The Advancement of Mateo Matic: April 23, 1693

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They weren’t allowed to return to the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. A little side punishment for their insolence was that they would lose all modern convenience privileges. They were going to live in the past, as the past people lived. It was unclear what Anatol and Zeferino were going to do with their ship, but if even one access panel was out of place when they finally got back to it, Leona was going to flip out. Since it was necessary either way to blend in with the natives, they had to find new clothes to wear. They took a quick detour to sometime in the future at The Hub on Tribulation Island. There, Téa was able to provide them with the appropriate attire and accessories for life in the 17th century. They gave her a friendly greeting, and she greeted them back, but they didn’t talk about anything. They didn’t know which timeline this was, or how simpatico they were. It was best just to acknowledge that they knew each other, remain pleasant, and move on.

Once they were fitted, they went back to the past, but not as far as they were before. It was now 1693. It would seem as though they were no longer on any sort of predictable pattern. It was still possible—maybe the jump would always be 85 years—but the most likely explanation was that the time of patterns was over, and they would just go whenever and wherever they were needed. The antagonists would probably still send them ever forwards so they didn’t accidentally interfere with their own past work in the future. At this rate, they would be back to their general time period in only about a week. But again, they didn’t really know anything.

They spent one night here in realtime, so when they woke up, it was April 23, and about time for their next mission. Their breakfast wasn’t very good, but they weren’t allowed the status of noblemen here, so they took what they could get. They were only entitled to eat some bread and cornmeal. Mateo added it to his mental list of the things he hated about the past. Who would live like this? It just felt so strange to him, even though he knew that most people hadn’t heard of time travel, and they certainly didn’t have access to it. He hoped that Leona’s weeklong estimate was right, and they would be done with this before too long. He did not vocalize his feelings, and he figured everyone else was deliberately keeping their complaints to themselves too. If the antagonists realized quite how annoyed they were with this whole thing, they might make it worse. They assumed Angela would be the most comfortable here. It wasn’t her time period, but they were closer to it in terms of technology. She was actually the most uncomfortable, though. Because she already lived through it, and she knew how much it sucked. Mateo kept clocking her reaching for her handheld device in her back pocket. Not only was the device not there, but nor was a pocket. It was presumably illegal for a woman to have pockets, because that would make her life too easy.

They walked down the stone street to get to the other side of the city. It wasn’t that bad, except for the excrement all over that people just threw out their windows. They were worried that, even in these garments, the locals would be suspicious of them. They might not have been holding themselves up correctly, and not everyone on the team had the right skin color. Seven strangers walking together must have looked weird too. For the most part, however, people just left them alone, and focused on their own lives. Their minds were most likely preoccupied with how much they hated living like this as well, and wishing there was a faster way to get across town. Leona was frustrated for similar reasons. So much could go wrong here. It would be far safer if they just lived in The Parallel, and pulled people through like normal. Before he disappeared, Anatol hinted that they weren’t going to use transition windows in the same way that Jupiter and Nerakali had. He was still going to include that power as part of the program, but the rescues were too far back in the timeline to be able to handle such a thing. They were going to have to get creative.

Leona looked around to make sure no one was watching. Then she pulled her sleeve back, and checked her Cassidy cuff. It was still technically operational, but its functionality was severely limited. The screen only showed them where they were, and where they were supposed to go. No maps, no messages, no features. It didn’t even have a clock in the corner. “This is it,” she said, stopping in front of a door.

“It looks like it’s in that direction,” Jeremy pointed out as he was consulting his own cuff.

“It doesn’t show how far away our target is,” Leona began to explain, “but I’ve been keeping an eye on our pace. I’m guessing the person we’re looking for is up against the wall of this apartment. We need this door.”

Jeremy nodded in understanding, still looking at his cuff. “Target is on the move.”

“How do we handle this?” Mateo questioned. “What do we do?”

Not bothering to wait for a discussion, Olimpia pounded on the door.

The little target dot stopped, and started moving in the opposite direction, towards them. An oldish man opened the door. “Can I help you?”

They didn’t discuss what they were going to say to him, so it was awkward for a moment. Olimpia seemed sick of waiting for other people to make the decisions. “You need to come with us right now.”

“Okay, let me retrieve my bag,” the man said. He wasn’t expecting them, but he acted like this sort of thing happened all the time. He left the door open, and walked back down the hallway.

“We have a new target now,” Jeremy announced. “That’s probably where we’re supposed to take him.”

“How did you know we would take him anywhere?” Angela asked.

“Apartment’s not on fire,” Olimpia replied. “He’s just hanging out, enjoying the day. I’m sure he’s not in any immediate danger. The mission is somewhere else.”

“Do you require the leeches?” the man shouted from the back.

“He’s a doctor,” Mateo guessed, remembering that people used to use leeches to get poisoned blood out of the body.

“Yes, bring the leeches!” Olimpia shouted back.

“Doctor,” Leona said just for the group, using airquotes. “Anyway, they’re called physicians. You call him a doctor, he might be confused. His title is mister.”

The physician came back with what he needed for a medical emergency that didn’t exist. Or maybe it did exist. They didn’t know what the mission was, or what its purpose was. Maybe Anatol needed someone else’s life to be saved, and this was his way of accomplishing that without the aid of the two known time traveling doctors. The physicians followed them without question. He didn’t even ask people their names, and they didn’t ask for his. Jeremy took up the rear so he could keep an eye on the cuff screen without getting caught. It was only telling them whether they were heading in the right direction, or not. It couldn’t plot a course for them through the streets, so they had to be real careful with it. Finally, they were past the city limits, and into the edges of the countryside. Still, the physician didn’t seem perturbed. He patiently walked with them, down the dirt road, up the trail, and into the clearing.

“Uhh, we’re here,” Jeremy said.

They spread out a little to look for clues, but all they saw were plants, trees, and grass. “How are we on time?” Dalton asked.

“It doesn’t have a time,” Jeremy answered.

“Well, how long do we wait?” Dalton furthered.

“What are we waiting for?” the physician asked.

“We don’t know,” Leona said vaguely.

“It’s changed,” Jeremy said. “We have to go this way now.”

“What are you looking at?” The physician wasn’t freaking out, but he was growing concerned.

“That’s the direction we came from,” Siria noted. “Are they messing with us?”

“I don’t know,” Mateo said. “It doesn’t matter. They’re holding all the cards. Let’s just keep following it until we end up where we’re meant to be.”

And so the group got back on the trail. They took it all the way to the dirt road, which took them to the stone streets, which took them back through the city, and then right back to the physician’s apartment. It appeared to be some kind of exercise in futility.

“Morning, Mister Stroud,” said a young woman as they were standing at the door, confused. “Who are your friends?”

“Not friends of mine,” the physician said. “Friends of a patient.”

“Oh. Is that where you’ve been for the last week?”

“How do you mean?” Stroud asked.

“You have been gone for a week,” she contended. “We assumed you had business in Chaslow again.”

“I saw you just at dawn,” Stroud argued.

The woman shook her head. “That was very much a week ago, sir. You look tired. You should get some rest. Good day to you all.”

Many returned with things like “good day,” and “good day to you.”

“What did you do to me?” Stroud was upset now.

Leona stepped forward like she was going to give him an explanation. She stood there for a moment before saying, “run.”

Most of the team ran off, including the newbies. They all trusted her judgment. Only she and Mateo remained. “We’re sorry to have wasted your time,” he said.

The confounded physician stared back at the two of them. He didn’t have an explanation for his missing time, and he already understood that they weren’t going to give one to him. The three of them turned to watch the rest of the team disappear around the corner, then the Matics casually left the apartment, and followed them at a comfortable walking pace.

Jeremy managed to get them a single message through the cuff. It was nothing more than a question mark. Leona replied with a simple GO. Stroud wasn’t going to call the coppers on them, or something, but it was still best if the majority of them just quickly returned to the safehouse. Leona and Mateo, meanwhile, were just going to hold hands, and enjoy some time alone for a bit. Once they were back, they explained to the group that everything was fine. The theory was that Stroud was destined to die sometime in the past week, and that it was their job to help him skip over that death. They probably crossed in and out of a transition window in the woods without realizing it. Most importantly, he didn’t realize it. He would never be able to explain, but he wouldn’t want to lose his station, so he would keep quiet about it, and just move on with his life. Hopefully he was now destined to save more lives with medicine.

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Extremus: Year 4

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The reigning theory is that Old Man was attempting to send Captain Yenant to his death when he modified the recall device to transport two people off the ship, instead of the ship as a whole. Halan made contact with Team Keshida on Gatewood to find out if the three people who ended up taking the device had shown up at any point in time, but it was a negative. Best guess is that Halan was meant to be sent to somewhere in the vacuum of space, while Omega and Airlock Karen were just going to be collateral damage. The reason Old Man and Rita were sent instead was because both of them touched the device with their bare skin prior to activation. Since the former was screaming about not being able to wash his hands well enough, the device probably gave off some kind of residue, which adhered to their hands, and linked them to it. When the button was finally pushed, it took them all away.

The Captain ordered a full head count of the entire ship; crew and passengers, to find out whether anyone else was missing. One other young man was, but the other passengers couldn’t place him, so it’s unclear whether he had touched the device as well, or if something else had happened to him before that. He may have never been on the ship at all. This was a terrible oversight that Halan knew he needed to rectify. Nothing like that could ever happen again. Even without a transportation device of some kind, better safeguards need to be put in place. If someone gets lost in the lower deck engineering section, for instance, there needs to be some way to know that they’re missing in the first place. This was an eye-opening experience.

Eckhart Mercer continued to prove himself an invaluable member of the team. His popularity with the passengers made him the obvious choice to replace Rita Suárez as the Lieutenant. They would miss him on evening announcements, but Mercer was already training someone to fill in for him, and she was more than prepared to take the baton. She too has a fun personality, and her own interesting spin on things.

Despite the tragic mystery that would likely never be solved, things went pretty smoothly over the course of the next year. Omega was released from hock, and joined the engineering team. His claim that he had learned his lesson was more than just an excuse to be free. He was being positive, helpful, and obedient. With Airlock Karen out of the way, the general population felt a lot more at ease. With Old Man out of the way, Halan personally felt more at ease. It was a fitting end to a potentially disastrous situation. As useful as he could be, he was the kind of guy who would ultimately do more harm than good.

Right now, Halan is sitting at his desk, looking over the micrometeoroid report. They’ve been getting worse every day, and while the teleporter field has been able to dismiss every object thus far, the experts still don’t know why the numbers are increasing. Mercer walks in. “It’s happened. It’s finally happened.”

Halan smiles. “You’ve all finally decided to stop celebrating my birthday? What a relief.”

“Actually, that may be true. It might be best if we cancel it for the sake of morale, and optics. What I mean is that the first death has happened.”

Halan falls into a frown. “I see. Report.”

Mercer consults his tablet. “A Kaiora Sambra. She was seventy-three years old, terminal. She refused advanced treatment, and boarded Extremus in order to spend her last few years with her family. She evidently died peacefully in her bed, monitored by hospice, and after some long goodbyes. Word is already spreading. Still, I think you should make an announcement.”

“Of course,” Halan agrees. “Please have Andara write something up for me. I’ll be doing the evening announcements in her stead today. Until then, I would like to speak with the family, if they’re up for it.”

“I’ll ask the counselor to coordinate.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“Sir.”

Halan quietly walks down the hallway, and gently knocks on Dr. Itri Meziani’s door. Though this is the first death on the ship, it’s not like the grief counselor has had no work until now. Many left loved ones behind on Gatewood, and will almost certainly never see them again, which is a form of grief, so she’s had plenty of patients. One of them could be in there with her right now. She opens quickly, and Halan can see that she’s alone.

“Come in, Captain. I think it’s a nice idea for you to meet with the family of the deceased, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

“How do you mean?” Halan asks.

“Have a seat,” she offers. She sits down as well, and smiles with her lips closed. “There are thousands of people on this ship, which is why I’m training—not just a replacement—but extra help. People are going to start dying. You will one day die. Setting this precedent could have dangerous consequences for the safety of this vessel, and all those still living on it. It might seem fine to do it this once, but what happens when the second person dies? Will people expect you to go speak with them as well? What about the third, or fourth?”

“I can count, Doctor.”

“Quite. The point is that my job is to help the survivors through this kind of thing. It is not yours. Trying to take on everyone else’s responsibilities will cause all such responsibilities to suffer, whether you were always obligated to them, or not. Again, seems fine now, but eventually, we’ll start measuring the death rate in months, weeks, days, even hours. I’m not questioning whether you can handle that. You would probably be fine. Throughout your entire twenty-four year shift, you probably wouldn’t notice any scheduling strain. But remember that you’re only the first of nine. You don’t want later captains to feel this burden, do you? They will not be able to handle it.”

Halan laughs, and holds his forehead against his thumb while he scratches his eyebrow with his ring finger. “Quit makin’ sense.”

Dr. Meziani nods. “It’ll be okay. I can report to you that the family is in high spirits. Mrs. Sambra died happy, and it was her time, according to her, and everyone who knew her. She got to see one last beautiful thing before she died. The survivors are not expecting to see you. I didn’t tell them you wanted to, and no one suggested you should.”

He nods back. “Good.”

After a pause, Dr. Meziani goes on, “I don’t have any more patients today, if you would like to talk. Losing someone under your care can be tough. I know you were so far removed from her to not have even heard of her—”

“I’ve heard of her.”

“You have? Before today?”

“I know everyone on this ship.”

“Hm.”

“I had a learning chip implanted in my brain, which uploads the history of the ship. It doesn’t...well, it’s complicated how it works. Every day, it reminds me of everything that it has already taught me. I don’t access the information from the chip when I need it. It just keeps teaching me and teaching me, and I keep memorizing and memorizing, until I get it all. It updates once a year, and teaches me every day.”

“You’ve memorized everything that’s ever happened on this ship ever?” she questions.

“No, just general information, like energy consumption, and average daily distance covered, which shouldn’t change, but it sometimes slows down slightly. Basic personal info about everyone on board is the only thing I know to any level of detail.”

“Interesting. So do you feel Mrs. Sambra as a loss?”

“No, not like that. I never did meet her. Most of the passengers are, umm...” He hesitates to continue.

“Doctor-patient confidentiality, obviously.”

Halan sighs. “They’re almost like not real people. I know all of their names, birthdays, and jobs, but I still don’t know them. Since I have to memorize so many, it’s all just data. I think it’s important, though. When I pass someone, I need to be able to greet them by their name, no matter who they are.”

“That is a fascinating stance.”

“I just consider it part of the job,” Halan explains honestly.

She nods, but says nothing more.

“If I could ask you for one more bit of advice?” he requests.

“Of course.”

“I was hoping to mention the death in the evening announcements. Do you think that will be okay, or would it also lead to an untenable precedent?”

“That should be fine, as long as you frame it as a one-time deal, because it is the first death. I won’t tell you what to say, but make sure the people understand that you’re talking about it because this is only the beginning, and that it’s all part of the circle of life, and we’re all here for a purpose, and everyone knows that they will never see planet Extremus.”

“I think I can do that. In fact, I’m not much of a writer, so I better go tell my speechwriter all of this.”

“Very well.” She stands up, and extends an arm.

Halan looks down, and smiles slightly. “The old way?”

“This is our universe now, let’s get used to it.”

It isn’t how the Ansutahan humans, or their descendants, normally greet each other physically, but it’s how their ancient, ancient ancestors did, and it’s how everyone else in this galaxy does it. Which gesture two people choose often depends on which one of them holds out their hands—or hand, as it were—first. Halan cordially grasps her hand with his own, and they shake up and down. He was born here, but this does not feel right. It’s never become common.

He leaves her office, and heads back to the bridge. He steps on deck to make sure everything is okay. The ship runs itself, as all ships do. Building a ship that actually requires a human crew would be like always expecting a mother to give birth to her child completely alone. It’s possible, and it’s been done, but it’s dangerous, and it’s manifestly irresponsible when you have a choice. The bridge crew, therefore, is primarily responsible for monitoring systems, rather than directly controlling them. In the four years they’ve been operational, they’ve not had to interfere once. Most of the time, they’re watching casually and comfortably, but not carelessly. “Report.”

“All systems optimal,” the Bridgemaster says. It’s her job to ask the rest of the crew individually how things are going, so that when the Captain shows up, he doesn’t have to go through it himself.

“Carry on,” he orders. Then he steps into the Passenger Outreach Room.

“Sir.” The current announcer hangs up the phone quickly, and stands up.

“Did you just hang up on a passenger?” Halan questions.

“It was just a friend, sir. We weren’t discussing anything important. But I, uhh...assure you that I keep both eyes on the incomings. I always switch as soon as someone else calls. I’m very sorry, I shouldn’t have been doing it...”

“It’s fine, Andara. Personal calls are fine. I just came in to talk to you about the speech. Did Rita ask you to write something up for me?”

“Yes, she did.” Andara hands Halan her tablet. “I’ve finished it.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to rewrite it. I spoke with Dr. Meziani, and she thinks I should be careful about how I frame it.”

Andara smirks. “Why don’t you read it first?”

Halan complies, not knowing why it matters, but as he looks over the words, he realizes that she picked up on the same things the grief counselor did. By the time he’s done, he’s decided that only a few things need to be altered. “I wasn’t briefed about this,” he says about one piece of news. “They only told me about the death.”

“I’m briefed about everything. Your Lieutenant’s filter is always preceded by my filter. And you were busy.”

“I didn’t even notice..four years.”

She shrugs. “People weren’t overly concerned about it, I guess. I don’t think it was intentional to delay this long. It’s begun now, though, and it won’t stop.”

“This is great, thank you. But it does need to be reworked a little.”

Paranoid, she takes the tablet back. “How so?”

“You need to do it instead.”

“Sir?”

“It’s your job. And they’re your words.”

“Sir.”

“Same time it always is. For now, I have to go see someone else. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Halan goes out to meet with Omega for one of their weekly check-ins. A couple of hours later, Andara begins her announcements. “Good evening, folks. This is Andara Goodman, coming to you from the Passout Room. The time, as always..is this moment, where we’re all together. Bittersweet news today; as one life ends, another begins. I’m saddened to be the one to inform you that we have experienced our first death. Mrs. Kaiora Sambra left us this morning, surrounded by her family and friends. She came here knowing that she would never see our dreams realized. She came here to help us; to help our descendants. She wanted a real home for the Ansutahan refugees, and her impact on that will live on well beyond her time on the physical plane.

“I’m also happy to announce that we have also experienced our first birth. Last night, Mrs. Sambra’s great granddaughter, Kaiora Leithe opened her eyes to the world, and the first thing she saw was her namesake smiling back at her. The Captain and I believe this to be a perfect example of why we’re doing this. The persistence of life—in a free and open world, of our own making—is vital to the prosperity of our people. Every single one of you has made a conscious decision to board this ship, including the children. There are those who wished to come, but could not, because it would mean leaving behind those who did not wish it. We do not know which choice little Kaiora would have made, but she’s here now, and she will help us flourish either way. Goodbye, Kaiora. And welcome to Extremus...Kaiora.”

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Microstory 1685: Earthbound Before Death

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After several decades of isolation—remaining physically separate from each other using small fusion-powered orbital ships—technology was approaching an inevitable step in Isoverse. When people have the ability to connect themselves to a virtual network to interact with each other, it only makes sense that many will eventually decide that they no longer require bodies in base reality. This alone would not necessarily allow a species to last and thrive. At an early enough point in technological advancement, if everyone did this, the population would stagnate. This is fine, if it’s what they want, but if they want to both do this, and propagate the species, they’re probably going to have to figure out how to make new people in the simulations. Yes, theoretically, enough of them could keep their physical substrates to accomplish this goal, but who do you ask to do that, and how long will it go on before they start feeling like nothing more than a baby-making subclass? The most sustainable model assuming no limitations in natural resources, like power and raw material, is by developing artificial intelligence. This AI will essentially replace the concept of birthing offspring, whether any given entity starts out as a blank slate, as babies once did, or is switched on with full capabilities. Such technology would allow people to upload their consciousnesses into VR permanently, and continue to live however they want there, without worrying about missing out on some basic human imperatives, like creating and raising new life. Still, not everyone in Isoverse was okay with this. Not everyone wanted to be immortal, or to only make AI children. These were the ones who would come to learn the cost of isolation, and consider the possibility that that cost was irreversible for them. When they tried to return to Earth, they found survival to be much harder than it was before.

Those who wanted to return to the surface of the planet actually weren’t returning anywhere. They were all young enough to have been born on the isolation ships, and had never once set foot outside. They were fed controlled food, and breathed filtered air. They had never gotten sick, and therefore, never developed antibodies. Experts attempted to explain this fact to them, but they would not hear of it. The government had never thought to make going back down to Earth illegal. It was only against the law to break isolation while on the ships, which wasn’t that much of a problem, because they were all too small to hold a party, or something, anyway. The best of friends have never met each other in person...ever. The reality of what would happen to their bodies by not exposing themselves to a natural environment was not lost on the Isoversals who first thought to launch themselves into space. They attempted to keep the people inoculated, but this was difficult, since a lot of research simply could not continue on the ships. They probably should have sent researchers back down on a regular basis in order to stay up to date on how to protect against the ongoing evolution of disease, but I imagine they didn’t want the public to think it was a good idea to return permanently. Not a single one of the Earth-bounders managed to survive for long in that environment. They had plenty of resources, and knew how to protect against the elements, but a single cut was pretty much all it took to get an infection that they couldn’t fight against. Had they gone right back up into space, they might have stood a chance, but their medicine reserves ran low faster than they thought, and the experiment was soon over.

Microstory 1684: The Squadron

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The last time I talked about this universe, I kind of made it seem like the war that the natives started against the Ochivari was simple and quick. They lured a ship back to their version of Earth, attacked it, won, and stole it. Of course, the process was a lot more complicated than that, and actually took quite a bit of time. The human confederates that the native Earthans captured were surprisingly resilient to interrogation. This was because they were conditioned not to fear pain, but to enjoy it. It was more than this, though. These ones were young enough to have received advanced medical treatments, which actually scrambled the pain and pleasure centers of their brains. The natives didn’t physically torture them, but they did try to make their stay uncomfortable, by keeping them in small cells, and forcing them to sleep on stone floors. They didn’t starve them, but they fed them very little, and they played loud music while they were trying to sleep. The confederates enjoyed much of this, though, so they realized they had to come up with a new strategy. They put each of them in deeper isolation. Soundproof rooms with no sources of light, and no human interaction, was worse than torture for these people, because it was boring. Still, they didn’t crack immediately. It took months for them to beg to be shown even one ray of sunshine. At this point, they would tell the natives anything they wanted to know. All this time, the world’s various governments were holding a sort of competition-recruitment program. Each nation was expected to supply one of the top experts in their fields. Some countries gave their best engineers, while others their best fighters, etc. They then trained what they called The Squadron to work together, and prepare to fight their common enemy.

By the time the Squadron was ready, so were the confederates, to give up the information necessary to start this war. They contacted the Ochivari for rescue, requesting a whole ship to come for them, but when that ship came, the joint military was waiting for them. Now, this wasn’t the Squadron. Their job had not yet begun. Regular soldiers could handle this mission. All they needed to do first was to get that vessel, and figure out how to use it. They did their best to not damage the ship in the battle, and not kill too many of the Ochivari, but losses were suffered on both sides. To open a portal massive enough to accommodate the ship, a certain number of Ochivari had to be sacrificed, but when the homefront battle was over, that number was not high enough. They would have to breed more. But would such offspring not be innocent? This ethics debate only further delayed the realization of their hopes to start a war. It delayed it for years, all the while, the Squadron, and the rest of the military servicemen across the world, continued to train. They never knew whether the Ochivari would eventually send another ship to investigate what went wrong with the first one. Time travel was confusing. No more Ochivari came through, and by the time they figured out the ethics, the new Ochivari were all considered adults. Not all of them were bad, but enough of them were. These were sacrificed so that the Squadron could go off and attack the Ochivari staging area in Efilverse. The good ones, meanwhile, stayed behind, and were mostly successfully integrated into Earthan society, where they learned to value life, and reject their ancestors’ crusade against nearly all civilization. The Squadron didn’t win, but they never expected to. All they hoped to do was inspire a revolution. They did.

Microstory 1683: Death Introduced

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The battle was over, and the majority of the crew of The Crossover left Providenciaverse to get back to their mission of cataloging the bulkverse. Only 148 Maramon were left to settle on the planet, one of which was the original captain, who was mostly there out of a sense of obligation to them. Still, he did not complain. He continued to lead his people, so that they could thrive on their new world. His last order as captain was to erase all navigational data, so that no one else could return to this place. He didn’t want the leadership back on Ansutah to decide that the deserters needed to be punished in some way. If they ever, ever figured out where Providence was, then they would be able to arrive for extraction immediately. Hell, they could even come at some point earlier in the timeline if they wanted. So the settlers didn’t hold their breaths for long. After a week of no retaliation, they were confident that their location would forever remain a secret. They began to get to work, building infrastructure to make their lives easier, and forming a radical propagation plan to increase their numbers as quickly as possible. In ancient times on Ansutah, Maramon felt compelled to have many children. This powerful instinct had to be quelled once the people realized that their universe was not vast enough to accommodate infinite expansion. Such population control was no longer necessary—not here—and they had no intention of taking that for granted. Despite being left there with no advanced technology, the settlers developed fairly rapidly. However, their choice to stay was not without cost. They were born and bred to be immortal, but those rules did not apply in every universe. Here, they would age. Here, they would die.

It was a pretty hard thing to digest, the fact that a universe was capable of not only having different proper physics, but that it could somehow transform a lifeform on an organic level. Their ancient texts spoke of death in the early days of their homeworld, but for most of history, the idea was more academic. Only recently was it reintroduced to them in full force when they discovered the limited scope of their universe. Even then, they remained ageless, and really only died due to the resource wars. It broke their hearts to learn that this was just the way they would live from now on, just like the way humans evolved naturally. And if they were no better than humans, as they had been taught their entire lives, what other lies did they believe about life, the bulkverse, and everything? Fortunately, their new state of being did not cause them to resort to something irreversible, like war. Not long afterwards, the original settlers all died out anyway, leaving their descendants to move on without them, having never experienced the immortal lifestyles of their forebears. They continued to progress, just as any moderately peaceful civilization will, while always keeping the environment in mind. The settlers had dedicated themselves to not teaching their young ones too much about where they ultimately came from. If the species was going to survive, they would have to think that the way things were was the way things had always been. Some stories held on better than others, but overall, the society that formed over the centuries was normal. Some people were bad, some were good. They tried to do the right thing, and made mistakes. They explored the solar system, and sent probes and colonists to the nearest stars in the neighborhood. Their Maramon brethren never did come back, for any reason, but the Ochivari did come, and that’s when things got interesting.

Microstory 1682: Starcatcher

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After the wars began—precipitated by a debate about what to do with the people on this version of Earth who were already infected with the sterility virus—a group of scientists figured that there was no way out of this. Now that the virus existed on their planet, there was probably nothing stopping it from getting out eventually. They could bomb the quarantined nation, and they could send people to bunkers, but their fate would eventually catch up to them. They decided that the only way to save the human race was to take it off world. But they weren’t trying to save themselves. They did not have the resources or technology necessary to send a significant enough population to the stars. They would only be able to send frozen embryos, and one individual young adult in stasis. There was also no guarantee that revival from stasis would work, because even though they had tested the technology in the short-term, they didn’t know if it would be able to last for what was potentially thousands of years. There were no sufficiently habitable planets within a reasonable distance from Earth. Neighboring worlds were always too hot, or too massive, or not massive enough. A human outpost could probably survive on these worlds, but again, this was a long-term project, and the people who would grow up in the colony were not liable to be able to advance fast enough in a harsh environment. Thanks to a boost from the solar sails, the ship was capable of traveling at about ten percent the speed of light. It would slow down over time as it hunted for the right world to settle on. Since they didn’t know exactly where the ship would be going, they called it Starcatcher. It was designed to use solar power to jump from the current star to the next, and just keep doing that until the right orbiting body presented itself.

There was no way to know whether their plan would work, let alone how long it might take. They just had to send off the embryos, and hope that Starcatcher found a new home eventually. As aforementioned, this could take thousands of years. They could program the AI to gather the requisite data for every planet they encountered, synthesize it well, and extrapolate a survivability factor, but so many things could go wrong. Again, the scientists would never know how the mission turned out. Even if Starcatcher did manage to find a world just next door, the trip was still going to take decades, and none of them was young enough to still be around. This was all about faith. They were right to have it. Fifty-six thousand years later, Starcatcher found a decent planet that was about 5500 light years away. It had a nitrogen-rich environment with healthy levels of oxygen, 85% water on the surface, and fairly reliable climate patterns. Things went pretty smoothly, but not perfectly. The Governess, as she was called, woke up from stasis, obviously still alive, but she wasn’t intact. She had trouble remembering who she was, and what she was meant to do. Fortunately, she didn’t try to mess with any of the embryos until her mind was better. It just took some time for her to acclimate to the future, and remember her purpose here. You may be wondering how it’s possible for a single woman to raise the 147 babies needed for the initial population. She didn’t start with that number. Experts had developed a complicated development plan for her, which involved starting out slowly, having the older children help raise the younger ones, and patiently doing this over the course of three decades. Humanity was able to restart here, and they never had to worry about the Ochivari again.

Microstory 1681: Dark Studies

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An Efilversal survivor named Nils Nilson was the one who ultimately taught the Ochivari how to start their antinatalistic movement. It was he who believed most passionately that the only way to protect life was to destroy it. He saw no irony in this. “To prevent suffering, one must cut the threads of existence before they get too long,” he was once heard saying. He was insane. But he was an excellent orator, and a very moving teacher. In exchange for his words, he asked the Ochivari to transport him to a new universe. He didn’t specifically say that he was going to continue to spread his message, but that was definitely what he wanted to do. His people were becoming extinct, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. If he wanted to mould a civilization into his image, he had to find one still with a significant population. That was what he really wanted, to turn people to his side, and convince them to do whatever he wanted. It probably didn’t matter much what he convinced them to do, as long as he would go down in history as the most influential voice of all time. It worked. The world he ended up on was falling apart. Wars and unregulated technology were threatening everyone in some way. There weren’t really even rich people who could protect themselves against the consequences. It was just a huge mess, and from just about everyone’s perspective, a lost cause. Nilson saw potential in them, though. If he could condition them to despise technology beyond a certain level, he could have his notoriety. He got to work. He used his charm to gather a few followers, and with the power they gave him, he was able to gather more. And more, and more, and then after that...more. It was never enough.

No one could stop him, even if they wanted to. Any government still standing at this point in time was wholly ineffectual, so there was no one willing and able to oppose him. Anyone who had some kind of principled stance against his ideas didn’t give him much thought. The reality was that he was not only the loudest voice in the crowd, but one of few who had any interest in using that voice to enact change. With little resistance, he banished sufficiently advanced technology, and killed anyone who did actively operate against him. Most people were too scared of him to argue. Yes, he was violent, but he was ending wars, because people no longer had the suitable resources to try, and they were all coming together under one banner anyway. Eventually, no one was left to fight, because they were either dead, or on the same side. Now, the Ochivari promised never to enter the universe where they left Nilson to start a brand new life. They had every intention of keeping that promise. Unfortunately for all of us, that kind of attention to detail can get lost when you’re dealing with bulk travel. Nilson died not too long after he arrived, which only augmented the mystique surrounding his philosophy. When the Ochivari finally did arrive, it was nearly thirty years later, and no one on the mission who made the original promise to him was even still alive. Despite their ability to travel through time, a generation for the Ochivari goes by quickly. Each time an individual tries to make a jump, there’s about a fifty percent chance that they’ll die, and past successes hardly increase those odds. Anyway, since their outlook was transformed, these humans were happy to welcome the Ochivari to their home, and were more than willing to join their cause. The loop is complete. The Ochivari gave Nilson to these people, which made them the confederates they would end up becoming to the Ochivari.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 31, 1608

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“This was not a win for you,” The Cleanser argued. “My girl was the one who actually rescued all the people from the boat.”

“My team provided the cuff necessary to complete the task,” The Warrior volleyed. “Your girl would have failed without us.”

“Uh, without us,” Mateo jumped in.

The Cleanser and the Warrior looked at him like he was even more of an idiot than he was.

Mateo held firm. “More specifically, without Leona.”

“Just so I can understand this,” Leona began, “are you two fighting over who manages to save the most people?”

Zeferino laughed. “Yeah, let’s go with that.”

“Ha, yeah,” Anatol agreed.

“Anyway, we agreed no mixing,” Zeferino said. “We’re supposed to be operating within different timelines.”

Anatol shrugged. “I’m still getting a handle on my new powers. I honestly didn’t realize this wasn’t a different reality. You normally do that for us.”

Zeferino seemed content with this response. “Then we’ll call it a draw, and move on to the next one.”

“Okay, but I don’t like your chances with this one,” Anatol said. “She seems...green.”

“I am green,” the young woman agreed.

“Well...” Zeferino began.

“You wanna split the teams again,” Anatol figured.

“I’ve already worked with some of these people,” Zeferino said. “It could be fun.”

“So, what? Three against three?”

“There are seven of them.”

Anatol shrugged again. “I don’t really know why this Olimpia person is here, or what she contributes.”

Olimpia didn’t seem bothered by this remark, and no one wanted to come to her defense, because all it would do was lead her to being just as much of a pawn in their chess game as the rest of them.

Leona cleared her throat pointedly. “There aren’t seven of us, there are six.” There had been this unspoken agreement that everyone would pretty much stay quiet while the gods fought with each other, but Leona hated bad math, and she couldn’t let it go.

Anatol looked around. “Wait, where is Dalton?”

“I didn’t use him for this one,” Zeferino explained. “These two haven’t met yet.”

“What are we doing with the numbers?” Anatol questioned. “Are you bringing him on, or what?”

“Let’s do boy versus girls,” Zeferino suggested. “I have a fourth man to bring on who could be on your team, and that will make them even.”

“Hold on,” Anatol said. “I have to take the guys? They’re all morons.”

“D.B. isn’t that dumb, Anatol.”

“You have Leona and Angela. That’s crazy.”

“You have the primary cuff,” Zeferino returned.

“Well, it doesn’t work without it, does it?”

“You do have two to spare, according to my maths.” Zeferino looked directly at Leona.

“I do. But you still have the dream team,” Anatol reasoned.

“I’ll tell you what, your team can have any powers you want them to have. My team can have none.”

They both thought over the proposal, to make sure there weren’t any issues on either side.

“Deal,” Anatol said.

“Deal,” Zeferino echoed.

They both looked over at the group. No one was preparing to argue or complain. Mateo was smiling.

“What are you thinking?” Anatol asked. “You believe this will give you some kind of advantage?”

Mateo’s smile widened. “Not as of yet, but it will present itself. That’s a major lesson that I don’t think I realized I learned until now. You see, you are so powerful that you can think ten steps ahead. But you always miss one thing.” He used hand gestures for emphasis.

“What’s that?” Zeferino asked.

“You always miss at least one forking path. We’ll play your game. We’ll let you break us up, and compete against each other across two timelines. While we’re doing that...we’ll wait. Despite your immortality, you both possess an obscene amount of impatience, and regularly demonstrate a high capacity for boredom. I give this...nine missions before it all falls apart.”

Zeferino and Anatol smirked, and simultaneously said, “deal.”

Leona, Angela, Olimpia, and newcomer Siria went their own way with the Cleanser. Mateo and Jeremy, meanwhile, went off with the Warrior to meet back up with Dalton, as well as meet some guy named D.B. Mateo was surprised to find out that they were talking about the D.B. Cooper; famed plane hijacker and folk hero. He reportedly made off with $200,000 in 1971, though according to Anatol’s introduction, this was just a ploy to get himself to altitude. His time traveling ability only worked when he was falling from a great height, and he was actually just trying to get home. The Cleanser apparently screwed with his attempt, and forced him so far in the past that this goal would be impossible. He recently spent some time working with Mateo’s once-mother, Laura Gardner, and her partner, Samwise Bellamy. Even though he was still centuries in the past, being in 1608 was sort of a break from that harsh life. There was a reason that most travelers didn’t spend too much time before the 20th century. Toilet paper was a pretty big factor.

“All right,” Anatol began. They were in some kind of salon, or meeting room for rich people, who didn’t want to spend too much time with the less fortunate. Everything was made of leather, or wood. “Now that everyone knows each other, it’s time to begin. Today is May 31, 1608. You are in Timeline One. The ladies are in Timeline Alpha. Most of the time, these timelines won’t be running concurrently, but access to The Parallel has given me the ability to keep one from collapsing under the weight of the other. For now. You’re in a competition. Not only do you have to complete the missions we set before you, but you have to do them better than the other team. Whichever team ends up with the best timeline will get to live on in their timeline. The losing team, on the other hand, will remain in the defunct timeline until such time that it finally does collapse.”

“Wait, what?” Jeremy questioned. “You didn’t say anything about that before.

“Oh, it didn’t need to be said,” Anatol joked. “Zef and I knew that was part of the deal all along. Don’t worry, we’ll be all right. Only the four regular people on the team will die. He and I will get out and survive no matter what.”

“Yeah, we were worried about that,” Mateo said sarcastically. “I guess it’s okay now that we know you two will live.”

“Quite.” Anatol was just going to pretend they were all being genuine. He handed Jeremy a slip of paper. “This first one is pretty straight-forward, just to dip your toes in. They’ll get more complicated as you level up. That is the address of a young boy. Rescue him from his abusive uncle, who ultimately accidentally kills him today. I’m not even gonna give you access to my time power library, because I don’t think you’ll need it. In fact, I’ll be suppressing both Dalton and D.B.’s powers, in case you get any ideas about escape.”

“Thank you,” Mateo said. “You can go now.”

“Very well.” Anatol disappeared.

The four of them looked around at each other. Then they all sat down. “Obviously we can’t do this,” Jeremy decided.

“No, we can’t let them die,” Mateo concurred.

“I don’t understand how this works,” Dalton noted. “When it kills us, will we go to the afterlife simulation?”

“I don’t think so,” Mateo guessed. “The simulation is in whatever timeline wins out over the others. That is, it’s not like it exists outside of time. Every version of it that exists in a collapsing timeline should collapse along with it. Otherwise, everyone would have infinite alternate versions of themselves in there, and I don’t think that’s how it works. We won’t even really die, it will be more like we never existed.”

D.B. nodded understandingly. “What is the afterlife simulation?”

They explained it to him.

“So, if we don’t save the boy,” D.B. said afterwards, “we just have to hope your friends on the other team do? Our version of the boy will be erased from history regardless, but one of them will live on?”

“That’s the way I understand it,” Mateo said.

“I feel a little weird letting him die even though it won’t matter,” D.B. lamented with airquotes.

Mateo nodded. “He said you’re a time traveler. You’re not a time looper, though, right? You create an alternate reality every time.”

“Yes, I see where you’re going with this. I’ve killed an infinite number of people already. I suppose it’s just that I’ve never been asked to save a particular person. My God...” He reached over, and took the paper from Jeremy. “We know his name.”

“The answer is..don’t think about it,” Mateo instructed. “He will be saved. There’s no way Leona doesn’t figure out how to do it in the best way possible.”

Meanwhile, in Timeline Alpha, the girls were sitting around in their own salon, but it looked more island tropical than stuffy cigar club. They were getting to know their new member. Siria was like Angela in that she didn’t have powers, but she knew about it all. She worked at a special place that was simply called The Time Clinic. People with time illnesses were sent there to be treated, or just made comfortable. Her job was primarily that second part, as she didn’t have any medical training, but she also seemed to have a knack for coming up with permanent solutions that helped the patients lead semi-normal lives. Many of the illnesses were the result of the Cleanser’s petty retaliations, which was how she ended up on his shitlist.

They too had decided that they couldn’t let their friends die in the other timeline just to save themselves. Unlike them, though, they realized that the guys would come to the same conclusion, and that the boy would not be saved in any timeline. They sat there for about an hour before someone knocked on the door. When Leona opened it, she didn’t find a person, but there was a movie theatre on the other side. That was about three hundred years too early, so they all walked through, and took their seats. The guys came in from the other entrance shortly thereafter, and found their own seats.

“Did you win?” Mateo asked his wife.

“I didn’t play.”

“Me neither. I was hoping you would. Were you hoping we would?”

Leona shook her head. “No.” She didn’t elaborate.

The house lights dimmed, and the curtains moved. An image came on screen. It turned out to be a trailer for a movie that featured most of the people that were in the auditorium right now. It was about a team of time travelers who very specifically found themselves on a planet a hundred and eight light years from Earth. They had a ship that could only take them a light year at a time, so they had to have adventures with crazy alien cultures in the meantime. It sounded more like a TV show, but either way, the audience couldn’t tell if this was prescience, or a joke. Once it was over, the feature presentation began, but it was shorter than the trailer they just watched. A drunk man was beating a young boy in his room, and ended up taking it too far with a lamp. This was the boy they were meant to save, but didn’t. These were the consequences.

The house lights came back up, and Anatol and Zeferino climbed on stage. “As part of this sneak preview,” the former began, “my co-director and I are hosting a Q and A session. Ask us any questions about...oh, I dunno, why the hell you should agree to participate, and what’s going to happen if you don’t, and...how many innocent people are gonna die?”

They waited. “No?” Zeferino asked. “No one wants to know those things?”

Leona stood up. “I don’t know what you thought you would accomplish by forcing us to become complicit in each other’s deaths, but good people don’t do that. We don’t choose to save ourselves. And if you can’t understand that, you shouldn’t be in charge of an outhouse, let alone all of reality. We’ve all asked you to help us save lives, and in exchange for that, you’re asking for us to kill each other. That’s not a thing, that’s not a thing! You can play it straight, or you can watch us sit here and do nothing. You have the power here, so either do the right thing, or perpetuate this macho psycho-killer bullshit reputation that you’re apparently so afraid to lose, you can’t see that all of your sadistic games are completely goddamn pointless!”

The two of them stood on stage for a moment. Then Anatol reached over, and placed his hand on Zeferino’s shoulder. They disappeared for a second, then returned in different positions. “All right, no games,” Anatol agreed. “One team, one timeline. Save the people we tell you, don’t ask questions, and we’ll let you know what the point of it all is in the end. This is our final offer. Either take it, or we’ll make you wish only half of you had been erased from existence.”

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