’t pick up. “This is called mutemouth. I assume it keeps you from being able to speak.” I stick it into my tactical vest. “Don’t make me use it on you.”

Lowell laughs. “Maybe we should use it on him preemptively.” He’s smiling wide with an open mouth. He looks up and to the left, like he’s trying to remember what he was going to say next. Faceless past birds?”

“What?” I question, confused.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Lowell agrees, still confusingly. “Drop it into the river.” And with that, he drops, but not into a river, the floor.

I kneel down, and place two fingers on his neck. “Do we have pulses in here?” I ask, urgently nervous. “I’ve never thought to check. Do we have pulses!”

“Yes,” Pryce answers. “If you feel a pulse, his code is alive, though that doesn’t tell you his general condition. He looks like he’s in a coma.”

“He looks like he is, or he is?” I’m getting angry.

“He is, he is!” Pryce shouts, worried I might kill him. “His code is trying to repair itself.”

“What do we do?” Nerakali asks. “We can’t just leave him here.”

“This is probably the safest place for him,” Pryce determines. “We can’t take him with us, though.”

“What happens when you press the button?” I start to feel Lowell’s body for other signs of life, and for symptoms, still not sure if I should be looking for the same things I would in base reality. “If someone who’s hurt like this is put on ice, what happens to them? Is it like stasis?”

Pryce hesitates to answer, but does before I can complain. “No, it’s not like that. His code will be saved in its damaged form, and when he comes back, he’ll either be a damaged version of himself, or he’ll finally die. That’s why you don’t just unplug a computer while it’s running. There’s a proper way to shut it down, and you can’t do it while you’re in the middle of a process, and expect that process to restart once the computer does.”

I scoff and growl. “Will it help to de-rez him?”

Since he’s just a visitor, and not a fully-integrated resident, yes. But he’ll revert to his mindstate from before he last entered the simulation. He won’t remember any of this, but he will be alive. The problem is we can’t do that from here, not while he’s in a coma, and can’t exit himself. Resurrection happens in a very specific place in the main world.” He looks over at the spot on Gilbert’s wall that’s missing the last item. “If we had the white staff...”

“You can unplug someone from the outside,” Nerakali reminds him. “I’ll go out and do it.”

“Pinocchio knows we’re here now,” I say. “He’ll know removing ourselves from the simulation completely might be our best option, so he’ll be waiting for us to return, in case we do. I doubt Gilbert built these tunnels in a way that allows anyone to reinstantiate directly inside. God, we should have thought of that. We should have had him unplug himself as soon as he got hurt. That was stupid.”

“It’s okay,” Nerakali says, hand on my shoulder. “I can still unplug, and I can unplug him. I’ll explain what happened, and we’ll just stay on the outside. Someone should be in communication with the Glisnians anyway.”

“They might shut us down to avoid infection,” Pryce says. “We designed it as a closed-system, but they might not want to take that risk. If they think things have gotten bad enough...”

Nerakali opens her mouth, and sticks out her tongue, which she has modded to look silver. “If they try anything, I’ll stop them. It’s what I do.” She mimics removing headgear from her face—which is not necessary to take herself out of the sim—and makes a really obscure not-so-pop culture reference. “Exitis.”

“And then there were two,” Pryce says, characteristically psychopathically.

“Four,” Gilbert’s voice says from the door to the boobroom. He steps in, followed by someone I never expected to see again. His name is Dalton Hawk, and he’s a salmon who hasn’t really made any waves amongst the time travelers. He’s not unimportant, but he’s not famous. Either way, he’s a good guy, so I know I don’t have to worry about learning to trust him.

“All right, then,” I say. “Gilbert, I’m glad to see that you’re still with us. Let’s get you two fitted with some mods.”

< > Entire Story

Microstory 1615: Going the Wrong Way

< > Table of Contents

Salmonverse is the messiest, most complicated, most dangerous universe that I’ve ever seen. It’s not dangerous because a bunch of demons are trying to kill you, like Adverse, or because of unpredictable base modifications, like you’ll find in Bladopodoverse. It’s dangerous because far too many people are capable of time travel and they travel through time far too often. With almost no regulation, this doesn’t just get complicated, though. It also leads to death. First of all, you have to understand that, since there are very few parallel realities in this brane, every time someone time travels, they’re technically killing billions of people. The act itself will collapse the timeline, and send its inhabitants into oblivion. Travelers justify this in a few ways. Many of the people who collapsed with the timeline they just came from exist in this new timeline as well. They will move on with their lives, and not worry about what might have been, unless there’s some other psychological reason for them to worry about that, in which case, the time travel isn’t relevant or necessary. Some people will never have been born, sure, but again, their once-loved ones will never know what they’re missing. There’s also the fact that reality itself is constantly springing and collapsing timelines. I’ve mentioned microrealities, which exist for fractions of a second, and are destroyed once true reality takes shape. There are people in those microrealities—duplicates of everyone who existed at the moment—and have just as much potential to survive as their counterparts. And this is happening all the time, in every universe, even the ones that don’t allow general time travel. But that’s not the same thing, because no one is doing that on purpose. Time travelers, on the other hand, are deliberate actors. Well, not all of them, I suppose. The universe’s namesake, salmon are controlled by the powers that be, but the accusation still holds. It’s just that blame must be shifted from the traveler themselves, to the people in control. It’s still happening, and timelines are still collapsing.

This is not a criticism of Salmonverse, or its residents, or the time travelers. It’s not even really about the people whose timeline collapses when a new one is created. It’s just not a good place to live if you want to make sure that you have a future. Anytime someone goes back in time, and changes something, everyone’s life is at risk. Their entire existence is in jeopardy. Sometimes it’s a timeloop, and everything they do is inevitable. When it’s not, though, even the slightest alteration—and I mean, on the quantum level—creates a new branching timeline. It may not have been their intention to change something, but it will, and they can’t stop it. Lots of time travel fiction involves doing your best to not make any changes to history, but again, unless it’s a timeloop, their efforts are pointless. History will change, even if they stand in one place until they catch up to their own present, which they won’t. Reality is also a lot less binary than people think. Stopping someone from dying on April 29, only to watch them die on April 30 still means that things changed. Death isn’t stalking you, trying to maintain some cosmic balance. If the person ends up dying anyway, it’s not because it was their destiny, or couldn’t be stopped. It’s just a coincidence. That’s what salmonverse is all about. Travelers are constantly making changes, often unintentionally, but also often in the attempt to improve something about reality. I don’t think anyone is qualified to say whether that’s good or not, but from where I stand, time travel is just not worth the risk.

Microstory 1614: That Which is Made

< > Table of Contents

I’ve mentioned the biverse to a few people before, and they always get confused. They think that the person who named them is an idiot. These two branes started out as one, and became two when it was duplicated. Now, this happened during an unpopulated period of the Universum Originalis, as it’s called, so don’t worry about alternate versions of people. It was really just more like a cell splitting in half. They were identical when it happened, but began to diverge from there on out. So which one is the original, and which is the duplicate? Well, it’s hard to say for sure, but this occurred as a result of an unexpected visit from a ship that originated in a completely different universe. And while identity is very complex, the universe where that ship ended up has always been treated as the duplicate. So they call the other one Prime, and this new one The Composite Universe. This is where people laugh. In math, a prime number is one that cannot be divided by any number but 1, and itself. A composite number is anything else. People laugh, because as the name of a universe, the word prime should not be using this definition. It really just means primary, main, foremost. And the opposite of this definition is not composite. Maybe it should be secondary, or alternate. The thing is, no one ever said it was. In this case, composite refers to—not the opposite of a prime number—but to the fact that it was composed, created, produced. This is where the confusion lies, and while I don’t know who actually came up with the names Universe Prime and Composite Universe, I suspect that this confusion was done intentionally so people like the ones I’ve talked to can complain about it, and then be schooled.

The Composite Universe is full of life. One of the passengers on the ship that accidentally created it grew to be lonely. He wasn’t the only survivor, full stop, but he was one of a kind, and he wanted to create life in the void. Fortunately, he was made immortal, and had plenty of time to realize his dreams. He wasn’t particularly well-educated in the beginning, but give him a few thousand years, and he’s leagues beyond anything any of us can understand. He started tinkering with genetics, biology, and evolution. He created all sorts of different intelligent creatures. Some he developed right off the bat, while others took time to evolve, just as life does in nature. Evolved and intelligent life is incredibly rare, and while I wouldn’t characterize it as deliberate, it is regulated by nature. The reason Universe Prime is called that is because that’s where all universes I’m fully aware of originate. Every one of them is branched off of it, which is why I’m always talking about Earth. It’s not like Earth is truly the center of the bulkverse. Almost none of them even has an Earth, and its inhabitants will have never heard of it. What they have in common is that—within the confines of their respective universes—they’re isolated, and alone. Life will evolve on one planet at a time, and won’t evolve again until that one has long, long been extinct. Why is this the way things are? I do not know. That is a lofty philosophical question that I can’t help you with. I can tell you that the Composite Universe is different, because this man decided it should be. He filled the galaxies to the brim with his creations, in places that never would have had it on their own. That’s what makes the Composite so different from all other universes. It’s complicated, and it’s busy, and though Earth is still important, it’s mostly ignored, and a lot of people elsewhere don’t even know that it exists.

Microstory 1613: Prime Mover

< > Table of Contents

Like me, The Superintendent is a spirit, and also like me, he can witness events in other universes, and he can see more detail. But it’s more than that. He’s also creating these branes, and controlling certain aspects of them. Free will is still a thing, but the people’s actions always follow his logic, and going against his explicit wishes is only possible once you’re made aware that he exists. I mean, I’m the one telling you this story right now, but I’m doing it through the Superintendent, and it’s being published in his world. It’s called Universe Prime, and no matter what he tells you, it’s because that’s what he decided to call it. It’s not the most important brane in the bulk, but it’s the most important to him, so he got to name it. He chooses the names for each of his universes, if he chooses to name it at all. He is not a more powerful storyteller, or dreamer. Anyone can conjure a new universe into being with nothing more than their thoughts. The difference is that he understands that he’s doing this, and uses it to his advantage deliberately. Every world I discuss throughout this series belongs to him, except for this one today. Universe Prime is where he lives, and he has no control over the outcome of events. But that doesn’t mean he exerts no influence at all. Most of what happens in Prime is a result of interference from a different universe, and if he really wants to, he can make or break such occurrences. For his version of Earth, there is a quite literal universal rule that it is to remain pristine and untouched. It’s written into Martian Law, and honored by the Fosteans. It’s recognized by the residents of Dextoculo, and frightens travelers from beyond the membrane. No one messes with the Superintendent’s Earth, and that is in no small part, thanks to the Superintendent himself.

He’s telling a story...a huge story. It’s so big that it’ll take decades just to get everything out. He’s in control of it, even if there is a high level of free will when it comes to individual choices. Everyone is so afraid of going against him that they follow his rules with little question. They know if they do something he doesn’t like, he’ll just wipe their story away. The Ochivari would never dream of invading, even though it’s a logical target. They’re struggling terribly with climate breakdown, and the future looks pretty grim. My voldisil ability operates according to his timeline, so I can’t see into its future from his perspective, but things are not going well. If any planet deserves the wrath of a race of antinatalistic mass murders, it’s his own. He won’t let it happen, though, for obvious reasons. If the Ochivari attacked, he would just write a story where The Allies of the Darning Wars all came together, and defeated them once and for all. They don’t want that, so they stay away from Prime, and tread lightly in the Composite Universe, and just leave it at that. Prime has plenty of problems of their own. The Fosteans generally respect the rule about Earth, but its leaders are not good people, and they are not peaceful. It and the Composite are twins, and together, they form the Biverse, so they are permanently linked, and dependent on each other. The Superintendent tells their stories, but does not do much to make himself a part of it. They’re strong-willed, resilient, and other than Composite, they probably contribute the highest number of notable individual members of the Transit Army. I don’t know how it ends, if it ever does, but I’ll be keeping a close eye on it.

Microstory 1612: Absolute Zero

< > Table of Contents

As we’ve discussed, concurrent realities are rare, but they do come up. Salmonverse has a handful, while Area Double Universe has thousands. Today, I want to talk about a brane that has only two realities. There’s no name for it, to distinguish it from others, as far as I know. All I know is that it’s a scary and dangerous place, and I can’t recommend it for vacation if you’re looking to relieve some stress. As a spirit, I hesitate to make a claim about whether evil exists, or if life is just all about choices, but this brane sure makes a compelling argument for the former. From my perspective, one of the realities appears to be the primary, while the other is reliant on the outcome of events from the first. Let’s say you were from this universe, and you happened to be a chef, and restaurant owner. You keep prices low, treat your employees well, and give your day-old bread to the homeless. You’re not perfect, but on the whole, you’re a good person. Your alternate self will be just as bad as you are good—I mean, exactly as far from absolute zero. On the other hand, if you’re a serial killer, your alternate self would be a saint. But their life would be incredibly difficult, because people are good in general, so that makes the alternate reality pretty bad. So that would be terrible on its own, but at least the main reality would be able to move on, and ignore their counterparts, right? Wrong. Whereas most of the time, you have to advance science enough to figure out how to access other dimensions, that sort of thing sometimes just happens to some people in this world. You could walk through your front door, and end up inside the alternate, and would have to hope you survive long enough to make it back home. Fortunately, if you do manage to not die, you will get back home. People remain permanently connected to their reality, and they will eventually be summoned home without having to do anything special. So there’s not a whole lot of interaction between the two realities—not on a large scale—but it does occur in isolated cases, and it does cause problems.

Enough of this back and forth travel happened throughout history that the governments and experts got together, and started trying to come up with solutions. They decided it was their moral obligation to do something about the other side. Could they destroy them? Could they teach them to be better? What if they shared knowledge, or resources, or disciplinary techniques? After years of study, and a whole lot of incidents that did not go well at all, they came to a single conclusion. The only way to stop everyone from being so evil over there was to stop being so good on the main side. They tried to institute programs, which were designed to teach people to just be okay. No more saints, no more sinners, just regular people who were doing all right. Everyone was expected to get average grades in school, and do the bare minimum at work. Don’t make waves, and don’t change the status quo. Just live your boring life throughout the day, and then go to bed. Certain things were outlawed in the hopes of making this easier. There was no more music or entertainment. Everyone ate meal replacements, and cooking anything else was strictly forbidden. All these things made people too happy, and if they were happy, their alternate was miserable. As you might have guessed, these measures did not work in the least. You can’t just make people be different. A rebel faction rose up, and became more and more violent over the years. Before they knew it, the main reality was more evil, and the secondary reality was full of good people just trying to do the right thing.

Microstory 1611: The Psychics

< > Table of Contents

Every human is born with telepathic potential. The ability to communicate with others using psychic signals is built into our species, and that is not something that can be removed from someone without killing them. It’s just part of who we are. You might be wondering how this is possible. You personally may have never experienced anything resembling telepathy in your life, and you’ve never heard of other people doing it either. How could it be true? Well, there are a number of factors that are operating against you, if you are such one of these people. Some universes are more hospitable to these psychic signals than others. They facilitate the transmission of them easily, whereas some just straight up block it. In other worlds, the signals transmit just fine, but there’s some sort of suppressant in the residents’ biology, neurology, or genetic makeup. There’s also a psychological factor. You have to know that you’re capable of it, and truly believe in yourself, and the people around you have to believe. They have to believe in you, and in themselves, and convincing a significant enough population that it’s all real is a real challenge. Because it has to start somewhere, and there’s no decent way to prove it to them unless they’re inclined to trust in it in the first place. These restrictions can be limited to whole planets, or even regions, and many places never get over them. Earth Prime, for instance, has little problem with psychic signal transference, though it’s certainly not the smoothest. The real issue is that these humans, in particular, don’t generally believe in any of these things. Even those who do only do so out of hope, but you have to have some understanding of the true mechanics, rather than simply relying on your intuitions, and exposure to fictional representations of such phenomena.

Like I said, some universes are better with this than others, and this is no truer than it is for a little place that I like to call Psychoverse. It’s a bit of an offensive term, yes, and I would never say it in front of someone who is from there, but it’s not entirely untrue either. This Earth has a major problem with what essentially boils down to racism. Some people are psychic, and some people aren’t, and those who are enjoy an unreasonable and unfair advantage over the lower class normal people. Attempts at regulation have always been met with heavy resistance, and often end in bloodshed. The psychics consider themselves to be superior to all others, and eventually decide to start referring to their supposed inferiors as The Braindead. Now that really is an offensive term, on multiple levels, and of course, it’s also completely untrue. Psychics aren’t smarter, or better. In fact, they lack a lot of very normal human skills, like independence, critical thinking, and true leadership. The Ochivari are antinatalists, but they only go after populations that are destined to destroy their own planet. The Psychoverse residents were bound to die out, which would have allowed their Earth to thrive, so I’m not sure why the Ochivari invaded. It’s, I guess, a good thing that they did, because the humans adapted quickly, and completely transformed their way of thinking, in order to combat this external threat. They shed their bigotry and injustices, and rose up against their attackers. Luckily, the Ochivari are not immune to psychic attacks, and this is a case of one of the few times when a planet managed to push back the invasion without the help of any of the teams dedicated to winning the Darning Wars across the bulkverse.

The Advancement of Serif: Tuesday, September 1, 2178

« < » > Table of Contents

Serif stood there next to the central table, staring at grave chamber four, but she didn’t know why. She felt like something important had just happened, but nothing was coming to mind. She popped off her back foot, and prepared to make a step towards it, but then she heard a cough at her flank. She stumbled a bit, and looked back. A one-legged Angela was on the floor, breathing heavily, and massaging her slowly-forming stump as the wound was sealing up.

“What the actual fork just happened?” Jeremy asked, climbing onto the platform.

“Angela’s hurt,” Serif answered, still distracted by the mysterious mystery of grave chamber four.

“I can see that,” Jeremy said, kneeling down, and hovering his hands over the healing leg, hoping to figure out some way of helping her. “She’s missing a leg! How?”

“I don’t know,” Serif replied, not letting up on her fixation. She tried heading for it once more.

“Serif!” Jeremy scolded. “Come down here and help her!”

She didn’t bother looking back this time. “I obviously already did.”

“No, it would help if you built her a new leg. All you’ve done is close up the one she has left.

“I can’t regrow limbs,” Serif apologized. “My abilities have limits. I don’t know who cut it off, or how, or where they went, or what they did with our memories, but I’ve done all I can for her.” She took another step.

“If you do not get down here right now, and try it,” Jeremy began, “so help me, Michael—I will end your life. You won’t die, you’ll just go somewhere else.”

“The afterlife simulation is only in the main sequence,” Serif reminded him, finally starting to be able to divide her attention.

“Right, but the Parallel has death subversion redundancies of its own; better ones, actually.”

“Well, I don’t,” Serif explained. “Her leg is gone. I’m sure it can be replaced, but not by my breath.”

“In that case, get down here, and help me help her up, so we can transport her to the nearest medical facility.”

“Where’s Olimpia?”

“I don’t know, stop coming up with excuses not to help. Let’s go!”

Serif sighed, and relented, but thought better of it immediately. She hopped over right quick to take a look inside grave chamber four, which she found to be nothing more than a space for sleeping. There was no stowaway hiding in there, or some kind of magical MacGuffin. It was just a hole, like it was supposed to be. “Okay, sorry, don’t yell at me again. I’m coming.” They lifted her off of the floor, and carefully lowered her down into grave chamber two. “I thought we were taking her to a facility,” Serif questioned.

“Yes, we’ll teleport her from here. Didn’t you read the specifications update?”

“What update?” Serif asked.

“Never mind,” Jeremy said. “You can stay here all you want, but I’m taking her to get help.” One arm around Angela’s shoulders, he used the other to open the panel, and activate the emergency teleporter.

The next day, still alone, Serif decided to explore her surroundings. She knew everything she needed to know about this ship, but none of it felt familiar. It was like someone once told her all about it using pictures, but she hadn’t been here until now. She climbed down the steps to the engineering section. She didn’t know how to work any of this stuff. They always just used an AI. She went back up, and then up again, to the next level, where microponics, hygiene, and the airlock were. It all made her feel very strange and uncomfortable. She shivered, because she hadn’t been alone here before. Or maybe she had never been here at all, and these were all fake memories. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, especially since they already knew their memories were indeed tampered with.

She climbed back down to the main level, and went over to sit at the table, but something stopped her. A cloud of insects spontaneously appeared before her, though there was no buzzing sound. She watched as the insects flew into each other, and grew larger. And larger, and larger, and larger. She realized they were coming into the form of a person. The process only took about a minute before the image was clear. It was Olimpia Sangster, after having been transported at the molecular level.

She too shivered. “That..was...actually kind of amazing. I would have never thought, but I guess it’s like a roller coaster.”

“Where were you?”

“Nowhere,” Olimpia answered. “I just skipped time.” She glanced around. “I don’t know how long, though. Where are Jeremy, Angela, and Leona?”

“Angela’s hurt, so Jeremy took her to hospital. I don’t know who Leona is.”

“She’s your girlfriend, or something, I think.”

“No, she’s not.”

Olimpia narrowed her eyes. “Your memories have been deleted.”

“I know, but...there’s no way I had a girlfriend, and just don’t remember her at all.”

“Well, you did,” Olimpia said both condescendingly, and matter-of-factly. “But I’ll drop it, because I can’t restore memories, and I’m sure it’ll all work out.”

Their Cassidy cuffs beeped. They had a new transition mission, this one apparently on the moon. “This thing can teleport there, can’t it?”

“I dunno, I haven’t been here that long.”

“Me neither.”

“I know.” Olimpia looked up into the aether. “Hey, hey, ship? Hey, ship computer?”

“Yes?” the computer offered.

“Could you take us to the moon?”

“Would you like me to transport you to the coordinates on your wristbands?”

“Yes, please and thank you.”

The engines revved up, and eventually delivered them to their destination. Serif and Olimpia climbed up, and headed for the airlock. They started to try to figure out how to put the vacuum suits on, when the AI stopped them. “The artificial atmosphere is pressurized, and breathable. You are in a lava tube.”

“Oh,” Olimpia said, dropping the helmet back in its cubby. “I don’t know what that is, but cool.” They stood before the outer doors. “You’re sure about that, right?”

“Quite certain,” the AI responded. Then it opened the doors, and let them out.

A man was approaching from a building down the way. He held out his hand and greeted them. “Welcome to Raivoe Tube. Do you have a transition window nearby?”

They were famous. “Yeah, it appears to be about thirty meters that way,” Serif answered, pointing.

He nodded understandingly. “Great. Well, I’m here if you need anything. You picked the best tube on the moon. We’re minimalistic and laid back, but we still have plenty to see. Please enjoy our Main Sequence Lunar Museum, if you have time. Did you know that the first human to set foot on the moon in the main reality did so only two hundred and nine years ago?”

“Thank you,” Olimpia said. “And yeah, I think I did know that.”

He laughed. “Wild. Their lives must have been so boring until then.”

“We had a lot of war to keep us busy,” Serif pointed out.

“Yes, of course. I keep forgetting about that.” He was still laughing. War must have been such a ridiculous and foreign concept to him.

“Well, we better go,” Olimpia said to him awkwardly. “The next transition is only in...” she took a peek at her cuff, “four hours.” Now it was really awkward.

A little bit of a frown, but he hid it fairly well, and they hid their recognition of it even better. “Of course, go do your thang. I’ll just...be in my office. Alone. As per uzhe. Nah, I’m kidding, it’s fine. I am lonely, though.” He stood there for a moment. “Sorry to leave you so abruptly, but it seems I need to do the daily test of my emergency teleporter.” He reached up, and pressed the button on his chest, which spirited him away.

They found a pit not too far away, which they could sit in, and have something to lean against. And there they sat for the next three hours until Jeremy and Angela found them. Serif jumped up. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry, I was just so distracted. I don’t know what came over me.”

“Our memories have been erased,” Angela acknowledged. “The doctors discovered at least that much. We still don’t know what we forgot, but it probably happened immediately after my leg disappeared. It was a trying time for all of us.”

Serif looked down. “It looks good as new. Is it a prosthetic?”

Angela shook her head, and then shook her leg. “Full regrowth. It’s mine. A doctor in the 21st century wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.”

They stood in silence for a moment.

“Pardon our manners,” Olimpia said. “Come on into our pit. There’s plenty of room, and we’ll give you the comfortable spot.”

“That’s okay,” Jeremy said. “We have a better solution.” He removed what looked like a toy gun from his bag, and started tapping on its little touchscreen. “One of the human medical practitioners snuck us one of these, so Angela always has a place to rest. She called it a gun-of-holding.” He found what he was looking for, so he pointed it to the ground, and squeezed the trigger. A couch appeared out of thin air, and beckoned to them. Once they were all seated, he squeezed the trigger again, and summoned a television in front of them. They had enough time to watch one episode of Teen Wolf before the window opened.

The augmented reality on their cuffs showed them that some kind of meteor crashed through the window above them, and was heading towards one of the buildings in the main sequence. Dozens of people appeared, narrowly escaping the small celestial’s wrath. Some of them were luckier than the others, though. Some were on the upper level, and once the floor disappeared beneath them, they fell, often on top of those below. No one died, and they would all be fine with medical treatment, but it wasn’t the most elegant transition that had happened.

The four of them ran over to help the people up. “We have three minutes to get to the next window!” Jeremy announced. “Why so soon?” Olimpia asked.

Angela was holding up someone with a broken leg. She started leading him towards the window coordinates. “They don’t know about time travel. They have to survive the meteorite without anyone wondering how.”

Serif started to breathe on people, but it was going to take too long, they just had to go. “If you can walk, grab someone who can’t, and help them over to the next spot. It’s only a hundred meters away. We have to get you back to your time!”

At normal pace, a normal walker could cross the distance in about two minutes. With all these limping people, though, they had to book it, and they still barely made it before the window appeared. As they were moving, Serif came up with a somewhat believable lie. All of them happened to decide to take a walk when the meteor came down. They also happened to be far enough away from the impact to avoid being crushed by it, but not far enough away to avoid superficial injuries. She would have rather they gotten more time to explain how important it was for them to lie, but perhaps that would have just spelled more time for the ignorant main sequencers to start questioning how it was they were being rescued. Their confusion and sense of urgency was hopefully going to muddy a lot of their memories, and any claims of time travel would be received under the assumption that it was the result of minor brain damage.

Once it was over, they breathed a sigh of relief. This mission came with a lot of hurrying up and waiting, and then it just had a bunch of hurrying. But they made it, and everything was fine. Sure, maybe one or two of them were fully in their right minds, and starting to think more deeply about the nature of reality, but hopefully it wasn’t enough to land them a spot in Beaver Haven, or risk exposing all time travelers to the general public.

The team walked back slowly, knowing that there was nothing left for them to do. When they arrived back at the couch, they found it occupied. A young man was sitting on it comfortably. He was smiling, and watching the second episode of the show that they were all trying to catch up on. There was no way he didn’t notice them standing there, but he was purposefully ignoring them, like a pickup artist trying to get the upper hand on his prey. “Hey,” he finally said, still not bothering to stand up. “I am a young Tamerlane Pryce. I have just been waiting for an opportunity to come here, and find out what you’re all about.” He nodded like he thought they were receiving him well. “Do you have any turkey jerky?”

« < » > Table of Contents