Microstory 1638: Global Reconstruction

< > Table of Contents

If you’ve ever seen or read a zombie apocalypse story, you’ll notice that they rarely ever really fix the problem. They may come up with some deus ex machina at the end, but in order to leave the door open for a sequel, it won’t ever truly work. Or they’ll tease salvation at the very end, but never really show what life would be like in a post-zombie world. This Earth of this universe had their own version of zombies, and they attacked people, and some survived, and the zombies died out. They could only keep moving as long as they ate the dying or dead flesh from a human, so eventually, they ran out of food. The most resilient human survivors managed to protect themselves in bunkers, and behind walls, leaving the zombies to wander around aimlessly until they died completely. Well, they didn’t die completely, but they weren’t zombies anymore either. They essentially transformed into ghosts, able to interact moderately with the corporeal world, but no longer a real threat to humanity. They were now mostly just scary, and irritating. Not every zombie turned into a ghost; just the ones who weren’t super great people while they were alive, and there were ways to defeat them. The living human species, meanwhile, went on. They began to rebuild civilization, though not out of the ruins of the old world. They had to stay away from cities that were still falling apart from the war, which meant they were basically starting over. This was a slow process, and the survivors were in no rush to return to the way things were before. They didn’t outlaw technology, but they ignored it, deciding to return to the way things were in earlier days. As the original cities crumbled and sank, new towns popped up where once there was wilderness. Progress came gradually, about as fast as it had before. This time, however, they knew of the dangers that came with advancement. They retained stories of where their ancestors went wrong, and while some was lost in translation, the morals lived on. They focused on preserving the wild, and using only as many resources as they needed. They were aware of renewable energy long before they were capable of wielding it, and they knew there was no point in fossil fuels. Centuries after the fall, humanity was pretty much back on track.

Microstory 1637: Wish Fulfillment

< > Table of Contents

I’ve not said anything about universes that contain a great deal of people with spirit abilities. Mine is like that, but throughout the bulkverse, we’re pretty rare. In any given brane, you might find one or two spirits in all of history. In Genieverse, there are many, though not quite as many as there are here in Voldisilaverse. The Voldisil are complicated in that we never all get together to make decisions. Each one of us tries to do whatever they believe is right, and sometimes that doesn’t work out so well, but we never decided to form some kind of governmental system. The spirits in Genieverse did. They were all born with the ability to find and recognize each other, and in the hopes of creating a better world, chose to found an organization that would utilize their abilities effectively. All spirits here were the same thing, though to varying degrees of success. They called themselves Genies, as you could have guessed, and I’m sure you’ve heard of them, but you probably know them to be slaves, or evil creatures of some kind. The real Genies can’t manipulate reality, or alter the laws of physics, but they can answer people’s prayers. And answering prayers is what they chose to do. They could have charged for their services, using regular currency, or maybe favors, but they wanted it to be fair. They opened their doors to all, and their only rule was that no wish could contradict someone else’s wish, or interfere with someone’s general happiness. Lots of people wanted the person they loved to love them back, but that would violate that other person’s agency, so it was off limits. It’s unclear whether they would be capable of such a thing anyway. They thought this simple restriction was all they would need, but there were problems, of course. It led them to prioritizing certain people over others—usually on a first come, first serve basis—resulting in an unfair system. It also resulted in chaos.

The Genies were powerful, intelligent, and knowledgeable. If two people wanted the same promotion at work, the person who asked for it first would usually be the one to get it, unless the Genies were aware that the second person was better suited. Well, this came with questions, like what were their parameters for job fitness, and what right did they have to circumvent the hiring manager’s decision? They were trying to become gods, while pretending they weren’t trying to be gods, while just making everything worse for everyone. They didn’t have any rules about how many wishes any one person was allotted. They didn’t think too far down the line at possible consequences for their choices. As long as a wish did not pose an immediate threat, and it was within their power, they made it happen. Society fell apart as people became obsessed with making their lives better without actually putting any effort into that goal. They believed as long as they didn’t ask for too much at one time, they would not be denied, and all of their dreams would eventually come true. It became impossible for the Genies to understand the ramifications of their actions. Soon, contradictions were popping up all over the place, and the solutions never really helped, because they always felt unfair as well. In two years, pretty much everyone in the world was unhappy, and there seemed to be no way out. The only reason it took that long was because not everyone believed the Genies were real right away. Unfortunately, it didn’t matter what they did at this point. No one was really wishing for the environment to be healthier throughout all of this, so the Ochivari came through, and wiped them all out, but it was their last successful mission.

Microstory 1636: Underverse

< > Table of Contents

As I’ve sort of explained, every universe that includes a populated Earth will begin at the same start value. This means that they should be accompanied by two planets closer to the sun, and another farther out before a small asteroid belt, before moving onto the gas giants, and icy worlds. And all of these celestial bodies should follow predictable patterns, and they should be the same for all versions of Earth. But they’re not. I don’t know enough about astrophysics to tell you why, but I have been able to see the consequences of these variations. On one Earth, astronomers uncovered the irregular orbital pattern of an asteroid from deep space, which was—apparently perturbed by other gravitationally-bound objects—on a collision course towards Earth. This gave them an eight-year warning, but that didn’t mean they could send up a bunch of space cowboys to blow the thing up. They possessed telescopic technology capable of detecting the asteroid, and the mathematical skills to predict its movements, but the space programs had barely reached the moon. Had this happened to them a few decades later, they might have stood a chance to stop it, but they had no hope of that now. All they could do was run and hide. Fortunately, the right people were given the latitude to jump into action, and preserve the human race. Private corporations and world governments started working together to an impressively harmonious degree. They built massive cities deep underground to protect them from the impact. The asteroid was destined to strike the continent of Africa, which meant their bunkers would have needed to be farther down than they were capable of digging. So other nations took in refugees, so the entire population of the planet could be saved. They didn’t even fight about it, they just did it. In only eight years, construction was completed. A few stragglers chose to remain on the surface, but very few of them were far enough away from impact to survive.

The reason they were able to complete the project in the short time allotted was that they planned the bunkers in stages. They knew that it was more important to finish the overall structure first, and stuff it with enough resources for the people to survive on. But they didn’t build individual units and rooms until later, in case it took them too long to finish Stage One. They didn’t build amenities until after impact, because they knew they could be okay until then. They just needed to get people down there, and they wouldn’t have been satisfied with anything short of the survival of everyone who wanted to survive. An impact winter reigned over the planet for decades to come after the incident, forcing the survivors to make their homes here, and forget about ever seeing the sky again. That was a dream that could be fulfilled by their children’s children, or beyond. Progress and development did not end here, though. They kept studying science, and coming up with advanced technology. They were able to tap into their undersea communication lines, and reestablish contact with each other across the continental divides. Within a couple decades, they were back to about where they were when this happened. They were just an underground species now. While they were down here, the Ochivari visited, and went on the hunt for evolved life, pleased to find this to be one world that they did not have to worry about. For some reason, they didn’t notice how few dead bodies were left behind, and foolishly concluded the humans were not a threat. But below, a source of recruitment into the Transit Army brewed.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, October 15, 2222

« < » > Table of Contents

With Angela’s help, Mateo was able to chill out a bit, and not be so focused on figuring out how to destroy The Superintendent by reaching out to his God. For the record, my God is named Sophia Dimo, and she’s a very lovely girl who doesn’t take sides, so his idea would not have borne fruit. Now they needed to focus on their next mission, which was taking them to what they would call Italy in the main sequence. Of course, in both realities, humans were living in tall arcologies, so they were in the middle of nowhere, in a rocky field. The AR flickers showed a man sitting at a desk, studying some papers. When the transition completed, he fell on his ass, but he was okay. Like they all did, he looked around, confused. He didn’t appear to be shocked to be in a completely different setting, though, like he had done it before. He noticed the transition team around him. “Are we still speaking English?” he asked. He said all the right words, but he seemed to be struggling with it.

“Yes,” Leona replied. “What language are you more comfortable with?” She started tapping on her Cassidy cuff.

“I was birth to speak Classical Latin, but I know other Latins. I now learning English modern.”

“We can speak Classical Latin for you,” she explained. She started to speak into her cuff. “Does this sound better?” All the other cuffs started translating her words in real time. It was Latin, but it sounded like her real voice.

Angela handed the man one of the extra cuffs, which he just held in his hand. “Yes, that’s much better,” the translation returned.

“What’s your name?” Leona asked.

“I’m Statius. I was born on the first day of what you would call Year One, A.D. On the day I turned eleven, I jumped forward eleven years, and a year after that, it happened again. It was year 22, year 33, year 44, and so on. It was just the year 2222, and I should not have yet jumped again.”

“You haven’t jumped forward,” Leona clarified. “It’s still 2222, but in a different reality.”

Statius crooked his neck. That didn’t seem to translate well.

“A different world,” she said, hoping that made more sense.

Time travel, he seemed to have a grasp of now, but any scifi nonsense beyond that was probably out of reach. He likely hadn’t met any other time travelers before. “Why am I here?”

“Were you in danger?” Jeremy asked through his own cuff. “We help people in danger.” He was always the one to explain that.

“Not that I know of,” Statius said. “The people here have been very friendly. They didn’t get mad at me for not understanding their magic boxes, and have been letting me learn the language using real paper, which is apparently rare in this time.”

“Yes, we no longer need it,” Leona agreed.

“We need to figure out why he’s here, why Nerakali chose him to transition,” Jeremy mused, not into his cuff.

“No, we don’t.” Mateo argued. He spoke into the cuff, “what do you want to do? Do you like being a time jumper?”

“I would like to go home,” Statius replied. “I wish this had never happened to me. I just want things to be how they were.”

“That’s not something we can do,” Jeremy said apologetically.

“Now, hold on,” Mateo said. “Let us discuss your situation. We may come up with a solution yet.” He spoke to the group without the cuff. “I may have an idea, but we should speak alone.”

“You can discuss it,” Angela said. “I’ll stay with him. I speak Classical Latin anyway.”

Mateo led Leona, Jeremy, and Olimpia back to stand next to the AOC. “What’s this idea of yours?” Leona questioned.

“We’ve been looking at these missions the wrong way. Jeremy keeps saying that we’re saving people, but we’re not saving them, we’re freeing them. He’s not in danger of being crushed by boulders falling down a landslide, or from being pursued by an evil serial killer. He just wants to go home, and I propose that we do that for him.”

“How?” Olimpia asked. “We can keep him in The Parallel to protect him from the powers that be, but his life was in the main sequence. They won’t let us put him back. I guess I don’t really know that, but I imagine they’ll be upset. He’s supposed to jump to the year 3333 in a few months.”

“No, we can’t take him back to where he was,” Mateo agreed, “but we can make him think he’s there. We can even make him think he never left. We can erase the last...”

“Twenty,” Leona helped.

“...twenty years of his life,” Mateo finished. “Make him think he’s a regular eleven year old in Ancient Rome, or wherever he was.”

“How would we make him think that?” Olimpia pressed.

“Virtual reality,” Mateo offered. “Put him in a simulation. Let him die there when it’s his time.”

“Mateo, that’s a...” Leona trailed off for a second. “The ethics for something like that are very unclear. You really think that’s what Nerakali had in mind.”

“I don’t care what Nerakali wants. This is what he wants.”

“You don’t know that,” Jeremy pointed out. “He wouldn’t understand it, even if we told him.”

“We don’t have to tell him,” Mateo contended. “We jack him into the Matrix, and make it look like it did when he left. I know the Parallel natives have the ability to reconstruct the past using a subject’s memories. Hell, they may even have data on what the world looked like at that time anyway.”

Leona was shaking her head. “It would all be a lie. He would literally be the only person in the world. He may not know it, but he could feel it. He could sense that everyone else is different, even without realizing that they were NPCs. If he ever did find out, it could drive him insane.”

Mateo wasn’t so worried about that. A well-respected scientific theory hypothesized that people were indeed living in a simulation already, and it didn’t make most people crazy. Hell, today was the day Leona went off to another universe to learn that it was kind of true, but she was fine. When he pointed this fact out to here, she disagreed.

“I did go crazy. I was in therapy with Eight Point Seven for a long time because of this revelation. I mean, we already knew that The Superintendent was playing around with our lives, but to learn it was literally a game that a bunch of children were playing to entertain themselves, was too much.”

“Well, we’re talking about the worst case scenario,” Mateo reasoned. “I trust the natives to know how to program a flawless simulation. Coupled with the fact that he’ll have his memories erased, it should be fine. Eleven-A.D. is too far in the past to have an inkling that the world around you is just zeroes and ones.”

“He has a right to consent,” Olimpia tried to defuse the situation before the Matics could get into a real argument about this. “We can’t erase his memories unless this version of him agrees to it. If we’re confident that he understands it won’t be real, but he won’t remember that it’s not real, then I’m all right with this plan.”

Leona seemed to be off the topic, and onto a more general problem. “We used to be a team. Mateo, I don’t know you anymore. I never know if you’re going to be your original naïve self, your new and improved zen self, or an explosive, vengeful asshole who frightens me. Whatever you and Angela are doing, it’s not working. You are too unpredictable, and you’re too dangerous. We’ll do whatever Statius wants, but after that, I don’t want you part of this team. You can keep the cuff on, but while the rest of us are handling the transitions, I want you to be off doing something else. It doesn’t have to be therapy, but you can’t come back until you can make me feel safe to be around you again. You need time to recover from whatever it is you’re going through.”

“Are you really doing this?” Mateo questioned, mortified and confused.

“I’m really doing this.”

“We need to talk.”

“No, I’m done talking,” she said angrily. “I can’t talk to you. I don’t even wanna look at you anymore. I’ve been trying to stay patient, but that’s not working either. You have options; don’t think you don’t. You can do what I asked, which I think is best, or you can take off the cuff permanently, and fuck off. Or we can get divorced, and you can still fuck off. I won’t have you on this team until you can prove you deserve it.”

“Why don’t you have to prove anything?” Mateo fought.

“Do you two think I have anything to prove?” she posed to the others.

They didn’t say anything.

Leona went on, “I’ve made mistakes, I admit that. I’ve always been me, though. You always know what you’re getting. You can’t say the same anymore, so I’m giving you a choice. What will it be?” She checked her cuff. “You have two minutes.”

Mateo set a timer, and waited the full two minutes. The other three remained silent the whole time. “I’m leaving, but I’m keeping the cuff. I want you to think about something, though. I want you to ask yourself whether you should take off the cuff instead, not because you’re not good for this team, but maybe you’re misunderstanding the situation. This is me now, this is who I am. You can’t understand what it’s like to lose your soul unless it happens to you. That’s not a thing that people can just...learn about second-hand. It was...it wasn’t the scariest time in my life as it was happening, but it gives me shivers now. Am I different? Yes. But I won’t apologize for that, and how dare you demand that I do. I don’t need time to figure myself out. I think you need time to figure me out. So maybe you should take off the cuff, and not come back for another, uhh...”

“Three years, goddammit!” Leona screamed. “The math is not that hard. The next jump is three years, and then another three years, and then nineteen years, and then three years again!”

Mateo stayed calm so as not to lose what he believed to be the upper hand. “Who’s unpredictable now?” He tapped on his cuff, and requested authorization to teleport to Nerakali’s location, which was the only place that he could teleport. Walking away in real time would not have gotten him away from his wife fast enough. Nerakali accepted immediately, probably after having been eavesdropping on their fight.

Once he was gone, Leona fell to her knees, and sat down. She was breathing heavily, and pressing her knuckles against her forehead. She was having a panic attack. “What did I do? What did I just do?”

Olimpia knelt down and wrapped Leona in her arms. “You can’t be around a man who doesn’t make you feel safe. You did what you had to in this moment.”

“Was it even me? Or is this just another twist for the Superintendent to capture his audience?”

No. This was an inevitable development, and a long time coming.

« < » > Table of Contents

Sic Transit...Lar Familiaris (Part II)

< > Entire Story

Treasure had never traveled the bulk on purpose before. In fact, she had no recollection of ever having done it. She didn’t even have proof growing up that she was capable of such a thing. Perhaps the time she transported her family to this world, and the time she accidentally transported to some random dangerous world by herself, were all lies her parents made up. Why would they do this? Why would they force her to wear a collar, and claim it was so she didn’t end up getting lost in the multiverse? What could possibly be weirder—or worse— than that? Nothing, apparently, because as she was proving now, it was all true. Her scream really could resonate at the right frequency to break a temporary hole in the membrane of the universe, and allow her to jump to other worlds. Unfortunately, her father had promised to teach her how to use her powers once she turned eighteen. They were planning a family vacation on that day to celebrate. Since she was leaving early, she didn’t know what she was doing, or where she was going. She could figure it out eventually, though, as long as she survived long enough. Once she did, she would be able to return home at the very same moment she left, and unless she said something, her parents would never know exactly how long the trip was from her perspective. But again, she had to survive.

Alarms were blaring, and she could hear gunfire outside the door. It took her a moment for her eyes to adjust to the low lighting. This room appeared to be an advanced futuristic laboratory, but what did she know? If this really was a different universe, their history could be unlike anything she had ever studied before in Miss Collins’ class. There were an infinite number of branes in the bulk, and this could be pretty much any one of them. The furniture and instruments looked somewhat familiar, though, so it probably wasn’t the version of Earth where dinosaurs evolved planet-dominating intelligence instead of humans. She wanted to escape, fearing for her life, but she couldn’t just leave without doing something. One time, when she was younger, she took a train to visit Chicago. It stopped to pick up a few more passengers in Iowa, so she took that opportunity to step off the train, just so she could say she once went to Iowa. But she hadn’t really. She was out there for all of thirty seconds, and had never returned for real. This could not be a repeat of that. She needed to explore, to make some mark—however small—so someone could corroborate her claim that she was here.

She stepped over to the door, and cracked it open carefully. The gunfire was farther away now, so she hoped the hallway would be empty. It wasn’t. Someone pulled the door open all the way, and forced himself in, nearly knocking Treasure down to the floor. He shut the door behind him, and pressed his ear against it. Treasure straightened up her clothes, and cleared her throat. “What’s going on?” Treasure whispered.

The man hissed at her in a language she didn’t know.

“I’m whispering,” she explained, even quieter this time.

He hissed at her again, and tightened the suction of his ear on the metal. They waited for a good five minutes. Once he was convinced they were safe for now, he breathed a sigh of relief, and started trying to talk to her. Language was the weirdest thing about the bulkverse, according to her studies. All these different worlds, some not even just alternate versions of Earth, but unrelated planets. And they all pretty much spoke English. It was the dominant language everywhere. Of course, other languages existed, but Miss Collins spoke of only a few planets that developed completely without it. The evolved dinosaur one was an example. This was a human, and she didn’t know what language he was speaking. It didn’t sound like anything she had ever heard before, except maybe...Ancient Egyptian?

They continued to try to communicate with each other, using hand gestures and facial expressions. He pretended to hold a gun, presumably asking whether she was armed. When she shook her head, he got really offended, and tried to frisk her, which she promptly put an end to. He put up his hands, somewhat apologetically, but not sincerely, and started pantomiming again. He held up an invisible gun, pointed to the door, and turned his fingers into legs. He opened a hypothetical door, and entered what he seemed to think was a glorious room. Something was lining the walls. Paintings? No. More finger guns. All different kinds. He threw a grenade. An armory. He wanted them to go search for an armory. Treasure wanted to shake her head again, but she didn’t know what to do. Was this guy a terrorist who deserved to be caught by the authorities? Was he an innocent accountant for this place who was just trying to escape? There was no way to know which side of this conflict she had stumbled upon. The only way she was going to understand it is if somebody here happened to speak English, French, Arabic, Mandarin, Hindi, Japanese, or Maramon.

Treasure relented, and followed the man out the door. They crept down the dim hallways, sticking to the walls as much as possible. They could still hear gunfire, but it was even fainter now. That certainly suggested an attack, rather than an authoritative raid. She would think cops would leave agents scattered throughout, instead of just moving through the whole thing together. But maybe not. There was no telling how large this facility was. She didn’t know what they did here, or why there was both a lab and an armory. They kept going until they could no longer hear the bullets. They were replaced with humming. It didn’t sound ominous or evil, but pleasant and comfortable. She almost sounded...bored. The man wanted to get away from it, but Treasure insisted they go check it out. If she was another survivor, they had to know, and if she wasn’t, Treasure could always scream.

They slipped through the door, and into what looked like a hock. The woman was alone, locked up, and didn’t stop humming when she saw them. Her arm was lying on the floor, which looked quite uncomfortable. She appeared to be stuck there. The two of them started speaking to each other in their language, so Treasure just stood there patiently. The conversation became heated, though, and he grew angry. It almost looked like he was blaming her for something. Finally, he took Treasure by the shoulder, and tried to pull her out. “No,” she responded, pushing his hand off of her. “What’s going on?”

“I couldn’t give him the answers he was looking for, so he’s abandoning me here,” the woman explained.

“Wait, you speak English?” Treasure questioned.

“I do, yes. I’m from Ansutah.” That was one of the bad universes. Miss Collins would never use such a word, because she was a kind and understanding person, but all the students got the idea. It was populated by monsters, who broke off of the universe that Treasure’s mother was from. They caused a lot of problems all over the bulk. They weren’t as bad as the Ochivari, but it was dangerous to trust them.

“You’re one of the human refugees,” Treasure guessed.

The man started complaining again, forcing the prisoner to get back into the argument. She dismissed him, and he finally gave up, deciding to leave Treasure behind, and go look for his precious armory.

“Sorry about that. I’m half human, half Maramon. They call us hybrids. My name is Azura, and I was sent to this universe to neutralize one Missy Atterberry as a threat.”

“So you are bad?” Treasure said.

Azura scoffed and laughed at the same time. “No, I never had any intention of doing that. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. Missy won’t show up here for another several billion years. I purposely screwed with the algorithm, so my creator would send me to the wrong time period.”

“Oh. My name is Treasure. I’m from voldisilaverse,” she felt compelled to reveal.

“I see. You don’t seem like a pretentious asshole.”

“I wouldn’t call them that. They’re just...proud of themselves.”

“What did I say?” she joked.

“Umm. Are you, like, bolted to the floor?”

“Kinda, yeah. These people hacked into our medical implants, and pushed the gravity up to eleven. I only survived because of my Maramon side. It won’t last forever, though. If you could kindly hand me that cuff right there, I would be eternally grateful.”

Treasure looked over at the object on the table. “What does it do?”

“It will disable my chip, putting my gravity back to normal. You don’t have to unlock the gate, I just don’t want to die on the floor.”

Miss Collins taught them about the adventures of The Newtonian Expats, and The Hybrids. The latter were sent to remove the time powers of the former. Each ended up in a different universe when The Crossover exploded, and started impacting history from there. Most of the hybrids switched sides, and became friends with the Expats, but not all of them, and this Azura person was never mentioned. Still, if Treasure was going to make her own difference, she had to start by giving Azura the benefit of the doubt. That was what Miss Collins would do. Treasure grabbed the implant disabling device, and slipped it through the bars. Azura pushed the buttons on the screen, which were displaying what looked like hieroglyphs. She wrapped the cuff around her arm as well as she could, and activated it. Then she was able to stand back up after however long. She stretched, and massaged the implant site.

“Why are you in here?” Treasure asked.

“I built this device,” Azura said, holding up the cuff. “The implant tracks every single member of the Astral Military Force. I really just wanted to be able to go off-world without my superiors knowing about it. I didn’t know it could have saved lives. As it stands, other than me, it only saved two.”

“Where are the other two?”

“Off fighting against the invasion, I imagine, surely presuming me dead. I did pass out for a while. Anyway, thank you for your help—”

“I’ll let you out,” Treasure assured her. “You don’t have to be weird about it.”

“Okay, thanks, because...I don’t belong in here. As punishment, they would have made me clean the restrooms for a few weeks at worst.” She guided Treasure towards the keycard, which unlocked the hock gate. She repeated herself, “Thank you for your help, but we should get you to safety. This is no place for a youngling. Where is the door to the Crossover?”

“I didn’t come in the Crossover.”

“Hm. The Prototype?”

Treasure shook her head. “It’s just this thing I can do.”

“Hmm. You weren’t on the list.”

“The list of what?” Treasure questioned, worried.

“The list of people who can travel the bulkverse,” Azura clarified. “You’re not on that list. With a name like that, I would have remembered.”

“I’ll use that to my advantage.”

“That would be wise. Though...because of time travel, once the secret gets out, it was always out.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Two questions, did that guy know where the armory is, and do you?”

“Not really, and yes. He was just a visitor who wishes he had come yesterday instead. The armory is just next door.”

“That seems stupid.”

Azura smiled. “This hock is meant for insubordinate soldiers who they don’t plan on kicking out of the military. If I were a traitor, or deserter, or something, they would have put me somewhere much more secure. This is mostly my commanding officer’s office. What does it matter, though, aren’t you just going home?”

“I have to help you. It’s why I’m here. Let me get you to wherever it is you need to be.”

The two of them stepped out of the hock office, and down to the next door. Treasure kept watch while Azura punched in the code. They walked in, and started gathering supplies. Azura took weapons and tactical gear, but Treasure just fitted herself with a bullet proof vest, and a helmet. Her father taught her how to defend herself, but no one trained her on weapons, and she grew up in a fairly peaceful world. All she wanted to do was protect herself, not hurt anybody. Azura, meanwhile, was carefully removing a grenade from a lockbox, placing it into a smaller box, and lowering it into her bag.

“You really need a grenade?” she asked.

“This is not a grenade,” Azura answered. “Are you ready to go?”

“Where are we going?”

“The Condensed Command Center. There will be very few survivors, and they will all convene there.”

“Okay.”

They opened the door, and tried to leave the room, but were immediately spotted by the enemy. Before she could react, Treasure heard a shot, and felt a choking pain on her neck. Something wet rolled down her chest, and she fell to her back. Azura returned fire only briefly, before dragging Treasure back into the armory, and locking it.

< > Entire Story

Microstory 1635: Isoverse

< > Table of Contents

I already told you about Floaterverse, where just about everyone on Earth lives on artificial floating islands. Isoverse is similar to that, but taken to an extreme extreme. I didn’t repeat myself, the first extreme is an adjective, and the second a noun. The Floaters still maintain their communities, they’re just modular. They can shift them around, which serves to promote a global community. The Isoversals, on the other hand, stay almost completely separate from each other, and they do it in space. Civilization started out normal, but quickly diverged, both socially, and scientifically. Advancement became an obsession for these people, and contrary to popular belief, this is not normal. For centuries, most versions of Earth will develop technology quite slowly, necessity being the mother of invention, and all. Most will not form a drive to push forward regardless of true need until much later. Coupled with religious hangups, this can hold progress back rather well. These same obstacles happened to the Isoversals as well, but unlike others, it severely pissed them off. A resistance group of sorts rose to power, and banned all religion impressively early. I say impressive, but do not mistake that to mean I condone their violent behavior. It’s just such an unusual thing to happen in history, but all told, there was less violence here than in most other universes. The group also banned war, and were prepared to stoop to the level of irony in order to protect that mandate. This also had the effect of increasing the global population, which might sound like a good thing, but it came with some problems. It came with disease. It was worse than any pandemic on any other world, except for the sterility virus. The Isoversals were nearly wiped out by it, and it forced them to change their perspective.

The survivors continued to advance, and came up with ways to protect themselves against something like this happening again. Self-quarantining became the norm, and each passing generation was more and more used to the idea, until no one was left alive who felt that there was any better way to live. To maintain the species, they had to live separately. It was the only way, according to researchers. Innovation didn’t halt, though, of course, and soon they were reapplying their methods to space travel. This reached its inevitable state when every family was afforded its own fusion-powered spacecraft habitat that could orbit a planet, or a host star. If requested and approved, they could even be fitted with a propulsion system capable of delivering them to other star systems. When a child was old enough to go off on their own, they did so literally, by transferring to a unit only large enough to accommodate them. Obviously, the entire point of all this was to protect the species, but the price of not going extinct by some disease could not be going extinct by a lack of propagation. Instead of interacting in base reality, communities formed in virtual constructs. They kept their physical bodies, but spent most of their time connected to the network. When two people met, they would begin by dating each other remotely, and would even form a permanent union in VR. They would only come together outside of VR to start a family, and they were assigned a larger habitat in order to make that work. This was how they lived, and they never thought there could be a better way. They didn’t colonize space to protect the environment of their home planet. They did it because they believed it was the best way to insulate themselves from each other. But it protected them from the Ochivari just the same.

Microstory 1634: Fighting Back

< > Table of Contents

The Ochivari don’t want a real war. They’re not worried about their own people dying, or having to use up resources to arm them. They just don’t want to destroy the planets that they’re trying to save. Plus, it takes all this time, and it’s this whole thing. They go to great lengths to keep their presence on a new world a secret, which is why it was such a boon for them when they met a group of humans who wanted in on the action. Still, the missions were rough-going at first. As it turned out, these human confederates weren’t as passionate about their crusade as they just liked killing people. They actually wouldn’t have minded going into battle against their targets, because it almost sounded like fun. The Ochivari had to spend a lot of time training them to be more like them, and to take the cause seriously. Even after this, there were hiccups. One of these issues came up on a version of Earth that should have been a no-brainer. The local population was destined to keep ruining the environment, and had little hope of changing their ways. As I’ve said, the Ochivari have no interest in teaching the people they encounter to do better. All they do is look to the future, and hold it against their past. It’s all very black and white to them, and they won’t listen to any concessions or compromises. The confederates, though better than previous missions, were reckless here. They made a lot of mistakes, and while the mission itself technically was completed, their exit was far more problematic. The locals discovered the virus that was going to result in their demise, and as you would expect, they were not happy about it. With nothing left to lose, they decided to fight back, and unlike other times when a planet realizes what happened, they stood a chance.

Most worlds can’t fight back, though many would like to try. Once the virus is released, the Ochivari and their confederates bug out, and their victims have no way to follow. This time, though, the infiltrators didn’t escape fast enough, and they were caught. The locals interrogated their prisoners of war, and managed to get quite a bit of information out of them. All the Ochivari were gone by then, but that didn’t mean it was over. The confederates knew how to contact their masters, in order to be retrieved and returned to safety. The locals used this trick to lure a Worlon ship back to them, so the fighting could begin. As true warfare was not ever part of their plans, the Ochivari were surprised, and completely unprepared. Their ship was destroyed, but the people themselves were kept alive, so they could serve a purpose. The locals forced them to do what they evolved to do, which was to travel to other worlds. They sent their own ship through the portal instead, and started firing upon the Ochivari homebase in Efilverse. Of course, they were severely outmatched, and barely made a dent in their population, but the spark was lit, and that little bit of hope was enough to change things. Their harrowing attempt to fight back was recorded, and before the ship exploded, two survivors managed to leave with the data. From there, it was distributed to as many universes as possible, in time periods before the Ochivari was fated to attack them. A resistance formed from this unwinnable battle that was vital to the future of all evolved life. The Transit was great. It was a cool space train that could also travel to other branes, but it wasn’t at all useful without people to run it, and believe in it. These fallen heroes inspired the army that actually could fight back, and make a huge difference.

Microstory 1633: Providence

< > Table of Contents

Just because a universe is capable of supporting human life, doesn’t mean that humans will actually evolve on a planet somewhere. While the chances of evolved life are negligible—which is why it pretty much only happens once a universe, if that—life itself is actually pretty common. Many have been led to believe that evolution is reaching for some kind of goal, and that humans are a milestone towards that goal, if not the realization of it. The truth is that there’s not always a benefit to being human, or as intelligent as one. Complex brains are difficult to maintain. We need fingers, particularly an opposable thumb, to grasp on to things, but you first need the conditions to need to grab on to things in the first place. Finned aquatic animals do just fine without hands, and they will probably never develop high intelligence, because they do not need it. A lot of the time, when we talk about the Maramons in a universe other than their home of Ansutah, it’s because they were stranded there when The Crossover suffered a cataclysmic failure, and exploded. This is not the only time that Maramon went out into the bulkverse, and it’s not the only reason Maramon are present on other worlds. The whole reason the Maramon built the Crossover in the first place, and stole the technology to do it, was to make more room for their entire population. Ansutah was a tiny pocket dimension when it first began, and only grew when a powerful human’s temporal ability forced it to do so. But this ended when that human was removed from the universe, leaving the Maramon with no choice but to eventually figure out how to break through the membrane. The Crossover went to many other branes, their only mission being to gather data. They needed to understand how common human life was, and which brane would be best suited for settlement. A group of them decided to go against this mandate, and just settle on the first decent planet they found. They called it Providence.

Providence was not the most hospitable world they had ever found—in fact, overpopulation aside, it was worse than the Ansutahan homeworld—but it was free, and open, and left room to expand. There weren’t any humans around, which was a good thing, because that would have further complicated things. The Maramon wanted a new home, not a place to fight against their progenitors. Proper physics did not allow time travel or alternate realities, or even faster-than-light travel, which was all probably good too, but not everyone agreed. The Crossover leadership demanded that the rogues who wanted to stay return to the machine, and stay on mission, but they refused. A skirmish resulted in heavy loss on both sides. By the time a ceasefire was called, the settlers numbered 147, which just so happened to be the generally acceptable minimum for restarting a given population, as it was sufficiently genetically diverse. Worried that the settlers would not survive the somewhat harsh environment on their own, the current Crossover’s captain decided to stay behind with them, so he could protect them from themselves. The machine, meanwhile, went back out into the bulkverse, and continued gathering data before going back to Ansutah. Providence became a new home, and the Maramon there progressed in about the same way humans will without being able to manipulate time. Their population increased, they conquered the solar system, and they colonized exoplanets. And for the most part, people left them alone. For the most part.