Sic Transit...Intima (Part VII)

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This was only the fourth time Treasure had traveled the bulk using her own powers directly, and only the second time that she could remember. She didn’t know where it had taken them, but she knew it was far. She had the highest reserves of bulk energy ever, having absorbed a great deal of it once the Transit was fully operational, and transconducting on its own. The way it was explained to her, she should have only been able to cross over into the nearest branes to where she was. Some branes were touching each other, and while she could probably connect to a chain, there were other universes that were just isolated, off in the bulk, not linked to any other. The three major machines were capable of reaching these places, because they could survive in the outer bulkverse. All signs pointed to the fact that she could not. She was just a human, not wearing a spacesuit, or anything. How could she survive something as dangerous as what scientists apparently decided to call an equilibrium, in order to distinguish it from its more commonly understood counterpart, the vacuum. However she did it, she did it. She survived, and so did her friends. They were floating through the bulk, watching time knives and swirling colors pass them by, protected by some kind of bubble, and hopelessly lost.

Treasure tried to direct them towards the nearest brane she could see, because the farther they got from where they were, the less likely they would be able to get back. She had no form of propulsion, though. She couldn’t control anything at this point. As best they could tell, they were following some kind of hyperdimensional current, and traveling in a fairly straight line. The only way they were going to be able to stop at this point was to manage to run into a brane by chance. It was difficult to keep track of time in the bubble. Their watches weren’t working, and obviously there weren’t any celestial movements. They just floated there, enjoying the show, but hoping it stopped soon. They could talk, but the sound was this weird echoey muffle. Their voices were louder, but hardly intelligible, and quite frankly, annoying. Plus, they didn’t know where they were getting all this air they were breathing, so it was best to keep silent, and conserve as much as possible. There they waited for at least a day, maybe more, until they came upon a time knife, and flew into its sharp edge.

The odds that they would land on a planet with good surface gravity, and a breathable atmosphere were negligible in this situation. There was just so much more nothingness than there was nitrogen and oxygen in the right ratio, but it happened anyway. Perhaps Treasure’s power would always take her to a place where she could breathe. It was all about survival instinct, and she couldn’t survive in space. Or maybe she could. Who knows now? The rules went out the window yesterday.

“Okay, so I couldn’t really say this before, but...I’m sorry.” It wasn’t very hospitable where they landed. It was a very dry desert, and the air felt a little toxic; not enough to kill them right away, but enough to decrease their lifespans in the long-run. They started walking forward, aimlessly.

Quiet Quino was as cool as ever, and might have even been relieved to be free of his superior officers. Rosalinda didn’t seem too terribly perturbed either. “Fascinating. The chance to study, and learn from, a society that rose up in a completely different universe.”

“We don’t know that yet,” Treasure pointed out. “This could be an uninhabited universe, or maybe just an uninhabited world in a vast universe. When you add it all up, life is unfathomably rare. Civilization is even rarer.”

“That looks pretty civilized to me,” Quino mused, pointing to the distance. They were standing near what kind of looked like an ice highway. It was definitely not ice, but it was smooth, metallic, and reflective like water. Coming down it was a hovercraft of some kind. It was just minding its own business as it passed by, but then struggled to stop, and backed up. The window rolled down, revealing two hard top androids, regarding them cautiously but curiously. “Humans,” the one closest to them presumed.

“Yes,” Treasure replied. She spoke with her tiara, though, and that seemed to confuse them more.

“How did you survive the transition?” He looked behind him, just in case there was some kind of human reservation around here. “Better yet, how do you survive the pollution?”

“We’re not from around here,” Treasure answered.

“Get in,” he offered. “It’s not safe out here for organics.”

They hesitated.

“We ain’t gonna hurt ya,” he claimed. “We’re just going to contact The Transit Army, so they can come pick you up.”

“You can’t do that,” Treasure contended. “It’s a, uhh...”

“Paradox?” the passenger suggested.

“Yes,” Treasure confirmed.

The driver smiled. “So that’s how you’ve survived, not here at all. Either way, we have to get you to a human sanctuary. They’re the only ones with clean oxygen.”

Having lost all her bulk energy reserves, and not knowing how to navigate the bulkverse anyway, Treasure agreed to get in the car, as did Quino and Rosalinda.

“Go slow,” the passenger warned her friend. “Vehicles don’t come with seatbelts anymore.”

He nodded, and went pretty fast.

“So,” Rosalinda asked while they were on their way. “Humans appear to be rare on your world. Tell me about that. What happened?”

“First,” Treasure interjected, “what are your names?”

“I’m Apple, this is Kickstand,” the passenger said. “In case you’re wondering, that’s my real name, but he won’t tell me his.”

“Original name’s dead, baby,” Kickstand said. “And to answer your question, it died when my organic self did. The Ochivari came and sterilized the whole population. They didn’t like that we were destroying our planet, so they decided to wipe us all out...slowly. Well, our fearless leaders didn’t like that, but it couldn’t be reversed, so they decided to just say, screw you guys, we’re gonna become robots. So that’s what we are, robots.”

“Robot means slave,” Apple reminded him. “We’re not slaves.”

“Aren’t we, though?” Kickstand put forth. “I didn’t ask for this. I wanted to have kids. My first wife embraced this new dynamic, but ya see, I actually care about the environment, and I always did. I only agreed to it, because the point of life is to leave a legacy. If I can’t have children, I can’t leave a legacy, so my only hope was to live forever.”

“I’m sorry this has happened to you,” Rosalinda said sincerely. “Is there hope now? Are you fixing the environment? I don’t mean you, personally...”

“Nah, we’re not doin’ that. This was the solution, and the easy way out. This is just how we’ll live; on a dying planet. Sure, the rich people can go off to colonize new worlds, and just fuck all, but the rest of us are stuck here in the shit. That’s why we’re headed South, lookin’ for work. Maybe we can save enough money to secure passage off this tombstone.”

“Easy, Kickstand,” Apple said, trying to calm him down. “I doubt these fine organics need a lecture from you. Their worlds are safe from the Ochivari, because their people made the right choices.”

“Actually, my galaxy is doomed,” Quino said.

“Wait, what?” Treasure questioned.

“Azura told me about it,” he explained. “The Ochivari invade a few years after we left. We’re not going back home, because it would be pointless. The rest of the crew intends to stay on board in a permanent fashion.”

“I...I didn’t realize.” Treasure was heartbroken. She looked over to Rosalinda, whose world could still have been destroyed as well. They still didn’t know how getting caught at Mizakh’s house impacted the timeline. “I ruin everything. I should have just stayed home. I shouldn’t have screamed.”

Kickstand slammed on the brakes, and came to a complete stop. “Wait, are you Treasure Hawthorne?”

She didn’t answer.

“You are. Oh my God, you’re a bona fide hero.”

“You can’t talk about this,” Quino said to him. “She’s not yet done anything that you already know about her.”

“I can’t believe The Treasure of Star Mountain is in my car. That must make you Quino Hawthorne, and...let’s see, if you’re not Azura...Rosalinda Schreier?”

“I’m not a Hawthorne,” Quino said.

Kickstand chuckled. “Oh, ho, ho, not yet, I guess.”

Quino turned red, and closed his eyes in embarrassment. Now things were really awkward. What little info Kickstand disclosed wasn’t proof, because time travel, but there was really good evidence now that he and Treasure were destined to end up together. It wasn’t the craziest idea. She had feelings for him that she never denied to her conscious self, and he obviously felt something too. When they were standing in a group, he always either positioned himself right next to her, or across from her, so she would be in his line-of-sight. If she had to go do something in another train car, he would come up with a—sometimes terrible—reason to need to go that direction as well. These were all things they didn’t ignore about each other, but they didn’t talk about them either. She was sixteen by the revolution of Earth, but equating that with Quino’s own interpretation of timekeeping was difficult. It wasn’t impossible, but trying to figure it out would require openly admitting why they wanted to know such a thing. Regardless, he was at least a little older than her, and some people weren’t jazzed about that sort of thing.

They drove into the garage, and entered the building. They weren’t the only humans there, but there weren’t many others. According to Kickstand’s continued rant—which Treasure only half-listened to, because she was stuck in her own head—almost the entire population transferred their minds to android bodies. Human survivors were living out the last of their days on an island somewhere, the farthest they could be from pollution, but they could all be dead by now too.

“Universe of origin,” the intake nurse prompted. It would seem bulk travel was a tiny bit more ubiquitous than Miss Collins led her students to believe.

“Universum Originalis,” Quino answered.

“Mine has no name that I know of,” Rosalinda said.

“Wait for me at that table over there, so we can run a cosmic frequency test.” The nurse looked to Treasure while Rosalinda was walking over. “And you?”

“Does origin mean birth, or where I grew up?”

“Where were you when you had your first poo? I don’t care about where you immigrated to.”

“I didn’t have my first—that wasn’t until I traveled to Voldisilaverse, but I was born in Salmonverse.”

Kickstand managed to walk over having been eavesdropping. “She’s the Treasure of Star Mountain.”

The nurse was as surprised by this as Kickstand was when he first found out. “Oh. Then why am I filling out refugee forms? You can just leave whenever you want.”

“We can’t leave until I absorb more bulk energy,” Treasure explained.

“How long will that take?” she questioned.

“You know, I don’t know,” she said. It would be a good idea to figure out how to gauge and predict all that. “I just have to wait until it feels like I have enough to transport three people.”

“It would be nice if we could wait until you can take a few more than that,” the nurse said. “The Transit hasn’t been responding to our calls. I think they’ve abandoned us.”

“The Transit is not responsible for human refugees,” Quino argued. “How did the humans get here anyway? Are they your people?”

“Two major bridge collapses happened on our planet,” the nurse explained.

Miss Collins taught the class about that. When Azura and her people were sent off to neutralize their enemies, they did it by hacking into a bridge that was only designed to connect Ansutah to Treasure’s mother’s brane, Salmonverse. This hack had terrible consequences for the whole local bulk group. Bridges started opening and closing at random, expelling objects and people from their homes, to foreign worlds. Some universes seemed to have more egresses, while others had more ingresses, like magnets. Flipverse, Hypnopediaverse, and apparently this universe were three examples known to receive a lot of people and things that didn’t belong there.

The nurse went on, “the Transit came for the first, and agreed to deliver the people back to their homes. Then another bridge dropped more people off, and they’ve not returned.”

“Where was the bridge?” Treasure asked.

“Which one?” the nurse asked.

“Closest one,” Treasure figured, but thought better of it. “No, not the closest one. Most recent one.”

The nurse found a map on her tablet, and projected a hologram. “The closest one is here.”

“That’s where we found you,” Kickstand pointed out.

“We came through a bridge without even knowing it,” Quino realized. “It wasn’t so random.”

“That’s why I need the most recent one,” Treasure said. “There aren’t any bridges in Voldisilaverse, so my teacher hasn’t been able to study them, but she has this theory that they’re all still there, even though they’ve collapsed. If you get me to the other one, it could have a higher concentration of bulk energy, which could plus up my reserves much faster. I don’t know how many human refugees you have, though, and I don’t know if I can transport that many people. I’ve only ever taken two others at the same time. It could be like diving in the ocean naked when what you really need is a boat. That’s why the Transit is as large as it is, and airtight.”

“I understand now,” the nurse declared. “The Transit isn’t responding to us, because they know the refugees have already been saved. You save them, using this concentration of bulk energy, and a vessel that our people are going to build for you. It won’t be as large as the Transit, but it will be large enough for everyone to fit. I know someone who will be quite excited to do this for you.”

Treasure was hesitant, and not because she didn’t want to put anyone out, or make them do a bunch of work for her, but because she wasn’t sure she even wanted it. Another machine? The Crossover, The Transit, and The Prototype. These were the three bulk traveling machines. This other thing has never been on that list, and when it comes to time travel, if something ever exists, then it has always existed. Then again, Azura once noted that Treasure herself wasn’t on the list either, and she had already proven herself capable of harnessing her power, even if she couldn’t quite control it. It was also entirely possible that, knowing what would become of Treasure, people intentionally kept her own story from her, in order to avoid any paradoxes. The nurse did say she knew someone who would want to do this, and if it could help a lot of people, then it wasn’t really Treasure’s right to put a stop to it. “Okay. If someone builds that ship, I will provide power to it.”

“Great. Until then, let’s get you set up in the penthouse of the refugee building. Someone like you deserves to have the best.”

“Hell yeah, you do,” Kickstand agreed.

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Microstory 1660: Understanding the Trinary

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For the most part, the residents of the Hypnopediaverse trinary system don’t think too hard about how that system works. They travel to another world in their dreams, and then deeper into yet another world, where time moves faster. There, they can commune with each other, and learn new skills, which can be brought into the real world later. Exactly how it works, and why it works, and why it doesn’t work unless they slip into that third world, is not relevant to most of them. They accept it and move on. Some are not so satisfied with this nonexplanation. They want to understand the physics of it, and find new ways of utilizing the power, if that is even possible. A few like-minded individuals came together, and formed an organization dedicated to this research. They did not have malevolent intentions, but they recognized the possibility that the dreamworlds could be weaponized in some way, or otherwise abused. Knowing about these risks only fueled their motivations. People criticized them for potentially letting those possibilities fall into the wrong hands, and perhaps it was best to just leave it alone, but really, there is no telling. It could just as easily happen on its own, and the world would end up defenseless. I won’t bore you with the details of what they learned during their research. Their primary objectives were to figure out if they could travel to the other worlds physically, and not just in their dreams, and whether they could transport resources between them. They never did figure that out, because bulk travel is so rare, but they learned a lot about the fundamentals of this branch of physics. As far as the general public goes, it didn’t really do them any good. They didn’t need any more resources, and most weren’t interested in understanding it, but it was probably best that someone explored these options.

Microstory 1659: Self-Sabotage

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I told you about how the people in Area Doubleuniverse primarily use their alternate realities to protect witnesses. Seemingly unrelated to the fact that this universe possess thousands of concurrent realities, there’s a lot of crime on this version of Earth. It’s just rampant and no one really knows why. I mean, they don’t have access to other universes, so they don’t know it’s abnormal, but from my perspective, as I watch history unfold, I can’t explain how it happened. I can say that the prevention of crime is neither a priority, nor technically possible. It’s not illegal to plan a crime, and a lot of things you or I might consider crimes are not actually illegal until certain things take place as a result. For instance, it’s perfectly fine to grow or manufacture recreational drugs. It only becomes a problem once someone tries to sell it, or use it. If the authorities discovered the location of a drug plant, they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, and in fact, they wouldn’t be allowed to surveil the people working there, waiting for them to commit a crime later. Surveillance just isn’t a thing there. Furthermore, physical evidence alone is not usually enough to convict someone of a crime. They rely much more heavily on witness testimony, so the human element is far more important, and that makes it much more dangerous to be a witness. That’s why the Alternate Reality Witness Protection Program exists. Instead of trying to keep witnesses away from the criminals who would have them killed to prevent them from testifying, they just relocate that witness to a reality where the criminal doesn’t exist at all. This is an extremely delicate dance, and there is pretty much no room for error. For the most part, the people in charge of the program know what they’re doing, and they don’t make mistakes. But of course, it wouldn’t be a story if it never happened. Knowing which parallel reality to relocate a witness takes a lot of data, so they can make sure the criminal they’re hiding from doesn’t have an alternate who may want to harm them as well. It would probably be okay most of the time, because even if the criminal did exist, they probably didn’t commit the same crime, or weren’t going up against the same witness. This is what happened once, when a woman named Azalea found herself face to face with the man she was trying to avoid at all costs. Fortunately for her, the alternate version of this man was not the same one she knew in her reality. He wasn’t that bad of a guy, and even wanted to help. This particular case came with all sorts of errors, which resulted in the original criminal figuring out where Azalea was. After breaking out of jail, he snuck into Area W, and traveled through a portal, to search for the one woman who could send him to prison forever. His alternate self, meanwhile, didn’t want this to happen, so he vowed to protect her. But would he be able to do what needed to be done to keep his promise?

Microstory 1658: Exceptions to the Rules

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The excelschians in Excelschiaverse are all pretty much the same. They’re like AI assistants, except that they can only be seen by the person to which they are assigned. The form spontaneously, to about half the population of Earth, and there appears to be no common link amongst the people who are chosen. No evidence has suggested that some kind of higher being is responsible for this in any way. Some see it as proof of a God, but it’s all just circumstantial. Those who study them have not come to any definitive conclusions. All they have found is that if someone were to hypothetically exchange their excelschian with someone else’s, nothing would change. It would still be able to transform itself into whatever shape the human wanted, it would still look human, and it would still not be able to interact with the real world. There are a couple exceptions to the rules. In one case, an excelschian appeared to develop some kind of personality, and personal agency. It started considering itself to be an independent being, and believed that it had the same rights as any corporeal individual would have. Unfortunately for it, and its physical human, there was no way to prove this either way. Only the human could see his excelschian, and while he made every attempt to fight for her rights, it was impossible. The human could have been lying, and no one would know. And even if the right authorities agreed to grant the excelschian her natural rights, what would that mean? How would that play out? She still wouldn’t be able to communicate with other people, and she couldn’t get a job, or contribute to society. All she could do was ask her human to let her make her own choices, which he did happily, and that’s as good as it ever got for the both of them. They even later fell in love.

There was another exceptional case, where the excelschian did not have trouble with people seeing him. Quite the opposite. Overtime, people around the human to which he was assigned started being able to see him, but only those who did not have their own excelschians. He didn’t develop his own personality, but he did end up with the compulsion to help everyone who was able to see him. He wasn’t exposed to just anyone who happened to pass by, but it was still a lot of people. So he began to serve as a sort of community excelschian, but this started causing problems. Who deserved him the most? Who decided what questions he answered, and when. It became so confusing that the original human had to run off to the other side of the country, and never come out of her apartment. The last major exception involves a human who found herself capable of seeing any and every excelschian. The world became a crowded place as she watched others ask their questions, and heard the answers. They didn’t answer her questions, which she tried as an experiment, but that was fine. The real problem was that it was difficult for her to move around in the world, because though she still couldn’t touch the excelschians, she never lost her instinct to give them space, and walk around, as she would do for anybody. She too had to run away from civilization, though not quite to the same degree. She just had to make sure she wasn’t around too many people who had excelschians. She actually tried to join a community of non-excelschianed humans on the edge of town, but those were pretty exclusive, and always at least a little racist, so they rejected her applications. These exceptions were not heralds of the future, or changes to the status quo. They were just different, and the chances of them happening were never zero.

Microstory 1657: Portrait of a Universe

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Most versions of Earth advance technologically at about the same rate. This is due to the fact that the majority of them are only c-branes, but I won’t get into the specifics of how that works. The reality is that this can be altered moderately by changing a few key conditions, or more dramatically by something insane, like time travel. In Muxleyverse, an alien descended from a group of Ansutahan who were expelled when The Crossover exploded, came to Earth to decide whether it was worthy of being brought into the galactic community. He brought with him highly advanced technology, which ended up being sent backwards in time. This changed everything about human history. This one little bit of tech transformed Earth from the youngest and weakest civilization to the strongest, and most powerful. This was where the mess began, and why most bulk travelers tend to avoid Muxleyverse, even the Ochivari. Now the dominant race in the Milky Way galaxy, the humans went around exerting their will upon all other worlds. They didn’t enslave anyone, and they didn’t kill unless provoked by a resistance, but they weren’t exactly pleasant either. They knew where they came from, and how it happened. They knew that the aliens would do the same to them, if given a chance. They felt that their only hope was to keep control of the situation at all costs. Unfortunately, one you introduce time travel into the mix, control becomes a laughable concept. Eventually, a rebel group of aliens managed to steal time travel technology. They used it to go back to their early days, and become the dominant race over all others. They were especially ruthless against the Earthans, for obvious reasons. But it did not stop there. An alliance of humans, and a different planet of subjugated aliens, stole time travel technology, and went back so they could become the dominant species. Can you guess where I’m going with this?

As you know, I have the ability to witness events in other universes, but that gift gets complicated when alternate realities are in the mix. You see, since each universe operates on a completely separate timeline, I’m actually watching these other events having happened, not as they’re happening. The past, present, and future don’t just happen all at once; they don’t even exist from my perspective. It’s all just one giant picture to me, which allows me to piece together stories. Alternate realities of all kinds make piecing those stories together more complicated. Concurrent realites are all but impossible for me to see through, because they add extra layers that block each other from sight, but sequential timelines aren’t easy either. The metaphorical picture of the universe is larger than a normal one when that happens, but my perspective hasn’t changed, so every detail is smaller. The point is that I don’t know how many loops these people went through. I only know that it was bad. They just kept going, always trying to gain an advantage over each other, until things got to be so messy that it all fell apart. For the most part, unlike what you might hear in time travel movies, the universe can’t be destroyed, even by a paradox. The paradox simply won’t take place, and everything will be fine. You can overstrain the fabric of spacetime, however, especially for a brane that was never meant to have temporal manipulation in the first place. Everything that those people did, it still happened. The end of the universe didn’t negate the past, also like what you might see in movies. But it did end prematurely, and it’s a shame.

Microstory 1656: Purebloods

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In the universe where Neanderthal DNA managed to survive as a higher percentage in the modern population, most people were genetically diverse. But there were a few outliers; bloodlines which they would often call pure. While knowing how much Neanderthal DNA an individual contained wasn’t something people generally knew until DNA testing became available, there were those who could detect it naturally. It appeared to be a survival trait shared by few. It would seem evolutionarily important to be able to know such information about a potential mate. Members of these so-called pure bloodlines became impure by the 21st century, because it just stopped being so important. Younger generations were making their own choices, and didn’t really care about tradition, or perceived purity. It was also getting harder to accomplish without committing incest, which was not out of the question for some people, apparently. The rest wanted to fall in love with whoever, and not worry about what people thought. One particular bloodline kept their traditions going much longer than the others, until the youngest of the latest generation met someone with the highest known percentage of Neanderthal DNA. She was 24.4% Neanderthal, and honestly, considered to be not so attractive because of it. That didn’t matter to this man, nor should it have. They had a lot in common, and they wanted to be together, but his family was not having it. At first, his parents threatened to cut him off from the family fortune, hoping that would be enough to straighten him out. He was not so easily swayed. He already had a decent education, presently had a good job, and could probably get a better one with time. He didn’t need their money. Since that didn’t work, they resorted to intimidation, and even stalking, but still he would not budge. He was in love, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. That was when they grew violent.

They attacked the couple in their home, but they didn’t kill his fiancée. No, they murdered the pureblood son, and didn’t even bother covering it up. Though he was one of them, the purebloods had no qualms about murdering him, because they couldn’t risk contaminating the family tree with what they deemed to be inferior DNA. They had previously resorted to inbreeding to prevent this from happening when no viable candidates were available as mates, but that wouldn’t help in this case. He wasn’t the last in his generation, or even the parents’ only son. He was just the best choice for passing the baton. His DNA was strong, and so were his reproductive capabilities. If they couldn’t have him, no one could. Yeah, they were that sick. The others could continue on without him, though, and everything would be fine. Of course, it wasn’t fine. The public was outraged by the development, and wanted something to be done about it. Law enforcement was able to arrest the suspects, and most of them were convicted of something. Some actually carried out the crime, while others conspired to make it happen, but in the end, they were all mostly gone. That wasn’t enough for everyone. A group decided to fight fire with fire. They didn’t murder anyone, but they did chemically sterilize the survivors. The pure bloodline would end here, no matter what they did, or who they tried to introduce into the family. The sterilizers were convicted of their crimes as well, but it was too late. The very idea of a pure human would forever be eradicated from the public consciousness. A new age of enlightenment sprang from this, fostering innovative ideas, and promoting social unity. Now they were all the same, because they were all different, and there was no need to fight about it anymore. The purebloods, meanwhile, died out, and became nothing more than a terrible footnote in the history of the world.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, November 12, 2250

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After the deed was done, Mateo sent a message through the cuffs that he needed to be alone for the rest of the day. He asked the Nexus technician on Varkas Reflex to send him to a random planet in the galaxy. There actually was a setting for that, which let the computer decide where he would go. The world it chose was almost entirely desert. A single artificially constructed oasis supported life for the few people who decided to check the place out. He was the only one there at the time, except for the world’s caretaker, which suggested the Nexus computer knew exactly what he was looking for. It wasn’t that luxurious, so Mateo didn’t feel bad about not inviting his team to be there with him. Apparently, this world was floating around the Milky Way at a pretty great distance from the black hole in the center. This was what made the place so barren, but Mateo didn’t bother listening to the whole explanation, which involved heavy elements, and gravitational disturbances. He just sat in his chair, and tried to think about anything besides the fact that he just murdered another person; and a friend, no less.

Before the day could end, he jumped back to Earth, and rendezvoused with his team on the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He just wanted to put the past behind him, and focus on the fact that Pharrell was right when he claimed that No-one Ever Really Dies, and Nerakali was just having different adventures in the simulation. He still wished that he could erase his people’s memories of what he had done, but unfortunately, what he had done had quite specifically removed brain blending from their inventory of time powers. Hopefully they would never run into another situation where such a thing was called for. The question remained, what were they going to do with their lives from here on out? Were they going to stay on this pattern, and do nothing with that? Would they change to a new pattern? Would they drop it entirely, and start fresh in 2250? Would they return to their respective time periods, or maybe choose some other time period together?

“Well, should we vote on it, or just discuss what everyone wants, and see where we end up?” Leona put forth.

“Yeah, let’s just talk about it,” Angela suggested.

Silence.

“Who wants to go first?” Olimpia broke the ice.

“I’m cool with whatever everyone else wants to do,” Jeremy volunteered.

“Yeah, me too,” and “agreed” were the responses bandied about. It would seem they quite enjoyed helping people transition, but if that was no longer necessary, there wasn’t much reason to do anything else.

“I think we should go back to the past, and continue doing what we do,” Leona began, “whether it’s by transitioning people, or not. We could help the Salmon Runners put right what once went wrong, or join another transition team under Past!Nerakali’s purview. Hell, we could join the salmon battalion, I don’t know.” It actually kind of sounded like she didn’t want to do anything.

Mateo decided to allow her the possibility of doing nothing without making her vocalize it. “Or we could just stay here in The Parallel. I’m sure there’s a planet suited for our whims, where we could live forever, and not worry about responsibility anymore.” It was a selfish offer, but not unwarranted. All of them did deserve it, for what they had been through. Had they not given enough to the worlds already?

The others stood there awkwardly, and did not want to argue.

Mateo still had to be the bad guy. “Okay, let’s do that. We could always go back to a life of service later. Let’s just suppress all patterns, find a nice little planet to call home, and relax for a little bit. Or we could travel. There’s no rush. There’s no rush to do anything.”

“I’m not opposed to this plan,” Jeremy finally agreed. “Like the man said, we can always change our minds later. We have the cuffs, plenty of people here have powers.”

“I can do that,” Angela said.

“Yeah, sure,” Olimpia confirmed.

Leona just nodded. She wanted this more than any of them probably, but was too used to helping people to admit it. That was fine.

“Unfortunately, that’s not how this works,” came a voice from above. A man was climbing down the steps from the upper level.

It took Mateo a hot second to recognize him. They had met him a few times before, but were never close, and there were so many faces to remember these days. “Anatol.” The Warrior. He used to go around the timeline, killing people. Though, time travel being what it was, used to wasn’t a real concept. Which version was this one here?

“Yes, it’s me.”

“I know why you’re here,” Leona said.

“Yes,” Anatol went on. “I have been waiting to come to you for a long time now. Of course, I didn’t have to wait, but I had some other things I wanted to make sure got taken care of, and I didn’t want to cross paths with Nerakali.”

“Who is this?” Jeremy questioned. “Who are you?”

“This is the man that killed Nerakali Preston,” Mateo explained. “I pushed her over the edge of her last life, but he actually dealt the final blow. Now he has her powers. More to the point, he has Jupiter’s powers.”

“That’s right,” Anatol concurred. “I’m here to replace her, after she replaced him.”

“What does that mean?” Leona asked. “What kind of...?” She hesitated to continue.

“What kind of boss am I?” he presumed. “I’m pretty cool, but I do have a different...mission.”

“You’re going to have us kill people, aren’t you?” Mateo assumed.

“I’m going to have you correct the timeline in a way that you’re not used to doing,” Anatol pretended to clarify. “You can call it killing, if you want. I would probably also call it that.”

“I’m not going to be killing anybody,” Olimpia declared.

“The rule is, kill or be killed.” Anatol took a blade out of its sheath. It wasn’t the Sword of Assimilation, but it was just as deadly. “I’m a pretty cool boss...to a point. That...I—that wasn’t meant to be a play on words. But seriously, this is what I’ve decided, so it’s what’s happening. And the sword really is a threat. I have no strong feelings about you people. I’m not sure I know the names of you three there.”

“Well, you probably should know their names if you’re going to boss them around, and threaten their lives,” Leona figured.

“Don’t worry about that,” Mateo said. “He’s not staying.”

“Oh no?” Anatol was confused.

“I challenge you to a duel.”

“Are you serious?” Anatol couldn’t believe it. “Like a...air hockey duel, or something?”

“No. Swords,” Mateo corrected. “I challenge you to a sword duel.”

“That’s stupid, Mateo; I’ll destroy you.”

“Prove it,” Mateo said simply. “You kill me, you get to take the primary cuff, and order my team around. I kill you, and you leave us alone forever.”

Anatol wasn’t going to argue about it anymore. There was no doubt that he could beat Mateo, and there was no getting around this fact. If they were normal people, maybe Mateo could sneak a gun into the duel, and just kill him, and it wouldn’t matter anymore, because the threat would be eliminated. But Anatol couldn’t die, and Mateo didn’t think he could die permanently anymore either, so there seemed to be only one outcome to this story. There was no cheating, and no loophole. Mateo had to magically become the better swordsman, fair and square. “Fine. Deal.”

“Could we have a minute?” Leona requested.

“You can have three hundred and sixty minutes. Meet on Uluru at that time. We’ll transition to the main sequence there. Eat a good lunch. It will be your last.” Anatol disappeared.

“I thought he wasn’t so violent anymore,” Leona said once he was gone. “Didn’t you change him? If he has Nerakali’s powers, he has to be the version of him that changed.”

“He never really changed,” Mateo pointed out. “I think he just started choosing his victims differently.”

“What are you going to do?” Leona asked, shaking her head. “He’s right, you can’t defeat him.”

Mateo smiled. “I don’t have to. There’s not going to be any duel. I just needed to distract him.”

“He’s a time traveler,” Leona argued. “He can’t be distracted. Or rather, it doesn’t matter how long he’s distracted. He can always come back to the past.”

Mateo smirked, and looked around. “I don’t see him, returned from the future to ask me why I never showed up.”

“How are you going to stop him?” Jeremy asked. “Or how did you? Or how have you will?”

“Yeah,” Mateo said. He rested his chin on his palm, and smiled pensively at the corner of the ship. “How did I do that?”

The others looked between him, and the wall he was staring at, but there was nothing there. He never explained what he was talking about, and they quickly dropped the subject. They decided to program their cuffs to suppress all patterns, and keep them in the present moment at all times, at least for now. They then went to what passed for a library in this reality, and searched the directory for a new home. They tried all kinds of search parameters, switching them out when they thought of something better. They only kept the basic criteria, like a regular spherical planet orbiting a yellow dwarf with comparable Earthan surface gravity, and of course, a breathable atmosphere.

“Let’s get away,” Olimpia finally suggested. “Let’s find a remote world, in a distant galaxy, far from the reach of this Warrior guy. Let those be our only requirements.”

The team considered it. “That makes sense,” Leona agreed. “Just because he doesn’t try to get back to us in the past, doesn’t mean he won’t try to show up later.”

Angela typed in what they were looking for. “The farthest inhabited galaxy, which means it has at least one Nexus, is Krovow. Also known as the Sculptor Galaxy, or Silver Coin, or NGC-253, in the main sequence, this spiral galaxy is eleven-point-five-six light years from the Milky Way. The best planet I’m seeing here is called Flindekeldan.”

They looked over her shoulder at the specifications. It seemed a pretty good spot to escape to, if not live there semi-permanently. “We’ll send a message to Ramses,” Mateo said, “and ask him to prevent Anatol from being allowed to use the Nexa. There’s no way he’s traveling eleven light years on his own, unless he kills The Trotter at some point.”

They didn’t waste much time. They jumped the AOC back to the Nexus, gave the technician their coordinates, and asked that they be erased from the computer’s memory after they were gone. The technician agreed, though whether that was good enough was anyone’s guess. The only way to truly know information has been erased is by physically destroying the storage hardware, preferably by dismantling it at the atomic level.

They arrived on the other side just fine, but still, they were nervous. They crept out of the ship carefully, almost expecting Anatol Klugman to be waiting for them, having gone back in time, and arrived in a relativistic ship. It would have taken him over sixteen-thousand years at maximum sublight, but it wasn’t impossible. He wasn’t there, though, and everything seemed all right. The world was a beautiful place, at least it was where they landed, right next to a creek. They weren’t next to the Nexus building. It wasn’t necessary, because the egress window could drop them off wherever; it was just impossible to jump this far without starting at a Nexus. Still, it was kind of strange. The technician would have had to deliberately input slightly altered coordinates, rather than going with the default.

A woman stood before them, waiting patiently for them to climb down. “Greetings. Welcome to Flindekeldan. I am Crucia Heavy, Zora Loncar.”

“That is a Croatian name,” Mateo whispered to Leona.

“Hello, Crucia Heavy, my name is Leona Matic. This is my husband, Mateo Matic, and friends, Jeremy Bearimy, Angela Walton, and Olimpia Sangster. We hope we’re not intruding. We were looking for a new place to live, and this sounded like a great spot.”

Zora smiled. “We know why you are here. Everyone comes here to get away. It’s about as far as you can get without having to settle a new world on your own. That’s why we have no Nexus.”

“There’s no Nexus?” Olimpia questioned. “We can’t go back.”

Zora sighed, satisfied. “No need to. This is your home now. Come. I will show you around.”

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Sic Transit...Res Historia (Part VI)

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They pierced the membrane, and landed in the new universe. It already looked a lot different than the first one, but that could have just been more about where they happened to come through. There was no city before them, but trees and other wildlife. They were in the middle of a great field, and there was no sign of intelligent life. “The reason I didn’t pick this universe first,” Azura began, “was because of payment. The people of Whrweh will be a lot more welcoming, but they will expect something in return for their help. It’s interesting how their society developed. They never came up with a form of currency that was accepted by all. They understand the concept, but just chose not to do it. They relied heavily on a robust bartering system all the way into their pre-singularity era. Now that they live in post-scarcity, they have everything they need, but in order to deal with alien cultures—which do exist here, for reasons I won’t get into—they continue to exchange favors. If we want power systems, we’ll have to genetically engineer a dog with two heads, or teach some random group of people how to sing.

“These favors don’t mean anything to them, they just want us to have to work for it, because they don’t think it’s fair to give away something for free. The problem is that they accept no substitutes. The council will decide what they expect of us, and that could take up to a month. We can either take it or leave it, but we can’t offer them something else. Seriously don’t even try, that is incredibly rude in their eyes, as they consider it a form of negotiating. We just have to hope it’s something that we can give. I don’t know how to genetically engineer dogs, or teach people to sing, so cross your fingers.”

“How did they advance to a post-scarcity society without ever having money?” Treasure asked, using her tiara. This was just how she was gonna talk now. Her true voice would be reserved exclusively for travel.

“Very slowly,” Azura explained, “but steadily. They remained in small and somewhat isolated pockets. Each pocket developed on its own, for if they attempted to reach out to others too much, it would make things too complicated, and they probably would have needed to devise a banking system. One thing this did was pretty much prevent all war. I mean, there has been almost no violence in their history, because people lived where they could find the resources, and operated independently. They still shared information with each other, but they didn’t collaborate directly. Their impact on their environment has been incredibly low, impressing even the Ochivari, and insulating them from attacks. They don’t live on the surface anymore. They live on the orbital ring.”

Just then, a shuttle dropped down from the sky, and landed on the grass in front of them. Azura led the crew out. “Greetings, friends,” she said. “We come on a peaceful mission, seeking power systems to repair our vessel.”

The man stepped closer to them, and sized up The Transit. “Peaceful,” he echoed. “We know what you are, this is not a peaceful mission.” It was starting to look like what happened in the last universe would happen here, or something similar.

“We discovered this ship, and are only trying to use it to return home to Universum Originalis. While this is destined for war, we are not its warriors.” Azura wasn’t technically lying, as she wasn’t part of the war yet, but she had every intention of joining, so it wasn’t the whole truth either.

“We do not interfere with the Darning Wars,” the man said, “but do not mistake that for endorsement. We do not interfere...on either side.”

“Hmm,” Azura said, only loud enough for the crew to hear. “Our database is incomplete. Obviously they’re peaceful, but I believed they would help us.”

Treasure decided to speak up, “please take our request to the council. Let them decide our fate.”

Azura looked over at her approvingly. This was the right thing to say.

“I am obligated to relay your message,” he agreed. “Payment is never guaranteed, but...I do not look favorably upon your chances. Come. You will stay with us while you await your answer.”

“Stay with the Transit,” Azura ordered Siphon and Spectra, and was met with no protest. The rest of them stepped into the shuttle, and went up to see what this orbital ring thing was all about. Treasure had never heard of it before.

It was exactly what it sounded like, a massive ring suspended in space that went all around the planet. People did not go down to the surface very often, instead deciding to leave it to the plants and animals. They mostly lived in large structures that were hanging from the bottom, down towards the atmosphere, like gargantuan stalactites. How interesting. The Transit crew stayed there for about a week, learning about their culture and history in the museum, and enjoying some of their entertainment. People didn’t seem to know anything about other universes, it was really just the representative who came down to investigate. The locals just figured they were from some other planet, if they even asked where they were from at all. They blended right in quite easily, because they were just nine out of tens of billions of people. Once the council was ready with their decision, they summoned the crew to council chambers.

“Thank you for coming,” Council Leader Ignatius said. She sat up there with her own crew, high above the floor, forcing all who seek help from them to literally look up to them. “We understand that you would like some advanced power system to integrate with your...space train.”

“That’s right,” Azura answered. “We would be eternally grateful, and eagerly await your charges.”

Ignatius nodded. “In exchange for our technology, we ask that the first thing you do with it is to travel back to our past, and extract an important figure before his death.”

“What’s that now?” Azura questioned. It was okay to ask for clarification, just not to argue or propose conditions.

“Mizakh Bordalajner is one of the most influential leaders of our history. It was he who first predicted that we would one day live as we are living today. He came up with the idea of the orbital ring, and he fiercely argued in favor of ecological mindfulness, so our species would survive long enough to realize his dreams. He, of course, died long before singular immortality, and we would like to reward him for his efforts by bringing him up to our present, and saving him. Have no fear, time travel is impossible in this universe without the aid of a machine such as yours. We do not wish for you to alter the past. Simply remove him from his deathbed, and bring him back here, so our advanced science can keep him alive forever.”

Azura looked at the four people to her left, and the four people to her right, just to gauge their reception of the request. No one seemed to have any objections. It was fair, within their power, and unlikely to cause problems for this world, or come with unforeseen consequences. Even if it did have consequences, that wasn’t really the crew’s problem. “We accept. Provide us with the pertinent information, and we’ll go retrieve your man.”

“That will not be necessary,” Ignatius said. “One of our top historians will be accompanying you, to make sure the mission moves forward smoothly.”

Azura nodded deeply, and cordially.

The anti-negotiation stance was a two-way street. The council failed to request that their own people would be the ones to install the new power systems on the Transit. Once the council meeting closed, they could no longer amend the request any more than the Transit crew could have. It would have been unfair, and unjust. They were a consistent and thoughtful people. So the crew was able to insist that they be the ones to interface human technology with Maramon technology, and get the whole thing up and running. It took longer, but they didn’t want anyone else getting their hands on bulk travel knowledge. Causality was grateful for the limited number of parties capable of risking paradoxes for all of reality.

The historian was a woman in her late twenties named Rosalinda. Treasure’s first impression was that she was nice and talkative. She loved to tell anecdotes from history, and she probably taught them more than they could ever learn from the museums. She also knew everything there was to know about this Mizakh Bordalajner. He was exactly where he was meant to be, exactly when he was meant to be there. They even knew when he would be alone, so that no one would try to stop them from abducting their loved one. The mission was so boring that only Siphon and Spectra were sent into the field. They returned with no problems, Bordalajner was hooked up to life support, and the Transit went back to the future. The problem was that this was not the correct future. Whrweh was still there, and perfectly intact, but the Whrwehs were gone. They had died out centuries ago, and the only explanation was the absence of this one historical figure. Even though he died anyway, he must have had a significant impact on the outcome of events.

“All right,” Azura said, quickly getting over the shock. “This isn’t a problem. All we have to do is go put him back. The Transit can mask its signature from itself, our past selves won’t even know we were there. We’ll put him back in bed right after the Young!Siphon and Young!Spectra first took him. Everything will go back to normal. We’ll figure out an alternative payment later. Rosalinda here can vouch for us, and explain why it didn’t work.”

“I don’t know why it didn’t work,” Rosalinda revealed. “He died. In fact, and I didn’t want to say this before, but he went missing. This was all destined to happen. At least I thought it was. I thought we were just closing a timeloop.”

“We are,” Treasure said. “We’re closing it now. Quino and I will put him back in bed. It’s best not to run into your alternate selves.”

“I’ll go too,” Rosalinda insisted. “It’s my world.”

“Very well,” Azura decided. “Let’s go.”

They returned to the past, overlapping with their own timeline, and preparing to make the exchange. If everything went according to plan, not five minutes would pass from the time Siphon and Spectra first took him, and the time Treasure, Quino, and Rosalinda put him back. No one would ever know they were there, not even their Past!Selves. It did not go according to plan. They avoided being seen by the other two crew members just fine, and got him back to bed, no problem. It was getting out that messed things up. Mizakh’s husband came back in time to see them trying to sneak out of their house. He shouted for help, causing a number of neighbors to flood the streets. They were trapped. He was an important man even while still alive, so they were all very protective of him. They formed a circle, so that there was nowhere for the three of them to go. There was nowhere for them to go...except through another dimension. Seeing no other choice, Treasure took a deep breath, and then she screamed.

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