Sic Transit...Ingenuitas (Part VIII)

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Saying that the penthouse was the best was apparently not saying much. Treasure hadn’t seen a lot of this world when she first arrived, but the word she used to describe it in her headcanon was dumpy. The people here weren’t just careless with the environment, but actively destructive of it. No one deserved to be wiped out by the Ochivari, but she had to pick one universe, she certainly couldn’t pick somewhere else over this one, right? That wouldn’t be fair. Still, the individuals she met were very kind and accommodating. They seemed to love and revere her quite a bit. She was a legend before her time. She wasn’t really excited to get to the part of her future where people knew her name, and she understood specifically why. Again, she was still so young, so she hadn’t thought much about her future. She only knew that she was born with this power, and it would be irresponsible not to use it, since as far as she knew, it wasn’t something she could bequest to someone else.

“Bequest isn’t a verb,” Quino instructed her. “I’ve been studying English. It’s a noun. Perhaps you mean bequeath.”

“Bequest is also a verb in my universe,” Treasure explained.

“Really?”

“My own personal universal bubble that I live in that’s only large enough to fit me and my tiara.”

“I can’t join you?” he asked. They had grown closer over the last few months. They weren’t actively pursuing a relationship with each other, but they also weren’t working very hard to prevent it. Though as he said, Quino was now completely fluent in English, their preferred shared language was Flirtish.

“Okay. I just need to absorb enough bulk energy to make it larger.”

He took an eighth of a step towards her. “Ya know, if I were to stand closer, you wouldn’t have to expend so much energy to make your universe big enough for the both of us.”

“That’s true,” she agreed as she was taking a quarter step. “How close were you thinking, though?”

Quino skipped the half-step, and just jumped right to a pretty wide full step. Their shoulders were touching each other, and maybe a few atoms could flow between the left side of his chest, and her breast. She could feel his breath on her forehead. “How much energy would it take to accommodate me now?”

She was surprised by this. They had never come this close before, and until this moment, the way they flirted could have always been dismissed as nothing more than innocent, or maybe even platonic. She was glad he was making the first move, though. It was so unlike him, which showed that he felt comfortable being relaxed around her. She felt the same, so she kept going. “Still too much.” She pulled him right up against her, and held him in place with her arms. “This I think I can handle.” She rested her head on his neck, and they just held each other tightly for the rest of time.

Without releasing completely, Quino reached into his back pocket, and showed her some little metal thing that she didn’t recognize. “Happy birthday.”

“Is it my birthday?” Treasure asked genuinely. “How can you tell?”

“You told me how long ago your sixteenth was before you decided to show your parents what you could do. Based on the amount of time we were in Hyperion, and all these other universes, I think I can reasonably surmise that today is the day you turn seventeen. I’ve been keeping track, because honestly, while seventeen Standard Vertean years does not equal seventeen Earthan years, it is pretty close, and it’s when my people consider someone to be an adult.”

Treasure smiled and nodded. “How clever of you. But I must say, I do not know what that thing is.”

“Me neither,” Quino admitted. “All I know is that it’s the last part that your special ship needs to be complete. Once they insert this doo-da-bob under the whatever-ma-thingy, we’ll be ready to go.”

“That’s sweet,” she said.

He pulled away a little more, and looked confused, as if someone else had said something that made him wonder what was going on. “Is it? I’m now realizing that my giving this to you is basically like giving you permission to do something you’re already entitled to do. I have no right to give this to you. It’s not mine. It’s always been yours.”

“Don’t overthink it,” Treasure said, taking the doo-da-bob from him. “Let’s go tell everyone else.”

“Everyone knows. They’re waiting for you to give a go-ahead on the manifest.”

“Why would I need to give the go-ahead?”

“Like I said, it’s yours. This is a gift. The engineers expect nothing in return. They were happy to be doing something. Apparently, being a robot is boring. Anyway, it’s your ship, so you get to decide who gets on it.”

“All the humans, I guess. I mean, if there’s room for any androids who want to go somewhere else, I’m happy to oblige them as well.”

“No androids want to come,” Quino said, “not even Kickstand and Apple. There is a complication, though. Word got out about you, specifically to the island of organics who chose not to upload their minds to mechanical bodies. There were thousands of them in the beginning, but the majority of them were old, and have since died out. Over two hundred of them are still around, though, and they would like to find a new home.”

“Aren’t they sick?” Treasure asked. When the Ochivari travel to a new universe, they destroy all intelligent life with a virus that sterilizes the entire population. It takes  decades to complete, but it can’t be stopped once it’s begun.

“Yes, they are presently in quarantine, to protect us, and the other refugees. The  virus is airborne, but it can only survive for an extended period of time in a living host, so this whole area is virus-free. That’s why we didn’t immediately contract it upon arrival. Bringing them onboard is risky, and there’s still no cure.”

“Then what’s the point? Where do they want me to take them?” Treasure asked. “We can’t let them try to integrate into some other civilization.”

“Yeah, but this world is polluted, even where they are. The atmosphere is becoming toxic, and will kill them all before old age can.”

Treasure sat a moment with this information. Her parents and Miss Collins, and pretty much every adult she ever met, taught her to help others. That was everything to them; helping people. It was their reason for being, and they instilled this value in her. Her instinct was to help, but that word was more complicated than it sounded. If you were to try to help someone in their quest to become president of a company, you might be hurting the person who already was the president. So the very idea of helping others was a lot more nuanced than just seeing someone in need, and providing them with that need. She had to think about whether helping them could cause harm to others, and the answer was yes. Yes, it would hurt others. If there were a cure to the sterility virus, or even if there was a way to stop them from being contagious, that would be a different story. They could live out their lives, happy and healthy, and not worry about infecting others. But that was not the bulkverse they were living in. In reality, taking these people to safety meant risking destroying all life, in every universe. Not even the Ochivari wanted that.

It was also prudent to consider the victims. As individuals, they may have all been lovely people, but they were living in a dead world, because their ancestors—and frankly, maybe even they—made it that way. They caused the pollution, and by all accounts, it was worse here than any planet Treasure studied in school. Perhaps they didn’t deserve to be sterilized. And once she was ready, Treasure planned to do everything she could to thwart the Ochivari’s plans. This was all true. The problem was that saying the locals deserved this would be an overstatement, but saying they didn’t deserve it didn’t sound right either. She could not justify rescuing these people at the expense of the truly innocent, which yeah, included herself. She breathed in deep, but didn’t say anything.

Quino understood. “I’ll take care of it, and I’ll leave you out of it.”

“No,” Treasure said. “Tell them it was my call. It’s what my mother would do. Well, actually, she would be brave enough to confront them herself.”

“That’s why you have me,” Quino assured her. “We’re a team now.” He started to walk backwards. “You, me, and Rosalinda. Hey, get your stuff together. We leave whenever you want.”

Unlike how it was in Hypnopediaverse, the bridge collapse refugees here were all from the same place. They were attending a concert in the park, and just so happened to be in the same vicinity as each other in the parking lot afterwards. That was going to make dropping them off that much easier. The engineers were brilliant. They included a cosmic frequency detector, which would allow her to navigate to any user’s universe of origin, or if calibrated correctly, back to a universe they had been to before. Navigating the bulkverse was difficult for anyone to do. Most of the technology the Transit employed was dedicated exclusively towards making these calculations. Treasure was supposed to be able to do it psychically, but given where they were now, she was obviously not so great at that. Fortunately, the cosmic frequency workaround was almost foolproof, and a fairly easy component to add. In the future, they would try to link this little lifeboat up to the Transit’s database, to gather the necessary coordinate data.

It was very easy to pilot the little ship. An AI did most of the heavy lifting for her. All Treasure had to do was tell it what she wanted, and it would figure it out. Once all the refugees were back where they belonged—having aged, but not having missed anything from their lives—Treasure navigated them to what Miss Collins referred to as an uncivilized universe. This may have sounded bad and dangerous, but all it really meant was that life evolved on planets with the right conditions, but did not progress enough to have any sort of sufficiently advanced intelligence. They were actually some of the safest worlds to be, because other travelers had no use for them, and there was no one around for the Ochivari to sterilize. Here, she stepped out of the ship, and prepared to return home on her own. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Where are you going?” Rosalinda asked.

“I have to go deal with my parents,” Treasure said. “I just need to explain to them what’s happened, and that my life is out here now. They won’t like it, but they’ll accept it, and they won’t be able to stop me.”

“Don’t do that,” Quino strongly suggested.

“Why not?” Treasure questioned.

“I want you to be back here soon, but from your perspective, it should be longer.”

“How much longer?”

He hesitated a bit. “Three years.”

“Three years!” she exclaimed. “Why do you want me gone that long?”

“In three years, you won’t be that much younger than me. That’s important, but there’s a reason age discrepancies are so frowned upon. You have not experienced enough of your life. You have not figured out who you are, and what you want to do. You’ve not explored your options. You need to finish basic higher education before you start doing all this.”

“This is easy for you to say,” Treasure argued. “It won’t be but seconds for you, no big deal. You expect me to wait years for you, just so I can get a degree that I don’t care about, and won’t use?”

“You’ll use the education you receive; you just probably won’t use it to get a job,” he reasoned.

“What if I meet someone new? What then? You know what you’re risking.”

“If you meet someone new, then you will belong with that person, and I will be happy for you. You still need to come back here to pilot The Strongbox, though. I don’t want to live in this universe forever.”

“The what-box?”

“The Strongbox,” Quino repeated. “That’s what this could be called, because it holds treasure?”

They kept arguing about it, but Treasure decided to agree in the end. Fighting wasn’t helping anything, and she could come back whenever she wanted, regardless of what he thought was prudent. She wouldn’t even have to tell him. So they said their goodbyes, and then she screamed her way back home. In those few seconds while she was waiting for the shatter portal to break open, she had an idea. If she navigated precisely to the moment she first left, her mother would never even know she had gone. She wasn’t in the room when it happened, so she didn’t actually see it happen. This was fate. She knew she had heard a different scream when she left. She thought it was some kind of echo, but no, it must have been Future!Her.

Her mom burst into the room. “What did you do?”

“See?” Treasure began, feigning innocence. She spoke with her real voice. “I can scream and not travel the bulkverse. I don’t need my collar anymore, I can control it. I can choose whether my scream is more than just a loud sound.”

Freya regarded her, unimpressed. “Treasure.”

“Yes, mom?” She was still trying to act like a good girl.

“You’re wearing different clothes, and there’s something on your head. Did you become the queen of another world, or something?”

“Uhhhhhhhh...quick-change trick. Mom, I want to become a magician.”

Freya sighed, obviously not believing the really bad lie. “Where did you go, and how long were you there?”

“Wait, I can explain. Just—” Before she could finish her thought, an obnoxious horn sounded outside. Treasure smiled gleefully. It was The Transit. Azura was here.

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Microstory 1665: Rainrider

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I’m going to get specific with this one. I kind of just chose a story at random to tell you about someone living in Salmonverse. Many people have the ability to manipulate time in some way. They can travel back and forth, or maybe even just back. Others can only teleport. Some people can do crazy things that you wouldn’t think called for temporal manipulation. Invisibility, for instance, is generally done by altering the path of light, but in Salmonverse, it’s done by creating the illusion that something is not there when it is, by superimposing what would be there if the invisible thing actually were not. Some of the restrictions and specialties—which are sometimes referred to as flavors—are bizarre, and seem oddly designed. They can suggest that there’s a higher power making these decisions, even when there’s not. There is in many cases, mind you. People who have no control are called salmon, while people who do are choosing ones. But choosers still have their own restrictions, and like I said, they can be almost too strange to believe. One man in particular could travel through time and space, but only in the rain. When he went outside while it was raining, it prompted his ability to make a jump, and he could land anywhere in time and space, as long as it was raining at his destination as well. Each jump would discharge the temporal energy, no matter how far, and the only way to recharge would be for him to dry off completely, and then go back out in the rain. If the storm had since passed, then he was stuck there until he could find another. I just think this is such a funny little story. There is no explanation for why he had to ride the rain, and he never even looked for one. He accepted his limitations, and used them to his advantage. Man, he loved it too. Once he discovered the power, he abandoned his old life, and used it all the time. He didn’t go back to make changes to the timeline. In fact, he was usually just doing it to see the sites. He didn’t run into any evil time travelers, or get stuck somewhere scary. He just traveled the world, and the timeline, enjoying life as one of the lucky few to see all this in one lifetime. Only once did he go into the future from his time period of origin, just to make sure there wasn’t some kind of temporal lid that would block him. He never had any interest in actually spending any time there, though, partially because he didn’t know the weather patterns anyway, but also because he figured all the beauty was in the past, before pollution and overpopulation ruined everything. Few other travelers ever met him, but it was one of them who gave him his nickname: The Rainrider.

Microstory 1664: Private Network

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When the immortal man created life on a multitude of planets, across thousands of galaxies, in the Composite Universe, he didn’t have many plans to interact with his creations. He figured they could be left to their own devices, and they would rise or fall upon their own merits and mistakes. He didn’t completely abandon most of them, though. For nearly every world, he designed a way to allow his people to reach out to him, if they so wished. Most of them could be found in space, which meant that the people would have to develop enough to actually reach it, but others were near the surface of the world of origin. They would still generally require some level of intelligence, as well as the ability to work together in a team. Still, there were a few planets he chose to ignore, not out of spite or anything, but just to see whether they could find him on their own. They were meant to progress in their own way, and if they eventually became sufficiently advanced—and chose to explore outer space—they could figure it out. It might take them a few thousand years, or more, but neither he nor they were on some kind of time limit. He was destined to live for billions of years, and he had so many other things to worry about, that the outcome of any one race didn’t matter too terribly much. One world discovered how heavily populated the universe was shockingly quickly. Instead of gradually traveling farther and farther from home, they decided to stay on the ground, and focus on finding a way to jump anywhere they wanted instantaneously. This was already possible by way of the Nexus network, but this civilization didn’t have access to that. They had to come up with it all on their own.

They devised a method of sending a vessel to anywhere in the observable universe within a matter of minutes, significantly cutting down travel time, though it was still not quite as fast as a Meganexus, which can do it in seconds. They equipped their vessels with recall mechanisms, allowing it to spontaneously open a new node, and send it back home. They would always have to go back to home base first, but that wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Given enough time, they could construct a new relay point, but they only did that if they felt there was any need, like if they found any other lifeforms at the second location. That was what they were doing; going out in search of friends and allies, but also for those who might threaten them. That was another reason not to build a relay point, because if they maintained control over the technology, a nefarious force was less likely to be able to find them. Of course, they started out at shorter distances, covering their galaxy, before moving onto neighboring galaxies, and beyond. Their creator deliberately spread out his people, so each would have room to grow without worrying about running into diplomatic issues for a while. The intergalactic hoppers were pretty upset to learn that they were alone, even though they weren’t. They created a formula long before that predicted how many worlds should be inhabited, and refined it as variables came in through their travels. Not a single evolved and intelligent soul across millions of light years? The reality was that naturally evolved life was even rarer than that, as this was several  hundred million years before humans evolved on Earth. They came this close to going extinct, and while it’s rather complicated, it was pretty much due to profound loneliness. The few survivors kept going, though, and would later find themselves assimilated into the general population.

Microstory 1663: Origin of Atlantis

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Universe Prime is vast, both in space, and across time. I could tell you any number of stories from this universe, and most of them don’t even take place on Earth. Why don’t I stick with what you’re a little more familiar with, though? More specifically, I think I’ll discuss Atlantis, since that is where all the interesting things happen. You’ve probably heard of the sunken island from one story, or another. Different storytellers have different interpretations of it, but there are a few key commonalities. It was an advanced island that sank into the ocean. Sometimes its residents survived, and sometimes not. The truth is that the island did indeed sink, and not only did the people survive, but they sank it on purpose. It all started when a group of scientists from the Composite Universe found themselves stranded in a strange new world. An experiment of theirs didn’t go wrong; it went too right. It was too powerful, and the range was too wide. They made a new home here, but did not want to live a primitive lifestyle, like all the native inhabitants. They still wanted to use their technology, and explore science, so they decided to colonize an island that was surprisingly equidistant from the land masses that would come to be known as Greenland, Iceland, and Ireland—around 690 miles, in your terms. In the beginning, things were fine, as they were far enough away from civilization to avoid interfering with their development, but it didn’t last. Visitors started to come from the mainlands. It was on accident at first, but then when they returned home with stories of the wonders of Atlantis, more came, hoping to see the truth. The Atlantians attempted to prevent any further problems. They distorted the celestial sphere from nearby waters, so it was difficult to navigate, but people still happened upon them. The tried to hide their technology underneath a façade of primitivism. But that was tiresome. They needed a permanent solution. Thus the sinking.

The Atlantians figured that, if any of the natives witnessed their island sinking, they would have been amazed, but they wouldn’t have attempted to investigate it. They certainly wouldn’t have been able to dive down that deep. It legitimately looked like the island was destroyed, so it all should have ended there. Of course, it prompted superstitions, but in the end, the world’s development was not too dramatically altered. They already had plenty of stories about magic, and that would not change for centuries. Meanwhile, the Atlantians kept a watchful eye on the surface of the planet. People were still occasionally finding themselves there from elsewhere, be it the other universe, or just some other planet in Prime. If you were stranded, Atlantis was your best hope of finding a way home. They eventually discovered a way to reach out to their world of origin, but they were now mostly the descendants of those original scientists, so they considered Atlantis their home. Only a few ever chose to leave, including newcomers, many of whom saw Atlantis as a great place to start over. Those that stayed continued to advance technologically, but never ventured outside of their bubble, except to bring in someone new. The island fell completely into the realm of myth, which was their intention all along. It was a pretty diverse crowd of witches, transhumans, regular humans, vampires, aliens, and even a few androids. Since their population was relatively small, even over time, they were able to maintain a fair democracy, and managed to avoid many of the hardships that other civilizations experience from their infancy.

Microstory 1662: Aggression Towards the Mean

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Things seemed hopeless in the universe with the two counterpart realities. It might have been okay in the prime reality if they had never learned of their alternate selves, but the realization made it too complicated, and ultimately ruined everything. There was no way to fix the problem. Every alternate was the opposite of their primary self; an evil twin, if you will—or the good twin, accordingly. They could not be changed unless the primary version was changed, but no matter what, they could not both be good people. One scientist wasn’t satisfied with this. He wanted to figure out how to rehabilitate a secondary individual without changing anything about the primary, and he chose to try this by experimenting on himself. He built a machine that would allow travel between the two opposing realities. He didn’t want to do anything with this machine except facilitate the progression towards this goal, and he didn’t want anyone else getting their hands on the technology. He knew that his creation could have consequences. He needed time to save his alternate self, but if that turned out to be impossible, it left at least one person who could reveal the secret to the world. What would he do then? How would he protect it? This scientist was an above average person, who tried to make the right choices, but was also full of character flaws. He didn’t always recycle, even if it wasn’t any more difficult than just throwing it in the trash. He voted for who he thought was the best candidate for a government position, but he wasn’t always right about that, and he didn’t get around to the polling location every single time. So his counterpart wasn’t evil. In fact, many would probably have a bit of a difficult time telling the two of them apart. This was probably for the best. Transforming a rapist into a selfless volunteer hero was a tall order, and maybe better left to a later stage of this endeavor.

He did his best to quantify their differences at first, but then just kind of began to improvise. They went to therapy together, and they studied the great leaders of history. They practiced mindfulness, and tried to help people when opportunity arose. Things were going okay. They were both improving a little, and there didn’t seem to be many issues. But that wasn’t enough. The true test came when the scientists sent his counterpart back to his home reality, and observed the results. They were a failure. The secondary really did do everything he could to hold onto the lessons he had learned, but it was impossible. His brain chemistry rewired itself, and within the day, he was worse than he ever was before. He started walking up to strangers, and kicking them in the shins. He poured laxatives into his friends’ drinks, and slashed his boss’ tires. The primary version was horrified. Knowing his alternate was his opposite was one thing, but actually being able to see it firsthand was just too much for him to stomach. So he went after him. He tried to kill his evil alternate, which was ironic, because murder is pretty bad, so it automatically turned his twin into the good one. But if he was good, then he didn’t need to be eliminated, so the primary tried to become good again. But then the counterpart started becoming bad again. It just wouldn’t stop. Every attempt to change things failed. Only one of them could be good at any one time. Seeing no way out, the primary committed suicide, and hoped this terrible act would permanently turn his alternate self into a good person, but this too failed, because what the survivors learned was that when one of them dies, so too does the other. It was all still so hopeless.

Microstory 1661: Leader of the Psychic Army

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Even in universes where they did not have human confederates to deploy as the infiltration force, the Ochivari were surprisingly good at keeping covert. They wore hoods, and stayed in the shadows, and kept their distance. This tactic did not work very well in Psychoverse. There were different classes of psychics on this version of Earth, and varying levels within the classes. One class in particular was simply good at detecting people around them, and maybe a little bit of information about them. They couldn’t feel emotions, or read minds, but could sense a few key characteristics about others, such as age, general health condition, and basic mood. They could tell when someone was happy, angry, or sad, and that was pretty much it. This was enough when it came to the Ochivari, though. They exuded strange readings, which alerted one individual that there was something strange going on in her town. Rattlesnake, Kansas was an interesting place to live. The population was low enough to be considered a small town, but the residents acted like a large city. They were anonymous with each other, choosing only to associate with those in their friend group, and ignoring the rest. This was how people liked it here, as it was low pressure, and high privacy. Psychics weren’t outlawed, but they were strongly discouraged, because they, of course, invaded this privacy. Psychics didn’t bother fighting against this, because they didn’t really care. There were better places to live anyway. The presence detector was allowed to live there without any grief, though, since it was her hometown, and she didn’t disturb anyone. It was a good thing they did, because the small town anonymity vibe was exactly why the Ochivari figured it would be a good idea to spy on the native population from right there in Rattlesnake. This psychic’s ability was nonnegotiable, meaning that it wasn’t something she could use at will, and not use when she didn’t want to. It was always on, so when strange figures in robes started walking around at night, most didn’t pay them any mind, because it wasn’t their business, but she knew there was something off about them. She decided to investigate on her own, even though she made a promise that she would kind of just leave others alone. When she learned the truth, she knew that she couldn’t just let this go, so she contacted a psychic associate of hers who could read minds. He came to Rattlesnake, and helped figure out these aliens’ intentions. Once they confirmed that the Ochivari had sinister plans for the world, the two of them formed a resistance army of other psychics. They defeated the infiltrators rather quickly, and then transformed the town into the capital of the defensive force. More psychics came, some with strong offensive abilities, and the original psychic whistleblower suddenly found herself at the head of one of the most powerful armies in the world.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: Tuesday, November 15, 2253

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Flindekeldan was a beautiful planet. If they were going to be stuck on one world for the rest of their lives, this was a good choice. They spent the next three years here, just being normal, and not thinking much about time travel and transition windows. There were no specific rules for what kind of lifestyle they could choose. Though it was only populated by several million people, it was fairly diverse. Some worked, because they didn’t like not doing anything. Others focused on personal hobbies. Technically everyone did have a job, though. Those who didn’t work were backfilled by an android substitute. This was not an assistant, who fetched coffee for their human, or washed their clothes. It was there to work when the human did not want to. Everyone was free to choose how much it worked in their stead, be it all the time, or none of the time. A few hundred people who came here were androids themselves, but they were still assigned a Flindekeldanian android, and the procedures were the same.

Olimpia did most of her work herself. She had never had a job before, because she wasn’t part of society back on Earth in the main sequence, and she wanted to know what it felt like. She worked her way up pretty quickly, eventually becoming a supervisor for a Helium-3 mining operation. Mateo learned how to surf, and did a lot of rock climbing, which he never thought he would ever get into. Jeremy took up animal watching. He liked to go to the other side of the world, where no one had settled, and just observe the little critters in their natural habitat. Studying their habits was both part of his job, and a hobby. He and his android worked together, sharing the load. Angela really just relaxed every day. She was always rather busy in the afterlife simulation, helping people, or learning new things. Now she just wanted to do nothing. She spent most of her time on the beach, but she sometimes got into an inflatable raft, and wandered the sea, letting the water control where she drifted. And Leona? Leona was different. No one fully understood what it was she was up to; not even Mateo. They knew it was some kind of secret society, and while she returned home to Mateo at the end of the day, she didn’t talk about her work.

“Again.”

Leona did it again.

“Quicker.”

Leona did it quicker.

“Good. Keep practicing when your friends aren’t around. Your legwork is fine. Your arms need to be more precise. Remember to pay attention to the way the air is moving. Cut through it, don’t let it slow you down.”

“Understood,” Leona said.

“All right, Ellie, your turn.”

Ellie did the same move, but she was better at it, which Leona found annoying, because she hadn’t been here as long. This was actually an alternate version of the Ellie Underhill that they knew from before, though not really. Ellie was tens of thousands of years old, but not because she was immortal, or even ageless. Her body had only been around for a few decades, but her mind had experienced many, many lives. When she found herself nearing the end of her lifetime, she would send her consciousness back to the past, and overwrite her Past!Self. Everything she did in the future was completely erased, and no one could remember it having happened, except for her. This adventure was an exception, because it was taking place in The Parallel, which was why Leona was here for it, even though Ellie would one day undo the timeline.

“Very good, Miss Underhill, as always.”

Leona made a fake scowl at her training partner. Ellie chuckled silently.

“That will be all for today.”

“Really?” Leona questioned. They never cut the training sessions short.

“It’s November 15, 2253, according to the standard main sequence Earthan calendar.”

“Oh, umm...” Leona trailed off. “I don’t find much significance to that date.”

“Your husband does. Go home, Leona.”

“Thank you, Crucia Heavy.”

“Thank you, Crucia Heavy,” Ellie echoed.

The two of them started walking out towards the exit together, but Ellie would not be leaving, because this was where she lived. She decided not to reveal her presence to the transition team. There wasn’t any real reason they weren’t allowed to know the truth, but there wasn’t any reason they should know either.

“You gonna think about what I said?” Ellie asked.

“I thought you were joking,” Leona said.

“No, I think you should consider it. Today would be the optimal time.”

“Ellie, if we use your method of transitioning, I’ll have to explain how I found out about it, and you’ll be exposed.”

She shrugged. “I can think of worse things to happen. Leona, there’s a Nexus on the other side. You’ve completed enough of your training. You can go back, and fight as Mateo’s champion. Isn’t that why you agreed to join The Highest Order?”

“I joined in case The Warrior ever caught up to us. I stayed, because I wanted to—because I like it—because I belong. And I’m not done with my training. I’m never done.”

“Exactly, you’re never done, which means you could be here forever. That is not what this place is designed for. You’re supposed to go out, and live a real life. That’s what I’m going to do. You graduate when you’re ready.”

“I’m not ready. Maybe in another three years. That’ll put us back on the Bearimy-Matic pattern.”

“Talk to him.”

“I can’t do that,” Leona contended.

“They’ll see who you’ve become someday, and then you’ll have to explain why you claimed this was all a secret, when it isn’t.”

“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.” She stepped onto the first of 576 steps back up to the surface.

“I just hope you can cross it, and it’s not just a pile of ash by then.”

Leona went up to the next step. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Ellie.”

“If you say so.” She turned, and headed towards her room.

Leona walked up the steps slowly. She would sometimes run them to get more exercise, but now she was worried about what conversation awaited her when she got home. Would Mateo want to go back if they could? More importantly, how would any of them react if she told them it was indeed possible; that there was a loophole she had known about for over two years now. Angela would probably be cool, and Jeremy liked his new life fine enough, but Olimpia often spoke of seeing Earth again, and eating fried chicken once more. Leona didn’t want to go anywhere. She didn’t want to stop her training, and she didn’t want to return to the Milky Way. This was her home now. No, she had to keep it a secret. Perhaps she would never tell them, and they would just live here forever. It would be difficult to hold back for quite that long, but not impossible. They had not yet qualified for full immortality, but they were receiving longevity and youth treatments, and there was still a chance that it would end there, and they would eventually die.

Leona opened the door to their house to find the whole team waiting to have dinner together, which she didn’t know was happening. It wasn’t surprising, though, as this was the day they would have returned to the timestream if the cuffs weren’t suppressing their pattern. They smiled as she walked into the dining room, and sat down. The food temperature suggested she was about fifteen minutes later than they expected, but they weren’t upset. She had stalled for time on the stairs, and on the walk through the park, but she still should have arrived earlier than usual. She glanced down at her watch. Nope, it had actually taken her a lot longer than it should have. She was more paranoid about the conversation than she realized. She was right to be. They immediately started reminiscing about their old lives, and lamenting not being able to do the things they once loved about Earth. It was like they knew what her secret was, and were trying to goad her into fessing up. Or maybe she was just imagining a tell-tale heart, and it had nothing to do with her.

“There’s a way back to the Milky Way galaxy,” her asshole voice said before she could stop it.

“I’m sorry?” Mateo prompted.

Leona closed her eyes, knowing there was no way to backtrack without looking as big of an asshole as her voice. “It’s called the Suspended Pond of Glieremé. If you swim deep enough, you’ll go through a transition window, and end up on Flindekeldan in the main sequence, where there is a working Nexus. It only has one unlocked destination, but we can go anywhere from there.”

Silence.

“I suppose we wouldn’t have to swim,” Leona went on. “The AOC is small enough to fit right through.”

“Did The Order tell you about this?” Angela asked calmly.

“I can’t tell you who told me about it,” Leona said. “Spoilers.”

Jeremy wiped his mouth on the napkin, and dropped it down on the table. “Goddammit.” He stood up in a huff, and left the house.

“I’m sorry I lied to you about it. I don’t know why I did. I guess I was scared Anatol would find us. I don’t know.”

“He’s not mad because you didn’t tell us,” Mateo said.

“He’s mad because you did,” Angela finished for him. “I must say, I’m not so pleased about it either.”

“I don’t understand,” Leona admitted.

“When we were stuck here,” Olimpia began to clarify, “it was fine. We all settled into our new lives, because it was all we could do. Now you’ve given us the burden of choice again, which means we’ll have to figure out what to do.”

“We can still stay here, if that’s what everyone wants,” Leona tried to promise. “I only told you, because the longer I waited, the worse I thought it would be when you inevitably found out. The Pond of Glieremé isn’t exactly a secret. It’s just ignored, because you can take the Nexus back to the Milky Way, but there’s no way back to the Parallel once you’re there.”

Olimpia shook her head like a teacher whose student didn’t quite get the right answer. “Now, no matter what we do, each one of us will worry that the others don’t really want that. We don’t want to resent each other, or even think that there’s any resentment.”

Leona was mortified. She had no idea they felt this way. Yeah, that was a good point; she had no idea.

“Leona, we’re not mad at you. We understand that you didn’t know.”

“Exactly,” Leona said, standing up. “I didn’t know, because apparently you all have this group text that I’m not on, where you discuss these things. You made a mistake by working together to explain to me how you feel, because now I know I’ve been left out of a lot.” She tried to walk away too.

“Leona, you’ve been so wrapped up in that fight club,” Mateo argued. “Yeah, we have conversations that you’re not there for. What, you want us to sit in silence in case you decide to come home on time? If we always waited for you, we’d never eat!”

“That’s bullshit, you could have filled me in on some of the more important things. Maybe I don’t hear about what mountain you climbed yesterday, but I should at least know how you’re feeling. What else are you keeping from me, and how did you know it’s a fight club? I mean, that’s not what it is, but I can see how you would come to that conclusion if someone told you a little.”

“We see the bruises,” Mateo explained. “You’re exhausted every night. Hell, you even walk differently than you used to. Leona, you aren’t playing board games down there.”

“Well, I’m glad you know so much about me, and I apparently don’t know any of you people anymore!” Leona shouted. She walked away for real this time, but she didn’t get far.

Jeremy came back into the houses, forced there by the edge of the Warrior’s blade. “I can’t tell you what I went through to find out where you were. I had to do a huge favor for a timeline interpreter. You owe me the five months I spent spotting his nephew at the gym.”

The group stood from their seats, and approached him cautiously

“Anatol, you don’t have to do this,” Mateo warned.

“You also owe me your lives,” Anatol reminded him. “Don’t think I have forgotten about our little deal.”

“What does it matter?” Mateo questioned. “Why is everyone so obsessed with us? My God, the powers that be, Zeferino, Arcadia, Jupiter? What’s the deal?”

“You’re just so fascinating,” Anatol explained, possibly sincerely. “Now put your cuffs back on, and give me the primary.”

“Anatol...”

“Put them on!” he ordered.

They did as he demanded. Jeremy carefully helped fit Anatol with the primary.

“You’re going to regret this,” Mateo warned. “They always do.”

“Or they switch sides,” Leona added.

Before Anatol could make some snide remark, he fell to his side, losing his grip on Jeremy’s neck which he was at it. Ellie Underhill turned out to be the attacker. “Go,” she commanded Leona. “We can’t subject this planet to whatever it is he would do with it, so you’re going to lead him through the pond, and I’m going to make sure he never comes back.”

“I’m sorry, Ellie,” Leona said.

“This is not your fault. Enemies gonna enemy.”

The team ran out of the house, and across the field, where their ship was waiting for them in the same place they had landed years ago. The Flindekeldanians didn’t even bother moving it. They just constructed a big tent to protect it from the elements.

“I’m sorry, Jeremy!” Leona cried as they were running.

“Don’t worry about it!” he cried back. “Now we’re back to only having one choice!”

They climbed into their ship, and initiated rapid launch protocols. Evidently, Angela was secretly coming back here regularly to learn about how it worked, and maintain the systems. This was good, because it wasn’t designed to just be left unattended for three years. They blew right through the tent when they took off from the ground. They didn’t make it all the way into space before coming back down at an angle, and heading for the Suspended Pond of Glieremé, like a guided missile. The AI navigated them right into it, and the pond did what it was meant to by delivering them back to the main sequence.

« < » > Table of Contents

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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