Microstory 1619: Adversity Overcoming

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If you hear about the Maramon, you may think that they’re all evil. The truth is that they’re just as diverse as any significant population. Some are good, some are bad, and the only reason they appear to be so averse to humans is jealousy. Everyone else was born to a large universe with plenty of breathing room, but Ansutah was made small, limited, and constricting. Still, there were factions and camps, and two of these opposing groups ended up in the same section of The Crossover together when the explosion occurred. I couldn’t tell you why exactly they were there, because the outer bulkverse is hazy for me, but I can tell you the consequences. The original Crossover had different sections that served different purposes, as you might imagine. One of them allowed access to multiple pocket dimensions, which effectively undecupled the amount of space that they had available. But it was actually a different section that generated and maintained the stability of these pockets, and this was where the two opposing sides were at the time of cataclysm. They flew off into the bulk, and only survived because the dimensional generator received an enormous burst of bulk energy. It was enough to create an entirely new universe from scratch, and it was here that these two groups would come to call home. Obviously what I’m setting up here is that they had different ideas of what that home should look like. One sided wanted to form a Maramon empire, where they would rebuild the Crossover, and use it to conquer the humans. The other wanted to construct a new version of Earth, and populate it with humans, who they saw as gods. The second group won at first, but then the first group took over, and warped the world to their needs. Their leader was named Azazil Aj-lishdefil, and he earned his woxa of Adversary when he led a coup against the true leader, Alaha ‘Almighty’ Adonai. Adversary didn’t just start killing all the humans. No, he pretended to be their creator, and let his religions spread around the globe, and throughout time. Millennia later, with the number of believers at its apex, he used his followers to build an army. It was his intention to send the witless slaves out into the bulkverse, so they could do all the heavy lifting, and realize his dreams of total domination on his behalf. Of course, Alaha and her own people couldn’t let that happen without a fight. A resistance grew out of the survivors, and they did everything they could do to stop Adversary and his demons at every turn. They were smart, better organized than Adversary thought they could possibly be, and scrappy. I won’t tell you how it ends, or who wins. I just want you to know the situation, so you don’t rush to judgment if you ever encounter a Maramon.

Microstory 1618: The Annual Coat Drive

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This is a nice little non-depressing story about a lovely version of Earth, which isn’t perfect, but is defined primarily by a wholesome and fun annual event that just about everyone loves. But first, you need some background. There are only a few people throughout the bulkverse who are able to travel across it. Even if you include the people who managed to get themselves on board one of the machines, like The Crossover or The Prototype, the number is strikingly low. The number goes up when you include The Transit Army, and the Westfall experiencers, but it’s still nothing compared to the number of people throughout all of existence. Only a handful of people can do it through other means. Joseph Jacobson is one of these people. He was born to a mutant time traveler named Jacob, and a mother whose nature may be more complicated than anyone can understand, though there’s proof of nothing. Jacob sired twelve sons, and one daughter, and all of them have abilities. They all possess some form of temporal manipulation, but Jacob was drawn to powerful women, so they all also have other abilities. None of them is as impressive as Joseph, though. Before any of this, one of those things capable of crossing the bulkverse suffered a major engine failure that could have resulted in tragedy were it not for the quick-thinking of its crew. Still, there were side effects, and one of these was a simple coat that someone happened to leave in engineering while they were working to stop the catastrophe. This coat was imbued with the ability to travel the bulkverse, but not for just anyone. The only people who could use it were those who had already done it at least once, and even then, they could only go to places they had been before. It’s an amazing piece of cloth, but it’s not all that useful to most. Joseph is different. With it, he can go anywhere he wants, and no one is sure what it is that makes him so special, because none of his siblings can do it, not even the one with whom he shares a mother. The two phoenixes in the family can technically travel as well, but they have to die first, and navigation is sketchy at best. Joseph is the one true bulk traveler, and it makes all of his brothers extremely jealous. For some, it makes them murtherous. That is a story for another time, though.

If these names and situations sound slightly familiar, that’s because you’ve probably heard the story. This family is important to the collective history of the bulkverse, so a lot of people are aware of it. Some see it as part of their religion, or someone else’s, while others know it as fiction. Either way, the story itself is powerful. If the right people produce the right interpretation of the story of Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, it will actually summon him to their location. From there, they can make requests to him. He’s not obliged to follow through, of course but you can always ask. Finding the right way to tell Joseph’s story is difficult, and requires clear intent. Lots of people have put on a show, and nothing has happened, continuing to allow them to believe that it’s all made up. If you know that it’s a possibility that Joseph will appear in the flesh, then you can try to make it happen. Again, it’s not guaranteed, but it’s kind of the only way to get a hold of him. One thing I never mentioned before is that hypnopediaverse has a history of people randomly finding themselves trapped there from elsewhere. I don’t know why, and it’s not that important. The point is that these people once came together, put on Joseph’s show, and were able to summon him to their location, so he could ferry them back to their respective homes. Two of these people told their own story when they returned, and surprisingly, people believed them. Not only that, but they wanted to recreate the magic. So they produced their own version of the musical, and found success. Joseph appeared, and regaled them with stories about his adventures across the bulkverse. Every year since then, the people of that universe have repeated the experiment, not just with one show, but with many. Multiple productions are shown simultaneously around the world, each one hoping to be the one that attracts Joseph Jacobson to them. Of course, once he does show up, Joseph allows his tales to be broadcast worldwide, but the cast and crew that won the contest that year will end up with bragging rights, global recognition, and other ancillary prizes. The true reward comes from the lessons that Joseph unwittingly teaches. Understanding what goes on in other universes has given this one the perspective it needed to make sure it didn’t make any of the same mistakes. They learned to better preserve their planet, and were justifiably ignored by the Ochivari, and the Darning Wars.

Microstory 1617: Efilism

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The Ochivari were not born as antinatalists. In fact, they were quite the opposite in the beginning. They multiplied like crazy, obsessed with developing galactic dominance through sheer numbers. Even without the technology of many human civilizations, they figured they could ultimately win any conflict simply by the fact that it was more difficult to kill them all. They would win any battle, because so many of their kind would be left over. This sentiment was not limited to the population growth itself. Overexploitation of resources became almost a point of pride amongst their species. They destroyed their planet as they raced to increase their numbers, and as they fought to spread out to other planets, so they could take those resources as well. Of course, this was a completely unsustainable model, and caught up to them quite quickly. They would have died out if they had not discovered that they were biologically capable of crossing over into other universes, where resources would ultimately prove infinite. As it would happen, the second universe they went to experienced a similar fate, though not quite as on purpose. The humans there were not living on Earth, but had evolved elsewhere in the galaxy. They wrecked their own world, and due to a number of unfortunate circumstances—including a relatively low oxygen ratio in the atmosphere, and relatively high surface gravity—they were never able to venture out into the solar system, let alone beyond. In the end, in order to preserve their planet’s future, they were the ones who came up with antinatalism for themselves. They killed almost the entire population, save for an elite few who were selected to survive in stasis. With humanity out of the way, their planet could once again take over, and eventually repair the damage. They would not awaken for millions of years. Now, while this brane is referred to as Efilverse, its inhabitants weren’t truly efilists. Efilism is a philosophical stance that places a negative value on both birth, and life. The efilversals make no such moral judgment. They just saw how much their civilization destroyed of their world, and decided that it was their responsibility to fix it, which they chose to do through genocide. Real efilists are not murderers.

The efilversals didn’t want their species to die out completely, but thought they could do things better once they returned from stasis, and restarted civilization, equipped with insight, and advanced technology. Unfortunately for them, they continued to make bad decisions, right up to the end. They made no attempt to choose the most practical survivors for the stasis program. Many of them were too old to bear children. Others were prone to genetic diseases. Some suffered from fertility problems, while others never thought of themselves as parents. They agreed to join the program, because they wanted to live, not because they would be particularly beneficial to the movement. Some stasis pods even malfunctioned, and killed their occupants long before they could be revived. The rich and the lucky survived, while all the poor people perished in the nuclear holocaust, which was already ironic, given why it was they were doing any of this in the first place. They were doomed from the start, even if everyone came out of stasis alive, was biologically suited for the task, and wanted to do it, because they did not have the numbers. Only a few committed themselves to realizing their dreams, but it just wasn’t enough. They died out within two generations, and that was that for the efilversals. Yet they did not go extinct without leaving a legacy. During their final years, the Ochivari showed up, only looking to expand their empire. The efilversals taught them what they had done—how they had fixed their world, which was the only successful part of their plan. The Ochivari weren’t willing to become efilists themselves, but it did spark the idea to be antinatalistic instead. They went back to their homeworld of Worlon, and fought in a great war, which saw the antinatalist faction to victory. This was when they began their crusade. They returned to efilverse, and started using that planet as their new homebase, and from there, they began to travel to other branes, where they would sterilize any civilization destined to make the same mistakes as them.

Microstory 1616: Animal Intelligence

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Some laws of physics pervade every universe in the bulkverse. They don’t allow impossible things like moons that orbit past the Roche limit, or gravity that repels objects. They don’t create cuboid stars, or flat planets. There’s no such thing as an animal species with wheels in place of feet, or whales that evolve in space. There are just some things that don’t exist, no matter where you go. Some universes, however, do have their own specific physical laws that would contradict each other, but which don’t interfere with multiversal constants. Magic is the number one example of this, but I don’t want to talk too much about that. Those universes can be paradoxically persistent, but unstable at the same time. There aren’t any rules that hold them together, but they’re extremely popular, which keeps them from collapsing in on themselves. They’re hard for me to see, because in order to avoid the collapse, aspects of such worlds don’t exist while people aren’t actively thinking about them. No, even ignoring the lawlessness of magic, there are still universes that would be considered bizarre, or even completely insane, to an outsider. Bladopodoverse is one example of this, but it’s not the only one. This next brane doesn’t have a name, like most others, but it has a little quirk that I don’t really understand. For the most part, humans are the dominant species on any planet, even if it’s not a version of Earth. The reason for this is God. God is human, God’s godlings are humans. The godlings’ respective godlings are also human. It just keeps going down the line, and if you ever meet an evolved creature that is decidedly not human, it’s just because it’s somehow related to humans, and spiritually speaking, is still human enough. There’s only one true alien species that I know of, and even that’s pretty complicated. This world is different. It contains multiple intelligent animals, with no apparent origin. I couldn’t tell you why the animals are smarter, and I definitely couldn’t give you any details about their neurology. I can see that a lot of them like to help the humans around them, because they seem so hopeless, and that there don’t seem to be a whole lot of evil animals, which I find interesting. Not all are like this, or at least they can even hide their intelligence from me. Some animals appear to be normal, or at least how you or I would use the word. The intelligent animals don’t use technology, or form human-like societies. They pretty much behave about as they would without their advanced intelligence, but sometimes exhibit traits far beyond what they should have. They communicate with each other on a higher level, and occasionally include humans in their dealings. Other than this oddity, this version of Earth is about the same as any other. It has an underworld, which only a few people are aware of, so if you traveled there, you probably wouldn’t notice a difference.

The Advancement of Serif: Tuesday, September 4, 2181

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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.

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Big Papa: Mods (Part X)

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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

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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

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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.