The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, October 18, 2225

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Mateo sat on the bench, pressing his forehead against the palm of his hand so hard, it nearly punched a hole in his leg with his elbow. Nerakali stood before him, patiently waiting to make sure that his rant was over. “I can’t help you, Mateo,” she finally said somberly.

“I know,” Mateo replied. “No one can.”

“I don’t mean that,” Nerakali said. “I can’t help you, because I’ve never been in a relationship before. My siblings and I were all created with two powers. I have the ability to travel through time. Zef had the ability to be an asshole. Arcadia is the one with the ability to fall in love with humans. She has an unhealthy, and let’s face it, twisted way to show her love, but it’s there.”

“Are you saying I should talk to her instead?”

“Oh, absolutely not, don’t do that. You’re the target of her obsession. If you don’t get Leona back, my sister will seize her opportunity, and come after you again.”

“Great, so it’s pointless.”

She reached down, and forced his chin up to make eye contact. “I can’t help you, but I know someone who can. You should talk to her first, but I’m certain that she’ll want to do some couples counseling.”

Mateo looked away, and searched through the version of his notebook that listed all the people he knew that he kept in his mind. “Mallory Hammer?”

Nerakali smiled. “That’s right.”

“Leona won’t go for that.”

“Leave that to me. You talk to Dr. Hammer today, and I’ll make sure Leona gets there tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.”

“All right, I’ll summon her.”

They were finally on their way to the stellar neighborhood. A lot of their transitions involved them crossing back into their own timelines, but that wasn’t so common anymore. It appeared that they were doing that again by going to Bungula, Alpha Centauri, which was where Leona was the first time she experienced 2225. At this point, both she and Mateo were off of their pattern, and living one day at a time. They weren’t together, though. While she was here, he was millions of light years away, on Dardius. This older and wiser version of Leona could remember pining after him, wanting desperately for them to reunite. That seemed so stupid now. She still loved him, sure, but their time apart probably did them good, and it would again. Either way, she was grateful right now, because if she had to meet her alternate self today, at least he would have no chance of also being there.

They connected the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to a Nexus, and jumped away to Bungula. When the transition beacon first appeared on their screens, it said that they had two hours to get there, but once they landed, the countdown started dropping rapidly. They ran out of their ship, and over to where the window was meant to be. The timer got all the way down to thirty seconds before it went back to normal speed. “What the hell was that?” Leona questioned. “Were we in a time bubble, or something?”

“I don’t know,” Jeremy said, “but there’s something different about this window.” He was looking around in AR mode.

“What is it?” Leona questioned, looking around herself. Bungula in the main sequence looked exactly as it did in The Parallel, which didn’t make any sense. While it was entirely possible that the people in this reality would deliberately recreate the design of their main sequence counterparts, the ones in the main sequence would not have done the same on their end, and this was of clear Parallel design. There was something wrong with the cuffs, or the transition window, or both.

“Uhh...Leona?” Olimpia said. “I see what’s different.”

“What?” Leona asked.

“It’s you,” she replied vaguely. “You’re the one flickering.”

“I’m flickering?” That didn’t sound good.

“Yeah, I see it too,” Angela confirmed. “What does that mean? Are you going to transition to the other side?”

“Oh, shit,” Leona realized. “I know what this is; it’s an ambu—” All of her friends disappeared, leaving her alone in what looked like a waiting room.

Dr. Mallory Hammer peeked her head through a door, and smiled. “Mrs. Matic? We’re ready for you now.”

Leona frowned. “I did not agree to this.”

“Still, you need it.”

“I wouldn’t think a reputable doctor would try to give someone counseling without their consent,” Leona argued.

Dr. Hammer sighed. “There are two doors in this room. You choose. Do you want things to get better, or do you wanna be a whiny little asshole? One of you has taken the first step, but this is a three-legged race, and he can’t go anywhere with you.”

“Oh, great metaphor,” Leona said sarcastically.

Dr. Hammer ducked back into the room, but left the door open.

Leona looked over to the exit, and then back to the first door. “Goddammit,” she muttered under her breath. She walked into the room to find Dr. Hammer just sitting down on her chair, holding her tablet. Mateo was on the couch, sitting as far from the door as possible. He somehow inched even farther away upon seeing her. He was recoiling. “Okay, you make it look like I’m an abusive partner.”

“Is that how you see yourself, Mrs. Matic?” Dr. Hammer posed.

“No, of course not,” she argued. “He’s being dramatic. I kicked him out of the house, because he was acting crazy, and I didn’t feel safe. Now he’s projecting that onto me, like I’m the bad guy.”

“No one said you were the bad guy,” Dr. Hammer assured her. “Why don’t you have a seat? Yes, right there, it’s fine. You don’t have to cuddle, but if you weren’t both trying to make this work, then instead of talking to me, you would be speaking with The Officiant about a divorce.”

“Is that even possible?” Leona asked.

Mateo twitched.

“I mean academically,” Leona clarified. “Sort of. No, I mean—” She was this close to hyperventilating.

“It’s okay,” Dr. Hammer said. “Take your time.”

Leona composed herself. “The Officiant made it sound like divorce wasn’t a thing. I don’t want to bring her into this, because I’m worried I misunderstood, and divorce actually is possible, and that she’ll force it upon us.”

“Okay,” Dr. Hammer said. “That’s good. Mr. Matic, do you agree? Do you not want to get divorced?”

“I don’t want a divorce,” he stated.

“So, we’re all on the same page. I don’t want you to divorce either. Now, we all know each other. My name is Dr. Mallory Hammer, but please just call me Mallory. I don’t say that just to sound friendly. I really do prefer my first name. Can we all use first names in here?”

“Yes,” both of them said.

Mallory straightened her skirt, and considered that path forward. “I would like to open the floor for each of you to...tell me where you believe this tension in your relationship is coming from. You will do this by taking turns, and will not interrupt each other. I spoke with Mateo yesterday, and I don’t want to poison the discussion with what I already know about what he believes, so Leona, you should go first.”

“It’s just been tough to be around him,” Leona began to explain. “He’s so unpredictable now. Ever since he and Angela had that run-in with the Ochivari, he’s been different. He had to literally lose his soul to save lives, and even when we got that fixed, he’s been weird. I just never know what’s going to happen. Truthfully, it scares me.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” Mateo argued.

“What did I say about interruptions?” Mallory questioned.

“I’m sorry.”

Leona wanted to respond to his claim anyway. “I know it wasn’t your fault. Maybe none of this is. Maybe that psychic woman who fixed you didn’t do it right, or maybe this is just an unavoidable side effect. It doesn’t really matter, I still feel unsafe.”

The two of them waited in case Leona wasn’t finished, but she was, so Mallory prompted Mateo to tell his truth. “I think she’s been just as unpredictable. She used to be so patient and understanding. And not just with me. She would meet someone knew, and always give them the benefit of the doubt, and wanted to help. I’m not saying she doesn’t help anymore, but she just looks so...tired of it. Do you want out of this pattern?”

Leona didn’t answer.

“I don’t want to do this opening statement thing,” he complained. “I want her to answer my question.”

“I don’t have an answer,” Leona said. “That’s not true, I do. Because I don’t. I don’t want off this pattern. For the first time, I feel like I am helping people. Maybe we did it a little in the beginning, but it wasn’t our purpose. We didn’t have a purpose. Now that we’re finally free of the powers that be, I feel like we’re putting some good into the universe.”

“That may be true,” Mallory jumped in. “Of course, I mean to say that it is true, you’re doing good things. But the question is, do you have to be on the Bearimy-Matic pattern to do it? Do you have to be on any pattern to do it? Plenty of people do great things with their lives, and they live one day at a time. They don’t travel through time, or go to other planets. Do you think it’s possible that you actually are perturbed by the new pattern? It used to be that you showed up every year, but now it’s sometimes three years, and sometimes it’s twenty. That must be hard”

She hadn’t been so mindful of this, but yeah. When Jupiter was in charge, it was somewhat antagonistic. He didn’t give them a choice. Now that Nerakali was the boss, it did seem a little weird that they were still bound by the same arbitrary limitation.

“That’s true,” Mateo said. He appeared to have been thinking the same thing. “Why do we skip so much time? That’s not necessary at all. Do we even need to skip any time? Couldn’t we just take off our cuffs?”

“No,” Leona replied. “Thanks to Tamerlane Pryce. When he resurrects people, he doesn’t—or maybe can’t—give people powers, but he can replicate patterns. Or maybe he can just replicate ours, because skipping forward in time isn’t the same thing as going into the past, and creating a new reality, or manipulating time in some other way.”

“Oh, that’s right, I forgot,” Mateo mused. “Still, we can suppress our pattern. Or we can just suppress Jeremy’s. Our cuffs give us those options, and Nerakali gives us access. She hasn’t limited us, as far as I know.”

“Is that what you want to do?” Leona offered. “Do you want to switch off the patterns? I suppose these cuffs are exactly what Missy, and all those people in Ansutah, were looking for. We’re using them to share, but that’s only one use.”

“Are we doing this? Are we going to try to change the game?”

“We’ll have to ask the others what they think.”

“First, what do you think we should...” Mateo looked around, but there was no sign of Mallory. “Dr. Hammer? Where did you go?”

“She disappeared,” Leona revealed. “I saw her out of the corner of my eye. It looked like she did it on purpose. She picked up her phone and cup of tea just before.”

“Why?” Mateo wondered.

“I think we’re back on track. Or at least we’re on two tracks that are about to connect with each other.”

“The question is, when we do reach the railroad switch, will we slip onto the same track seamlessly, or will we crash into each other?”

Leona stood up. “I suppose that’s for us to decide. One of us will have to get there first to avoid a collision.”

He nodded.

She reached a hand out to him. “Let me be the one to speed up. If you keep going as fast as you have been, we’ll miss each other.”

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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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