Microstory 1783: Big Bear

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One thing to know about me is that I prefer the cold. I live in a midwest state with seasons, but I hate the summer. I could work in retail anywhere, but my parents had me when they were already pretty old, so I’m kind of obligated to stick around. Still, I blast the air conditioning when it’s hot, and keep the windows open. Is that illegal? I don’t know. Is it wrong? I guess we just have different definitions of morality. The A/C stays on during a lot of the winter, and I still at least have my bedroom window open while I’m trying to sleep. I say all this in preface, so you’ll understand that I don’t know how long I was outside on the ground before I even realized it. Had it been my sister, it would have been a different story. She keeps her house like a friggin’ sauna, I can’t stand it in there. She would have noticed right away if she had suddenly found herself in the spring air, let alone this freezing cold place. I finally wake up, and that probably has more to do with needing to relieve myself than anything. I might never have noticed until the sun came out, and maybe not even for a long time after that, because my alarm clock didn’t accompany me. I have no idea where I am, or how I got there. I see trees and dirt, and that is pretty much it. I see pine needles instead of leaves, which I find unusual. I like the cold, but not the outdoors. I would never go camping in a million years, so there’s no chance I got so drunk last night that I made this choice on my own. Someone would have had to bring me here against my will. They might have left me to die because they underestimated my ability to survive these temperatures, or maybe something went wrong, and they had to scrap their original plans with me. Either way, as okay as I am like this, I know I’m no superhero. I will die out here without shelter and clothing.

I start walking, hoping to catch the scent of a campfire, or the rumble of late night traffic. I could be moving even deeper away from civilization, but there is no way for me to know. I don’t have those lizard brain instincts that normal people have kept. Walking is warming me up, if only just a little. If I don’t come across someone’s tent, or a cave, staying in place would still be foolish. Besides, if someone did leave me, but planned on coming back, I’m better off as far from the drop site as I can get. I can see a lake in the moonlight, but I don’t know if I should go for it. Am I more likely to find salvation there then elsewhere? I’m proud of myself. I’m not too keen on walking either, but I haven’t stopped once to take a break. Maybe this ain’t so bad. I spoke too soon, or rather thought it. I finally do stop when I run into a gigantic creature. It’s dark as all hell, but my assumption is that it’s a bear. It was low to the ground, but now it’s raised itself up, meaning that it started on four legs, and now it’s on two. That’s something I know bears can do. It doesn’t growl, or even seem that menacing. Maybe it’s just trying to get a good look at me. I also know that you’re supposed to pretend to be bigger, and make a lot of noise. I don’t think I’m gonna do that, though. I just adjust my heading, and walk away. It doesn’t get mad or try to follow. I doubt it eats people, and it can tell that I’m not a real threat. Lights. I see lights through the trees. As I approach, I see that it’s a cabin, and it’s occupied. This could be who took me, but this is my only shot at survival. I knock on the door, and a scruffy old man opens. He’s not surprised to receive a visitor, even though we’re in the middle of nowhere, and I’m completely naked. He lets me in, and I ask him where we are. “This is Big Bear Lake, son. California.” Yeah, that tracks.

Microstory 1782: Tukana Is All

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We live our lives by the Tukana. It is an ancient text, which lays out the ways of the Tukan. It provides us with the guidance we need to make the best decisions, and be happy. Some go against the Tukana, but we fight them, and we always win. We will always win. For the Tukana is everything. The Tukana is all. I am known as the Dominant, which means that I am in charge of this entire tropicas. I did not simply fall into my position, and I was not selected. I had to fight my way to the top. Literally. The main social activity, according to the Tukana, is fencing. The practice is even more ancient than the prooftext. Our ancestors once used it to determine who amongst them was the bravest and noblest. They did not become rulers, though. That is something the Tukana demands of us. I am obviously the best. Many have attempted to thwart me, but I put them down every time. Unfortunately, our laws dictate that fighting for dominance is not the same as sparring. The better must kill the lesser in order to become the winner of the challenge. Until then, nothing is settled, and it would throw our world into chaos if I let them live. This has threatened our population before, and I can’t let it happen again, so I outright reject any challenge that comes my way when there is no hope that I’ll lose. It would not be fair to the challenger, and it only places us in greater danger to our enemies, the Buseros. They follow a similar path to enlightenment, but it is corrupted. Their inferior prooftext, the Buseron was plagiarized from our own; the one true book of salvation. The writer paraphrased nearly every sentence in his work, and passed it off as original so he could make money. The Tukana is not about making money. The Tukana teaches us to embrace the fruits of our destinies.

We are fruitarians. That is our number one rule, and as far as I know, no Tukan has ever broken it. We are aware that our ancestors once killed for their food, as the Buseros still do. That is perhaps our main difference. We do not destroy what we eat, but spread it around, and make more of it. We pollinate what’s left of our beautiful and precious Earth, and we do not take anything for granted. I may need to break our rule, though. I have been held captive by the Buseros for the last two weeks, and I’m starving. They have deliberately locked me up with a garden of plants, and small furry creatures. They want me to fall apart, and become more like them. It would be the greatest victory they’ve ever seen...dare I say the only victory. I’ve tried to hold on this whole time, but the pain inside me grows by the minute. The guards have left me alone for the next half hour, or so, as they do every day. They will notice if I eat one of these plants, or of course, an animal. We’ve become friends, I certainly don’t want to harm the latter. The former deserve to live out their lives as well, even though they do not have faces. The insects. They can’t possibly know how many insects are in here with me. They crawl and hop in and out at will. They’re still alive, so I don’t want to kill them, but I suppose if it’s me or them, it has to be me. I look around to make sure I’m not being watched, and then I snatch one off of the ground. It doesn’t taste good, and it’s not much, but I keep doing it, and I eventually start feeling energized again. I can’t eat much before the guards return, but I keep doing it every day. The Buseros are so impressed after I show them I’ve survived for four whole months, and they have no choice but to let me go. I return home to tell my people of the tasty insect, and its many rewards.

Microstory 1781: Triangle Water

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There was originally nothing special about the Bermuda Triangle. There are many explanations for why there seem to be more lost aircraft and oceancraft in the area, and not all of them are supernatural. Yes, some believe it leads to another dimension, while others think that there’s some kind of glitch in the magnetosphere over this spot. Even the more logical explanations aren’t necessary, because the truth is that it mostly comes down to math. Why are there more disappearances in this one region of the sea, as opposed to, say, the middle of the South Pacific Ocean? Simply because there is more travel happening in this area. It’s like asking why there are more deaths in cars that are driving on the road, as opposed to cars that are parked in people’s garages. Well, they’re not moving, so there’s not as much opportunity to suffer an injury. It’s not impossible, but not as common, and not reported as a traffic accident. In the 1950s, sensationalist media began to suggest that there was something different about the Bermuda Triangle, and people began to contrive their conspiracy theories. Once this happened, the Triangle began to distinguish itself. Just the suggestion that it was special was what made it special, and that was what gave it the temporal properties that it otherwise would not have had. To be clear, supernatural disappearances did not start to occur in the 50s. It was still perfectly safe to sail or fly over these waters, and expect no more problems than you might encounter elsewhere. Neither activity is without risk, but that’s true of anywhere. The best thing you can do to protect yourself is to be prepared, and again, this is true of anything. At any rate, you won’t have to worry about an undersea demon rising up to eat you. It’s more that becoming so important to the global consciousness has allowed the natural laws of temporal sciences to exploit it for other purposes.

Time travel is real, and so is immortality, but reaching true immortality is a pretty big chore. It requires obtaining eleven sources of water. Catalyst primes the body to accept them, and Activator binds them together. Each of the sources in between imbues you with a different flavor of non-mortality. Bermuda Triangle water is called Existence. Most of the waters are fairly obvious in regards to their purpose, while Existence is a little more vague—though not quite as vague as Death—at least if all you’ve heard is its name. Youth keeps you young, or even youngifies you, if necessary. Longevity lets you keep going throughout the years. Health cures you of disease, and immunizes you against all future disease. The others are just as apparent when you first hear of them. You can take any of the waters you want, and exclude any you don’t, but once you drink Activator, it’s over. You are permanently at least one kind of immortal, and you can never benefit from any of the ones you missed. Heck, you could theoretically not drink any of the middle nine, and become permanently immune to them. Some choose to ignore Existence, but it is the absolute most important. Time water keeps a time travel event from preventing you from ever reaching your goal of immortality in an alternate reality. Existence is similar, but instead it prevents a time travel event from preventing you from being born in the first place. If you never existed, you can’t become immortal, can you, even if you drank Time in your first timeline? The closer to the center of the Bermuda Triangle, the better, and it only counts for the water found after 1950, but if you did manage to drink it, and then Activate, no one can take it away, even in the past.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: March 15, 2373

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To be honest, no one really knew how Tamerlane Pryce did it. That wasn’t to say it was so shocking and impressive that there were no words to describe it. It was just that no one had taken the time to study Level Elevens, to find out exactly how he resurrected certain people with unusual temporal properties. He seemed to have limitations. He couldn’t transform anybody into any kind of artificial choosing one he could think of. If that were possible, all humans throughout history probably would have eventually ended up with time powers, like that episode of Heroes where they go into the future, to a world where superpowers are apparently ubiquitous and affordable. There appeared to be a difference between, say, being able to teleport a target’s individual molecules, and simply skipping chunks of time. Relatively speaking, it was probably pretty easy to give Mateo, Leona, and Angela the one-day-per-year pattern, but something like Nerakali’s brain blending abilities were likely out of his reach. One thing about this process—however it worked—they recently learned was that he did it with both a corporeal component, and a neurological one. When Mateo and Kestral swapped their bodies, both of them found themselves jumping to the future come midnight central; Kestral because she was now inhabiting a body that experienced accelerated time, and Mateo still because his consciousness was also involved.

This made a bit of sense, from an evil mastermind’s perspective at least. Pryce wanted the three of them to be on this pattern, whether they were happy about it or not. He didn’t want any one of them to be able to just jump to a new body, and suddenly be free from his choice. All of Mateo and Leona’s experiences leading up to their temporary deaths, and all that came after it, resulted in both of them deciding that this was what they preferred anyway. They were time travelers, who were gonna end up in the future faster than most people. It became a part of them a long time ago, and they wouldn’t want to give it up. All the times they did, like when they took a break from it on Flindekeldan, or when they were on the Bearimy-Matic pattern, they were uncomfortable. They may have thought they liked it, but they have since admitted to themselves that this is the pattern they want. Kestral made no such declaration. There had to be a way to switch them back. It wasn’t fair to her.

Dr. Mallory was here, as was Six Turner. The latter was the sixth incarnation of Paige Turner, and evidently histories’ foremost expert in consciousness transference. She probably understood it better than Pryce himself. She didn’t say how far into the future she lived, but she made it sound pretty far. She had the two patients sit next to each other in a loveseat while she stood behind them. At the moment, she was sifting through Mateo’s head as if hunting lice. Or rather, it was Kestral’s head, but Mateo was using it at the time.

“Can you see my brain right now?”

“Shh,” Six hissed.

“You mean my brain,” Kestral argued.

“Shh!” she hissed louder. She continued to use her magical powers to investigate their minds. When she was finished, she sighed greatly, practically blowing the two of them over with her breath.

“What is it?” Leona asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Him,” Six answered, indicating Kestral. “It seems to be a failsafe.”

“Failsafe for what?” Leona pressed.

Six pet Kestral on Mateo’s head, like she was a puppy. “I don’t know why he would do this, but Pryce seems to have decided that Mateo had the right to change bodies precisely once, and then never again. This tech is illegal. I mean, think about it, you would be able to imprison someone you don’t like in a non-infinite substrate. It would be like murdering them. It might take a century or two, but if you can’t transfer your mind to something new, you will die.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Angela pointed out. “We’ve already transferred our minds before, when we cast to Teagarden.”

“That wasn’t full transference,” Leona explained. “It was just surrogacy. That’s why things got so crazy when the time jump came.”

“Oh.”

Leona redirected her attention back to Six. “Pryce’s technology technically predates whatever laws were passed to regulate mind-uploading. It probably can’t be considered a crime.”

“Yeah, well if I were you, I wouldn’t call the cops either way,” Six began. “They’ll focus on making the rest of Mateo’s life as comfortable as possible, like he’s in hospice.”

“What can we possibly do?” Leona asked. “Surely you can break through this...body lock?”

“What can we do?” Six echoed as she consulted her watch. “Kill him within the next twenty-seven years.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Leona was going into fight or flight mode.

Six didn’t understand why Leona was mad at her. This wasn’t her fault. “Like I said, it’s a failsafe. He will die, and if that happens before The Edge, he’ll return to the afterlife simulation. If he dies after the year 2400, he’ll just die. And nobody knows what happens to people upon true death, if anything.”

“The simulation shuts down after we reach the Edge?” Angela questioned.

“Yeah, the two developments are tangentially related to each other. The public finds out about time travel a number of different ways, one of them being the sudden appearance, brief disappearance, and reappearance of the Matrioshka Brain, along with the introduction of the Patrioshka Brain.” Six clearly had no qualms about warning people of future events.

“If we kill him,” Leona began, “and I’m not saying we’re going to do that—but if we did, there’s no guarantee that Pryce will give him back.”

Six released a highly exaggerated grimace. “You wouldn’t be dealing with Pryce anyway. The politics up there get really complicated around the time that it returns from the center of the galaxy. I’m not recommending this because it’s a good idea. It’s just Mateo’s only hope. I know what happens on the other side of the Edge. Vonearthans are expected to deal with death on their own after that. His condition is a thankfully rare exception to those solutions.”

“Wait, he’ll die,” Ishida started. “What about her?” She pointed to Mateo’s body.

“Oh, Kestral’s fine. Yeah, you can make her a clone body, or whatever you want, and she’ll be all right. Well, she can’t return to her original body, of course, and I don’t know how you feel about that, so maybe it’s not all right, but she’ll live.”

“Don’t be so sure of that,” Dr. Hammer warned. She was doing her own thing throughout all this, running her own tests.

“What?” Six asked.

“You may know more about consciousness transference than I do, but I know about time powers and patterns, and the transfer of those.”

“Oh, no,” Kestral said. “I’m on his pattern now, permanently.”

“That’s what the test says,” Dr. Hammer confirmed. “And not just because you’re still in his body. As soon as you made the transfer, the damage was done.”

“I knew I should have done it!” Olimpia argued.

“There’s no way anyone could have known,” Kestral reminded her.

“At least you wouldn’t be enduring a disgusting penis...no offense,” Olimpia contended.

Mateo wasn’t sure if he shouldn’t take offense, or should.

“That’s not a real problem!” Leona jumped back in. “She can suppress the pattern all she wants, be it with her own Cassidy cuff, or something else! I’m confident they’ll figure it out! The problem is my husband is about to die, and return to a terribly dangerous place, or die later, and possibly not survive at all! What are we going to do about that? I don’t want to hear any more problems! I want solutions!”

“I’m sorry,” Six said to her. “The body lock is beyond me. It’s airtight. It has to be, or it doesn’t exist at all. That’s why it’s illegal.”

Leona continued to scream at her, but it wasn’t at all productive. Six was the bearer of bad news; not the source of it. Besides, Mateo made peace with his own mortality a long time ago, even before the time traveling. If it’s over, he’s okay with that. “Leelee,” he said. “Stop. Please.”

He didn’t have to say another word. She knew what he was feeling, and she knew that pushing the issue would only make things worse. Six was a Paige, and they had yet to meet any version of her that couldn’t be trusted. If she said there was no way to save him, there was no way to save him.

“I can save him,” Ramses finally spoke.

“How do you figure?” Six was skeptical.

“If we kill him right now, he’ll go to the afterlife sim, regardless of who is in charge of it, correct?”

“Yes,” Six followed.

Ramses nodded. “So, that’s the loophole. The digital mind system that Pryce uses is different than the ones that normal people do here in the real world.”

“True,” Six agreed, “but that makes it worse. His system is also airtight. I’ve already tried breaking into it.”

“We don’t have to break into it,” Ramses began. “We just have to trick Mateo’s consciousness into thinking that the simulation we build is the right one. When he dies, he’ll go there, where he’ll be free. Then we should be able to move him into whatever substrate we want.”

Six thought about it for a not very short amount of time. “That’s beyond my expertise, which is why I didn’t think of it. I don’t know how to code simulations. It could work, but only assuming you can.”

Ramses smirked, and popped his knuckles. Then he reached over and did something to his own Cassidy cuff. “Oh, I can do it. I just might need a year to complete the programming, and send it through the testing phases.”

“Okay,” Kestral said. “I don’t think you need me for that, so I’m going to transfer my mind to a base model while I wait for my clone to grow.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Dr. Hammer said. “Your connection to the year-jumping pattern is unstable. Your mind is still getting the hang of it. That doesn’t mean you can stop it, but you shouldn’t mess with it either. You need to let it play out; make another jump or two, and then suppress it permanently.”

“Olimpia was right, I don’t like having a penis,” Kestral argued.

“This is my professional medical opinion,” Dr. Hammer said bluntly. “You don’t have to listen to me.”

“If I skip time, who will monitor the portal?” Kestral reasoned.

“I can handle this end,” Ishida assured her. “Leona can suppress the pattern instead, and go back to the AOC. Right, Leona?”

Leona didn’t like the idea of sticking around for a whole year without her husband, but five minutes ago, she thought she was going to lose him forever. This was certainly preferable. “Very well.”

And so five people stayed, and five people went. Six spent more of her time on the AOC with Leona while Dr. Hammer spent more of her time on the Jamil. Ramses was there too, since their ship had far more processing power, and more sophisticated technology. He worked all hours of the day, but he would occasionally join them for a meal, which they usually had on the AOC. He either had to get this done in a year, or another, or another. There was just no thirteen-month option here, and that was a lot of pressure for him. It wasn’t the first time for him either. He was working with the same time constraints when he built their ship in the first place. People were relying on him, and he was paranoid about letting them down. They would be fine, of course, if they had to wait for another timejump, but that would have messed him up psychologically. And so, 363 days later, he announced that the new simulation was ready. It wasn’t.

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Extremus: Year 23

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Things have been going incredibly well. The crew has fallen into a nice rhythm. Shifts are lasting as long as they should. The Captain garners the respect she deserves, and the Future Captain is learning everything she’ll need to know to take over when the time comes. Even Second Lieutenant Callaghan is doing okay, and has accepted his role as the primary liaison between the crew and passengers. Speaking of the passengers, things are going well for them too. The government was duly elected, and is making reasonable choices for the people. They live in a time of peace. Tensions between the two camps have abated, and the risk of civil unrest has been thwarted. There is still the looming threat from the True Extremists, who have yet to make a move since Vesper tried to kill then-Captain Yenant. At least they’ve not made any noticeable moves. Perhaps they’re slowly replacing every person on this ship with a robot, but so far, all evidence is to the contrary. The Admiral filled Olindse in on all of that, but until they come across some new information, there is really nothing anyone can do about it. That is about to change. The original bridge section has been returned home.

As the Earthans were first beginning to sail away from their homeworld, and visit other planets in person, the Four Pillars of Spaceflight were devised. They were Safety, Compartmentalization, Redundancy, and Modularization, and known as SCR&M for short. This is how Vice Admiral Thatch was able to send the entire thing into the future without disrupting the rest of the ship in the slightest. It was relatively easy for the engineers and their vacuum bots to replace it without so much as stopping for supplies. The new one looks exactly like the old one, except in one major way. They constructed a special platform on the bottom of it, which was designed to allow the old one to return at some point, and reconnect. When teleportation and time travel are in the mix, you can’t assume that something, or someone, that disappeared won’t one day come back to you. The Earthan researchers who came up with SCR&M didn’t include this kind of contingency in their paper on the subject, but the crew of the Extremus knew that it was a fair possibility.

The idea was to have any visitor or returnee come in through the quarantine, but seeing as both Omega and Valencia are temporal engineers, it isn’t that hard for them to break through teleportation restrictions, and jump right onto the new bridge. Security surrounds them with weapons immediately. Captain Belo stands from her seat. She spends more time on the bridge than Halan ever did, and a lot of that is thanks to the Second Lieutenant, who deals with a lot of the issues Halan always had to handle personally. Olindse knows who these three are, and expects to be able to trust them, but she can’t be sure, and that’s not protocol. “You were meant to go straight to quarantine,” she argues.

“We don’t have time for that,” Omega contends.

“This ship is about to hit a brick wall,” Thatch reports, knowing a real explanation is needed quickly. “You are on a collision course towards a planet roughly the size of Mercury.”

“How do you know this?” Olindse questions.

“We’ve seen it,” Valencia explains. “We were there, in the future. We couldn’t save the Extremus in time. There was no way for you to course correct, so we decided to travel back in time, and warn you now.”

“Are you sure you are not subject to fate?” Olindse presses.

“Pretty sure.”

“You don’t have much choice,” Omega argues. “You’re headed for a darklurker, which has been deliberately shielded from the void telescopes, and all other sensors. It’s massive, and extremely dense, like a planetary neutron star. We barely made it out of its gravity well. It interferes with our teleportation drive and time drive. If you don’t alter course now, we’re all done for. We have already made the calculations for you.” He tries to hand her his handheld device. “All you have to do is input them.”

She looks at the device like she just saw him come out of the bathroom, and knows he didn’t wash his hands. “That is not procedure. Major course correction requires a shipwide vote.”

“We don’t have time for that!” Omega raises his voice just a little too much to be respectful. “Where is the real Captain?”

“I am the real Captain,” Olindse fights back. “You will have your opportunity to speak with Admiral Yenant, but we are following procedure. We shouldn’t even be talking to you right now.”

“He’s being dramatic,” Valencia says, trying to calm the room. “You have time for the vote. All it means is we have to change the specific calculations to account for the time difference. But do understand that we cannot just wait and see if anything changes. Someone put that rogue planet there, and they did it on purpose, because they know our route. All of those meteoroids we kept hitting, those were just the foreguard; a...side effect of the massive gravitational disturbance that Theia-Two is producing.”

“Theia-Two?” Olindse questions.

“Historical reference, it’s just a placeholder. You can call it whatever you want, because no matter what word you use, you’ll have to spell it D-E-A-T-H.”

Captain Belo takes a regal deep breath. “Take them to quarantine. Callaghan, please covertly find out if any of the passengers noticed their return. I’ll alert the Admiral. The rest of you...?”

Everyone freezes in place, nervous.

“Not a word. Everyone in this room just signed a new NDA. You may not remember, but trust me, it happened, and trust what will happen to you if you break it.”

Two weeks later, the executive crew has convened for an official briefing in what was designated as the crew courtroom, but it’s never been needed. It’s kind of the best setup they have, especially if they want to remain covert. Omega and Valencia are leading the presentation. Before them are the two captains, the First Lieutenant, Admiral Yenant, Dr. Holmes, Temporal Engineer August Voll, Future Temporal Engineer Kumara Bhasin, and Head of Security Armelle Lyons, along with Passenger First Chair Nuka Bloch, and Second Chair Poppy Ogawa. Second Lt. Callaghan is busy running the ship while the rest of them are busy with all this. He has a small case of FOMO, but he’s mostly excited to pretend to be completely in charge, at least for the next few hours. Vice Admiral Thatch is sitting on Omega and Valencia’s side of the room, but he’s not really part of the presentation, because he mostly served as an auxiliary crew member on the bridge ship while the smart team investigated the gravity problem.

Most of the crew have already heard nearly everything about what the team went through, but they have to go over it again in an official capacity, especially for the Chairs, who had heard very little. Now that everyone has some perspective, they just sit there, unsure how to proceed. Halan knows what to say, but he feels like he needs to stay quiet. The pause is taking too long, though. “Thank you, Valencia and Omega Strong. That is quite a tale. We will do everything we can to get you back to your son, should you so wish. Until then, we still need you.”

“Thank you, Cap—Admiral,” Omega has to correct himself. In the rest of the galaxy, admiral is a more respectable rank than captain, but on Extremus, it just means they have less power, so Omega feels guilty for the mistake. It’s the way things are, and it’s the way they should be, so each next captain can have uncomplicated control over the ship, but everyone here got real used to considering Halan their leader. The transitions should get easier as time goes on, but for now—for most—it’s surreal...even after three nonconsecutive years without him. Dwelling on all of this, Omega has forgotten what else he was going to say, or even if he had anything more at all.

“Until then,” Halan goes on, “we have to deal with this brick wall problem. We always knew that rogue worlds could be in our path, because they’re so hard for the void telescopes to detect. So what steps did we take for our original flight path that were designed to insulate us from accidental collisions?”

“Hold on,” First Chair Bloch jumps in. “We’ve yet to see any proof that this isn’t an accident.”

Omega rolls his eyes, but doesn’t even get the chance to open his mouth before his wife stops him with a hand on his arm. She knows him well enough to know when he’s about to find himself on the wrong end of an HR report. “We found the rogue planet 683 light years from our present location after studying the gravitational disturbance the Extremus has been fighting through for two decades. Space debris is unpredictable, chaotic, but it is relatively uniformly distributed, congregating only when a significant source of gravity attracts them...like a solar system?” She takes out her hologram pen, and begins to draw a visual aid in the air. “They don’t form lines like people at the post office. Here’s the planet. All of this is the debris. You see how they kind of form a trail? It stretches thousands of light years across, and we’re flying right through it. There is nothing in the universe like that. Quite frankly, sir, I don’t see how anyone could look at this image, and see anything but an unnatural attack by a shadowy enemy.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Second Chair Ogawa points out. “This meeting was not called to discuss how we’re going to deal with the True Extremist problem at large. We’re only here to vote on releasing a referendum for the general public to vote on a course correction to protect ourselves from an impending collision. It’s irrelevant how the planet got there. It’s there, and we have to do something about it.”

The first chair is probably going to be their one holdout. That’s okay, it doesn’t need to be unanimous; just a majority. “I’ve not heard how much this is going to add to our flight time.”

Admiral Thatch literally slaps his face with his palm. “This is a 216-year mission. We’re not going to a specific planet. We always talk about there being nine captains, but we’ve always known there would probably be ten—or now eleven.” He indicates the interim captain, who changed the math. “The last one is going to be responsible for the search for our descendants’ new home. There are a few ways they might do this, but my point is that the course correction doesn’t add any time to the journey, because we don’t know what we’re looking for. We’re merely assuming that there will be a hospitable world out there, somewhere. It might take this ship a little extra time to find it, but the course correction has nothing to do with that.”

“Very well,” Chair Bloch concedes. “I’m ready for a vote when you are.”

“Thank you for your permission,” Omega says with snark. He can’t just leave well enough alone.

Before Captain Belo can call for the vote, a person flies out of a violent portal, and slides across the room, stopping quickly when the justice bench gets in her way. Dr. Holmes, more spry than one might think for her age, hops over the railing, and kneels down to tend to her unexpected patient. Everyone else crowds around to see what’s going on. The doctor carefully rolls the young woman to her back to straighten her spine. Upon seeing her face, they look up at the Present!August Voll, who is not particularly surprised at seeing her alternate self. Time travel is illegal on the ship except for vital purposes, such as needing supplies from a star system that’s going to be too far away within minutes, or in case of emergency. If anyone’s going to use the technology for the latter, it should be the temporal engineer, who understands the dangers and consequences.

Alt!August opens her eyes.

“She’s hurt,” Dr. Holmes says, “but probably just needs pain meds.”

“First,” Alt!August manages to say, “I have to warn you. Don’t bother voting on the referendum. A course correction is not going to work.”

Valencia kneels beside her, and takes her hand in both of her own affectionately. “Why not? What happens?”

“This isn’t protocol,” Captain Belo argues. You don’t just ask a time traveler what happens in the future. The conversation on the bridge when Omega, Valencia, and Thatch returned was a bit of a gray area.

“Shut the hell up...Captain.” Good save.

Alt!August closes her eyes for a few seconds, like she’s about to fall unconscious, but she pushes through it. “They just move the planet. They have all the time in the universe. We’re doomed.” Now she really does passout.

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Microstory 1780: Triangulum

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My parents hate each other, but they claim they can’t get divorced. My little brother is very sensitive, and they don’t think he could handle it. Unfortunately, they can’t stand to even be in the same room as each other, so I don’t think that’s really helping him. They parent him separately, and I’m expected to fill in the gaps. He may be too young to be consciously aware that he never sees the two of them at the same time, but it’s almost certainly affecting him, and eventually, he’s going to grow up. I guess they’re hoping they’ll be able to finally walk away from each other by then. I think it would be far less traumatizing to the kid if they just took care of it now, but they won’t listen to me. I’m just the older brother in the middle. My therapist calls it triangulation. In order to put up a united front for my brother, both of our parents have to agree on whatever decision needs to be made. But since they can’t talk directly to each other, they go through me. My mom sleeps on a pullout couch in her home office, while dad stays in the master bedroom. They coordinate their schedules so they don’t end up in the bathroom at the same time, and mom still needs to keep some closet space up there. Again, I don’t know that their youngest doesn’t notice all of this, but again, I’m actually the one coordinating it for them. I’m responsible for knowing who is going to pick him up from soccer practice, and which is available for the next game. Both of them have pretty flexible schedules, and could theoretically watch him play together, but one will always pretend to be busy, and it’s up to me to decide which, making sure that he doesn’t feel too neglected by either one. It’s such a pain. It’s also not fair. I’m 17 years old, I’m not supposed to be responsible for their relationship. My therapist says I need to stand up for myself, and he wants to have a conversation about that with all three of us, but that is just this side of completely impossible. I gave up on trying to fix them a long time ago.

It wasn’t always like this, and even after it started, it wasn’t always this bad. It’s not like they had a meeting at one point, and contrived this plan to triangulate their fourteen-year-old son. It started out small. They would fight about the baby, and one of them would sleep on the couch that night, but then they would work it out, and come back together. This happened more and more until they realized that they sometimes hadn’t spoken for two straight days. I was brought in to relay their messages, but if that got to be too complicated, they would step in, and finish the conversation themselves. But then they stopped doing that altogether, I guess because I got better at anticipating their responses, lessening the amount of back and forth necessary. I became half my father, and half my mother, so that I could act on each one’s behalf to the other without actually speaking to them about what they would choose to say under normal circumstances. It was too late before I noticed that I had lost my whole self in that chaos. I’ve been trying to get the real me back for a year, but it can’t be done unless we break the triangle. So that’s why I’m here today, Your Honor. I know it will be a long process, but it must be done, and I was advised by my counsel to begin now. I turn 18 in six months, and when that happens, I need to have full custody of my brother, so I can take him out of that toxic environment. Our parents are not going to like it, but I’m confident that I will prove myself to be the most mature person in the family. I have filled out all of the requisite paperwork, and I’m ready to plead my case, whenever you are.

Microstory 1779: Telescope

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I forgot my telescope on the bridge. It’s this hopelessly useless little thing that can’t see the sun on a clear day, but I still wanted the Captain to autograph it for me, and I’m so proud of myself for having been brave enough to ask. She signed it with a smile, and didn’t even blink out how difficult it was to write on a cylinder. It was an honor just to be there, but the fact that she spoke to me personally was more than I could ask for. I can die happy now. I was so relieved that it all worked out, and excited to be up where the action was, that I left the telescope on top of an auxiliary console. By the time I realized my mistake, something had gone terribly wrong in the ship. I don’t have access through the doors myself, but an engineer was running out just at the right time, so I slipped back in and hoped not to bother anyone. I just wanted to grab it, and get out of everyone’s way. Things escalated quickly. We had apparently come out of plex too close to the planet, and were unable to compensate. The ship was being torn apart by the tidal forces, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Our vessels are at their weakest when they collimate back to realspace. The strain from faster-than-light travel is not enough to vaporize us, or anything, but couple it with the sudden gravitational pull of a celestial object, and you have yourself a recipe for disaster. I’ve always hoped to be a pilot one day, so I’ve been studying all of this stuff. I really shouldn’t be here right now, though. I try to leave, but the doors are blocked by the hustle and bustle. I think it’s best if I just try to stay out of the way. I grab my telescope, and stick myself in the corner, where nobody notices me. It’s not long before they all begin to evacuate. They’re heading for the escape pods, as are the rest of the passengers like me. Meanwhile, I’m frozen.

I can feel the ship cracking from the gravity, and I know that I have to get out of here too. Hopefully I can squeeze in one of the pods before they all leave. I don’t make it. This ship’s bridge was designed as an actual bridge, which overlooks the crew observation deck below. As I’m running along the railing, an explosion from the side pushes me over the edge, and I begin to fall towards the floor below. I watch it crumble, and escape into the vacuum of space before anything hits me. I’m sent into the black as well, where I expect to die quickly...except I don’t. I’m still alive, for some reason. I’m not breathing, but my blood isn’t boiling either. I’m just there, conscious and watching the debris flying chaotically around me. I don’t hang around for long before I fall towards the atmosphere of the planet. I was supposed to live here for the next year while I finished school. Now I’ll die here. It doesn’t happen yet, though, as I continue to fall. I can see the fire around me, but I don’t burn up. This doesn’t make any sense. This is not what’s meant to happen when an object falls from space. I’m not built to survive. What the hell is going on? I feel like I’m suspended in place while the ground flies upwards to greet me. As it becomes larger, I see more detail. The indistinct terrain, the road that cuts through it, the vehicles, the people walking to the beach, their eyes. As fast as I was moving, and as quickly as I stop, I don’t even die on impact. I land, awkwardly but safely, as if I simply hopped out of bed a little too hard. I still don’t understand this. Then I look up and see a flat piece of debris falling down right over my head. It’s too large for me to get out of the way. And then I crash onto the floor of the observation deck, and die as the rest of the ship is ripped apart around my body, telescope still in hand.

Microstory 1778: Bullsh

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I was a terrible liar when I was young. I would keep doing bad things, and trying to hide it from my parents, and they always realized right away that I wasn’t telling the truth. I just kept trying, and they kept seeing right through it. My father would get angry about it, and my mom was always disappointed, but not in the way you think. She too was a liar, but an expert at it. Over the years, I learned more about who she was, and what she did behind everybody’s backs. She shoplifted, pulled mean-spirited pranks on complete strangers, and cheated on her husband more times than want to think about. I was basically just like her, except that I wasn’t good at keeping secrets. Seeing my potential, she took special interest in me, but you wouldn’t know it if you were looking from the outside. She treated our lessons just like she did anything else, as nobody else’s business. Mother was a grifter before she met dad. He was the first man she met who she didn’t want to screw over, so she gave up that life, and settled down. She couldn’t let go of her compulsive habits, but she was no longer taking thousands of dollars from her victims. He provided them both with more than enough money, and that was really all she cared about, unlike the con artists you see in the movies, who apparently mostly do it for the thrill. She couldn’t be sure I would grow up to be a functioning member of society with a decent job, so she felt that she needed to teach me her old ways so I would have something to fall back on no matter what. It wasn’t normal, and it wasn’t moral, but she taught me that everyone has to come up with their own set of morals, and I believed her without question, because I couldn’t tell when she was lying. I’m better at spotting it now that I’ve gone through all my lessons, so I know that she legitimately believed that. Before she passed, she lived her life with no regrets, and she wanted me to live mine the same way. I have, but not as she imagined. I use my powers for good.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has an entire division dedicated to fraud, and that’s all well and good, but they don’t do what I do. They investigate crimes with forensics, by hunting for, and searching through, evidence. They don’t know what a grifter looks like. They just know what their victims look like when they’re done with them. It’s really obvious too, when a corporate executive turns out to have been embezzling, or cheating their customers out of the product or services they paid for. How do you find out which ones are bad, and which ones are good? Simple: they’re all bad. Every single one of them is a devil, and they’re not even in disguise. What I do is go after the people that are in disguise, or who work in the shadows. They make small scams here and there, which add up to a lot, and ruin a lot of people’s lives without anyone ever knowing their true identities. I can practically smell when someone is getting scammed. There’s a certain lightness in the air that most people can’t detect. I can teach you to find these people too. I believe everyone at this continuing education seminar can help me grow my team of investigators, which focuses on stopping the fraudsters that aren’t out in the open, and don’t ever end up in the news. I know I can do this for you, because I...do not even work for the FBI. I made this badge in the bathroom this morning, after waking up and deciding on a whim what I was going to do today. I’m that good. Your real teacher will be coming in soon, but don’t tell her that I was here. She’ll ground me for a month if she finds out that I snuck into her building yet again. Parents just don’t understand, right?