Microstory 1698: Benedict’s Purpose

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Benedict Stewart was an odd duck, and though no one would argue he was the best person in the world, he wasn’t evil. He was a high school science teacher, who was forced to leave for engaging in an inappropriate sexual relationship. She was not one of his students, but she was pretty young, and his behavior reflected poorly on the school. She was a college student, who was there as a pre-service teacher, so she could gather enough supervised experience to become a certified instructor once her own schooling was complete. As her supervisor, he was considered to be in a position of power, even though he assured the district that he did not take it into account when evaluating her performance. The student teacher stuck up for him, and declared it to be a fully consensual relationship, which probably prevented the situation from becoming a news story, and also kept him from being fired. He would have been free to apply for work elsewhere, and while no job was guaranteed, he likely would have eventually found some place fitting. Instead, he chose to work at the soda bottling plant on the edge of town. It wasn’t as rewarding, and it was below his education and experience, but it was a decent living. His girlfriend, meanwhile, stayed with him for years, eventually becoming his wife. A week after the wedding, she was the victim of a drunk driver, and ended up in a coma. Benedict was distraught, and could no longer function. He became careless in his duties, and his boss had to let him go. The money wasn’t that much of a problem, as the drunk driver was the son of a wealthy businessman, who agreed to a hefty settlement in exchange for keeping this quiet. But Benedict was still alone, and he was still sad.

His boss was a good guy, who understood how traumatic this whole experience was. He hired him in the first place, fully aware of his past transgressions. He couldn’t let him keep his job for the time being, but he intended to kind of leave it open until Benedict got the help he needed. He recommended a support group, so he could work through his grief, and find some way to move on. Benedict got a lot of help from them, but he didn’t realize until later that this support group had a bizarre secret. It turned out to be the source of recruitment for a budding superhero organization, and they wanted him on the team. Him? Really? Why? Well, he wasn’t just any ol’ chemistry teacher. He was known for creating little gadgets to illustrate scientific concepts for the kids. He helped bridge the gap between all the sciences, including physics and biology, and even other subjects, to facilitate a more well-rounded education. So the leaders of the superhero group suggested he come up with some non-lethal weapons, and use them to protect the city. It would give him purpose, and help relieve the depression, and some of the suicidal thoughts he was suffering. So that was what he did. He wore a magnetic suit that could steal guns from an aggressor, a taser, striking gloves, a sonic eardrum burster, chemical explosives, a heat ray, blinding laser lights, and a slingshot. The idea was for each weapon to demonstrate one of the ten types of energy, excluding nuclear and gravitational, because he didn’t actually have any powers, and he didn’t have genius-level intellect. As time went on, and Benedict pursued missions for his team, he shed some of the excess from his persona, and focused on the more important features. He also learned that maybe the people who recruited him had been lying about being heroes all along. And now Benedict...would have to choose a side.

Microstory 1697: Erroneous Soulmate Syndrome

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There are obvious downsides to only being able to have relations with one partner for your entire life. That person has to be something special, or you might end up just being miserable, and resentful. As mentioned before, your partner may die, leaving you alone, or only with however many children they were able to conceive with you. There are some really bad consequences that evolution couldn’t take into account, and which medical science had to pick up where it left off. There are many atrocious cases, but I will talk about the first one that was corrected, at least on a chemical level, that is. From a biological standpoint, in this universe, rape and sex can end the same. Two people come together, and release chemicals that will prevent either one of them from copulating with someone else. The fact that it’s not a consensual encounter is not something that the body knows, or would be able to do anything about. One young woman was just trying to live her damn life as a coworker kept pestering her about a date. He felt entitled to the exploration of a relationship, and ultimately, did not take no for an answer. Unlike in other universes, no one has intercourse while they’re dating. You have to be certain that this is the right person for you, or you could be stuck with the wrong partner forever. Still, people have sexual urges, which they usually take care of in other ways. The coworker was not willing to do that. The more he begged her for a date, and the more she rejected him, the most frustrated and erratic he became. He was both not thinking about the rules, and didn’t care about them. He wanted sex, and he was going to get it, whether she was willing or not. It was wrong in any world.

Once the attack was over, they were now supposedly bonded for life. She no longer had any hope of finding a true life partner, and he didn’t either, for as much as that mattered. The rape itself could not be undone, nor the psychological trauma that the act inflicted upon the survivor. It would always be there, no matter how much therapy she received, and no matter what punishment her attacker faced. As for the biological soulmate problem, there actually was hope now. Medical science was advancing at a decent rate, and a particular research team believed they had the answer to what had already been deemed Erroneous Soulmate Syndrome. Using a new surgical procedure, they thought they could reverse a soulmate bond, and return people to their original, pre-sex active state. This woman was the first to undergo the experimental procedure, and discover that it worked. It was flawed, however. She was still unable to bond with anyone else. It didn’t hurt, but the soulmate connection could still not take place. Her chosen partner would have technically been free to choose another while still having relations with her—though, he did not do that. Neither of them would end up with a biological soulmate, but at least she was no longer linked to her rapist. Over time, the researchers continued to perfect their techniques until they could successfully reverse a bond, while allowing a patient to find another afterwards. That first patient’s limitations were never fixed, but it was an important first step in making the world a little more fair by giving people a choice. As the years went by, new laws were passed, allowing more exceptions to a bonding, including not only rape, but childhood tomfoolery, and drunken mistakes. Decades later, the elective procedure was standard for anyone over the age of eleven, but of course, it was only ever performed after receiving consent.

Microstory 1696: Symbiotic Death

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For the most part, the commensalistic relationship between a human and their nevilere is a loving and happy one. As stated above, they’re like a pet that you keep with you throughout your entire life. There are almost exactly as many nevileres as there are humans. Nature didn’t keep the populations so even like this, but in modern days, with doctors and other medical professionals keeping track of such things, it’s been pretty equal. Occasionally something can go wrong, but that does not mean that there is no way out of the problem. It’s sad, but death is a part of life. When a nevilere embeds itself in its host, it will enjoy an extended lifespan. It won’t die until the human does, and it won’t ever survive beyond that, unless it’s removed from the hump in enough time. This is a dangerous and risky procedure in any situation, and most humans don’t want to think that their lifelong symbiotic organism friend was later given to someone else. Plus, the nevilere probably wouldn’t survive for much longer anyway, and even if it did, it would probably be depressed, because it would have become just as attached to its original host as the host was to it. There are some cases when the nevilere dies before the human does. This universe didn’t come up with a lot of the more violent or dangerous sports; there is no such thing as boxing, or even SCUBA diving. Doing harm to a nevilere—be it one’s own, or another’s—is considered more heinous than murdering a human. So people are generally a lot more careful around each other, but that doesn’t mean that accidents don’t happen. If a nevilere dies before the human is sufficiently old, it will often leave the survivor in great despair. It has been known to lead to suicide.

Luckily, there is hope. Someone else’s nevilere can birth an offspring without the host having anything to do with the process. It can then donate it to the other host. The challenge is coaxing it to do this. Nevilere are smart, but still just animals. Nevilere experts know how to provoke conception with vibrations, tickling, and other techniques. It’s a little weird, but it’s necessary, and no weirder than any other form of animal husbandry. Not everyone would choose to go this route. If they were to lose their nevilere, they would never dream of trying to bond with another. This is all right, but there is a little bit of stigma attached to it. Being asymbiotic, as people call it, can sometimes make other people feel uncomfortable. They don’t know whether something unavoidable happened to it, or if you intentionally did something to harm it, and of course, being flawed human beings, they can assume the worst in you. Overall, however, people of Nevilereverse are compassionate and patient with each other, and they try not to judge. They value facts and understanding. It is unknown if this has something to do with the nevileres themselves, or if being part of such a profound symbiotic relationship has taught the human race to choose kindness over cruelty. Either way, it’s had a generally positive impact on their impact on the environment. While they do have a history of burning fossil fuels, and otherwise harming the ecosystem, due to a delay of innovation, they’ve done fairly well for themselves, and their planet. After careful study and deliberation, the Ochivari ended up deciding to leave them alone, and let them develop without any interference. While many cultures end up walking the path towards transhumanistic upgrades, the Nevilereversals were not able to figure out how to bring their nevilere with them, so they remained forever organic.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 23, 1876

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Anatol didn’t give them any time to rest before sending them off to their next mission. He didn’t say much about what they were going to be doing, which was standard protocol. He was careful to make sure they understood to convince the young version of himself to go back to Prussia, while they did whatever he was intending to do instead. They still didn’t know what that was, but they still didn’t have any leverage against The Warrior, and he was providing them with opportunities to save people’s lives. Perhaps he was becoming more like Nerakali and Jupiter, which was what they wanted all along. At the moment, they were standing at the bank of a river, or a lake, or something.

Olimpia knelt down, and dipped a few fingers in the water. She then stuck them in her mouth. “Salty.”

“My dear!” said a gentleman who was walking by with a fancy cane. “Of course it’s salty. It’s the ocean!”

Olimpia smiled submissively. “Yes, sir. I’ve never seen the sea. I have lived my whole life inland, on a farm.”

“Very well, miss.” The dandy started to walk on.

“Um, first,” Olimpia stopped him. “Since I am such a fool, could you tell us where we are, and maybe...the date?”

He looked upon her with such pity. “Portsmouth, on the twenty-third of November.”

She continued to give him puppy dog eyes.

“Eighteen-seventy-six.”

“Thank you, kind sir.”

He was able to walk away.

“At least they speak English,” Jeremy noted.

“Anyone got eyes on the target?” Angela questioned.

“Yeah, he’s over there behind all that brush,” Mateo answered. “He’s been spying on us since we arrived.” They all looked over to see the figure of a man, crouched behind the tall grass, still as a statue, hoping he wasn’t actually spotted. “Come on out Annie,” Mateo instructed. “We need to talk.”

A young Anatol Klugman stood up, and approached them. Though he had just spent the last several years killing Prussian enemies in every war that his state was involved in, he appeared wide-eyed and naïve. He had yet to become so cynical and combative.

“You speak English by now, don’t ya, Annie?” Mateo went on.

Anatol just nodded his head.

“You gotta go home.”

“Why?”

“I don’t actually know, but it’s where you belong right now. Perhaps it has something to do with your mother?”

“My mother is dead.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mateo said genuinely. He reached behind him, and offered his hand to Angela, who took it, and stepped forward reluctantly. “This woman delivered you. Your mother was alone, and we showed up to help.”

“That was thirty-eight years ago,” Anatol said.

“We skipped all that time to come right here...to help you yet again. Helping you is sort of...what we do,” Mateo explained, mostly truthfully.

“I have business to conduct here,” Anatol argued.

“We’ll do it for you,” Mateo promised.

“You don’t understand...” Anatol lamented.

“We understand enough,” Mateo contended. “Prussia needs you. The port is ours.” He gestured towards the harbor behind him.

Anatol thought over the proposition. “I suppose, if you fail, I will always be able to return to this moment to repair what you broke.”

“Yes, you could always come back. But you might not have to...if you tell us what it is you were here to do in the first place.”

“You don’t already know?” Anatol asked rhetorically before disappearing without so much as a helpful hint.

“We’ll figure it out,” Leona assured her husband. “We always do.”

Mateo turned and gazed upon the water. “My guess is that someone is going to drown. Let’s fan out, and look for trouble.”

Since there were only five of them, they couldn’t cover much ground, but they were theoretically already in about the right spot, or the Warrior would have dropped them off somewhere else, and the other Warrior would have shown up there too. It was Olimpia who happened to be closest to the problem when it arose. It wasn’t just a drowning, however. As reported later, a man was deliberately holding a woman’s face down in the water; possibly to murder her, or maybe just to shut her up. The rest of the gang didn’t make it there in time to help. They just heard a blood-boiling scream, along with probably half of England.

When they arrived, the man was frantically crawling around on the ground like a dog. “You—you damned dirty wagtailing hedge-creeper! What did you do to me!” Blood was running down his ears, and dripping onto the grass. Olimpia’s arm was wrapped around the survivor’s shoulders, and she was slowly crab walking them both away from the would-be killer.

Jeremy knelt down, and tried to hold the man in place, but he freaked out, and started flailing around like a fish on the dock. Jeremy didn’t let up, though. He pulled the man’s wrists together behind his back, pressed his cheek down on the grass, and started rubbing his back. It kind of looked like a deep tissue massage. After a few moments, he looked back up to the group. “I once saw my dad use this technique on a dog who wouldn’t let him into a house to help its injured owners.”

“He’s right, though,” Leona said, looking over at Olimpia. “What did you do?”

“I think I burst his eardrums,” she answered. “With my voice,” she added.

“He deserved it,” said the survivor as she wiped some residual water from her face. It was then that they realized quite how young she was. A girl, they might have called her. He was much too old for her, though they had to remember this was a different time. Besides, there could be any number of reasons these two were at the harbor together, and anyway, nothing would have given him the right to shove her face in the water like that. It didn’t really matter who she was, or who he was, or what they were doing, or what precipitated the attack. It shouldn’t have happened, and none of them could feel bad about the consequences that this man was now suffering. They weren’t here to hurt people, even though that was what Anatol wanted, but that didn’t mean they were going to condemn Olimpia for taking it this far. Sometimes, the only way to keep someone from getting hurt was to hurt someone else. Some people just gave you no choice.

They left the man on the ground, knowing that a passerby would discover him at some point. It wasn’t their responsibility to make sure he was okay. They needed to get this young woman to safety, and if that meant giving her a cuff temporarily, so she could join them on the next jump, then so be it. For now, they just made their way into the woods, where they could set up their fancy futuristic tents, and stay on the fringes of society. She was obviously impressed that such a large structure once fit inside such a small bag, but she didn’t ask questions about it. It wasn’t crazy enough to warrant her rethinking everything she knew about the world, like a cell phone, or something, would. She was particularly attached to Olimpia, for obvious reasons, so the latter stayed with the former while she tried to get some sleep. The rest of them made a fire, and sat around to talk.

“Did you notice her name?” Angela asked as she was warming her hands.

“Orna?” Mateo echoed how the woman had answered the question on the walk here.

“Orna Kelly,” Angela said in full.

They all shrugged their shoulders, and shook their heads to indicate that they did not see the significance.

“Does she become famous, or something?” Jeremy asked.

“Not her, really. And maybe not at all. It could just be a coincidence.”

“Go ahead,” Leona encouraged.

Angela began the story. “Decade after I died, I wasn’t anywhere near being considered for a role as a counselor yet. I was just a normal resident, but I was...privy to certain historical knowledge that other people didn’t have access to. I didn’t know it at the time, but since I had a personal connection to a time traveler, Tamerlane Pryce let me know a thing or two about life back on Earth. You have to understand that once you died, you lost all connection to the world. If you wanted to know what was happening, you had to wait until you just so happened to run into someone who died at some point after you, and just ask them to recount the history. I, on the other hand, like I said, had access to the news. I received a newspaper every day that gave me just a brief overview of current events. I didn’t know why I was receiving this, or why other people weren’t, but I just accepted the privilege, and read it during my breakfast.

“Well, since I’m a clever girl, I was able to occasionally use this knowledge to meet certain historical figures, because I got an alert every time they died. It’s essentially what eventually made me become a counselor in the first place. I am cognizant of certain...truths...about certain...conspiracies. I know who killed JFK because I was able to talk to people that people on Earth weren’t. Anyway, the year is 1888. I meet a twentysomething woman named Mary Jane Kelly.”

“Jack the Ripper,” Leona interrupted.

“That’s right. She was his last victim, and she told me...well she told me a lot of things, but she talked about her family. She mentioned having a sister named Odharnait, which I believe is the full name for the diminutive Orna.”

“You think that’s Dark Mary’s sister?” Leona guessed, pointing to the tent.

“Timeline checks out,” Angela said. “I don’t know anything for sure.”

“What does this mean?” Jeremy asked. “For the rest of the timeline, that is. Did we save this Mary Jane’s life just by saving her sister first, or what?”

“Without someone like Anatol to tell us, there is no way to know the consequences of our actions, or Olimpia’s,” Leona explained. “All we can say for sure is that she saved someone’s life today. How that impacts the future is not for us to say...not yet. We still don’t know why Young!Anatol had to go back home, and let us take care of this mission, instead of just letting things play out as they did. He’s a time traveler, he should have been able to go back home afterwards.”

“Maybe that killer has powers.” Olimpia was out of the tent, and sitting down on the log. “And maybe Anatol didn’t want his younger self to end up with those powers. Maybe Prussia has nothing to do with this.”

“Spot on!” The Warrior said. They turned to find him standing a few meters away, covered in blood. He jammed the Sword of Assimilation into the ground, and left it there while he walked over to warm himself by the fire. “My stupid younger self was an idiot. He was reckless with his powers. He just jumped around the timeline, taking whatever he wanted. That man’s abilities...it was too early. Young!Me isn’t ready. I’m ready now, so I had you alter my personal timeline, so I could assimilate myself into my future alternate self’s body. I know it’s confusing, but everything’s better now. Miss Kelly is on her way to her true destiny, and it’s time for you to return to the modern day.”

“What exactly is Orna’s destiny?” Leona questioned.

“Don’t worry about her,” Anatol said. “No one is going to connect her to that asshole’s murder. I know how to get rid of a body. And before you get all high and mighty on me, I agreed to let you save people’s lives, instead of taking them. I never agreed to go celibate myself.”

“That’s not what celibate means,” Jeremy said to him.

“It does for people like me.”

“Where are we going?” Mateo asked, knowing that this conversation about death could only end up in a fight if it were allowed to continue.

“How does 2013 sound?” Anatol smiled with his teeth. “Huh? Computers? Showers? Ubiquitous antiseptics? Let’s do this. You’ll have a week to rest.”

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Extremus: Year 6

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Over the next year, the micrometeoroid problem worsens. Several even manage to slip through the field. Or maybe the field actually teleports the objects inside of it, instead of away, which was an early problem that the technology had. A woman named Weaver figured out how to reduce the chances of that happening, but she was operating under the assumption that the interstellar density would not change this dramatically. Fortunately, it’s not like Extremus was designed with a single layer of aluminum foil. The bulkhead has so far proved strong enough to withstand the damage, and robots have been dispensed to repair the dents immediately. Many of the meteoroids don’t even hit the ship itself anyway. The field is meant to be a buffer; not the last line of defense. Still, it’s a concerning issue, and it still needs to be dealt with.

After a week, the new committee that Halan formed reconvenes. Individuals and teams give their own ideas about how to solve this issue. The Bridgers make another appearance, but it’s their last one. Any information that they need to know about the future of the mission can be passed along to them at a later time. They don’t vocalize any ideas themselves, but everyone else has more than one possibility. Head of Security Gideon has the simplest idea. They could make a lateral course adjustment, and fly parallel to the galactic plane, rather than right through the center of it. It’s not the craziest plan, but it’s also not ideal as it extends their mission time by a measure of years, and potentially uses up too much energy. Lead Mechanic Holgersen thinks that all they need to do is bolster the hull by adding Whipple bumpers, and other armor. Again, this isn’t insane, and it’s certainly doable. Almost all of the ideas come with downsides. They are only short-term solutions, or they make something else about the mission harder, or they just won’t necessarily be good enough for an even higher interstellar density. And then there is one that is the craziest of them all. Surprisingly, it comes from passenger representative, First Chair Ebner.

Omega and Lead Engineer Ocean have been working out the details for the last year, and now it’s time to present it to the rest of the engineering team. So far, no one else has been brought into the mix—not even the rest of the crew—and this strategy has been working. That has to change now, but they should still be able to keep the circle tight. “Thank you all for coming,” Veca begins. “I know you’re all worried about your apprentices, but I’m confident that they can survive the next few hours without you. That’s what they’re here for.” When the mission began, a certain number of people were approved for the crew, based on their education and background. Now that the mission is six years in, some of the younger passengers are finally ready to prepare to replace the initial crew members at a one-to-one ratio. Each current crew member has been assigned an apprentice to train, who will supposedly take over their responsibilities when their shift is over.

Veca continues, “before I begin, due credit is owed to the woman who came up with the idea. She has no engineering experience, so it’s the rest of us who will have to make it actually work, but it’s a good example of how everyone has something to offer, and solutions can come from some of the most unexpected places. First Ebner, would you please stand up?”

Satyria likes to be heard, but she doesn’t just want people to think that she’s important. She wants to actually be important, and to earn all of the recognition she receives. She works hard to contribute to the cause, and never rests on her laurels. Still, she doesn’t love to be the center of attention. She would rather just know that people are pleased with her contributions on their own time. Even so, she stands up, and thanks the crowd as they clap politely.

“Now. Again, we need you. This is a massive endeavor. About half of you are directly responsible for the construction of Extremus. The other half was still in the middle of your education. Either way, you all know what it took to make this dream come true, and none of you takes that for granted. It is a magnificent vessel, and I am profoundly proud of the work we have all accomplished. Unfortunately, as you read in the pre-meeting brief, there is one flaw, which comes out of a lack of data about the composition of the galaxy. You built a great ship. Now I’m going to have to ask you to do it again. It won’t be an entirely new ship that’s the same size as this one, but it will be heavily fortified, and it will be responsible for acting as a sort of frontrunner shield. We’re tentatively calling it The Spearhead.”

One of the engineers raises his hand. “You want a second ship to fly in front of us, so it can take all the micrometeoroid damage on our behalf?”

Before Veca can answer, another engineer piggy-backs on the question. “How do you suggest we get this thing in front of Extremus? Even if we build it in modules, and assemble it on the outside, we’re literally going as fast as relativity allows us. We’ll have to slow down so it can accelerate, and get ahead of us.”

“That’s what those three are for.” Veca points to the corner of the room.

Temporal Engineer Raddle and her apprentice, August are sitting with a second apprentice whose first day on the job was yesterday. Valencia stands up. “We don’t have to slow down to get something in front of the ship. All we have to do is teleport it to a point in space ahead of us. FTL technology isn’t fast or safe enough for general interstellar travel, but it’s perfect for short range jumps. We’ll attach the Spearhead to the bottom of the hull, fire up its engines, send it to the edge of shield space, and let it fly in front of us. Boom, easy.”

“Yeah, that sounds easy,” someone from the crowd groans.

“Simple, not easy,” Veca corrects Valencia’s point. “Look, I know that this sounds crazy,” but Omega and I have been running simulations for months now. Quite frankly, we should have designed the ship to have an external shield the entire time. It will create a clear path for us to follow, and warn us of other dangers ahead of time, like gamma-ray bursts, and collapsed stars. The Spearhead is about more than just micrometeorite strikes. It’s about knowing what’s coming before risking any lives.”

Before anyone can say anything more about anything, they hear a thunderous explosion, and feel a shockwave ripple through their bodies. Captain Yenant, who’s been quiet this whole time to let the experts carry out this presentation, jumps up and activates his emergency teleporter. He likes to walk from place to place most of the time, but obviously he needs to get to the bridge quickly. Mayhem has taken over, and crew members are screaming data at each other, and trying to communicate with their comrades around the ship. “Report!” Halan screams.

“Fires on decks nineteen through twenty-two. Casualty reports still coming in. Deaths upwards of eleven.”

“Sir,” someone else begins.

“What? Just say it!” Halan demands.

“Deck twenty-four, main engineering, has been obliterated. Twenty-three is exposed.”

“Has it been sealed off?” Halan questions.

“Yes, sir.”

“Teleport all injured parties to the infirmary.”

“Already done, sir.”

“Main engines.”

“Holding.”

“Power efficiency.”

“Down to 83%, but rising.”

“Hull integrity.”

“Stressed between twenty-two and three.”

“You’re sure that everyone is out of twenty-three,” Halan asks.

“Sir,” he confirms.

“Decouple,” Halan orders. “Jettison deck twenty-three, and what’s left of twenty-four, before they tear us apart.”

“Jettisoning twenty-three and down,” he agrees as he inputs the command into the computer.

Halan waits a moment, and watches the screen to make sure the damaged sections are successfully removed from the ship. “Okay. Reframe speed.”

“Seven-oh-seven-C.”

Halan sighs and shakes his head in sadness. “All that. All that death, and we’re still just moving along like nothing happened. Did we even lose any time?”

“No, sir.”

“Great. I’m sure everyone we lost was comforted in their final moments that we’re all still doing okay.”

“Sir?”

“Compile the data, and run full diagnostics on every single system on the ship, including the passenger sections. I’m going to the infirmary.”

Fifty-five crew members, and one passenger were killed in what they could come to learn was yet another micrometeorite strike. According to what little data could be recovered from the incident, it was about the size of an ancient Earthan baseball. Though not so big, it was able to do sizable damage, because of how fast the ship was moving. The teleportation shield made an error when it transported the object closer to the ship, where it was able to rip straight through the lowest deck, and kill everyone there instantly. The only silver lining was that this was the main engineering section, which was designed to sit lower than anything else. The passenger sections were numbered from the opposite direction, since it was more intuitive for them to think of it like an above-ground building. Level one actually coincided with Deck 20.

Since nearly all of the current-shift engineers were in the middle of the meeting on Deck 2, they managed to survive the strike. Sadly, their apprentices were down there instead, monitoring systems, and relogging data. They were all killed, and as if that wasn’t sad on its own, it also meant that there would be no one to replace those crew members once their shift officially ended. Perhaps Halan would be able to convince them to extend their shifts until replacements could be sufficiently trained, but that isn’t what matters right now. They have to rebuild, and fortify the physical shield, and increase power to the teleporter field, if possible. Nothing like this can ever happen again, and it falls on Halan’s shoulders to ensure that. No one seems to blame him for it, but as Captain, he is ultimately responsible for literally everything. A lot of people were nominated for the position, and about half of them declined specifically because it was too much pressure. The other half are probably feeling lucky right now that they weren’t put in charge. Well, one of them doesn’t feel lucky, because she’s dead.

Captain Yenant addresses the whole ship on the evening announcements, explaining to everyone what happened, and what they will be doing to prevent another tragedy. It’s over the next few days that he starts to hear the criticisms, and they are all pretty much valid. He can’t condemn anyone for losing faith in his leadership, or in the mission as a whole. There is a carefully laid out procedure for recalling a captain, but the passengers have less to say about it than the crew does. For now, no one’s been talking about that, and Mercer has been keeping his ear to the ground for it. It’s not out of the question, though. It’s never out of the question. And Halan will step down gracefully, should the need arise. A battle for power does no one any good, and undermines the spirit of the ship’s mandate. Hopefully it won’t come to that, and it’s looking like it won’t. The crew still does not blame him for what happened.

The repairs themselves were fairly quick and easy. Extremus was designed to drop any section at will in case something like this occurs. The decks above were negatively impacted, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed. A significant portion of the vessel was designated for spare parts and raw materials. That’s not the problem, though. It’s the missing decks themselves that are going to make things difficult for them. They don’t ever plan on stopping, unlike most ships, which only have to make it to a destination in the stellar neighborhood. The really cool thing about relativistic travel is that it cuts down on the amount of time that something can go wrong. At the moment, the closest outpost is only twenty light years from Origin, which means while it takes a little over twenty years to get there from Earth, the crew only experiences ten days. Extremus, on the other hand, will be en route for 216 years. They can’t afford to have to rebuild the ship over and over again. They’ll be able to replace those missing decks over the course of the next year, but every time that happens, it cuts down on their reserves. They will eventually run out, and Halan doesn’t know what happens when they get to that point. For now, the problem has to be solved, and Halan isn’t sure they’ll be able to take care of it before another strike kills them all.

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Microstory 1695: A Whole New Meaning to Omega Male

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Most of the time, The Omega Gyroscope makes big changes to reality. It causes the global population to go back in time, or alters their perception of it. Or it instantly switches everything to a new timeline. Some of the time, however, it makes small changes, and it all has to do with the person wielding it. The Gyroscope is basically a wish fulfillment device, which reads its user’s mind, and makes changes to the universe in whatever way it’s capable of, getting as close to the user’s desires as possible. It’s not really trying to do that. It’s not really trying to do anything. Some people are just better at forming a psychic connection with it, and it accepts this input like a computer. That’s all it is, a very fancy and advanced computer with no buttons or monitor. The results of a user’s desires are often not what they truly wanted, but not because of a be careful what you wish for aphorism. It’s more that the Gyroscope has its limitations, and can’t just do whatever you want. Before the little powerful device ended up in the museum, where it would later be used by a number of people, it was discovered in an attic by three adult children who were cleaning out their father’s house after he passed. Since the Omega Gyroscope is so small and seemingly innocuous, the three of them thought little of it. They just threw it in a shoebox, and focused on the rest of his effects. It was only later when one of them, bored at the estate sale, idly spun it. At the time, she was thinking about her father, and how she wished he had never died. Apparently, the Gyroscope interpreted that to also mean that he wouldn’t ever die, even in the future.

The daughter stayed in her seat for the next hour or so before realizing that something had changed. The sale was still on, and she was still in charge of handling the money, but it was no longer an estate sale. It was just a regular garage sale. Evidently, in this new reality, the four of them decided to clean out the father’s house anyway, and sell what they could before donating the rest. He was still very much alive, and just as she was noticing that the sign by the street was different, he was returning from having helped transport his kayak to its new owner. Only she seemed to remember that he had died in the other reality, but by then, there was no way for her to make the connection that the Gyroscope had had anything to do with it. She didn’t even consider it as a possibility. She also didn’t try to explain what she could remember to the others. She kept her mouth shut, and decided to be grateful for the gift, no matter what had actually caused it, be it her magical powers, or simply a welcome relief to a bad dream. Since she didn’t know that the Omega Gyroscope was responsible for the gift, she let the thing be donated to an antique store, where it would one day be found by the curator of a museum. For the next ten years, the daughter watched her and her siblings continue to age while their father stayed the same. No one could explain it, and it was eventually decided it was best that they keep him a secret. Other people would start asking questions. What would happen in the next ten years, or the next hundred? They didn’t know if there was a limit to it, so they all moved, and started a new semi-anonymous life in a new city. Their intention was to move again, and start referring to him as their brother. Before this was necessary, the Omega Gyroscope precipitated a major global phenomenon, which saw the entire human population sent back in time to their younger bodies, and father and daughter would find themselves at the center of the action.

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.