The Advancement of Serif: Tuesday, September 23, 2200

« < » > Table of Contents

Lochan Madigan was a refugee from another universe. His world was attacked by an alien force bent on destroying all sufficiently evolved life. Instead of literally starting a war, though, they decided to simply sterilize the entire population. It had a near hundred percent success rate, but Lochan managed to slip past those odds. Scientists and medical professionals tried to figure out what made him different, but never came to any conclusion. His ability to resist the pathogen was completely irreproducible, despite everyone’s best efforts. The theory was that they could find success if they discovered a woman with her own resistance, but they never did. He was seemingly one in a trillion. And so he was rescued from his world, and transported through the bulkverse in an attempt to find him a new home. They couldn’t save anyone from that universe, but they could save him, and that would have to be good enough. Thack and her bulk traveler were on their way to drop him off when they received that call about Adamina and Esen, and decided to make a pit stop. When he was stranded here due to Tamerlane Pryce’s intervention, he asked to just stay in The Parallel. “This is as good a brane as any,” he said. “I just don’t want to watch everyone I love struggle, knowing that their legacy ends with them. If I can find someone to love here, then they all live on, in a way.”

Serif and the crew got him set up with a new life on Earth, and then jumped to the future. When they returned, they found him immensely happy. He did meet someone to fall in love with, and pretty quickly sired a son. The boy, Amulet was fourteen years old now, and eager for his own life. Lochan told him the truth about where he was from, and how he came to be here. He grew up fascinated by the whole idea of having adventure. There were billions of worlds in this reality. He traveled to a few of them, but they weren’t exciting enough. They didn’t have death or danger, and Amulet didn’t think that was living. He begged his parents to one day let him join the crew of the AOC.

They were all standing around the central table of their ship, the crew, and the Madigan family. Here was his problem. He was too young now, but if he didn’t put on a Cassidy cuff today, he would have to wait nineteen years. “I’m old enough,” he argued. “There is no standard definition for an adult in this reality.”

“That’s only because people regularly travel to different planets, with different solar cycles,” his mother, Ilaria reasoned. “According to Earth, you’re only fourteen. And a fourteen-year-old can’t go off on his own on a spaceship.”

“Since when?” Amulet argued. “That happens all the time. It’s not about the number of minutes I’ve been alive. It’s about how mature I am, and I think we can all agree that I’m well-prepared, and well-suited to do this.”

“We don’t even know if Serif would want you to be on this ship at all,” Lochan said.

They all looked to Serif now. “This isn’t, uhh...this isn’t a fishing boat. Our job is unfathomably dangerous, and none of us volunteered. We were all recruited, and while we’re comfortable doing it now, I don’t know that I’m allowed to bring in someone else. I’m in charge of the choices the crew makes, and how we handle our missions, but I’m not in charge of the roster, or what missions we take.”

“Well, who is?” Amulet asked.

“Her name is Nerakali Preston.” Serif lifted her cuff, and spoke into the microphone. “Do you hear me? Care to weigh in on this?”

A message popped up on the screen, reading, No.

“No, he can’t join, or no, you don’t want to weigh in?”

Another message appeared, He can’t join. Kill him, before he kills you.

“Ha-ha-ha. What?”

Nerakali’s coordinates then appeared, prompting Serif to tap on it. “I’ll be back soon, I think. But hear me, Amulet. You cannot join us if your parents do not approve. It doesn’t matter what I say without that, so you’ll have to convince them first.” Serif tapped the link, and jumped to Nerakali’s location on the edge of a foggy mountain.

“What the hell are you goin’ on about?”

“It’s like I said, you have to kill him,” Nerakali ordered. “That’s the mission today.”

“He’s just a boy.”

“That boy,” Nerakali began, “is the destroyer of worlds. He is the sickness that pervades. He is the end of all life.”

“Stop speaking in riddles. Tell me what the problem is, so we can come up with a solution together. Is he supposed to be the next Elon Musk, or something?”

Nerakali sighed quite heavily. “The timeline is confusing, and I don’t have all the information, because our memories have been messed with, but I’ll try to explain. There’s a pathogen in 3117. It renders every biological entity sterile. Sound familiar?”

“Yeah, that’s what happened to Lochan’s world. But he’s immune.”

Nerakali breathed slowly now, trying to figure out the words. “He’s not immune. He’s just very, very virile. It’s more like a game of chance. I can’t tell you how the pathogen works, but it doesn’t stop him, because he’s just powerful enough to overcome it. He’s still a carrier. Fortunately for us, he didn’t start infecting everyone he came into contact with since he left his universe, but he did pass it on to his son, and if that son is allowed to reach sexual maturity, he will start spreading it, and you can’t stop it then.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. You said the pathogen shows up in 3117. This doesn’t line up with him being here today.”

“It does if you give him that Cassidy cuff. He’ll be in 3117 in no time.”

“Okay, so my options are as follows. I can give him the cuff, and by the time we reach 3117, he will have matured enough to spread the pathogen. If I don’t give him the cuff, he’ll mature in a matter of years, and the pathogen will show up a millennium early. Or I kill him now, and stop the pathogen completely.”

“Yes,” Nerakali confirmed. “In some realities, the pathogen appears around this time period. In others, it’s in the future. You have to create a timeline where it never existed at all. You can end this now.”

Serif started to think over her options. Obviously, killing him was totally off the table. She wasn’t going to do that. Having him join the crew was probably never something she was going to agree to either. Why did Nerakali think that happened? In what reality did Serif make that choice? Perhaps people in the Parallel were different, but where she was from, fourteen was too young to do something this insane. Then she remembered what Thack told her just before she left. Let him enter the cave. “Wait, how do you know how the pathogen gets to 3117? How do you know it’s because he wears the cuff?”

“It’s how the math works out. I don’t actually know it, but it makes sense.”

Serif shook her head. “It doesn’t make that much sense. And I don’t think it’s true.” She kept digging into her memory archive, and trying to solve the riddle. “The time cave on Thālith al Naʽāmāt Bida. It goes nine hundred and nine years in the future.”

“No, it goes nine hundred and nine years in the past.”

“Unless you enter the cave on Earth.”

Nerakali frowned, and looked away, now also solving the riddle. “Why would he go through the time cave?”

“Maybe he doesn’t know it’ll take him to the future. Maybe he’ll just try to get there before we go there for our transition missions.”

“That’s absurd.” Nerakali shook the thought out of her hair. “It doesn’t matter, though. You still have to kill him. He’s dangerous no matter what time period he’s in.”

Serif placed her fingers on either side of her nose, and cupped her mouth. There had to be a way to get through this without anyone getting hurt. “I’m a healer.”

“You’re a nanite healer,” Nerakali contended. “You think the people who have been trying to stop this haven’t already thought of nanites? You don’t have a power so much as you’re a walking nanobot manufacturer with a small-scale delivery system.”

“Maybe I can’t cure an entire population of this,” Serif said, “but maybe I can heal this one person before it takes full hold of his system.”

“If you try that, and it backfires, it could kill you.”

“I thought it didn’t kill people, it just sterilized them.”

“It’s killed before, if it’s too concentrated. It killed Leona’s mother.”

“I have to try,” Serif maintained. “It’s who I am. I was created...for...”

“That’s something you’ve forgotten. Why were you created?”

“Maybe for this. Maybe this has been my purpose all along.”

“In no reality has this happened,” Nerakali claimed. “In every reality, the pathogen takes hold somewhere, somewhen. If this were going to work, I would have heard about it already.”

“Maybe. Or maybe there are some things that even you don’t know.”

“Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. There’s too much at stake here for you to do anything if you’re armed only with a bunch of maybes.”

“Are you ordering me to stand down, Nerakali, or are you warning me that you’re gonna try to stop me? Because I can ignore the first of those, and I can fight against the second. Either way, this is happening. So all you need to do is decide if you’re gonna hold me back, or back me up.”

Nerakali was still reluctant. She didn’t want to kill a fourteen-year-old boy, but she didn’t want to let the whole species go extinct when she had the power to stop it. But that was true either way, wasn’t it? She had the power to stop it no matter what.

“If it doesn’t work, you can always go back in time, and change things. But if you do, then just take him to an unpopulated universe. Don’t kill him.”

This seemed to satisfy her. “Very well. Go make your attempt.”

Serif returned to the ship. Surprisingly, Amulet’s parents finally agreed to let him join the crew in a limited capacity. He would not go on any missions that were too dangerous, and— “It doesn’t matter. Stop talking about this.” She turned towards the boy. “You’re sick. You have the same disease your father’s people had. I might be able to cure you, but if it doesn’t work, you could be responsible for the end of the human race in this universe. If you think you’re old enough to join the crew, then you’re old enough to hear the truth.”

Amulet was frightened, but desperately didn’t want to show it. “Do it.”

Serif stepped forward, and inhaled to prepare to breathe on him, so her nanites could enter his system, and cleanse him of the lingering and dormant sterility pathogen. As she was trying to exhale, a pair of hands appeared between their faces, blocking the air from reaching him. The hands gently pushed Serif away, and she could see who it was. It was an alternate version of herself.

“Whew!” the other Serif said. “That was a close one. You have no idea what I just saved you from.” She started walking around the room, shaking everyone’s hand. “Hi, it’s nice to see you again. I’m Future!Serif.”

“What did you save me from?” Present!Serif demanded to know.

“Not you. Like, us, I guess. All of us, as a species. Your nanites are a key ingredient. Not only do they not cure him, but they exacerbate the problem. The pathogen makes the victim’s body turn on itself, like a cancer. They would attack your nanites, take them over, and use them to spread. You’re immune. Uh, I am immune. And that’s only because I’m...well, at the time, I was—”

“Pregnant,” Present!Serif interrupted. “I’m pregnant.”

“That’s right.”

“And the baby is Mateo Matic’s.”

“Right again,” Future!Serif said.

“Yeah, I’m starting to remember him. It’s all coming back to me.”

“Yes,” Future!Serif noted, “very..interesting. The point is that you’re not a cure. Your baby is the cure. We don’t need your breath, we need your amniotic fluid.”

“And then I’ll be cured?” Amulet hoped. “And then I can join the crew?”

Future!Serif laughed. “Ha! No, that would be stupid. Roster’s full now. You’ll find your place. You’re a second generation spirit, after all.”

« < » > Table of Contents

Big Papa: White Hole Radical (Part XII)

< > Entire Story

I keep watching after we think it’s all over. Pryce has finally been neutralized, and it looks like everything’s gonna be okay. But of course there’s still one loose end. With everyone still distracted for a moment, staring at the spot where Tamerlane Pryce once was, Pinocchio takes his shot. He pulls out his own zero blade, and pierces Genifer right in the heart. “I want that button.”

Lowell lunges forward to help, but Genifer holds out her staff, and stops him. “No.” She smiles at Pinocchio, confusing him. Then she turns her staff, and pounds it on the floor three times, very deliberately. The paint melts off of it like ice on a summer snowman. It’s turned white.

Pinocchio looks over at it, unimpressed. “The White Staff can’t save you now. It’s too late.”

“It’s too late for you too, whoever you are,” Genifer replies as the blackness quickly overwhelms her clothes. She lifts the staff, and gently—almost affectionately—taps him on the nose with it. “Boop!”

They both disappear at the same time, him in a flash of white, her in a puff of smoke. Behind me in the real world, a floor model gasps, and begins to breathe heavily. Pinocchio rolls out of the pod, and squirms on the floor. He’s never been alive before, so he’s quite harmless for the time being. Back in the simulation, the white staff has remained standing, even though its bearer is now dead and gone. As if finally remembering simulated gravity, it begins to tip over, but Dalton catches it gracefully.

“We need to figure out what to do with that,” Gilbert notes. “It’s up to Ellie to decide who gets resurrected, and when.”

“Yeah,” Dalton says, nodding his head. But he doesn’t hand the staff over, and there’s something weird about his answer. He’s just looking at it like there’s writing on it, and he’s in the middle of a good story. Then he bolts. He runs as fast as he can, down the hallways, and back up the steps. Lowell and Gilbert aren’t sure whether they should chase after him, or what. As far as leveling weapons go, it’s dangerous to be in the wrong hands, but at least no one will get hurt by it. I understand why someone would want to maintain control over it, and though I don’t know why Dalton is one of these people, it’s not the worst of our problems. As he’s climbing out of the fountain entrance, still moving as fast as he can, I can see another version of Pryce gliding down in the opposite direction. It’s probably Avatar!Pryce, having recovered from his indentured servitude. The zeroblade should destroy any copies of the same code, unless the copy is sufficiently divergent.

“Is that the guy who took over my body at the wedding?” Lowell wonders out loud.

I point at the resurrected Pinocchio, but before I say anything, I realize my mistake. He’s not been resurrected at all, but this is his first day as a real boy. It’s more like he was just born, and I guess in this case, there is such a thing as original sin. “Call security, and have him taken to MedHock,” I order the lab tech. “But first, put me back in. Same coordinates as Lowell.”

“You should know,” the tech says, “Madam Preston was keeping Mr. Benton apprised of her situation with the Glisnian authority. She has not been doing well. She fears a complete shutdown.”

“If she calls again...” I say, “tell her to stall.” One crisis at a time, please.

I return to the simulation just as Avatar!Pryce is arriving. He approaches cautiously, and with no sense of aggression. “I felt her death. I felt the loss.”

“Is there any way back?” I ask. “Is the zeroblade a lie? Are they just dormant, and recoverable?”

“It’s not a lie,” Pryce answers, possibly truthfully. “Her death is final. The blade destroys the code, like overwriting a file.”

“I’m not gonna let you push the button,” I warn him.

“I do not aim to,” he claims. “You’ll push it, though, I guarantee it.”

“Why would I do that?” I question.

Pryce looks at his wristwatch. “It’s 2400. This year marks beginning, and ending. It’s a transitional period. The patrioshka body will return to its place in the stellar neighborhood, the truth about temporal manipulation will come out to the public, and the simulation...will shut down.”

“Not if I can help it,” I maintain. “I won’t let these people die.”

Pryce chuckles with his lips sealed. “Of course you won’t. Why do you think I stepped down? It has to be you. You’re the only one capable.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” He’s not making any sense to me.

“When you took over for me, did you happen to notice our official position? What was my title, and what’s yours, now that you wear the rainbow clothes?”

“Yeah, it said Kernel. I thought it was a misspelling of Colonel. I don’t use it, because it’s stupid. I’m just Ellie.”

“No, my dear,” Pryce begins, “it’s not stupid. It’s everything. You are Kernel Underhill, and you deserve it. Now go in that room, and push the button...so we can all get out of here. Time’s running out, I’m sure.” Without another word, he turns confidently, and tries to walk away.

“No,” I say with my own confidence. “You want me to push the button, you’re gonna go in there with me, and explain in excruciating detail, exactly what it does.”

“As you wish.”

“Lowell, keep that ice pick at the ready. If he tries anything...”

“Got it, boss,” Lowell agrees.

I place my hand against the stone door, just to try to figure out where the handle is, or how it works. It gives to my pressure immediately, swiveling on an axis in the center, and allowing us to pass through. Up until this point, the stone walls and ceilings were smooth and even. Pryce designed this chamber to look more like it existed naturally, and everything else was built around it. We’re inside of a mountain cave, with jagged edges, and random stalagmites. A highly detailed pavilion is in the center, and in the center of that is a well-carved stone structure. Sitting on it is a wok, filled with fire pit marbles. Water bubbles from underneath, and spills out on all sides. The fire burns high, partially obscuring a small obelisk that does not rise high enough to be touched without feeling the flames. A button rests on top, ready to be pressed.

“For the very last time...what. Does. It. Do?” I demand to know.

“You are the kernel, and it is a syscall. Part of your code will be copied a hundred and twenty-billion times, and placed inside the IDCodes of everyone inside the simulation, including the Level Ones. Yes, it can put everyone on ice, but only if the one who pushes it has just been downgraded to that level themselves. As long as you stand within the borders of that pavilion, you can decide what level you are, and what code will be copied. That is, as long as you don’t choose a level beyond your own real one. Mr. Hawk, for instance, was only a Limited, so if he pushed the button, that would be as far as he could take it. For you, it’s different. Once that code is disseminated, you and everyone else will change into whatever it is the code you’ve allocated does. You could put them all in Hock, or make them all Elites; whatever you wish. But be careful, because you will suffer the same fate.”

“Why are you asking me to do it?” I question. “Why have you not done it yourself?”

“I do not have an IDCode,” Pryce admits. “My other self does not either. Neither of us ever died, and came here. He was always a visitor, and I...I’m just an NPC. You have been resurrected, so you can resurrect them all.”

“So can Lowell,” I point out. “So can Leona, and Mateo, and a couple dozen others in Hogarth’s new universe.”

“Yes, but Mateo and Leona aren’t here, Lowell has always been bad code, and Hogarth’s World-Builders are ambitious, entitled, narcissists who believe they have become the gods they always thought they were.” He’s one to talk.

“Aldona does not fit that description,” I counter.

“True. Like Harry and Neville, I suppose there is indeed one other option. But you’re the only one who’s truly earned it. You’re the one who demanded control over the simulation, and you are the one standing here today.” Pryce has a response to everything. “We could call Madam Calligaris, if you want, but she may not arrive in time, seeing as that the Glisnians are this close to shutting the whole simulation down with all of us still inside.”

“Wait, Gilbert’s here too.” I just resurrected him recently.

“Oh, no,” Gilbert protests. “Don’t nominate me for this role. If anyone’s bad code, it’s me. You know the things I did while I was alive?”

“Ellie,” Lowell says. “Stop coming up with alternatives. It’s all you.”

“Where, do you reckon’ you want I should put all these people?” Now I’m sure I have them stumped. “There are some floor models waiting for hosts up there, sure, but not a hundred and twenty billion, I’ll tell ya that much right now.

“I had that problem solved a long time ago,” Pryce claims. “There are about ten million up there, and it takes about an hour to replace them, as long as the protein goop keeps coming. There’s also enough temporary storage to keep them dormant while they wait their turn. It’ll be done in two years. I own those servers, the Glisnians wouldn’t be able to shut them down without sparking a war.”

“Which they would win,” Lowell argues.

I’m shaking my head. It’s a trick. There is no altruistic or benevolent version of Pryce. There are only some that aren’t as bad as others. I don’t know why he wants me to be the one to do this instead of him, but I can’t let him play any part in it. Something he said reminded me of something else. He used the term protein goop. The cloning machines aren’t only limited by the amount of time it takes to create a new floor model body. They need the raw materials to actually make the damn thing. Star Trek replicators aren’t a real thing, and they never will be. Well, unless you use time powers. Fortunately, I know someone who might be able to help, and now I’m starting to think that she saw this coming; that she knew what was going to happen all along. I can transfer the minds, but I need her to build the bodies. Can I contact her from here? Can I access a separate brane? I take some time to try, and find that I can. The conversation isn’t long. She agrees to help.

“What are you thinking?” Pryce asks, noticing that I’ve been silent and stuck in my own head for quite awhile now.

“That you are unworthy...and unnecessary.” I step right over to him, and place my hands on his head. He’s too confused to struggle. In a matter of seconds, the avatar has been de-rezed. I’m not sure where he went, or if I just murdered him, but there’s always a backup somewhere, so I’m not too butthurt about my choice.

“What are you doing?” Gilbert asks, purely out of curiosity, and not at all bothered by my actions.

“We don’t need him anymore. I’m ending this, once and for all. I can’t promise things will be good once we’re on the other side, but I don’t think we have much time. I asked Nerakali to stall—”

“Oh, thank God,” Nerakali’s voice comes into my ear. I’m starting to realize that people can contact me across distance as long as I’m thinking about them at the same time. “You have ten minutes. The Glisnians work fast, and they’re done with this whole thing. They think Pryce has become too big of a nuisance.”

“Thanks for the update,” I reply to her. “I don’t think I’ll need that long.”

“What are you doing?” she asks, unknowingly echoing Gilbert.

“Now I am become life, the sower of men.” I step up onto the pavilion, and approach the pedestal. I don’t want to give these people any snippet of my core code. I don’t want them to be able to spy on each other through time, or spontaneously and nonconsenually transfer each other’s minds to other substrates. I don’t need a button to resurrect any of them. I just need access to all of them. This thing grants me that power, but I already have the power to save them. Almost angrily, I swing back, and swipe the wok off of the platform. I’m left with a fountain, bubbling up from the ground, connected to every consciousness inside the simulation. Hogarth is ready on her end, so I reach into the fountain water. It’s freezing cold, but still somehow pleasant and life-affirming.

I can feel them immediately. I can feel their hopes and their pain. I see images of what they’re doing right now, all combined to form a mosaic of the entirety of the afterlife simulation multiworlds. I know what they’re thinking, and what they’ve done, and what they’ve seen. I know who they are, and who they want to be. “Hear me now, people of the afterlife,” I say to them all. “The experiment is over, and it is time to see The Beyond. It is time to live once more.” They’re all here because they crave life, experience, triumph, risk. The few who wanted to die and find a true afterlife—if such a thing exists—have moved on by now. Everyone wants to be alive, and I can give them that. It won’t be through floor model substrates, though. They won’t wake up in a cold clone pod with straight edges, and a tube coming out of their navel. The first thing they see won’t be the harsh lighting on a white ceiling. The first thing they see will be a beautiful and relaxing violet sky. I’m sending them to Violkomin, where a protein-infused lake of primordial soup will construct new bodies for them in accelerated time. Here they will float, until they are ready to walk the lands, and begin a new journey. They will breathe again. They will live again. And they will do it in a new universe.

< > Entire Story

Microstory 1625: Fort Underhill

< > Table of Contents

I think it’s a pretty fitting time for me to discuss this next brane. As you’ve probably noticed, if a universe manages to distinguish itself from others enough to earn a name, it always ends in verse. Flipverse, Hypnopediaverse, and Salmonverse are good examples that I’ve already mentioned. Most of them form one word titles, but there are exceptions, like the Composite Universe, Universe Prime, and Area Doubleuniverse, which is quite obviously a pun. Still, they’re all verses. This one is the one exception to the rule. It’s an artificial brane, though its no less an independent brane than any other one. It’s twinned to Salmonverse, which protects it from external threats, and there’s only one entrance that I know of. The membrane surrounding it is 50,000 times thicker than most, done completely on purpose, which is why it’s impossible to cross into, except in the one special place. Its creator is a very powerful woman named Hogarth Pudeyonavic. She has her own story to tell, but it all came to a momentous transition when she discovered that she had a connection to the energy that pervades the bulkverse. No, I’m not talking about bulk energy, per se. This is more like the data delivery aspect of it; the waves that carry information in all directions. They call it the Aitchai, and Hogarth was chosen to wield it pretty much as she wished. It allows her to transmit matter from any location in the bulk, to anywhere else, at the subatomic level, if need be. She used this power to create mechacelestial objects, like the matrioshka body, and Big Papa, but once those were complete, she set her sights on something larger...more glorious. She wanted to build an entire universe, according to her specifications. These specifications are her creation’s proper physics, which refers to the physical laws specific to a given brane, as opposed to the ones that are true of all branes. What she didn’t have after completing her creation was a population. No one lived there, and if it remained as such, there would be no point to it. That is where another powerful woman named Ellie Underhill comes into the story. It was her own abilities that transferred tens of billions of people, allowing them to start new lives, and thrive in them. I’m afraid I can’t tell you much more about it than that. I witnessed its beginnings, but cannot see things that are happening inside the universe itself, because that’s the whole point. The thickness of the membrane doesn’t just keep invaders out physically, but also psychically, and spiritually. I can tell you that it works, and that it becomes a key sanctuary and strategic position in the Darning Wars.

Microstory 1624: Would You Rather

< > Table of Contents

Here’s another one that’s both bizarre, and involves multiple realities. You’ve probably heard of would you rather games. These can range from innocuous questions for children, to really raunchy, unsavory, or sadistic. Would you rather be blind, or deaf? Would you rather only be able to breathe from the bottom of your feet, or only ever smell smelly feet? They can be fun, they can be embarrassing, and they can be impossible to answer without looking bad. But one thing they’re not is consequential...unless you live in Hypothetiverse. In that world, every answer you give comes true. It happens to someone. It happens to an alternate version of you, one whose only real purpose in life is to suffer whatever circumstances you’ve forced upon them. Not all hypothetical questions lead to this. You have to ask it in this very specific way, but if you do, it will happen every time, and each time it happens, reality as a whole becomes more complicated. It almost feels like there’s some kind of intelligent design to all this, and not because of the inextricable connection between the main reality, and all of these offshoots. It’s also that the bare minimum number of realities exist to accommodate these realized hypotheticals. Some questions contradict each other—like if you were asked whether you would want to go without the internet, or without TV, for the rest of your life, and another one later that asks whether you would rather only be able to visit porn sites, or advanced scientific databases, for the rest of your life. Those two versions of you will live in their own respective realities, because they would not be able to coexist. But beyond that, all the hypothetical alternates live in the same reality. That is, as long as they don’t contradict each other, they’re together, so it’s not like there is one reality for every single would you rather hypothetical. Here’s where things get interesting, though. Each of these alternate realities has to be inhabited by a full population, and not everyone has answered one of these questions ever in their life. So their alternate is just walking around, trying to lead a normal life, amongst a neighbor who can only walk on their hands, and a co-worker who has to eat everything with a butter knife. They don’t know they’re in a realized hypothetical reality, so they can’t explain this odd behavior, and if they were to ask one of them about it, that person is also unaware of what they are, so they would just think it was normal, and not be able to articulate their reasoning. “Well, I don’t understand the question, I can only drive on Sundays. How would it be possible for me to ever drive on any other day of the week? You’re not making any sense.” I won’t get into specifics, but this universe doesn’t have anything to do with the Darning Wars, because these realities eventually collide after too many would you rather questions are asked, and things get ever crazier from there on out.

Microstory 1623: Death in a Vacuum

< > Table of Contents

Vacuumverse, as I think I’ll call it, is another really weird one. It started out as a normal version of Earth. History came with hardships, war, death, beauty, advancement; everything you would expect. The world ended rather abruptly, and though humanity lived past the planet’s destruction, it too came to an end. In space, there is no up, or down. Because of gravity, it’s more like in and out. You’re either letting it hold you against the nearest sufficiently massive celestial object, or you’re trying to resist this gravitational pull. Most of the time, this works just fine, and it’s totally predictable. By measuring an object’s mass and density, you can figure out how strong of an attraction it will have on some other object. The math is hard to reach, but easy to fathom. In this case, the sun orbits the center of the galaxy, while all its orbitals revolve around it. Every inhabited universe operates in this way. Some others have alternate fundamental constants, but we’re not worried about this, because they don’t support life very well. Something changed in Vacuumverse. Maybe it was a black hole, maybe it was artificial, I don’t know. But something suddenly altered the orbit of Earth. If you were looking at the solar system from a distance, keeping the orbital plane in a horizontal position, you would see the planet fall down towards an imaginary floor underneath the whole thing. In fact, you would see all of the planets doing that, as if the sun simply stopped having any gravitational impact on its orbitals, and something underneath them took over. It was still there, but nothing was attracted to it anymore. Like I said, it’s weird, because it should be impossible. That’s not really how gravity works, so again, I can’t say what happened. Obviously, since it was no longer being supported by a host star, the Earth started becoming inhospitable. It’s a good thing a few people knew that it was coming, and had a plan. It wasn’t a particularly good plan, and it didn’t quite work out in the long-term, but I suppose it was the best they could do on such short notice. Or maybe they just didn’t try hard enough.

These people couldn’t save everyone, but they did save a few, and the way they chose to save them was just as strange as the cataclysmic event itself. Much like the Bicker Institute in Bickerverse, those in the know sought out people with healthy and compatible genetic codes. They figured that the survivors would need to be able to restart the population at some point, and they wanted to maximize their chances. As we’ll find out, their plans were hopeless. They gathered these lucky survivors a few different ways, usually by sending them subliminal messages, but also sometimes through good old fashioned kidnapping. They protected them through vehicles and aircraft retrofitted to survive the vacuum of space, and be completely self-sufficient, using advanced solar power technologies. Some were even protected in a bubble that surrounded a big parking lot. Don’t ask me to explain that one. What they didn’t do was tell anyone that this was happening. They didn’t even tell their savelings, as they called them. Once it was time to leave, they put everyone they wanted in their special lifeboats, and flew away, leaving Earth to plummet out of orbit. Their plan was...insane, and convoluted, and ridiculous, and honestly, short-sighted. I call it Vacuumverse, because now these people were living in vacuum-sealed tin cans with very minimal propulsion systems. All they could do was stick by the sun, and float around aimlessly. They couldn’t fly off to the next exoplanet over, and they couldn’t mine raw materials to expand their fleet with a growing population. They were just destined to be stuck there, with no hope for survival, not for long, anyway. It didn’t matter that they picked people with the best genes, because there wasn’t enough livable space for them to spread out. So they died shortly after everyone else did, and no one in the rest of the bulkverse even knew enough about them to care.

Microstory 1622: Invasive Species

< > Table of Contents

I mentioned before how Efilverse was the second universe that the Ochivari went to when they discovered their ability to travel the bulkverse. I wouldn’t call it specifically intentional, but it was at least a deliberate experiment. Before this, it happened by accident. I don’t need to go into detail, but bulk travel is part of Ochivari physiology. It’s encoded in their DNA. But unlike their progenitor, they don’t open portals by punching invisible dimensional barriers. They do it by fighting against each other quite violently, and painfully, and it comes at a great cost. I don’t really know the ratio, but it’s something like, for three Ochivari to break the membrane, a fourth has to die. And for four to cross over, two have to die. Or something like that. I don’t think it goes up perfectly mathematically, and it has to do with total mass, and I believe some deaths are more powerful than others. Anyway, it’s not something that happens easily, which explains why they didn’t discover the phenomenon in ancient days. It just so happens that two Ochivari were fighting both against each other, and against two other Ochivari. I’m sure the squabble was stupid and petty, but this little fight had extreme consequences for the entire bulkverse. The first two decided to stand back to back, so they could face their mutual enemy head-on. They were angry, though, and anger is a powerful emotion. When an Ochivar is emotionally charged, little flaps will rise from their back. It’s an evolutionary response, designed to promote their own survival against a threat. Even though they kind of look like spearheads, these flaps are flaccid and harmless, which is why they don’t actually use them in battle. They’re not weapons; they’re only meant to be just for show, and everyone has always believed that. They had little reason to press their backs against each other for an extended period of time. It was really just happenstance that it occurred this day. While the two of them were locked in this position, a special fluid was secreted from under their stress flaps, and mixed with each other. This prompted a sort of trance-like state, where the two fighters became locked in a glandular battle with each other. They were unable to move, and they looked strange, which gave their enemies pause. Once it was over, one of the Ochivari essentially imploded, and tore a hole in the membrane of the universe, which sucked the other three in. This was the first time the Ochivari crossed over, and ended up in a random universe, populated by normal humans.

These humans were unremarkable until this moment. Their technology advanced at a reasonable pace, religion held them back a little, they didn’t have time travel. Everything, according to most metrics, was totally fine. The Ochivari survivors were horrified by what had happened to them. These humans were other, and they were dangerous. So they attacked. They wreaked havoc all over this world’s version of New York City, in the attempt to get back home, in anger at the humans, and still while trying to kill each other. People died in the onslaught, and so did one of the Ochivari. The humans were surprised, and not because they didn’t know aliens could possibly be a thing, but because their nature was not what they expected. They hadn’t come up with many invasion fiction stories. They weren’t naïve; just hopeful. They wanted to believe that aliens would come as visitors, rather than as hostile forces. The Ochivari’s arrival was the most demoralizing thing to happen to them. The two surviving Ochivari managed to get themselves away from the crowd long enough to try to recreate the circumstances that brought them there. Of course, one survived this next trip, while the other did not. While he returned to his world to spread his story, the humans kind of fell apart. This one incident changed their whole outlook on the universe. They became angry isolationists, bent on killing anything that came their way from outside. They assumed the aliens would be back for a full-scale invasion. It never happened. The Ochivari never came through, and this version of Earth wasn’t situated in a galaxy of resident aliens. They were all alone. Not knowing this, they became more and more militaristic, but since there weren’t any more aliens, they decided to start warring amongst themselves...and it destroyed them. It was probably why the Ochivari felt like they never needed to go back.

Microstory 1621: Floaters

< > Table of Contents

No version of a populated Earth is a waterworld. Sure, it’s possible that a version of it could be bombarded with enough asteroids and comets to cover the entire surface with water, with no land, but if that were the case, humans would not have ended up on it. Life could theoretically evolve to a certain point under the sea, but technology made by such a species would reach its maximum level pretty early on, as they could never invent electricity, or even discover fire. The land is where the magic happens, but that doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. It just needs to be a starting point. One universe took this idea to the extreme. Apparently for no other reason than they felt compelled, these people moved out to the oceans, choosing to live on artificial floating islands. A small fraction of the population stayed on land, but it is very rare, which doesn’t really make much sense to  me. For the most part, humanity is not a monolith. It shouldn’t be possible for the entire race to want to live the same way, but that’s exactly what somehow happened here. Nearly all of them wanted to become water-bound, and I still can’t explain it. These islands are modular, meaning they can be broken apart, and transported elsewhere, to be rearranged according to whims and new needs. Continents separate into countries, countries into regions, regions into cities, cities into communities, and communities into individual homes. Tired of your neighbors? Just detach your section, and go find new ones—clear across the globe, if you want. Someone invented the technology to make this possible, and easy, and everyone jumped on board pretty much immediately, literally. It ended all wars, and even poverty. Small floaters are cheap and accessible, and with access to the whole world’s resources, there was no need to hoard. They can escape from any storm, move away from any area to let it replenish itself, and avoid overtaxing their planet. This doesn’t seem to have been their idea, but this transformation also led to the Ochivari completely ignoring their world. They’re totally safe from the Darning Wars. It would probably be a nice place to vacation if bulkverse travel were more common.

The Advancement of Serif: Tuesday, September 7, 2184

« < » > Table of Contents

Their group having nearly doubled all of the sudden, sleeping arrangements were a little complicated on the AOC, but they figured it out. Jeremy and Avidan shared a grave chamber, as did Angela and Olimpia, and the children, Adamina and Esen. The rest had their own, but things would be better soon, once the new members were put where they needed to be. Nerakali didn’t open any more windows in 2181, but hopefully she would know what to do three years later. After an early breakfast, the Cassidy cuffs beeped, showing them that they had a date on Dardius.

“We don’t have time for a regular transition,” Angela argued. “We have to find a way to get these people back to their destinies.”

“This might be our chance to do that,” Jeremy said. “Just because no one here needs to go to Dardius, doesn’t mean we won’t find help here. Nerakali is a lot more helpful than Jupiter was. When she took over, she started recognizing when we were the ones who needed help, and she’s delivered.”

“You don’t think the next transition is irrelevant?” Angela questioned.

“I don’t,” Jeremy answered.

“This is what we do,” Serif agreed. “We have to assume we’re meant to be there, whether it helps us or not. Adamina and Esen will be fine, as long as they stay on the ship.”

“How do we get the ship all the way to Dardius?” Olimpia asked. Getting to a planet millions of light years away was pretty easy in The Parallel, but taking their ship with them made it a little harder. They had to first request permission from the Earthan leadership. Parallel natives were starting to grow uneasy about their relationship with the transition team. This might be one of the few remaining favors they would be allowed to ask, which would be a problem, because they were approaching the beginning of human exoplanet colonization. The first quantum probe, in fact, landed on Proxima Doma just last year. If the transitions continued, they would probably begin happening throughout the stellar neighborhood, and nothing could cross those distances in the span of a day, save for a Nexus, and but a handful of temporal manipulators. For some reason, trotting—as it was called—was a rare power, even in this reality. No one was sure whether the power-granters came up with the restriction deliberately, or if it was some kind of universal limitation.

Earth granted them permission at least this one more time, allowing them to interface with the Nexus from outside the building. The trip took them to this reality’s version of Tribulation Island. Jeremy agreed to babysit the children, while the rest of them went out to find the transition window on the mainland. They didn’t really want Tamerlane Pryce to go with them, but they didn’t want to leave him behind either. On the foothills of a mountain range, two people came through the window, standing in one place, and unconfused, like they knew it was coming. It was a man, and a child about Adamina and Esen’s age. The man smiled, and reached out his hand. “Thank you for coming. My name is Dardan Lusha.”

“Dardan?” Serif asked. “As in, the namesake of this planet?”

Dardan chuckled. “That was technically a different Dardan, but yes. I’m one of his alternates.” He looked down at the child. “And this little guy is Newt Clemens.”

“What?” Avidan was taken aback. “Is that a coincidence?”

“It’s not,” Dardan began to explain. “He is the alternate son of an alternate you. He’s a very special boy, and unique. He’s here to help your own young ones. You see, you didn’t come here to save us with a transition window. We’re here to save you. He can remove people’s powers, and will do that for Adamina and Esen, so they can lead happy lives here with us. We’ll also take that pocket dimension generator off your hands, and give those Maramon a good home somewhere here. The solutions to all your problems lie here.”

Serif was hesitant. “I don’t know you, and I don’t know that boy. How can we trust you?”

“We can trust him,” Kivi assured her. “He’s good people.”

Serif waited, not wanting to concede so quickly—after no argument, or discussion—but if they could only trust one person in the whole universe, it was Kivi. She had been part of this mission since the start, and had proved herself time and time again. “I suppose...if she says you’re okay, then you’re okay. Is this real, though? Can he really take powers?”

“Yes,” Newt answered for himself. “I’ve done it before.”

“You understand the need to keep him safe, though,” Dardan said. “You can’t tell anyone you did this, that this happened. We can’t have people coming to our planet, hoping to exploit his gifts.”

“We won’t tell anyone,” Serif agreed.

Dardan nodded. “You may bring the children here, or we will accompany you to your vessel.”

“We’ll bring them here, but there’s something you should understand first,” Serif said.

“What is that?”

“We don’t do nonconsent. I recognize that, as children, they may not know what is best for them, but I will not violate their rights. We temporarily suspended their abilities with these cuffs, but if they don’t want to make it permanent, I will not force them, and I will not let you force them.”

“Like I said, we’re here to help, not force anything.” Dardan promised. “We do believe that we have a good way to convince them, though.”

Serif didn’t press for clarification, choosing to be patient instead. She sent Kivi and Vitalie back to retrieve the children. Meanwhile, Avidan went off for supervised visitation in the main sequence—thanks to Nerakali’s intervention—with the son he might have had. His real parents agreed with no objection, but wanted to make sure Avidan didn’t try anything funny. Alternate selves was a complicated concept that fictional representations of time travel took for granted. Someone who looked exactly like you, and had a similar history to you, was not really you. There could only ever be one you, and anyone else could be no more than an approximation. Still, they felt that Avidan had some rights as that approximation, and chose to honor it.

By the time the girls came back with Jeremy and the kids, three more strangers had joined them. One of them was wearing a tiara. Dardan knelt in front of Adamina and Esen, and told them how dangerous it could be for them to keep their abilities. He spoke well, not dumbing himself down for the children to understand, but still using language they would respond to. After he was finished with his spiel, it was time for the demonstration. “I introduce you now to a woman from another world. Her name is Thack Natalie Collins.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lusha,” Thack said graciously. “And I will introduce you to my friend, Lochan. What I do is see other worlds from a distance, and what he does, is show you what I see. Do you understand?”

Adamina and Esen nodded their heads.

“Then let us join hands,” Thack said, taking Adamina and Lochan’s hands in hers, while Esen held onto Adamina’s and Lochan’s. The four of them closed their eyes and lifted their chins. Everything seemed okay at first, but grew worse as they shared the vision. It started out looking like REM sleep, with their eyelids bulging and twitching. It continued on from there, as they started to struggle more, and Serif realized that the kids were horrified at what they saw. Serif didn’t know enough about it to know what it was they were witnessing, but they clearly wanted it to stop. She had to do something. She reached over, and broke Adamina free of Thack’s grip. Angela did the same for Esen.

“What did you show them?” Serif demanded to know.

“I showed them the universe of Ansutah,” Thack answered. “I showed them what the Maramon do, to each other, and to the humans.”

“They’re too young,” Serif fought.

“I was younger than them when I first saw it,” Thack said. She looked down at the kids. “Do you want that to happen? Do you want to cause it?”

The kids, still saddened and scared, shook their heads.

“You have your answer,” Thack went on. “Bring in the lizard, and take your cuffs back. Avidan will come with us.”

“Why would he go with you?” Serif questioned.

“I know where he belongs,” Thack answered. “I know where his home is. Or rather, I know who it is.”

“I can’t stop him if it’s where he wants to go,” Serif said.

Their cuffs beeped, alerting them that a transition window would be opening up in ninety minutes. There was something different about it, though. “It’s two-way,” Jeremy said, knowing they all had the same question. “Whoever’s standing at the coordinates will go to the main sequence, and whoever was in the main sequence will come here.”

“All right,” Serif began, “let’s order lunch, and wait for Avidan to finish his visitation with his would-be-son.”

They ate, and they waited. Vitalie pointed out that she needed to get back to the main sequence, so she could continue on with her life on Earth. This was true, she had things to do there before too long. So when the time came, she and Dardan took the children to the middle of the coordinates, and switched places with Avidan. Olimpia walked up to him, and placed a hand on his shoulder. They spoke privately for a few minutes, while the others looked on. They didn’t know each other very well, but it kind of felt like Olimpia knew what it was like to leave someone she cared about behind. Once they were ready, they walked over and joined the group.

“Did you wonder?” Thack asked cryptically. “Did you wonder who his mother was?”

“Yes,” Avidan said, distraught about leaving his alternate child, but not wanting to talk about it much.

“I can take you to her. Time travel has created two versions of both of you. Two of you are together, traveling the multiverse with their friends. Like you, the other version of her, is still alone. Would you like to meet her?”

“Will she know who I am?” Avidan asked.

“She will. She will be grateful to get back to you, even though you’re not the same you.”

“Then okay. There’s nothing left for me in this world.”

“Okay,” Thack said reverently. “Treasure? Get ready to scream; Frequency Four.”

Serif perked up. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Don’t worry,” Thack said, “it’s fine. This is how we travel. You should get back, though.”

Serif, Jeremy, Angela, Olimpia, and Pryce walked backwards in one direction, while Thack, Avidan, Lochan, and the tiara-wearing traveler named Treasure walked backwards in the other.

“Oh, and one more thing!” Thack called out to them. “Let him walk through the cave! It’s just easier that way!”

“Who are you talking about?” Serif shouted back, but she didn’t receive an answer.

Treasure turned away from them, and stretched out her neck. Once she was ready, she screamed. She screamed so loud, the ground shook a little bit. Serif noticed that Pryce had been acting a little fidgety this whole time, but now they knew why. Seeing his opportunity, he bolted. He ran right for the travelers as fast as he could. He apparently wanted to go to another universe, and there was nothing they could do to stop it. Treasure was already mid-scream, and if the team tried to run after him, they could get caught up in that scream themselves. He reached them just in time to disappear through the portal with them, but not everyone made it. He took Lochan’s place, leaving Lochan stranded here.

« < » > Table of Contents