Sic Transit...Vox (Part III)

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This was it. This was exactly what her parents were so worried would happen to her. She was shot, and bleeding out on the floor of an unfamiliar universe. If her father was going to find her here, he would have to do it quickly. Azura grabbed the medkit from the wall, and started wrapping gauze around Treasure’s neck, but this wasn’t a hospital, and she wasn’t a doctor. There was no guarantee of survival. Worst of all, without a throat, she couldn’t scream. She couldn’t escape. Something was pounding on the door.

“Can you leave?” Azura asked. “Can you jump from here?”

Treasure shook her head, but obviously couldn’t answer. She started pantomiming again. She pointed to her throat.

Something pounded on the door again.

“You have to be able to talk?”

She mimicked air coming out of her mouth.

More pounding.

“You have to sing?”

She shook her head again, and widened both her mouth, and her eyes.

Something struck the door so hard, dust flew in from the edges.

“You have to scream.”

Treasure nodded.

The door dented inwards.

“Okay. That’s okay. I just need time to program it.” Azura just as carefully as before removed the grenade from her bag, and placed it on the floor. “I don’t know the coordinates to voldisilaverse. That’s loci non grata for us. Where else do you feel safe? Where should we go?”

Treasure removed one hand from her neck, keeping the other in place. She waved her finger down, into a curve, then back up, and into a complementary curve, before finishing off the tail.

The dent in the door grew deeper.

“That looked like a fish. Salmoverse, really?”

Treasure nodded.

Light from the hallway peeked in through a little hole in the dent.

“All right, well, I definitely have those coordinates.” She started messing with the gears and tiny buttons, and whatever, on the grenade. When she was done, it opened itself up, releasing a glow. The door broke open too. Just as the enemy soldiers were coming in to kill them, the whole room filled with technicolors, and spirited them away. It spirited all of them away.

Luckily, Azura knew what had just happened, so she wasn’t as confused as the soldiers. As she lay there dying, Treasure watched Azura make the first move. She started fighting the enemies on her own, switching opponents easily, always knowing which one was the greatest threat that second. She got shot herself a couple times, but just kept going. In the end, they were all on the floor, and she was left standing. “Hold tight,” she said to Treasure. Not only had all the people come through the transport grenade, but the weapons and other gear did too. She found cuffs and chains, and used them to bind the soldiers to the seats. Yes, seats. This looked like a really big train car.

Now that the enemies were disarmed and no longer a significant threat, Azura felt she could drag Treasure to the next car up, and start getting back to treating her neck. Treasure tried to speak, but still couldn’t.

“Just rest. I’ll get you patched up.” Azura removed a syringe from the medkit. “This...is gonna hurt.” She jammed it into Treasure’s neck, and knocked her unconscious.

Treasure woke up after a good night’s rest. She was no longer on the floor, but in a bed that looked like a sleeper car. It didn’t just look like a train. It legit was a train. The windows were weird, though, and it was far too big to fit on a regular set of tracks. Was this—? No, it couldn’t be. What were the chances...? She sat on the edge, and started testing her throat. She could swallow, and she could cough, but she couldn’t speak. Well, she could eke out some really pathetic sounds, but not enough to convey information, and she absolutely couldn’t scream. Was this permanent? It was then that she realized that there was something on her head. It kind of felt like a tiara. She accidentally tapped the jewel in the center of it, which apparently powered it up. “What the hell is this thing?” a voice came from the tiara. “Who said that? Was that me? That sounds like me.” It was her own voice, but instead of coming out of her mouth, it was through a little speaker. The tiara was evidently converting her brain signals to an audible voice. She didn’t even have to move her lips.

Treasure left the sleeper car, which was actually just one section in a whole car of other sleeper rooms. While looking for Azura, she ended up finding the first car instead. The soldiers were still chained up to the seats, but their arms were now free, so they could eat. They regarded her with fairly noticeable indifference, probably having realized that she didn’t know anything about them, and had no stake in their war. One man didn’t have any food yet. Azura was just coming in from the other side to hand it to him. She changed tactics, and handed Treasure the food instead. “How do you feel?” she asked.

“Like a robot,” Treasure’s brain answered.

“Oh, good, the tiara is working. I’ve yet to find an exit,” she began to explain, “or a control room. We may be floating in space, for all I know. I know what this is, though.”

“The Transit,” Treasure said first. “The missing bulk travel ship.”

“That’s right,” Azura confirmed. “My people made it, but never used it, and then it disappeared. They always suspected it ended up in Salmonverse, but I don’t think they spent much time looking. It, uhh...never worked that well. Elegant design, but half-assed engineering. If we want to use it to get you back home, we’ll need someone smart enough to get it running.”

“Can’t we just use your grenade thing?” Treasure presumed.

“It was a one-time thing,” Azura said. “That’s why I was being so careful with it. I was trying to figure out how to reprogram it for multiple crossing, but only ever figured out how to change the destination. It kind of...exploded after we used it.”

“My true voice. Will it ever come back? I doubt this thing will let me...”

Azura hesitated to answer. “Medically speaking, it’s possible for your vocal cords to repair themselves. With anyone else, I would be hopeful. Realistically, historically, futuristically, probably not. You might heal, but I think you probably aren’t destined to. It would explain why you weren’t on our list of people and machines capable of crossing over. You only did it once, so...it wasn’t in our records.”

“It happened more than once, but that wasn’t the point. Now her only hope of getting back home was this machine, and no one here would know how to fix it.”

Azura turtles her head forwards. “You just said that out loud. And you said it in Vertean. Why did you use third person past tense?”

“What’s Vertean?”

“That’s their language.” She indicated the soldiers.

Treasure looked down to find the soldiers looking at her funny. “I think I need to practice using this thing. Alone.”

“I’ll keep looking,” Azura said. “The ship is pretty big.”

Treasure went back to her sleeper car, and started talking to herself. She complained about her parents, and how this was their fault. They should have taken her on trips early on, so she could get used to being on other worlds, and better understand how to use her powers. Perhaps there was a workaround. Maybe she didn’t really need her voice after all, but now she couldn’t test that theory. Now she was stuck. They should have let her learn. But it wasn’t their fault. They laid out the rules, and they were clear, and they were reasonable. This whole thing was exactly why those rules existed, and she should have respected that. She should have trusted them, and honored them. They were going to help her learn when she was an adult, and that should have been good enough for her. She should have been patient. This was her fault, she was such an asshole.

“I don’t think you’re an asshole.” Azura was at the door with one of the soldiers.

“What do you want?” Treasure asked.

“Treasure,” Azura said from behind him. “Siphon would like to say something to you. Go ahead, Siphon.”

“I’m sorry for shooting you.” The tiara was both translating her thoughts into his language, and his voice, into her tongue. It wasn’t that hard to use, now that she knew the difference between a stray thought, and one that she wished to vocalize. “I realize now that you were never my enemy, and...we should have been more careful. We should have kept our war to ourselves. I apologize. I know what it’s like to be silenced.”

Treasure stared at the man with a blank expression. Then she reached over to the sliding door handle. “Get the fuck out of my car.” She slammed the door shut. Hopefully that word translated well, so he would fully grasp how angry she was. She half-expected Azura to come in, and try to talk to her, but she didn’t. They both left, and Treasure went back to hating herself for getting her into this mess.

Hours later, a simple knock on the door indicated that there was another food tray waiting for her on the table outside the bedroom. This was how they started doing things. Treasure would stay in her personal train car alone, mostly in the bedroom. Azura would come by every once in a while to switch out her food trays, and update her on the goingson. She and the enemy soldiers drew up a truce, and then came to an understanding, and then became friends. They weren’t so different after all. It was only Treasure who didn’t belong, even though she was the only one actually born to this universe. Of course, she crossed over to volidisilaverse within seconds of her birth, but her mother was from here, and spoke of it often. If they ever figured out how to get this train back down to Earth, she would know who to contact.

Yes, the train ship was in space, probably in some kind of lava tube on Pluto, in order to keep it out of the hands of those who would exploit its power. Based on gravitational readings, that was as much as Azura could determine, but even that didn’t seem right, based on what she thought she knew about Pluto. The windows were there, but they were opaque, so it felt like living in an underground bunker. There was plenty of space for the small group of them, and they spent the entire time trying to power it up completely, if only to send a message to Earth. Treasure spent three weeks almost completely alone before something happened that forced her to leave. There was a jolt, and a surge of energy throughout the walls. It didn’t hurt much, but she definitely felt something, and she had to go out to ask about it.

Azura and the rest of this brand new crew were in an auxiliary control room. She was pounding on the inputs, trying to get them to work. “Come on, you were doing something before. You’re alive sometimes.”

“What happened? I don’t mean to interrupt, just curious,” Treasure added.

“I believe we went back in time,” Azura replied.

“Why?”

“I can only get any screen to give me any information for a moment. My guess is that the ship is quantum locked. It exists exclusively during a fixed period of time, probably according to the orbital period of whatever rock we’re on. That narrows down the list of suspects, but I still don’t know where we are, because I don’t have that data, because I can’t turn on most of these damn interfaces!” She was frustrated with all the time it was taking to work on this, but not mad at any person. The crew understood.

Treasure stepped forward to comfort her, and maybe apologize for being such an insolent little child this whole time. As she did so, the nearest computer booted itself up, as if responding to her presence. They were all very surprised.

“What did you just do?” Azura questioned.

“Nothing,” Treasure claimed. “I’m just standing here.”

“Walk over towards that computer over there.” Azura jerked her head farther down the car.

Treasure did as she was asked. That computer turned on as well.

“Oh my God, it’s you,” Azura complained. “This ship senses your power. I can’t believe you were the key to our salvation all along. Come with me. I need you to activate the engine room.”

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Microstory 1640: Give Me Shelter

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I’m going to be contradicting myself a little bit, but this is a pretty extreme case, and a significant exception to the general rules. I mentioned Guardian Races once, but didn’t get into what they are. They take on various forms, so it’s just a catch-all term that refers to any species—or even a small group of people—who, in some way, takes care of another species, usually secretly. Since I’ve established that aliens are possible under certain conditions, and with certain caveats, it’s easy to see how one of these alien races can become this for humans. Indeed, even humans can become a Guardian Race for an alien planet, which would have evolved using one of the methods described in the previous story. Or, it can be something radical. The humans on this version of Earth evolved, developed technology, and fell to the Ochivari’s sterility virus. But it didn’t happen all at once. A lucky few conspiracy theorists caught on to what was happening, and made preparations. They protected themselves against the virus in secret underground bunkers that were completely self-sufficient. They had plenty of resources down there, but they did not have a lot of space. So while the rest of the population was slowly dying off, the survivors deliberately kept their population low. Each couple was expected to have two children, and no more than that. The population would increase with each generation, but no single generation would exceed the maximum. They were able to get four generations using this method before the math got to be too annoying. They didn’t want anyone to have any children with anyone that they were related to. Everyone in the fifth generation was an only child, with only one couple deciding to not have kids at all, leaving the final number at eleven. These remaining eleven didn’t want what happened to their people to happen again to someone else, so they hatched a plan. Fortunately, they were in a position to do it.

The bunker wasn’t first filled with scientists and doctors. They had to learn about all that along the way, using an extensive library of knowledge that they had the wisdom to take down there with them. Over the century, the descendants kept progressing, and pushing the boundaries of science ever forward. Their predecessors were close to finding the trailhead to immortality, so all they had to do was finish the work. They figured it out while the last generation’s parents and grandparents were still alive, but they all chose to stay behind, and eventually die. This was when the eleven left the bunker, and ventured back out onto the surface. They didn’t stop there, though. They made great use of their now infinite lives, and continued to advance. They built a ship, and launched it into outer space, where they began to explore the galaxy, predominantly searching for other lifeforms. They didn’t find any other intelligent races, but they did come across a promising world. Using their science, they protected and coaxed a single cellular organism in the primordial waters along, making sure it evolved into multicellular life, and pressed on from there. They didn’t genetically engineer anything, but they helped one evolutionary branch survive everything that would have otherwise prevented it from ultimately evolving intelligence. They helped them pass all of their Great Filters, and become an alien race. The eleven immortals stayed with their children for over a billion years, all the while remaining hidden. They prevented their creations—which called themselves the Sheltren—from making the same mistakes that Earth did, and ensured that the Ochivari would not come for them as well. Once the Sheltren were sufficiently advanced themselves, the eleven revealed the truth, and celebrated their accomplishment. The Sheltren were grateful, and motivated. If they could be half as dedicated as the humans had been with them, the universe could become a wondrous place. The Sheltren did not remain in their universe, however. Inspired by their own Guardians, they found a way to travel the bulkverse, and become a full race of Guardians, so they too could protect other planets from the Ochivari, and other threats.

Microstory 1639: Smart Plants

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Aliens are rare. They exist for a few different reasons, the main one being that they were genetically engineered from humans, or evolved from a branch of genetically engineered humans. Or they were humans raised on something called a source variant, which basically means that something in the way they were developed—with every intention of keeping them human—altered them enough to make them a different species. Radiation is often a factor. There’s one other method of creating a non-human intelligent species, and it goes back to a multiversal maxim which states that God is human, and therefore God’s godlings are also human. This is vague, and doesn’t explain anything, so I’ll break it down. My people and I come from a god, who houses us in a special subdimension in his soul. But that god also has his own god, and he’s housed in her soul, and so is everyone else in my god’s universe. So too do they have their own godlings, running around, being human. Nothing can evolve that isn’t technically human, because they are all ultimately sourced from one theoretical universe that stands above all others. The people in this universe have no god, so they are not godlings; only gods. And from them, we all come into being. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other lifeforms; just not ones that are sufficiently evolved. These other lifeforms are often known as pets, and if one forms a strong enough bond with its human, it actually has an impact on the genetic evolution of the godlings that belong to that person. That’s what sometimes results in an alien species that is not very human. Something different has been introduced into the system. On at least one occasion, a God actually bonded with a plant, and ended up creating plant-based godlings in their subdimensional soul. So they’re aliens, and they’re not fully human, but they have to be a little human, because we’re the only species with complex souls, as opposed to the simplex souls that animals have, as well as apparently, this plant. The plant in the higher universe will not create godlings on its own.

This doesn’t mean that the hyperintelligent plant species will suddenly spring into existence either. Evolution still takes place, no matter what. It usually follows an inevitable path that will eventually lead to a version of humans, but even with this exception, it still has to follow evolutionary logic, or it won’t happen. Evolution takes place over the course of billions of years, and that remains true for Sapioplantaverse, so I’ll just go over the highlights. There was a species of plant that lived on a planet in the Milky Way galaxy. This plant struggled to perform photosynthesis, and get enough energy to survive. Trees towered above them, and blocked much of the sunlight, but it wasn’t just the lack of light itself. It takes a lot of energy to create the components necessary for photosynthesis in the first place. It’s a cycle, where the sunlight powers the plant, which allows it to build itself up, and gather more sunlight...to power the plant. This cycle was strenuous, and taxing, so this plant evolved to lower the cost of energy. It did this by eating nearby plants, and stealing their photosynthetic pigments. The individual plants who were better at leaning towards these prey plants were better at surviving, for they were able to steal more pigment. The leaners slowly got even better at this when they figured out how to uproot themselves, inch closer to their prey, and reroot themselves at this new location. Their descendants became better and better at this, until they were pretty much walking. Then eventually, they were walking. The rerooting process became so quick that they essentially had legs, and from there, the evolution was obvious. The mobile plants were able to move to areas of stronger sunlight, and better nutrients, making them larger, and stronger. The better the individual’s external sensors were, the better it was at detecting where it was going, and overcoming obstacles, so that genetic trait was passed down to its descendants. This led to them evolving eyes, noses, and appendages. They developed knees to move faster, tongues to gather nutrients more efficiently, and brains to navigate easier. After a whole lot of time, they attained human level intelligence, which made them just as skillful, and fully capable of conquering their world.

Microstory 1638: Global Reconstruction

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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Sic Transit...Lar Familiaris (Part II)

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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.

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