Microstory 1694: Constant in Life

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If looking at a normal universe from the outside—as I do on the regular—is like staring at a still painting, looking at Fickleverse is like trying to spot one particular mosaic tile that’s glued to a powered up chainsaw...in a room full of powered up mosaic chainsaws. I have an idea of how it works, but it’s incredibly difficult to make out the details. It’s too chaotic, too unpredictable, too messy. So I can’t give you many specific stories that took place on this world. I can’t even be a hundred percent sure whether the only populated planet is an alternate version of Earth, or some other place. I had to work really hard to find one interesting story by digging deep, and trying to find the most linear of proverbial needles in the haystack. Like I said in an earlier installment, people in Fickleverse know that they’re in Fickleverse. They recognize that time moves in more than one direction, and events almost never add up to an inevitable conclusion. I found one woman who kind of seemed immune to the sort of temporal changes that most people experienced here. Her name was Corain Flint, and she lived a pretty standard life; or at least, as standard as it could get. She was born in one year, and died 74 years later. In that time, technology in her immediate area advanced 74 years, and she aged along with it. Her parents remained the same throughout her entire life, until they passed when she was in her forties. She never had any siblings, but she had two children with a consistent husband. They all stayed as they were until she was gone. Like everyone else, she too could see that time was fickle, but she was more perturbed by it than most, because she felt more like an observer, and less like a participant.

It was tough for her, trying to convince the people around her that some things didn’t make any sense. Her neighbor’s first name kept changing, and while everyone else automatically adapted to each transition, she could never keep it straight. She had to actually ask what his new name was, and when she did, he would be confused and upset, because to him, it seemed obvious. Yes, his name changed, but how could she possibly not know that that was the next logical step in his nominal development? Most films played in the right temporal direction, but not all, and though everyone else was able to comprehend a story out of the backwards dialog, she didn’t have any idea what the hell was even going on. They usually wouldn’t give her her money back. Corain eventually gave up, and realized that she was pretty much alone in her feelings about time and reality. She just tried to live her life in the best way possible, and ignore the discrepancies unless impossible. Several years later, she started thinking about it again when a friend she had known her entire life simply disappeared. No one else who knew this person believed Corain when she claimed he was real. They had no recollection of this man, and no reason to suspect that something had been done to their memories. Nonlinear time was one thing, but a whole person spontaneously being completely removed from the timestream was unfair, and the last straw. She decided to go against her friends’ advice, and start a support group for others like her. She didn’t know if such people even existed, but she had to try. There had to be someone out there who could see where she was coming from. There was. There were many someones. As it turned out hundreds of people around the world also experienced time more like her. A chapter sprang up in every major city, and no one else ever understood what their deal was.

Microstory 1693: Dreamscreamer

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After fascism finally fell to war that ended the world, only a few hundred people were left standing. Most of them were upgraded to become immortal, but many chose to stay completely normal, and then die in the next few decades. A couple of centuries later, nearly everyone else followed them to this end. They tried to restart the population from here, but their way of increasing their lifespans provided them with about a fifty percent chance of conceiving healthy offspring. The species experienced diminishing returns, and those who failed later gave up on life altogether. Eventually, only one man was alive; a child of one of the lucky couples. His name was Dreamscreamer Bryant, presumably because no one was left to make fun of him for it. It’s unclear what exactly happened with his parents. Perhaps even having a kid wasn’t enough to pull them back from the despair they felt in this empty world. After he buried his parents, Dreamscreamer went out to look for others. He figured it was possible that some branch of humanity managed to hang on somewhere. He went to every single old city in the whole world, and he scanned the countryside for signs of new life, but he found nothing. He was pretty much finished just under a hundred years later, so he chose to quit, and move on with his life. He spent the next few years just hanging out, and enjoying the peace and quiet, but that grew to be incredibly boring, so he decided to make it his mission to clean up the world. He started deploying robots to tear everything down, all over the planet. He went back to those cities, dropping off the automated deconstruction starter kits. Then he left for the next location. Around and around he went, releasing the ADSkits, providing maintenance to the failed machines, and even continuing to look for friends. Some of the raw materials were recycled, but most of it was launched into the sun.

Nearly a whole millennium passed before the project was complete. Dreamscreamer launched a passenger ship, and entered orbit. From here, he looked down at the clean planet, and admired his work. You would have to be pretty desperate to come here and find any evidence that a species capable of modifying its own environment on a massive scale had once called it home. It was then that the Ochivari arrived to find out whether this version of Earth was a candidate for the sterility virus. When they found Dreamscreamer in his little orbiting home, they guessed that he had been responsible for the destruction of the species, and they congratulated him on the effort. He was baffled by this. He knew what it was like to be alone, and could not imagine doing anything to jeopardize that if he had been given the opportunity to be part of a community. Still, he understood that there were other worlds in other universes; some even alternate versions of his home planet. He still wanted that community, and apparently, the only way he was going to find it was if he played along. He had to pretend to be a radical antinatalist, just like them, in order to convince them to take him somewhere else. Of course, he could easily see the flaw in his plan. There was a strong chance that they were just going to take him to a world that they would choose to destroy anyway, and that wasn’t what he wanted. It would defeat the whole purpose, and it was intrinsically terrible. Still, he maintained the act. He let them take him to a new home, and then he personally killed all of the survivors. He then dropped their ship onto the planet, and tried to warn the natives of what might come if they weren’t careful.

Microstory 1692: No Signal

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After the Besananta left its home universe in an attempt to explore the bulkverse, those left behind eagerly awaited their return. They waited, and they waited, and still no one came back. They tried looking for data that the ship might have sent, or that a probe picked up at some point, but there was nothing conclusive. As far as they could tell, the mission was a huge failure. There were some theories, like that travel outside of a brane was possible, but back into one was impossible. However, signals could clearly penetrate the membrane, so that didn’t seem too likely. Perhaps the destination universe was so amazing that the crew decided to stay there, and forget about everyone else. That seemed strange too. They might have encountered some terrible threat that forced them to cut off all contact with Infiniverse. That wasn’t entirely unbelievable, but in the end, these theories didn’t really matter. They had no way of knowing how the mission turned out. Did they make it to another universe? If so, why did they not return? The chances were too high that the ship didn't survive, for one reason or another. They decided to stay, and never try again. Answering those questions weren’t going to do them any good. Just because they could tell that other universes existed, didn’t mean that they were any good, or worth traveling to. They didn’t find any other life here, so they were going to have to make do. That was what they did. They chose to expand back out into the stars, so that before too long, aliens did exist, because a civilization that started from a colony a thousand years ago was no more similar to them than one that had evolved on its own. Here they remained for the rest of the age of their universe. Some cultures died out, while others thrived, while more rose up. This was the way things were supposed to be. People weren’t really ever meant to explore the bulkverse at all. It wasn’t designed for travel, which is why it was such a fluke. The Infiniversals just had to recognize this truth.

Microstory 1691: In All Things

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Biological optimization was always sort of in the back of the minds of the people who lived in Moderaverse, even before they earned their name. I couldn’t explain why it is that this version of Earth was so different than others. I couldn’t explain why such a thing ever happens at all. What changes are made that cause this divergence, and why? I suppose that it doesn’t truly require an explanation. It just is. The Moderaversals just reached what they would call technological completeness, and left it at that. That’s what it really comes down to. Most cultures develop a high level of curiosity, and nothing can stop them from pursuing knowledge. They might be held back by religious hangups, or they may be limited by other conditions, such as pandemics, or extreme gravity. But the strongest of them will survive because they had a drive to be better, more advanced. This, I suppose, is an extension of the evolutionary concept of the survival of the fittest. The reason humans always become the dominant species of their world is not because they decide to be better at life. They’re better at life because those fit to survive are the only ones who will survive. Nothing evolves to be subservient, weak, and averse to survival. Such traits always disappear, because anytime they show up in an individual, that individual will struggle to persist, and pass on their genes. So once the species evolves enough to have intelligence, they’ll start using that intelligence to improve themselves. Then it will just keep going until there is nothing left to learn, if such a state is even possible. The Moderaversals, on the other hand, experience no such desire. They have determined that life itself is good enough, and as long as it never ends, they shouldn’t worry about advancing beyond it. They don’t need faster ships, or cooler tech. All they care about is relaxing, exerting as little effort as possible, and living in harmony with nature.

It was a long road to reach this point. As I said, the dream was always there, but it wasn’t always practical. Everyone starts somewhere. No one quite remembers how exactly the movement got started, or who started it, but it was kind of like a nonreligious religion. I guess it was more of a philosophical way of life, where people started to reject modern technology in favor of simpler lives, but still with less work. A true simple life would involve waking up while it was still dark, and working until it became dark again, but they certainly didn’t want that. That wasn’t chill. They got rid of most of their worldly possessions, which included a lot of art. That was one interesting side effect of the movement. Art does not require technology, but the enjoyment of it often does. For them, it meant no more movies, no more television. If they wanted to see a play, admire a painting, or hear music, they would have to go witness it in person. Over the decades, even as technology progressed, the movement grew. The great thing about it was that it was adjustable. Some people eschewed all electricity, while others just tried to unplug more often. Eventually, there wasn’t as much demand for certain things as there are in other universes. Most people didn’t care about looking for life on other planets. They didn’t care about cooling down supercomputers, or building extremely realistic virtual simulations. They just didn’t ever want to die. So that was the kind of science that students started getting into, and the more that started the help them, the less they relied on other things; from the hyperfast pocket devices, to even just clothes. When you can regulate your own body temperature, clothing seems a lot less necessary. There wasn’t really any sort of opposition to this movement. No one decided to move off, and do their own thing somewhere else. They all just fell in line, and got with the program, until doing anything all day other than pretty much nothing was essentially unthinkable to nearly everyone.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 31, 1838

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Leona checked her watch when they woke up in a completely different room the morning after the doctor mission. It was now May 31, 1838; the largest jump yet. Their cuffs weren’t giving them directions. In fact, they weren’t on at all. Until now, they weren’t even aware they could be turned off. Either they were completely dead, or Anatol figured out how to use them, and decided they weren’t necessary this time. “I actually don’t know how they’re powered,” Leona admitted. “I’ve never been allowed to open them up and examine them. Yes, they could be dead.”

“Well, no one here has powers, except for Olimpia sort of,” Mateo pointed out. “We don’t need them anymore regardless. We just have to do what The Warrior asks of us.”

“What is it he’ll be asking of us?” Jeremy asked. He was a little down, even though they still had no proof that the cuffs weren’t coming back.

Just then, they heard a scream in the other room. It didn’t sound like someone was being attacked, or that they had just bumped into the coffee table. It was more like they were in mourning, or something. The six of them rushed through the door to find a woman on a bed, crying out in pain. She was very pregnant, and almost certainly in labor.”

“Does anybody know how to deliver a baby?” Mateo asked.

The woman shouted at them in a foreign language. Or rather, the native language.

“Does anybody speak German?” Olimpia asked.

Angela stepped forward. “Wir sind hier um zu helfen.”

“Ich bin allein,” the mother replied.

“Nicht länger,” Angela said. She turned to the group. “Jeremy, find clean towels. Olimpia, give me that bottle of hand sanitizer from your bag. We need all of it. Siria, find me some liquor, in case all of it isn’t enough. Leona, fresh water. Mateo, how strong is your arm?”

“You need me to lift something?” Mateo questioned.

Angela took his arm, and placed it in the mother’s grip. “Halte ihn fest.”

Mateo winced as the mother beared down. “I’m okay, I’m okay. Okay.” He placed his other hand upon hers, both to comfort her more, but also hoping she didn’t feel the need to break his radius.

“Ich muss jetzt deinen Bauch berühren.”

The mother just nodded, so Angela reached under her outfit, and started feeling around. Then she started to press harder. “It’s breeched.”

“What are you going to do about that?” Mateo asked, still trying to figure out how to survive this death grip.

“Turn it.” She looked up at Jeremy when he returned with the towels. “Hold all eight fingers right here,” she ordered. “No. Harder. Harder! You’re not going to puncture her stomach with your fingernails. Hold until I say otherwise.” Angela got to work, pressing on the mother’s belly as Jeremy held in place. It looked like she was giving a deep tissue massage, and she was feeling it more than she was looking at it. Before too long, she shook her head. “It’s not working.”

“What else can we do?” Jeremy asked.

“Let go. Give me your knife.”

“Are you serious?” he questioned

“Give me your goddamn knife right now!” She faced the mother. “Es ist okay. Du bist okay. Okay?”

“Okay,” the mother confirmed.

Siria returned. “I found some alcohol.”

“Give it to her,” Angela ordered. “Trink es. Trinken Sie alles.”

The mother was too scared.

“Trinken.”

Still scared, the mother took the bottle, and downed it pretty much in one gulp.

Once the bottle was empty, Angela took the fairly large pocket knife from Jeremy. She drenched it in the hand sanitizer, then rubbed some on mother’s belly. “Ich muss das tun.”

The mother nodded, understanding what had to be done.

Angela cut into the belly, less carefully than Mateo would have thought. She didn’t need it to look pretty, or leave a clean scar, or maybe she just didn’t have enough training. She had Jeremy pull the flesh away as she continued to cut. There were a lot of layers to get through before she reached all the way into the uterus. Mateo could see a head peeking through. By this point, Leona was back. She sat by the mother’s head, and rubbed her hair affectionately. Olimpia and Siria stood by, ready to receive. Angela reached in and pulled the baby out, again less gracefully than Mateo would assume. She just got it out of its mother, and placed it into the towel in Siria’s arms.

While Siria and Olimpia were washing the newborn off, and making sure it was crying and breathing, Angela reached in and retrieved the placenta. Leona had apparently considered there might be a c-section, so she was ready with a needle and thread. Angela sewed the mother up like a seasoned surgeon. The baby’s cries filled the room. It had all apparently gone well. They spent the next few hours caring for the two of them, retrieving whatever she needed; water, food, more towels. Mother was able to hold baby most of the time, and even managed to nurse him a little.

“Now, no one had babies in the afterlife simulation, right?” Mateo asked.

“Never. It wasn’t part of the programming. Any baby born inside the sim would be artificial intelligence, and difficult for many to accept as real. There were plenty of medical training programs, though. I wouldn’t be able to perform open heart surgery, but I can do some basic things like this.”

“No one would call that basic,” Leona contended. “It’s a good thing you were here. I learn something new about you every day.”

“I’m sure the Warrior knows my history and education.”

“I’m not certain he does,” Leona said. “We haven’t come across many people who know about the afterlife sim. I think it’s a pretty good secret, and anyway, it would be difficult for him to gather information about things that actually happened to people in there. Or, I suppose, will happen.”

On the other side of the room, Siria was trying to communicate with the mother. “The name. What will you name him?” She pointed to her own chest. “Siria. Siria Webb.” She pointed to Olimpia with her whole palm. “Olimpia Sangster.” Now she pointed to the baby.

“Oh,” it sounded like the mother said. “Anatol.”

The room stopped what they were doing, and turned towards her. “What was that?”

“Anatol,” she repeated. “Es ist sein Großvater.”

“He’s named after his grandfather,” Angela translated.

“Anatol Klugman?” Jeremy asked.

“Ja.”

The grown up Anatol came into the room and regarded his mother, and his Past!Self. Now it all made sense. The Warrior brought them here to assist with his own birth. But obviously it went fine in his own reality, or he wouldn’t exist to ask them for help at all. This didn’t feel like a predestined time loop. So that was what made it actually not make sense at all. It made no sense when considering time travel rules. This version of Anatol existed. And no matter what they did, this version of him would continue to exist. Any other version in any other timeline would have to be assimilated either way, so who cares? Was it just his mother? Did he just want his mom to have the baby, regardless of what that meant about his own identity? “It’s time to go, you six,” he said. “Now,” he added when they didn’t move. “She’ll be fine.”

They stood, and started to leave. “Warten,” the mother said. “Herzlichen Dank!”

“Gern geschehen,” Angela said for the group.

“Let’s go,” Adult!Anatol said. Baby!Anatol, on the other hand, said nothing.

Once they were in the other room, and out of sight, he transported them all to the middle of the woods. “What?” he asked defensively.

“We didn’t say anything,” Leona promised.

“I’m not just being self-serving!”

“You don’t have to explain to us,” Mateo said honestly.

“You’re right, I don’t, so shut the hell up! And if you ever tell anyone about this, you’re literally dead. And I mean, like, real dead. All I would have to do is take you to dinosaur times, before Pryce’s computer program exists.”

“Anatol, it’s fine,” Mateo tried to assure him. “I don’t know if you’re just too used to dealing with bad people, but we’re decent. We’re not going to put your Baby!Self in danger. Do you really think that’s the kind of thing any of us would do?”

Anatol sighed. “I suppose not. But you’re also a little unpredictable, especially when dealing with someone who you would consider an antagonist.”

“No one here is gonna hurt a baby,” Mateo continued. “The Superintendent once sent me out to kill a bunch of Adolf Hitlers from other universes. They were all at different ages, and one time, he was an infant in 1890. I refused, and I’ve always kind of thought it was a test. Anyway, I still think there’s good in you, and I’m not giving up on finding it.”

“You’re right, there is good in me, and I use it every day, because what I do is good, and it is just, and I don’t regret a choice.”

“Well...that’s what I’m trying to change. Good people have regrets. If you don’t, you’re not doing it right. You either can’t recognize your mistakes, or you’re not taking any risks. I know you take plenty of risks, so...”

“I’m done with this conversation,” Anatol began, “and I’m ready to move you on to another mission. After five years of fighting in all of the Prussian wars, I tried  to return home, but ended up on a detour. I need you to take care of my business for me, so my Past!Self can go home.”

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Extremus: Year 5

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Captain Halan Yenant is standing at the head of the table, while the rest of the group is seated. To his left is Lieutenant Mercer, who is one of only three people who know what’s going on, and why this meeting has been called. Most of the rest are clueless. “To begin, I’ll do introductions. You may all know each other, but let’s do it anyway. I’m Captain Yenant, first of nine. This is my Lieutenant, Eckhart Mercer. Over here we have Lead Engineer, Veca Ocean, who brought the issue at hand to my attention. Next to her is another engineer, Omega Parker. He’s here, because he’s the clone of a very clever man, who was partially responsible for much of the technology that we take for granted on this vessel. I have recently named him Head of Special Projects, which is what I believe this will be, if it isn’t already. Back on this side is Head of Security, Karson Gideon. He’ll be present for every meeting henceforth, and will be largely responsible for the secrecy of this committee’s mandate.”

“What is this committee’s mandate?”

“I was getting to you, Satyria,” Halan says. “I guess I’ll skip over these others to introduce you to Satyria Ebner. She’s Passenger Chair. While I am still demanding that this project be kept secret from anyone outside this room, she has the right to be included. Coming back this way, Lead Mechanic Corey Holgersen. Across from them is our one and only Temporal Engineer, Valencia Raddle, plus her apprentice, Augustina Voll.”

“I—”

“But she goes by August,” Halan added before realizing that she was trying to say that herself. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine, I didn’t know you knew that. It’s not in my file.”

“It is now.” Halan points down to the end of the table, past Satyria. “Those two down there are The Bridgers.”

The crowd looks down at them, surprised to see them here.

“I know,” Halan says, holding his hand up. “They’re not supposed to be out in public, but it’s too important. This project is long term. It will probably last the entire trip. If word gets out that this committee has formed, or why it has formed, anyone here is subject to profound disciplinary action, including me. I could be deshifted for it, it’s that serious. Anyone who reveals anything about the Bridgers, however...will be executed, because it’s even more serious. No one can know who they are, or that they’re here. Does everyone here understand this? I need verbal confirmation from every single one.” He received it.

“They probably won’t say anything,” he goes on, “and you won’t need to say anything to them, and you don’t need to know their names.” The Bridgers are a mystical and mysterious class of people. They live in a secret section of the ship, and don’t participate socially. They are immortal, having undergone transhumanistic upgrades to keep them from dying. Over time, either their current bodies will be modified, or their consciousnesses will be transferred to new bodies entirely, just to better ensure their anonymity. Now that this meeting has been called, only eleven people in the universe know anything about them, including Rita, and their personal doctor, who lives with them. The next administration will be read-in when the time comes for transition.

The Bridgers were created to maximize the chances that this project will succeed. If something goes wrong during one of these administrative transitions, they can assume authority, and put a stop to any conflict. If something goes wrong with the entire mission, they are expected to survive, along with embryos that are being stored in their secret section. If no one else survives to reach the Extremus planet, hopefully the two of them will, along with a new generation of human descendants. They can’t let this all be for nothing. Of course, this is only a last resort, but the original engineers, some of which ultimately decided to not even come along, felt it necessary to stack the deck in their favor. The very idea of the Bridgers was spread throughout the passengers and crew as a way to frighten those who might go looking for proof of their existence, while maintaining the very real possibility that there is no proof, and that it’s all just made up.

Halan regards the people of the committee, looking for anyone who wants to ask a question, but is too afraid to. He doesn’t plan on answering such questions, but he needs to know if they’re there. “Okay. I’ll cede the floor to Mrs. Ocean, who first came to me with this problem.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Veca says. “As he said, we have a problem. It’s not one we didn’t see coming, nor are we completely unprepared for it, but it is worse than we thought it would be, and it will probably only grow worse as we approach Sagittarius A*.” She places her tablet in the center of the table, and activates the hologram. “This is a rough map of the Milky Way galaxy, based on readings taken from Earth over the last several centuries, the stellar neighborhood from the last several decades, and Projects Stargate and Topdown from the last few decades. Right now, we’re here, and we’re headed to somewhere around here.” She points. “Between us and our destination are stars, planets, and even asteroid belts and shells, but this map is missing a key component. It’s impossible to map to any significant detail, and difficult to illustrate in general, but it’s there, all around us.”

“The interstellar medium,” Corey guesses.

“That’s right,” Veca confirms. “It’s composed mostly of gas and dust, but larger micrometeoroids take up a greater share than we ever knew. The center of the galaxy is denser than the outer arms, therefore, we assume there will be even more micrometeoroids.” She brings up a data table. “Over the last five years, we’ve noticed an increase in field collisions. So far, it’s held. It teleports any incoming matter to a random spot anywhere between a few hundred meters to an AU away. Again, everything is fine. The field has never failed. We want to solve the problem before it fails, though, because that is not an impossibility. However remote, the chances are not zero. This committee was formed in order to make sure it never happens.”

“All of you need to know about this eventuality, but no one else does,” Halan says, retaking lead. “I’m not saying that we won’t ever bring in others, or even make a public announcement. It’s just not in the plans right now. I want to see if the people in this room alone can come up with a viable solution before we start getting inundated with other opinions.”

“If I may make a suggestion on how to proceed?” Omega jumps in.

Halan merely nods.

“When I was working with Team Keshida, if they ran across a problem, they would separate from each other prior to any deep discussion. It was each of their responsibility to come up with ideas without being distracted by other ideas, kind of like what you’re saying with the public. It seemed to work well with them. I propose we adjourn immediately, so each of us can return to our lives for at least a week. Then, we come back together, and present our solutions.”

Halan thinks this over. “The ship is not going to explode in the next week, and if it does, nothing we decide here today will be able to stop it. I accept the proposal. Mrs. Ocean will provide you with the relevant data. If, during the week, you think you need more than what she provides, come to me, and I’ll see what I can do. Sound fair?”

They all seem to think it does.

“Thank you,” he ends. They all get up to leave. The Bridgers activate their teleporters, so no one sees where they go. Only Halan, Mercer, and Omega remain. “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Halan says. “I’ll be fine.” He knew Omega would want to speak with him privately. That was the point of the whole weeklong recess thing. Once Mercer leaves, he turns to the engineer. “What’s your plan?”

“I don’t have any specific ideas,” Omega explains. “I just want to do something I’ve been asking for for the last two years.”

“You’ve been asking for a lot for the last two years,” Halan volleys. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“I think maybe someone’s already come up with a solution to this, and we just don’t know it.”

Halan shakes his head slightly, and tries to think. Then he realizes where Omega is going with this. “You mean Old Man.”

“We have no clue what’s in his lab. We don’t know what prototypes he’s made, what working machines he was using, what designs he’s drawn up. Frankly, it’s irresponsible to not look. Maybe there’s a timebomb in there that’s scheduled to go off in a week. Somebody should look, it doesn’t have to be me.”

“But you’re the most qualified, aren’t you?”

“Saxon was smarter than Veca ever will be. Yes, I’m the most qualified.”

Halan breathes deeply. “I supervise, and I’m putting cameras in your own lab. If I find out you’re trying to create something unauthorized that’s even so much as inspired by Old Man’s work, I’ll banish you to the Karen airlock, and I won’t even let you have a wristwatch. Those are my conditions.”

“I see no problem with that. I don’t want to engineer something if you haven’t asked me to.”

“Thanks. I’ll be reporting this arrangement in the transition file I give to the next captain.”

The two of them go down to Old Man’s old lab, which has been locked and off limits since he disappeared in 2272. It looks the same as it did before, which is good. He was always half-worried that Old Man was actually still around, and secretly hatching schemes down here.

Omega slowly scans the room. “This could be awhile.”

“If I need to leave to handle Captain’s duties, you’ll leave too. We’ll come back as often as it takes for you to get what you think you need.”

“I’ll start with the main computer.” He sits down, and gets to work.

Halan looks over his shoulder for a bit, just to make sure he isn’t trying to access the self-destruct sequence, or navigational controls. Then he starts to look around on his own. He doesn’t fiddle with any of the weird inventions lying around, but he does open cabinets and drawers. One drawer appears to be DNA locked, which means it’s the one he needs to get into.

“Oh, I, uhh...” Omega starts when he sees Halan trying to break in.

Halan rolls his eyes. “What?”

“I can...get into that...for you...probably.”

“How so?”

“I’m not just a clone. I can alter my DNA at will.”

“Why would Saxon build you to be able to do that?”

“Diversity. Each clone was assigned a different module in the Project Stargate ships. Once we were done with our shifts—as you would call them—we would be allowed to go off, and live wherever we wanted. In order to sort of make it less weird, Saxon gave us the ability to change our DNA, so it wasn’t like he was trying to take over the whole galaxy with his own copies. He didn’t want to be seen as some kind of conqueror. The only reason we were clones was because otherwise, over a million people would have to volunteer for the job.”

“So you can make yourself look like anyone?”

“Not superficially. I’ll still look like me, but I can change the blood in my finger long enough for the safe to register as belonging to Old Man.”

“Do it. But just this once.”

“You’ll have to give me six hours. That’s how fast my body can replace a sufficient number of neutrophils. It would take longer if we wanted it to be permanent.”

Six hours later, the DNA safe is open. Halan reaches in to find a stack of letters that were once held together by a now deteriorated rubber band. There are also a couple of ancient storage devices called flash drives, what appears to be a really old cell phone, and an envelope full of hard copy photographs. “What is this? Who is this kid? He’s in nearly every photo.”

“Hmm.” Omega takes one of the better photos, and sets it on the table so he can scan it into the computer. Once the image appears on the screen, Omega commands the computer to age the subject. “Just as I suspected. It’s Old Man. It’s...Young Man. What is his real name?”

“That name is in his official records. I never questioned whether he legally changed it at some point, or if his parents were just weird.”

“He’s from Earth. I recognize this place,” Omega says, picking up one of the other photos. “He’s at the Mauna Kea Observatories, which were decommissioned in the late 21st century.”

Halan shakes his head. “No, I spoke to the other older people here. I wasn’t probing, but they talked about knowing him from before we were rescued. They definitely saw him on Ansutah. He was there.”

“Well, he was also on Earth...about two hundred and fifty years ago, back when they were still using actual film cameras. These sure look like it’s where he grew up, and not just somewhere he visited as a time traveling universe-hopping kid.”

“Who was this guy?” Halan asks, mostly to himself.

Omega flips the photo over. “Elder Caverness, 2005.”

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Microstory 1690: Fade Away

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After the Eleven Guardians of Earth managed to help their foster species evolve to the point where they could leave the nest, and do the same for others, the original guardians didn’t know what to do anymore. Five wanted to follow the Sheltren into the bulk, and find a new race to protect. The other five wanted to repeat what they did before, and foster the evolution of life in this universe. Their leader was the deciding vote, but she wanted to do neither. They had been at this for a billion years, and she was ready to retire. The people they created and helped were now off on their own, and trying to do the same thing. Their numbers were great, and they were eager. What more could a measly eleven people hope to accomplish, now that they had to compare their abilities to those of their children? According to her, having raised the Sheltren so well was all they needed to do. Anything beyond that could just as easily result in terrible consequences. They could theoretically turn a race into the next Ochivari, or even something worse. Perhaps they got lucky with the Sheltren, and it would never go so well again. She voted that they find a random world to live out their eternity alone, no longer meddling in the lives of others. She was going to do this regardless, but she wasn’t going to force anyone else to follow her lead, or even work very hard to convince them to agree. She spoke her peace, and then took off. The others, meanwhile, decided to stay in their home universe, and do things exactly as they had before. They went off in search of a really good planet, and found a unicellular organism that had the potential to evolve into more complex life. They watched and protected them for the next few hundred million years, but then grew tired of it. They missed their leader, and this venture wasn’t as rewarding as it was before. So they left. They didn’t do anything to harm the new planet in any way, but they weren’t going to protect them any more. If life wanted to continue to evolve here, it was going to have to do it on its own. It did. They managed to survive, and develop intelligence, passing all of their Great Filters along the way. It was only a matter of time before they too felt compelled to travel the stars, but they did not have the same idea as the Sheltren, or their absentee Guardians. They didn’t even know that their predecessors had existed. As for those eleven, well they just stayed on their lonely paradise planet in the void, and faded away from history.

Microstory 1689: Connections

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In the early days of a universe called Universum Originalis, a civilization formed in a galaxy called Vertea. It wasn’t just a galaxy, but the entirety of the cosmos, according to its inhabitants. A bizarre phenomenon known as The Verge forced all interstellar travel to first converge in the center of what, again, the people thought must be the center of the universe as a whole. From there, they could travel outwards to where they wanted, but they weren’t able to move laterally. And they weren’t able to move beyond the galaxy, because they weren’t even able to detect that other galaxies existed at all. Once they did progress enough to figure this out, some of them decided to explore. They built ships that were bigger and more impressive than anything they ever had before, and they went out in search of new cultures. While these ships could reach incredible speeds, they still took time, and they figured that not everyone would be so patient. If it took them a hundred years to finally find some alien friends, it would take a hundred years to get back. They decided to construct something known as the Nexus Network. Machines were placed on key planets, which would allow near instantaneous travel between the stars, and even between galaxies. They could automate these network builders to go all over the place, so if one of them ever did encounter intelligent lifeforms, anyone could get to them in a matter of seconds, or maybe minutes. Well, they didn’t find anyone. They didn’t realize how few and far between civilizations were. Natural branes are designed to support life in one galaxy at a time, and most likely crumble by the time a new one rises billions of years later. Fortunately, this was just the one universe, and there were infinite places to go once they came up with sufficiently advanced technology.

By the time they came to understand how rare life was, the small group of scientists and their friends had figured out how to travel between universes. At this point, they themselves were billions of years old, so actually interacting with these others didn’t seem as interesting as it once did. They began to feel like the wisest people in all of reality, and while they weren’t pretentious about it, they didn’t think it was a good idea to interfere with the children too directly. That didn’t mean they didn’t want to help. They could remember being so disappointed about how alone they were in their home universe. They figured that the best way to help was to create connections, so no one else would experience the same feelings of isolation. They built more Nexus networks. They didn’t build them in every universe that they encountered, and not only because the proper physics in some didn’t support the technology, but because they didn’t all need such a thing. Sapioplantaverse needed a network, but only one that reached throughout their home galaxy. They were ecstatic when they discovered the Nexus on their planet, which  was deliberately hidden to avoid extremely primitive species from being sociologically harmed by the technology. The artificial intelligence that runs each Nexus is just that; it’s intelligent. The engineers who built the system programmed it to assess someone’s technological status, to decide what they’re allowed to do with the machine, and what they’re not ready for. Some are allowed to go to any world they want, while others can only go to one. Some immediately have access to advanced features, like evacuation mode, while others have to earn that right, if they ever do. The intelligent plant-based were given easy access to the control room of the machine, but weren’t able to do anything right away. This forced them to study what they had uncovered, and figure things out on their own. It took them years, but once they did, they sent an exploration team to the only other planet seen to have a Nexus of their own. It was this universe’s version of Earth, and from here, an alliance formed. Because what they discovered was that they weren’t the only two cultures in the Milky Way. The Ochivari chose this brane to reconsider their options.